Letters to the Editor

Letter: Just couldn’t bear it

It is not often enough I take pen to hand to engage mischief head-on. And in mischief, we are awash. So accordingly, I just couldn't resist diving into a recent lead article in your fine paper regarding a record $45 million in personal property losses this past year — a stupefying sum by any measure. Likewise, it was with astonished amazement I read some follow-up reporting on a recent stakeout crime bust and the quick thinking of Officer Ben Corwin, chief ranger with Chugach State Parks, who, through dedicated vigilance and good fortune, may have thwarted our notorious Bear Valley Gang and, not coincidentally, in the process may have also singlehandedly saved the local Subaru population.

On a sunny Friday morning in the Glen Alps parking lot, Officer Corwin met his nemesis. Under the rising sun and in front of legions of caffeinated trailblazers, web-connected tourists and tethered poodles, a brazen teenager picked out an overmatched Subaru Forester visiting from some Rocky Mountain locale to practice her craft, popping a window from the steel can with grand Barnum and Bailey Circus flair and secured her quarry — a peanut butter/banana sandwich and a half growler of Double Shovel mimosa hard cider.

Our well-seasoned public servant appropriately reasoned that the asphalt grid was not the venue for this day of reckoning. Moments later, on a nearby earthen slope, after the last bite of peanut butter was chased down, our villain was introduced to our hero. A cooler had definitely gone missing, and there was no mystery as to the who and what of it.

After telephone coordination with higher powers, there in an unpretentious tangle of birch and spruce, Officer Corwin meted out justice to a young female black bear, thereby ending one sordid chapter in Bear Valley Gang lore and most likely sparing follow Anchorage residents another season of unsolved Hillside mysteries.

Today, safe at home, sits a road-weary truck currently without its plates and a barbecue grill minus two propane tanks that seem to have suddenly eloped to warm climes. But thank-yous go out to all those successful crime avengers doing public good. I rest easy knowing you're out there setting things right.
— R. A. Myers
Anchorage

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