Debra McKinney

Well over 30 years ago, Doug Cleaves was brutally murdered in Sand Lake, snuffing out a life with so much promise — but also with anguish. His sister Susan cannot forget.

After dealing with her mother's death, her husband's illness and a devastating fire, the beloved Alaska musher needs the Iditarod more than ever.

Almost 10 years after a near fatal brown bear mauling, Dan Bigley and former Daily News writer Debra McKinney have released a book about how Bigley navigated his way through his tragedy: "Beyond the Bear: How I Learned to Live and Love Again after Being Blinded by a Bear."

Forest Bond has been that bundle of bones passed out at the picnic table, people walking by, staring, shaking their heads. He's been that unconscious drunk carted off to the emergency room, over and over, three times in one week, best he can remember. He's scored a blood alcohol level of 0.5 more times than makes any kind of sense. That's more than six times the legal limit for driving.

Used to be, there were days on end when Sara Cheney was convinced she didn't deserve to take another breath. Then along came a dog named Hannah from Alaska Assistance Dogs, one of the beneficiaries of the Pick. Click. Give. program.

In a conventional Eagle River neighborhood -- at a tired, two-story rental with peeling paint and tapestry-draped windows -- about a dozen friends, all in their 20s, are gathered to make some fun on what might otherwise be a dull Tuesday night. It's the dead of winter, it's getting kind of late, and they're out in the driveway jumping rope.

For Kato Ha'unga, too many books is not enough. The woman's a little obsessed. But then these are books with a purpose. If she can make it happen -- and she's confident she can -- these are books bound for Tonga. A tsunami of books inspired by a tsunami.

The home Anna Osip and her husband, Adam, provide not only keeps kids safe, but connected to their culture in ways that go unspoken, and in ways that can't be missed.

Sue Stein of Soldotna, a former Mrs. Alaska, has been reunited with the memory of her long-lost father, a pilot shot down during a bombing mission over North Vietnam in 1967.

As a chef, John Stryjewski has cooked his way from one adventure to another, in institutional kitchens, in swanky private ones. Atop wood stoves and over campfires. On oil rigs, boats and trains.

Christopher Erin Rogers Jr. was sentenced Tuesday to an additional 189 years in prison for the Palmer portion of his 2007 murder binge that began when he entered his father's bedroom swinging a machete.

Although it's too soon to shrug off Mount Redoubt's latest mood swing, the volcano has simmered down considerably since Wednesday and the alert level remains upgraded a notch from green to yellow.

Alaskans had the chance to send off the old year and welcome the new one with more than the usual fireworks in the sky. The final day of 2009 not only featured a "blue moon," but the chance to see a partial lunar eclipse.