Molalla Pioneer

By Abby Sewell
Molalla Pioneer

A Molalla man was lost at sea during a fishing expedition off the Alaska coast on Monday.

For the last 20 years, according to family members, 36-year-old Steve Reutov has spent each summer on commercial fishing expeditions in Alaska, usually from May through the end September. During the winter months, he returned to Molalla, where he did construction work with his brothers.

Reutov had packed up his apartment in the town of Cordova and was ready to head back to his home in Oregon when he took to the water for one more fishing expedition on Monday morning.

“He was right in the middle of picking his gear, and it looks like the wave got him,” Reutov's sister-in-law Maria Reutov said.

The Coast Guard got a call from Reutov’s brother at about 9 p.m. that night, saying that he was overdue to return to harbor.

A helicopter found the 32-foot aluminum fishing vessel about three hours later, beached on the west side of nearby Egg Island. The crew located a survival suit, life ring and a strobe light in the surf near the vessel, but found no sign of Reutov.

Aircraft searches began again the next morning, saturating the area for 15 hours, according to a Coast Guard press release, but ended without results at 7:52 p.m. on Tuesday.

The last sighting of Reutov, by another fishing vessel, occurred at about 1 p.m. on Monday.

On Friday, although no body was found, Maria said his family was preparing for a funeral in Molalla, where Reutov and his wife have lived for the past 10 years.

Reutov left behind an tight knit extended family of brothers and sisters in Molalla, along with his wife Paula, four daughters and a baby son.

“Everyone loved him,” Paula Reutov said. “Not one person could say anything negative about him. He was an excellent husband and an excellent father.”

Coast Guard Marine Safety Unit Valdez is investigating the incident.

By Abby Sewell
Molalla Pioneer

Greenhouse Health and Wellness Center owner Ralph D. Mitchell won’t be calling himself “Doctor Dan” any more, under the terms of an agreement that the clinic owner and the Oregon Department of Justice signed on Wednesday.

The Molalla clinic owner, who does not hold any medical license or academic degree recognized by the state of Oregon, won’t be allowed to practice naturopathic medicine, diagnose diseases or hand out “prescriptions” for treatments. He won’t be allowed to tell people that he holds a Ph.D., a Doctor of Ministry or even an undergraduate degree.

He won’t be allowed to claim that he has done “pioneering” work in the field known as Bioenergetic psychotherapy until he can prove to the state that he has actually done so.

And he’ll be required to pay restitution to former customers of the clinic who have filed complaints against him with the DOJ, along with $25,000 to the state agencies that participated in the five-month investigation of his practice; including the Oregon Board of Naturopathic Examiners, the Oregon Office of Degree Authorization and the Oregon Board of Psychologist Examiners.

The agreement reached on Wednesday is similar to a plea bargain, according to DOJ spokesperson Jan Margosian. The agency worked with Mitchell’s attorney to prepare it. By signing it, Mitchell avoided admitting to any violations and forestalled a potential lawsuit.
But that doesn’t mean he is off the hook, she said.

“He’s out of business as far as illegally practicing medicine, and we’re going to monitor everything he does,” Margosian said. “… He can’t diagnose and treat disease, whether he uses an instrument or whatever – he can’t do it.”

But Mitchell said he does not claim to practice medicine and is not out of business as far as operating the Greenhouse is concerned. His attorney Brad Woodworth said the agreement with the DOJ allows Mitchell to continue counseling clients as a pastor and conducting electrodermal skin testing, a method of analysis that measures the electrical response of a subject’s skin.

“I am a pioneer in this field of using this technology to discover the connection between emotional and behavioral issues and physical issues,” Mitchell said.

Mitchell will not be allowed to diagnose medical conditions, to prescribe treatments such as ionic footbaths as he did in the past, or to administer acupressure and massage therapy.

But the fact that he will be allowed to continue operating the business at all is a better outcome than he had expected, Mitchell said.

“This (agreement) is a total victory,” Mitchell said. “… If I was hurting the public, if I was doing something deceitful, if the technology was fraudulent – all those things they charged me with – they wouldn’t have made this settlement to say I can keep doing it.”

But at least one former client still maintains Mitchell is nothing but a fraud.

Former Greenhouse customer Deana Rieden went to the emergency room and narrowly avoided amputation of her feet after going through a series of foot soaks that Mitchell told her would cure her diabetes, according to a complaint filed in Clackamas County last Wednesday.
Now she’s suing for more than $250,000.

Rieden, a diabetic, suffers from a painful nerve disorder called neuropathy and originally approached Mitchell in April 2007 to get an herbal pain remedy.

Mitchell told her to call him “Doctor Mitchell” or “Doctor Dan,” she said.

“He said ‘I can cure neuropathy’ and I was like, ‘You can?’” Rieden said. “The way I understood it, there is no cure for neuropathy.”

Not only that, Mitchell also told her he could cure her diabetes through a series of detoxifying foot baths, she said. Rieden, who had been told by medical doctors not to soak her feet, was wary but eventually agreed.

Even when her feet became swollen and sore after the baths, Mitchell encouraged her to stick with the regime, she said.

“About the third visit, I started feeling really weird about the whole process,” she said. “But he convinced me it was normal and that it was going to get worse before it gets better.”

Beyond telling her to continue with the foot baths, Rieden said, Mitchell told her to pour peroxide and colloidal silver on the sores on her legs to treat the infection.

Eventually, the infection in her legs became so severe that she wound up in the emergency room, where doctors told her she was at risk of losing her feet.

Although medical treatment succeeded in saving her feet, the process left Rieden feeling bitter.
“I’m really afraid that (Mitchell) is going to do something like this to someone else,” she said.

A relative of Rieden’s who asked not to be identified by name said, “You assume someone in his position knows what they’re talking about … but (Mitchell) should never have been treating (Deanna). He should never have been treating anyone with any kind of serious disease.”

Mitchell declined to comment on the lawsuit.

The clinic owner maintains that he’s caught in a “David and Goliath” battle with a state that has an overly restrictive definition of naturopathic medicine and does not allow for other types of alternative therapy.

The solution, he said, is to change the laws in the state of Oregon to allow more freedom to alternative health practitioners.

“We are continuing to address the alternative health issues within the state, now that we’ve won (the agreement with the DOJ), through legislative change,” he said.

Woodworth credited some of the Mitchell’s legal issues to the fact that the technologies he uses are new to the medical field.

“In the initial adoption and early use phases of this technology, there are some turf battles emerging,” he said. “… A lot of the things that are occurring are really things that are in the statutory and regulatory gray areas.”

Margosian said the DOJ received 96 complaints regarding alternative health practitioners between 1989 and 2007, and undertook 12 investigations.

She could not give an exact count of how many people lost their naturopathic license or were found to be practicing without a license during that time period.

By Abby Sewell
Molalla Pioneer

Test results have come back showing that the two deer confiscated from a Molalla home on Sept. 12, are both disease-free and in good physical condition, the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife reported on Wednesday.

Snowball, a six-year-old doe and her yearling son Bucky are currently living at an licensed wildlife facility while attorneys negotiate over their fate.

Snowball has a deformity in her legs and unusual white coloring that make her an unlikely candidate for survival in the wild. Had house painter Jim Filipetti not picked her up from the side of the road and taken her home, wildlife experts say that natural selection would have destined the doe for a short life.

Bucky appears a more likely prospect for release, according to ODFW wildlife veterinarian Dr. Peregrine Wolff. The yearling buck is physically healthy and more wary of humans than his mother. Caretakers are trying to encourage that trait by limiting his contact with humans and allowing him to forage for food as he would in the wild.

Wolff said the ODFW is waiting for blood tests to return, showing whether Bucky is in fact Snowball’s son as the deer’s former owners have stated. The results are expected to return in about two weeks.

She declined to comment as to whether the possibility of passing on genes for a deformity will play into the agency’s decision on releasing Bucky into the wild. Realistically, it will be at least a month before the buck could be released, Wolff said.

Meanwhile, an attorney representing the deer’s former caretakers is in negotiations with the ODFW, in hopes of having both of the animals returned to the family.

Geordie Duckler of the Animal Law Practice firm in Portland said no immediate end to the wrangling is in sight.

“It’s kind of a David and Goliath situation,” he said. “Because there’s just me and (the family) and then there’s state … which has resources way beyond mine, and I know already that they’ve spent an enormous amount of money.”

The family did receive some welcome news yesterday, when the Clackamas County District Attorney’s office informed Duckler that no charges will be pressed against Filipetti or his partner Francesca Mantei for keeping the deer in captivity. Under Oregon law, they could have been charged with a Class A misdemeanor carrying a sentence of up to one year in jail and a $6,250 fine.

Duckler also takes partial credit for the ODFW’s decision not to euthanize the deer, which the agency announced publicly last week.

The day that the ODFW came to confiscate the deer, Duckler called the agency and informed them that he would get a restraining order if they were planning to have the animals killed.

“I think part of it was me threatening to get a restraining order, and the rest of it was that it would have been a public relations nightmare if they had euthanized the deer,” Duckler said.

ODFW spokesperson Michelle Dennehy had no estimate of how many deer the agency has euthanized in the past year but said that it is a rare measure. The agency may choose to euthanize in animal in cases of severe injuries or sickness, to stop the spread of disease, or in cases where the deer is considered incapable of surviving in the wild and is habituated or aggressive towards humans.

Like Duckler, Dennehy had no estimate of when a settlement might be reached.

The ODFW had previously offered to allow Snowball to remain on Filipetti’s property as long as she was not kept in an enclosure. But the family refused to agree, citing concerns that if the doe was allowed to roam loose, lacking the ability to run or jump, she would likely be killed by neighborhood dogs or other predators.

The state of Oregon issues only 24 permits at a time for private citizens to keep cervids, or horned animals in the deer family. Sixteen of those permits are reserved for commercial elk farmers, like Molalla’s Rosse Posse Acres. Of the other eight permit holders, some were grandfathered in because they owned elk or deer before the current rules were instated in 1993. The others are zoos or research and educational facilities.

And currently, all of the available permits are taken.

Brenda Ross, co-owner of the Rosse Posse Acres, said she and her husband have contacted the ODFW offered to take the deer if they cannot be returned to the family.

As soon as Snowball’s story hit the news, the elk farm began receiving a barrage of phone calls from concerned citizens asking the farmers to do something about the deer’s plight.

Ross said she has sympathy for both Filipetti and the ODFW.

“I bottle raised (an elk calf) for the first time this year, and you cannot help but fall in love with a bottle raised baby,” she said.

At the same time, Ross said, “I would really hate to be in the ODFW’s shoes right now. I really think the they have got some tough decisions to make, and their hands are tied by laws.”

Dennehy confirmed that the ODFW has had preliminary discussions with Rosse Posse and other licensed facilities, but with legal negotiations ongoing, no decision has been made.

Mantei, who raised the two deer along with Filipetti, said the couple is waiting for the outcome of the case while trying to finish a painting job near Bend that was interrupted when the commotion started last week.

“We are wracking up a huge, huge legal bill, and with all the media attention we have been unable to work,” she said. “It’s been very, very crazy.”

Mantei noted that the volume of phone calls has been overwhelming and asked that concerned citizens send their questions and comments to snowballandbucky@yahoo.com.

The family has also set up a “Snowball Donations” fund at Wells Fargo.

A proposed compromise between the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife and the keepers of Snowball, a captive albino blacktail deer, broke down when property owner Jim Filipetti refused to consent to the arrangement.

The ODFW wanted to take Snowball's son, a healthy yearling buck, to be evaluated by a wildlife specialists and potentially released in the wild. They would have allowed Filipetti to release Snowball, who is crippled in her back legs, on his own property, as long as she was not fenced in.

Filipetti is in Central Oregon on a painting job, while his partner Francesca Mantei holds down the fort.

"Half of me was just ecstatic because they were going to let me keep Snowball, and the other half of me says, how am I going to protect this deer?" Mantei said. "She can't run, she can't jump. ... We let her go and we sign her death warrant."

With Filipetti, via phone, adamantly refusing to agree to the proposed compromise, the ODFW and the Oregon State Police may have to return to Plan A, getting a warrant to enter the property and seize the two deer.

"We didn't finish pursuing the warrant because we thought we could come to a civil agreement," ODFW public information officer Christie Scott said. "Right now we're at a standstill until either an agreement can be made or the warrant comes through."

By Abby Sewell
Molalla Pioneer

It started one morning almost six years ago, when Jim Filipetti was driving his kids to the school bus stop and something in the bushes caught his eye.

"He called and said, 'Honey, I saw a little white deer,'" said Filipetti's longtime girlfriend, Francesca Mantei. "I said, 'Honey, you're a South Florida city boy. We don't have little white deer around here.'"

But a few days later, the deer was still there; and not only was it little and white, it had two deformed hind legs.

That was how the family ended up with Snowball, an albino blacktail doe, living in a pen on their five-acre property in the Meadowbrook area, north of Molalla. They took the deer to the veterinarian in Woodburn and had casts put on her legs. For six months she lived inside the house with the family before she was strong enough to move to an outdoor pen, and during that time, Filipetti drove her to the vet's office in Woodburn every week.

"She's a member of the family," Mantei said. "She lived in my house for six months. We've had Snowball longer than my youngest daughter."

That's a problem, according to the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, which began investigating the situation after an anonymous caller phoned in a complaint to the Oregon State Police in March. Oregon law makes it a crime to remove wildlife from the wild without a permit. The Class A misdemeanor carries a potential sentence of one year in jail and a $6,250 fine.

After a previous investigative visit in the spring, OSP officers and ODFW officials showed up at Mantei's door this morning and told her they were there to take Snowball and the doe's one-year-old son, Bucky.

Bucky, an apparently healthy young animal, was the unintended product of an unexpected mating between the doe and a blind buck that lived in the same pen for a short period of time after being taken from the wild by a friend of the family.

The five-acre property holds somewhat of a little menagerie, including a llama, a potbellied pig, turkeys, ducks and a Shetland pony.

John Bring, who works as a caretaker on the property six days a week, said Filipetti is unable to refuse an animal in need.

"He's the biggest-hearted man," Bring said. "He had a friend with a bunch of llamas, and there was one that his kid really liked. After a while, he was going to butcher the llamas, and his kid was so upset about the one llama that Jim offered to take it."

So when Mantei called her husband at work and told him the police wanted to take Snowball away, he got on the phone and ordered them off the property. While some of the officers went to get a warrant to take the deer, others set up for a long wait at the end of the driveway.

Meanwhile, Mantei got on the phone and called every lawyer, state agency contact and wildlife rehabilitation center she could think of.

"We're pretty much afraid that once they take Snowball, they'll put her down," Mantei. "Bucky would do okay on his own, Bucky can be released in the wild. But Snowball won't."

But when the ODF officials returned several hours later, they came to offer a compromise.

Bucky would have to leave the property, to be evaluated and potentially released into the wild. Snowball could stay and be released on site. She can't be enclosed or fenced in, but if she chooses to, she can stay on the property where she has lived all her life.

Although still apprehensive about the possibility of the deer leaving the property only to become prey to dogs, coyotes or cougars, Mantei said the resolution was better than she had expected.

"I thought we were going to lose a part of us," she said. "For them to make this decision -- we'll jump through whatever hoop they put in our direction."

For Bucky, the prospects are mixed, according to ODFW district wildlife biologist Don VandeBergh. Although the young buck is apparently healthy and is more wary of humans than his mother, he will still be at a disadvantage compared to deer raised in the wild, he said.

"A lot of it is that people pick (animals) up and don't know their dietary needs," he said. "They don't have the basic instincts that their parents would show them."

In 2006, state-licenses wildlife rehabilitation specialists reported seeing 168 animals that had been held in captivity. Of these, 31 died in captivity.

"Our key point is, if people find an animal, please contact us or the state police so it can go to a licensed rehabilitation facility," VandeBergh said. "These situations are tough for the department and really obviously traumatic for the family."

By Abby Sewell
Molalla Pioneer

Logan Hines, a 15-year-old Molalla High School sophomore, died Sunday evening after collapsing during a friendly basketball game.

At about 5:30, he told a friend he was feeling dizzy. Then his knees gave out and he slumped to the ground.

He was unconscious and had no pulse when the police and paramedics arrived.; and despite repeated attempts to revive him at the scene and en route to the hospital, he never regained consciousness.

“The doctors said there was no pain,” said Bill Glover, the father of Hines’ half sister, who knew the boy from the day he was born to the day he died. “I think that’s important.”

Seth Kelly, an MHS who was on the court with Hines when he collapsed, said, “We were just playing ball. He went out to get a rebound, and he turned around and looked at me and my cousin and said, ‘I feel dizzy.’ Before I could say ‘Take a break, go get some water’ or anything, his knees collapsed and he fell down in front of me.’”

Kelly and his cousin Caleb Kirk, the third player on the court, grabbed Hines’ cell phone and tried to decide whether their first call should be to 911 or to Hines’ mother. In the end, Kirk dialed 911 and Kelly began giving their friend CPR as they waited for the police and paramedics.

Molalla police officers arrived first and began administering CPR.

Molalla and Colton firefighters and paramedics were on scene shortly thereafter. Paramedics administered shocks in an attempt to revive the boy's heart, while police officers went to contact the family.

They continued trying to revive him as he was transported by ambulance to Molalla High School, where the LifeFlight helicopter was waiting to take him to Oregon Health and Sciences University, where he was pronounced dead.

“It was pretty traumatic for the officers on scene,” said Molalla Police Department Sgt. Jim Barnhart, who arrived at the basketball court to find two other officers giving Hines CPR. “Everything possible was done by us and the fire department, and we still couldn’t save him. … It kind of reminds you how quickly life can be taken away.”

Rockie Henderson, Hines’ mother, said her son had surgery for a congenital heart defect as a child, but had no recent history of health problems.

The family moved to Molalla two years ago from the Tri-Cities area in Washington State. Since then, Henderson said, Hines and his older brother and younger sister have found a tight community of friends.

Several dozen of them gathered on Monday after school to hold a vigil the basketball court next to the Molalla Public Library, the scene of Hines’ collapse.

“When we first talked about moving here, I didn’t know if it was the right decision,” Henderson said, looking around at the myriad faces gathered in love and mourning for her son. “But obviously it was. Just look at this.”

Jake Moore, a friend and fellow MHS sophomore, remembered meeting Hines on the first day of school their freshman year and being intimidated by his six-foot-plus stature. But he quickly found Hines to be a good hearted friend.

“That first summer, every day I was at his house or he was at my house,” Moore said. “He was the type of kid that, if you had nobody else to talk to, you could always call him. I don’t think I know anyone who does not like the kid.”

Many fellow students remembered good times on the basketball court. They remembered how he loved to send text messaged. And everyone remembered his sense of humor.

“He was a comedian,” Glover said. “Ever since he was a little tyke, he would do something to make you laugh. He was a real good kid, just a real good kid.”

The family is setting up a memorial fund at Wells Fargo. Checks can be made out to the “Contribution for the Benefit of Logan Hines” account.