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PRICE DROPPED! A PATCH OF PARADISE

1848 sq. ft. of nice, country living on a 1 acre lot. New paint inside and out. Carpet, vinyl, kitchen appliances and more all only two years old. Great condition, excellent view lot. All for $165,000. R1358 $150,000

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610 S. First in Othello (509) 488-5651

Eric Olsen • Broker • 989-0838

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Gail Earl • 331-6497Pete Olsen • 488-9823Lynn Olsen • 488-9823

Meghan Olsen • 989-9721

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OLSEN HOMES, LLC.OLSEN HOMES, LLC.NEW LISTING!MOTIVATED SELLER

2011 built 3 bed, 2 bath like new home! 1,436 sq.ft. Olsen Home features an open floor plan with a bonus den/office space, lawn installed, tip-top condition. No need to wait 3-4 months for construction, when you can move right in, make an appointment today! R1362 $145,000

GET BUSY

Top of the line restaurant building in heart of Othello. Built in 1998. Sits 65+/-, along with drive-thru. This is offered at far less cost than cost to build. C331 $380,000

NEW ON MARKET

4 bed, 2 bath, 2,000 built manufactured home. Sits on a large, corner lot just a short drive out of town. R1363 $124,900

Othello OutlookOthello OutlookTheThe

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see Board | A6 4

By Erik [email protected]

An indictment out of the U.S. Attorney’s Of-fice in the District of Nebraska has charged former ConAgra Foods vice president Don-ald Wilson with eight counts of wire fraud in a scheme ran from 2007 through 2011 to de-fraud his employer. The indictment, released last fall, alleges that Wilson would work with third-party vendors to provide ConAgra cus-tomers with promotional materials and named Othello’s GTL Enterprises as one of the ven-dors implicated.

Wilson pleaded not guilty to all eight charg-es in November and according to District of Nebraska media coordinator Jan Sharp, two

more defendants, Charles Garcia and Jose L. Sanchez, pleaded not guilty in a follow up proceeding Jan. 22. The indictment said Wil-son allegedly filed 15 requests with GTL En-terprises to provide marketing materials on behalf of ConAgra, which resulted in $521,757 transferred to GTL over a five-year period.

The indictment goes on to state that pay-ments made to GTL from ConAgra were used to pay expenses for a softball team the two men are connected through. Garcia said that throughout this time frame, he never had a reason to doubt Wilson, who was the VP of Sales and Marketing for the western re-gion at the time, would be asking him to do something unlawful.

“Basically, he used me and my company’s

name to fund his portion of softball,” Garcia said. “Everything I ever knew was that he had permission to allocate funds for advertising be-cause of his job title.”

Garcia said he was shocked when he first heard about the indictment considering the sta-tus Wilson held within his company.

“My company or myself never took a dime or any type of money to benefit us,” he said. “I never had a reason to doubt someone in his position.”

The indictment also goes into a further part of the scheme alleging that Wilson submitted at least14 similar payment requests to All Out Athletics, a company Garcia was a financial partner in, but operated by an individual only identified in the indictment by the initials J.S.

The document said Wilson induced ConAgra to send $83,835 in checks to All Out Athletics between 2008 and 2011.

In the court documents, U.S. attorney Deb-orah Gilg wrote that in all 29 cases revealed, Wilson either received cash payments from GTL or All Out Athletics after the requests were made or gave direction to Garcia or J.S. to use this money to pay for trips, hotel rooms, rental cars and other softball team expenses.

Altogether, monetary payments in the form of checks from GTL and All Out Athletics to-taled $605,592.50.

Garcia said going forward, he’d continue to cooperate with officials.

“I would never knowingly or willingly have anything to do with this,” he said.

Former city councilor named in federal fraud indictment

Thank you, drive thru

Photo by erik PAgue

A man accidentally accelerated his vehicle through the window of the Shell service station on First Avenue the afternoon of Thursday, March 13. The Chev-rolet Impala smashed through multiple rows of items in the convenience store before coming to a rest in a mixture of broken glass and sticky soda puddles. Ken Johnson, of Johnson Glass, was at the scene to assess the damage and estimated repair costs could approach $5,000.


Members of the Othello Healthy Community Coalition invited Dr. Katherine Newton and researcher Nora Coro-nado from the Group Health Research Institute (GHRI) to speak about reaching their goal to increase the availability of diabetes self-management workshops in Adams County and statewide during their Tuesday, March 11, meeting.

Newton, principle investigator of the GHRI diabetes re-search team, said the disease is a growing issue in the state and the problem is large enough that it would require coor-dinated efforts from many groups like the community co-alition to make significant headway.

“When it gets right down to it, it needs to be at the grass-roots level,” Newton said. “We’ve found it’s most successful when you have people like the people you’re teaching to be in charge of the classes.”

Newton said diabetes affects Hispanics at a higher rate than other ethnic groups and combined with the language barrier, could make providing these kinds of classes more difficult in an area like Othello.

“Diabetes is really increasing in Washington state … and

Healthy Community Coalition working with group to improve diabetes management


Othello School District board members are consider-ing ways to address the steady growth in population sizes in the city’s schools and set a date of March 24 at 6 p.m. to invite community members to share their insights into the situation. The community forum will be held at Othello High School and precedes the scheduled school board meeting to begin at 7 p.m.

The forum will cover the population “bubble” set to reach McFarland Middle

School in the coming years and board director Juan Garza said the possibility of new construction hasn’t been ruled out and that the district wants to gauge the communi-ty’s reaction to the possibility of more building.

“We’re going to ask the community if there are any questions they’d like for us to answer about that,” he said.

Board establishes new scholarship

During the board’s Mon-day, March 10, meeting, directors discussed the se-

District looks for community inputBy Erik PaguE

[email protected]

Othello’s Distinguished Young Women royal court members haven’t even had their new titles for a month yet, but are already plan-ning for their many trips to parades and fairs this sum-mer. They’ll be able to ride in style as a $7,000 dona-tion from the Rotary Club of Othello to the organiza-tion has allowed DYW to purchase a new horse drawn carriage for the trio of young ladies to use during upcom-ing parade appearances.

Rotary president Greg Fultz presented DYW board

members Raun Jensen and Celia Hesselroth with the check during their Thurs-day, March 13, meeting. Fultz said most of the fund-ing came from proceeds they raised from selling items in their fair booth and are also looking to support the group with their annual rose selling fundraiser set to begin later in the month.

After combining the two donations, Fultz said they hope to contribute as much as $13,000 for DYW to pur-chase the carriage, with the hope it will stand out while representing Othello in pa-rades and that it could also be used for other commu-

nity events.Jensen said they’ve always

been appreciative of Rota-ry’s support in the past but

decided to ask them to sup-port this instead of the usual floats the girls would ride

Pageant winners have a new ride for parades

Photo by erik PAgue

Othello Rotary Club president Greg Fultz presents Distinguished Young Women royal court members Stephania Miron, Emily Risenmay and Jailene Alvarez with a $7,000 donation Thursday, March 13.

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