In Your Neighborhood, Jan. 20

Ridgefield and Fairgrounds

Ridgefield: An American Paint Horse named JZA Wyatt I Zipt, owned by Teresa Albrici of Ridgefield, captured a world championship title at the 2009 Fall World Championship Paint Horse Show, held Nov. 5-14 in Fort Worth, Texas. JZA Wyatt I Zipt was shown in the Solid Paint-Bred Trail class by Kip Larson of Arlington. In this class, horses are judged on their ability to negotiate six to eight obstacles that might be found on a trail, as well as demonstrate a pleasurable walk, jog and lope in a responsive and willing manner. Open competitors may be youth, amateurs, or professional trainers, and they can compete on their own horses or those owned by another individual.

Ridgefield: Members of Pleasant View Church of the Nazarene have introduced a children’s program called Kidz Blitz, a children’s church curriculum that focuses on involving the children in activities and having the kids act out Bible stories. The first week featured about 12 participants; four or five members of the church are involved in organizing it each Sunday.

Battle Ground, Meadow Glade and Hockinson

Battle Ground: Thirty yellow school buses formerly marked with the name of their owner — Petermann Northwest — have gotten new lettering that identifies the school district they serve instead. “Battle Ground Public Schools” is the new message on the side of buses that tend to run the district’s southern routes — Orchards, Barberton, Brush Prairie, Salmon Creek — and sometimes share roads with buses from the Vancouver and Evergreen districts. “This gives the buses and the school district a better sense of identity and offers some clarity to other motorists and the general public,” said David Gray, assistant superintendent. There are approximately 112 buses in the Battle Ground fleet carrying students more than 10,000 miles per day. Petermann is still the contractor that provides the buses, drivers and mechanics.

Hazel Dell, Felida and Salmon Creek

West Hazel Dell: Three members of Columbia River High School’s DECA club have been helping their fellow students become more financially literate. Henry Rolfs, Silas Collentine and Nate Dahlstrom taught a senior math class Dec. 2-3 about establishing and earning good credit, as well as how to balance their budgets and stay out of debt as they go on to live their lives on their own. On Dec. 9-10, they taught an eighth-grade leadership class at Thomas Jefferson Middle School about balancing a budget. The students also taught two fifth-grade classes at Sacajawea Elementary School about dollars and cents and introduced them to them the concepts of banks, savings, and earning interest on their money. “We got the fifth-graders involved in this by playing a game where each kid received six Jolly Ranchers, each color of Jolly Rancher having a specific point value. They were then given time to trade their Jolly Ranchers with the goal being to get the most Jolly Ranchers worth the highest amount of points. At the end of our lesson, we set up a Jolly Rancher bank and gave the kids the option of giving us their Jolly Ranchers and earning interest on what they gave us, or keeping them or simply eating them,” DECA member Silas Collentine wrote in an e-mail.

Northeast Hazel Dell: Adrean Butler, a 2003 graduate of Hudson’s Bay High School, is a calendar girl. Butler is Miss October in Hooters’ calendar. She has worked at the Jantzen Beach Hooters restaurant for three years and was selected as Miss October from more than 20,000 Hooters Girls working at 450 locations worldwide.

Orchards, Sifton and Brush Prairie

Walnut Grove: Chase Bank has proposed construction of a branch office on the corner of Northeast 63rd Street and Andresen Road near the Andresen Marketplace retail center, which is anchored by Safeway. Plans call for a 4,195-square-foot bank with three drive-through lanes and one ATM lane. Vancouver’s Robertson & Olson Construction is the project’s contractor. Chase operates 15 branches in Clark County as the consumer and commercial banking division of Chicago-based JP Morgan Chase, which acquired Seattle-based Washington Mutual in 2008. Chase operates more than 5,400 branches in 23 states and places third behind Wells Fargo and Bank of America in terms of total U.S. retail bank branches.

West Vancouver and Downtown

Esther Short: The Greater Vancouver Chamber of Commerce raised more than $10,000 through its annual Chamber Cares holiday giving campaign. The effort was launched at the 1,100-member business group’s annual installation dinner in September and ended at a holiday giving breakfast in December. Donations came from chamber activities and from businesses. The proceeds will be used to support more than 50 nonprofit groups affiliated with the chamber.

Hough: The Hough Neighborhood Association has updated its Neighborhood Action Plan for the first time since 1996. The plan was presented to the Vancouver City Council in December. Four of its highest priority goals are: increasing neighborhood participation, reaching agreement with the U.S. Postal Service to keep mail delivery at doorsteps rather than street boxes, increasing the safety of the neighborhood through participation in crime watch and emergency training programs and preserving and increasing Hough’s historic character.

Arnada: Kevin Ellis, a senior at Catlin Gabel School in Portland, was notified Jan. 13 that he is one of 300 students from across the United States to be named a semifinalist in the Intel Science Talent Search, a highly regarded precollege science competition. His winning research project is titled, “Automatic Parallelization Through Dynamic Analysis.” Each of the 300 Intel STS semifinalists receives $1,000 with an additional $1,000 going to their school. Forty finalists will be announced on Jan. 27 and will receive an all-expenses-paid trip to Washington, D.C. in March to attend the Science Talent Institute, where they will compete for $405,000 in scholarships.

Central Vancouver, Minnehaha and The Heights

Harney Heights: The Harney Heights Neighborhood Association elected its officers at its November meeting. Rick da Corte is chairman; Will Vinson, Jason Vombaur and Steve Powers are co-chairs. The neighborhood is following with interest the Salvation Army’s possible purchase of the old Fred Meyer store at Grand and Fourth Plain for use as a family service center.

Central Park: Rachel Stansbury, development assistant for the Clark College Foundation, has been selected for the 2010 Rising Star Award by the Council for Advancement and Support of Education District VIII. The award honors outstanding individuals with three to five years’ experience in the advancement profession and recognizes early success as a good sign of future leadership and achievement. Stansbury will be presented with the award at the District VIII conference Feb. 17 in Portland.

East Vancouver, Cascade Park, Fisher’s Landing and Evergreen

Bennington: Alia Hidayat, a student at Shahala Middle School, had her design chosen as a first-place winner in the Push-Up and Create contest, sponsored by Dreyer’s Grand Ice Cream and Scholastic.com. The contest was to create a new tube design for Push-Up ice cream snacks. Hidayat won a $250 gift card for her design. The designs can be seen at http://www.scholastic.com/pushupandcreate/index.htm.

Cascade Park: Local artist Li Ping Chen, 70, has only been painting for about three years, but she’s already amassed a stack of award ribbons from local art shows. Among those awards include a judge’s choice award from the Portland Fine Arts Guild for a self-portrait of her younger self, and she also won the people’s choice award during the fall show for the Society of Washington Artists for a picture of two polar bears. Her subjects range from landscapes to portraits to a variety of still life subjects.

East Clark County: Camas and Washougal

Camas: The Grass Valley Elementary School held a successful Giving Tree and coat drive prior to the holidays. The school’s PTA collected 50 coats that were then donated to Share and the gifts from the giving tree filled many boxes and were picked up by the Camas Fire Department to distribute to local families in need.

Camas: Camas High School has been awarded a silver medal and named one of America’s Best High Schools by U.S. News & World Report. The magazine analyzed nearly 22,000 public high schools and awarded 1,000 gold medals, 461 silver medals and 1,189 bronze medals. Students at Camas High School perform better than the state average on standardized tests and excel at Advance Placement tests, according to a statement. Vancouver School of Arts and Academics was also awarded a silver medal and CAM Junior-Senior High School, an alternative school in Battle Ground, was awarded a bonze medal.

Camas: The staff, students and families of Skyridge Middle School really made a difference in December. They donated 321 jars of peanut butter for orphaned Mexican children who live near the garbage dump of Vincente Guerrero and get no other protein. They adopted a needy family of six through the Salvation Army. They donated six boxes of used books and art supplies to a needy school in Eastern Washington. They sent holiday cards to Americans serving in Iraq. And they collected thousands of food items for local food drives during the holiday season.