Sunset Spotlight

D.A. Drops Murder Charges in Shooting
Because of conflicting testimony from witnesses, a suspect apprehended for a double homicide in the Sunset District in March has been released.

Mathew Owyang, 19, was arrested shortly after the March 29 slayings of Jason de la Cruz, 31, and Derek Butch, 23, outside of Irving Pizza at 19th Avenue and Irving Streets.

The key witness in the case said authorities had the wrong man and said another, unidentified man had jumped into the vehicle she was in after the incident. It is unknown who the other man is.

The City Attorney's Office dropped charges against Owyang after the witness said Owyang was already getting into the vehicle when the shots rang out. Several other witnesses were unable to make a positive identification that Owyang was the gunman.

Labor Strife at UC Results in 46 Arrests
Employees at the University of California, San Francisco staged a noisy protest April 3.

Forty six students and employees were arrested after they sat down in the middle of the 400 block of Parnassus Avenue about 4 p.m. to demand better wages and benefits for the UC system's 20,000 employees.

Muni's #6-Parnassus and #43 Masonic bus lines were rerouted because of the action.

Safety Network Honors Local Activist
The Safety Network, a citywide partnership, has the mission to organize and engage local community members in developing and advocating for sustainable grassroots strategies to improve public safety.

On April 2, the Safety Network honored 13 individuals and organizations at an Awards Reception at the State Building.

The Safety Network received more than 200 nominations demonstrating the breadth of work by neighborhood activists and organizations on the issue of public safety.

The nominees from the Sunset District were: Art and Michelle Tom, Carol Mo, David Ferguson, Guilietta Trubell, Marc Randall, Raimol Cortado, Sean Yeung, Sgt. Steven Quon, and Susan Suval. Randall was chosen to be honored as the Sunset representative at the 2008 Community Leadership Awards.

Randall has been serving communities in San Francisco for almost 35 years, working through the SF Recreation and Park Department to provide countless children and their families with free or low-cost after-school care, sports activities, arts and enrichment programs.

Serving as an assistant recreation supervisor for the last 10 years, Randall currently supervises recreation sites throughout the Sunset and oversees "latch key" after-school programs at West Sunset, JP Murphy and West Portal. The sites provide hundreds of children with a safe and structured environment.

Randall's main office at the Sunset Recreation Center offers a wide variety of activities, including yoga for adults, science for youth, and numerous youth sports programs, including flag football, basketball, baseball and the most active ping-pong room in the Sunset.

Randall believes in the great health and wellness benefits, as well as the spirit of community togetherness, that is fostered by recreation, and has infused creativity and enthusiasm into all the programs that his sites offer.

Sunset Murderer Given Life Sentence
John Puckett, a 74-year-old man convicted in February of the 1972 rape and murder of Diana Sylvester, a nurse living in the Inner Sunset District, was recently sentenced to life in prison in San Francisco Superior Court.

Lowell Students Volunteer at Mt. Sutro
The Mt. Sutro Stewards organization works with community volunteers to help restore and conserve the UCSF Mt. Sutro Open Space Reserve, a wilderness area situated in the heart of San Francisco.

Mt. Sutro's dense eucalyptus forest and fog-shrouded slopes are home to an amazing variety of vegetation and wildlife. The summit native plant garden and expanding trail network are a quiet refuge for neighbors, visitors and UCSF students and staff.

In the fall of 2007, UCSF and Stewards were contacted by Alex Yi, a student from Lowell High School, who was interested in performing a community service project on Mt. Sutro. Several potential projects were identified and evaluated and a proposal written that included the scope of work and number of hours to be contributed.

The selected project involved the restoration of a scenic rock outcrop, along Mt. Sutro's historic trail, which was hidden behind a screen of dense thorny blackberry. The challenge was working on a steep, slippery slope while trying to remove many decades' worth of growth.

Yi and his volunteers first exposed a 20-foot-tall rock outcrop and cleared blackberry from around the site. Then, the students discovered that the rock was just the tip of a geologic formation that runs for hundreds of feet just above the historic trail. At that point, the project took on a life of its own.

For more than six months, groups of Lowell students and community volunteers continued to clear blackberry bushes and root bulbs by hand from the steep slope. In February, habitat restoration expert Jake Sigg, from the California Native Plant Society, and Peter Brastow, from Nature in the City, worked with volunteers to begin replanting the slope. Now, after several months and a good deal of rain, the newly-planted slope is beginning to thrive.

But, before the student project was completed, the Lowell volunteers had a final request. They wanted to make a significant and lasting contribution to the area, so they worked with Stewards to construct a stone retaining wall at a switchback on the lower north ridge trail. The result was a major improvement to one of the most heavily-used trails at Mt. Sutro.

- Craig Dawson

City Cracks Down on Residents Exposing Cans
The SF Department of Public Works has started to crack down on people who leave their garbage cans out on the streets after sundown on the days their garbage is picked up.

The department issued some 200 citations in the Richmond District in April, according to Examiner columnist Ken Garcia in a report April 29.

The citations carry a $100 pricetag and are given to anyone whose garbage cans are exposed "in plain view." The fines apply to any of the three containers that the public puts out for collection, the black one for garbage, blue one for recyclables and green one for composting.

The SF Board of Supervisors passed legislation authorizing the fine last year, but just now started enforcing the ordinance, which was authored by District 1 Supervisor Jake McGoldrick.

Ulloa Elementary Named 'Distinguished' School
Ulloa Elementary School has been selected as a California Distinguished School for 2008. It was one of 343 elementary schools across California to receive the honor.

This year, the selection criteria for the Distinguished School Program were more stringent than ever. Schools wrote a substantive narrative application and then were subject to an extensive site validation.

For the current year, 839 elementary schools submitted applications and were identified for eligibility on the basis of their Academic Performance Index (API) and Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) results.

All applicants underwent a rigorous selection process conducted by the California Department of Education, with the help of many local educators from across the state and in partnership with the California County Superintendents Educational Services Association.

Principal Carol Fong is thrilled Ulloa has been selected. She credits the award to a caring staff, the students' hard work and families' dedication to student achievement.

"We set high expectations for everyone," says Fong. "Families learn very quickly that we care very much that students succeed, and that we pay close attention to things like attendance and homework."

Fong's staff meets regularly to check in about students who may be struggling and work to create support systems for them.

For the last six years, Ulloa's test scores have been steadily improving, and its API score last year was 1010 (the target for all schools in California is 800). For the last five years, Ulloa has also been a Title I Academic Achievement School.

The California Distinguished Schools Program was established in 1985.