Green Bay News

APPLETON – It’s a simple gesture that can mean so much.

Organizers of the Help for the Homeless hygiene drive are making their final push for donations.

It’s an opportunity to help area homeless coalitions to stock the shelves of homeless and crisis programs around Northeast Wisconsin. The goal is to supply a year’s worth of products to each agency. They are looking for items like a bar of soap and toothpaste.

Click here for a list of wanted items.

Organizer Heidi Prahl from The Family radio says it takes the entire community to make this happen, “This only works because individuals, one by one, make a point to pick up an extra and put it in the box.”

The Help for the Homeless Hygiene Drive continues until March 15.

You can drop donations off at any of these locations throughout Northeast Wisconsin.

The New Holstein School District says they are deeply saddened by the death of District Administrator, Bill Van Meer.

Van Meer died of natural causes Thursday morning.

Principal, Rick Amundson said in a press release below that Van Meer was an excellent administrator and his dedication to the New Holstein School District was evident in everything he did.

“We are deeply saddened by the sudden loss of our dear friend, mentor, and leader, District administrator, Bill Van Meer.

Our heartfelt sympathy goes out to Bill’s family during this tragic time.

Bill had a quiet confident demeanor to compliment his steady hand and was a true servant leader, always mindful and focused on the highest priority, our students. Bill was an excellent administrator and his high level of ethics earned the respect of all who knew him. His dedication to New Holstein School District was evident in everything he did – whether it was working with students, faculty, parents, meeting with state or local officials, or supporting the wide array of our students’ extra-curricular activities. Bill was proud to be a New Holstein Husky, and we were very proud of him.

Bill’s leadership will be missed but his memory will be honored by continuing the mission to provide top notch educational opportunities for our students and community. We will never forget the contributions Bill made to our district and we will miss him very much.”

Green Bay Southwest’s Natisha Hiedeman talks about win over Notre Dame.

Green Bay Southwest and Notre Dame played in a girls basketball Division 2 sectional semifinal Thursday.

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) – An Indiana proposal that would allow “baby boxes” in public places such as fire stations to give mothers in crisis a way to anonymously surrender their children faces a backlash from advocates of safe havens across the country who see it as going too far.

At least three safe haven groups have issued statements opposing the proposal, which would add the boxes to an existing Indiana law that allows a newborn to be surrendered without prosecution so long as the child hasn’t been harmed. One group, Baby Safe Haven-New England, has called the idea a “fiasco” and has compared it to a 2008 safe haven law in Nebraska that resulted in children as old as 17 being abandoned at hospitals before lawmakers changed the law.

Michael Morrisey, co-founder of the New England group, has taken to Indiana radio stations and social media to oppose the baby box plan. He said Massachusetts considered baby boxes more than a decade ago but determined they wouldn’t be effective because their electronics can fail and because it would be cost-prohibitive to retrofit existing buildings to include the boxes.

Monica Kelsey, firefighter and medic who is president of Safe Haven Baby Boxes Inc., poses with a prototype of a baby box, where parents could surrender their newborns anonymously, outside her fire station in Woodburn, Ind., Thursday, Feb. 26, 2015. The box is actually a newborn incubator, or baby box, and it could be showing up soon at Indiana hospitals, fire stations, churches and other selected sites under legislation that would give mothers in crisis a way to surrender their children safely and anonymously. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy)

The state instead decided to put up signs on fire and police stations identifying them as safe haven sites and including instructions to call 911 if no one answered the door.

He said Indiana’s existing law is sound but that the state needs to improve its awareness campaigns. Too often, he said, authority figures are delivering the message about the law instead of young people who can relate to their peers.

“It’s people the age of James Taylor trying to speak to people the age of Taylor Swift,” he said, citing the celebrity musicians.

Monica Kelsey, a Woodburn, Indiana, firefighter and medic who is working with Republican state Rep. Casey Cox on the box proposal, said she expected to encounter disagreements over strategies for preventing abandonments but wants the focus to remain on saving children’s lives.

She stressed that installing the boxes would be voluntary and that they should be considered a last resort for women who can’t face relinquishing their babies in person.

Kelsey said a similar concept known as baby drawers is used in some Phoenix hospitals.

“Somebody else understands what we’re trying to do, and it’s working,” she said.

The boxes, which would be about 2 feet long and equipped with heating or cooling pads, would include a toll-free number staffed 24 hours a day by a counselor who would first ask the caller to surrender the baby to a person. They also would be equipped with sensors that would set off alarms when the box is opened and again when a weight is detected inside. They also would include a silent alarm that mothers could activate themselves by pushing a button.

The state health department would develop regulations for the boxes, and sites that install them, such as hospitals, police and fire stations and churches, would register with the state.

Cox said Friday that he has spoken with several safe haven advocates about their concerns and hopes to draw on their expertise to ensure the bill strengthens the state’s existing law. He plans to meet soon with Sen. Jim Merritt, R-Indianapolis, who sponsored Indiana’s safe haven law when it was adopted in 2000 and is carrying the bill in the Senate.

Merritt said the proposal points out the need to better promote Indiana’s safe haven law. But he questioned whether it truly would allow for anonymous relinquishments, noting that hospitals have security cameras everywhere.

“Can anybody really give up their baby in an anonymous type of situation that they’re striving for?” Merritt said. “Is the goal of being anonymous even achievable?”

Senate health committee chairwoman Patricia Miller, R-Indianapolis, said she has concerns about how the proposal would work and is still studying the bill to decide whether her committee will take it up in the coming weeks.

“I’m not going to do it without giving it a lot of thought and talk with a lot of people,” Miller said.

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Associated Press writer Tom Davies contributed to this story.

GREEN BAY — For the third time this season Green Bay Southwest and Notre Dame met on Thursday but the stakes were a little different compared to the teams’ two regular-season meetings.

The Trojans and Tritons met in a girls basketball Division 2 sectional semifinal with each team winning at home during the Fox River Classic Conference season.

Both teams were coming off impressive regional final wins, with Notre Dame shellacking West De Pere and Southwest beating Pulaski on a 40-footer by Natisha Hiedeman.

Two wins from the state tournament, this game was expected to be a terrific showdown between the two-time defending state champ Notre Dame and Southwest, which hasn’t tasted even a sectional final since 2000, let alone reach the state tournament.

The game played out as expected between the No. 2 seeds with neither team being able to put any distance between them, but in the end it was Hiedeman and the Trojans who ended the Tritons’ three-peat quest with a 43-39 win at Green Bay Preble.

“We really respect Notre Dame and they’ve had our number the last few years,” Southwest coach Casey Zakowski said. “We have had some close games with them, so it’s gratifying to knock off the two-time champion here in the sectionals.

“I thought our kids displayed a lot of toughness mentally and physically the second half. Dealt with adversity, handled it well and just kept battling.”

We had high goals to get here and now that it’s here it’s one more game and then state, so that’s what we have our eyes on,” Hiedeman said.

The game included Hiedeman, who was seeking to become the Green Bay metro’s all-time leading scorer for boys and girls, against the best defender in the area in Olivia Campbell of Notre Dame (14-11). The two greeted each other at the tip, then squared off for the jump ball and then spent the next 32 minutes trying to beat each other.

Each had their moments and Hiedeman knew it wouldn’t be easy.

“We know Notre Dame very good, they know us very good,” she said. “Playing them so many times this season, basically all the games could’ve gone either way. We got the one that mattered the most. It feels good.”

What felt real good was Hiedeman’s step-back 3-pointer with just over two minutes to play in the game. Southwest (19-6) trailed 35-34 and then Hiedeman went to work.

Working off a pick, Hiedeman got loose from Campbell and buried a 3-pointer to give the Trojans the lead for good at 37-35. That also made her the area’s all-time top scorer for boys and girls basketball as she passed N.E.W. Lutheran’s Adam Jones (1,734 points).

“The game was going back and forth there for a while,” Zakowski said. “(Tess) Gapinski hit some big shots and I think that three there helped us defensively. People were pumped up and we just rode that wave of emotion. That was such a huge shot. Shot of the game. We made some free throws down the stretch and got some stops.”

“The step-back three is kind of my shot,” said Hiedeman, who has 1,737 career points. “I thought I might as well put it up there. We needed to get ahead. I let it go and it felt good.”

Hiedeman, who scored 23 points, became the all-time leading girls scorer in the area earlier this season, passing former Preble star Kenzie Perttu. Zakowski said she has had to deal with a lot on the court.

“You wouldn’t be some of the defensive looks we’ve had this year,” he said. “Opponents play a triangle-zone and put two on her and if she would’ve taken a water break or gone to the bathroom, they would’ve followed her. Box-and-ones, all kinds of face-guarding, we’ve seen it all.

“It’s amazing what she has done. She’s had the biggest target on her back; tremendous player, one of the best that’s ever played in the state.”

Hiedeman was all smiles when talking about the record.

“It’s unbelievable, it means a lot,” she said. “What’s the next record?”

The next accomplishment could be leading Southwest to the state tournament. Southwest plays Cedarburg at 2 p.m. on Saturday at Fond du Lac and Hiedeman is feeling good.

“We play with passion, trust each other and makes us a really good team,” she said. “I love my team. I just want to go to state.”

Follow Doug Ritchay on Twitter @dougritchay

DE PERE – A good portion of students and staff at Hemlock Elementary School are all sporting the same hairdo now.

Eighty-seven people voluntarily shaved their heads, or donated more than ten inches of their hair, to support children battling cancer.

All students and staff also performed a parody rendition of Taylor Swift’s Shake it Off, which they changed to “shave it off.”

The event benefits St. Baldrick’s Foundation, which funds childhood cancer research grants. The school raised several thousand dollars in donations. The inches of donated hair go to Locks of Love, which creates wigs for young cancer patients.

Watch extended video of the event above.

GALENA, Ill. (AP) – The rail cars that split open and burst into flames during a western Illinois oil train derailment this week had been retrofitted with protective shields to meet a higher safety standard than federal law requires, railroad officials said.

The fire continued to burn Friday, a day after 21 of the train’s 105 cars derailed in a rural area south of the city of Galena. No injuries were reported, but the accident was the latest in a series of failures for the safer tank-car model that has led some people calling for even tougher requirements.

“It certainly begs that question, when … those standards failed to prevent leakage and explosions that threaten human safety and environmental contamination,” said Steve Barg, director of the Jo Daviess Conservation Foundation, which owns a nature preserve several hundred yards from the derailment site.

Smoke and flames erupt from the scene of a train derailment Thursday, March 5, 2015, near Galena, Ill. A BNSF Railway freight train loaded with crude oil derailed around 1:20 p.m. in a rural area where the Galena River meets the Mississippi, said Jo Daviess County Sheriff’s Sgt. Mike Moser. (AP Photo/Telegraph Herald, Jessica Reilly)

BNSF Railway said in a news release that the train’s tank cars were a newer model known as the 1232, which was designed during safety upgrades voluntarily adopted by the industry four years ago in hopes of keeping cars from rupturing during derailments. But 1232 standard cars involved in three other accidents have split open in the past year.

Those other accidents included one last month in West Virginia in which a train carrying 3 million gallons of North Dakota crude derailed, shooting fireballs into the sky, leaking oil into a waterway and burning down a house. The home’s owner was treated for smoke inhalation, but no one else was injured.

In Thursday’s accident in Illinois, 21 cars derailed in an area where the Galena River meets the Mississippi. The company said a resulting fire spread to five rail cars, and emergency personnel were still working to contain the blaze Friday.

Firefighters could only access the derailment site by a bike path, said Galena Assistant Fire Chief Bob Conley. They had to pull back initially for safety reasons, but by midday Friday officials described the area as “stable.”

The Federal Railroad Administration said its investigators expected to have access to the site around noon.

The train had 103 cars loaded with crude oil from the Northern Plains’ Bakken region, along with two buffer cars loaded with sand, according to company spokesman Andy Williams. The cause of the derailment hasn’t been determined.

The accident occurred 3 miles south of Galena in a wooded and hilly area that is a major tourist attraction and the home of former President Ulysses S. Grant. It’s part of the Driftless Area, a multi-state region prized in the largely flat Midwest for its high bluffs, karst limestone and steep ravines that escaped the last continental glacier.

It is also just alongside part of the Upper Mississippi River Wildlife and Fish Refuge. So far, there’s no indication of any oil contamination there, said U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service spokeswoman Georgia Parhan.

As of June of last year, BNSF was hauling 32 Bakken oil trains per week through the surrounding Jo Daviess County, according to information disclosed to Illinois emergency officials.

Recent derailments have increased public concern about the safety of shipping crude by train. According to the Association of American Railroads, oil shipments by rail jumped from 9,500 carloads in 2008 to 500,000 in 2014, driven by a boom in the Bakken oil patch of North Dakota and Montana, where pipeline limitations force 70 percent of the crude to move by rail.

Since 2006, the U.S. and Canada have now seen at least 22 oil-train accidents involving a fire, derailment or significant amount of fuel spilled, according to an Associated Press examination of federal accident records.

The wrecks have intensified pressure on the administration of President Barack Obama to approve tougher standards for railroads and tank cars, despite industry complaints that it could cost billions and slow freight deliveries.

Oil industry officials had been opposed to further upgrading the 1232 cars because of costs. But late last year they changed their position and joined with the railway industry to support some upgrades, although they asked for time to make the improvements.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s exclusive use of a private email account for public business during her years at the U.S. State Department has torn a hole in the administration’s promise of the most open and transparent government in history.

“I can’t even imagine the justification she had for not using the email accounts, the department email accounts, she was supposed to use for official email. I can’t even imagine the justification,” said Republican Congressman Andy Harris.

It’s still not clear if Clinton violated any laws or security policies. But Fred Guy with Hoffberger Center for Professional Ethics says it’s deeply troubling to think a cabinet member in the Obama administration was permitted to use a personal email account to pass presumably sensitive information through an in- home server?

“The higher the office, the more they are used to being able to pretty well set their own rules,” said Guy.

Clinton has remained silent about using her personal email account. State Department Spokesperson Marie Harf said there was no prohibition on using a personal account when Clinton worked at the State Department.

“There was not a time requirement for when your personal emails or documents writ-large had to be preserved as part of the record. That has since changed, but that was after she left,” said Harf.

Clinton has since turned over thousands of emails to the State Department and in the months ahead we expect to learn more about them.

NEW YORK (CNN) – They call him “Hulk.”

A pit bull who’s size is so incredible, he seems destined to become the world’s biggest pit bull once he’s done growing.

At 18 months old and weighing 175 pounds, Hulk isn’t finished growing. And Hulk sure seemed to grow on New Yorkers during a whirlwind tour.

Jeanne Moos reports on a gentle giant turned media darling.

 

 

 

 

STURGEON BAY – The U.S. Coast Guard will start breaking the ice in the Sturgeon Bay Ship Canal Tuesday morning.

To help the movement of commercial vessels, they will start cutting from the canal’s entrance at Lake Michigan west to Sherwood Point Light. Operations will continue through Mar. 11.

Once the Sturgeon Bay area is complete, the U.S. Coast Guard Cutters MACKINAW and MOBILE BAY will continue ice breaking in northern Green Bay on or about Mar. 12. The cutters will enter Green Bay from Lake Michigan at Rock Island Passage.

All ice fishermen are asked to remove their ice shacks and equipment from these areas. Snowmobile and ATV operators and other recreational users of the ice should avoid shipping channels and use caution near the ice.

 

CEDARVILLE TOWNSHIP, Mich. – Fire significantly damaged a house in Upper Michigan Thursday night.

Menominee Co. Sheriff Kenny Marks says crews were called to the house on M-35 in Cedarville Township just after 6:30 p.m. Flames and heavy smoke were shooting from the third floor when crews arrived. Crews were on scene for more than nine hours.

The homeowner was taken to the hospital. He was treated and released for smoke inhalation.

Marks says the house was mainly used for storage and another house on the property, where the family lives, is still livable.

The Red Cross was called in to help the family.

GREEN BAY – The 12th annual Project Play 60 is Saturday at Lambeau Field.

Project Play 60 is focused on getting kids out of the house to enjoy non-strenuous physical activity.

There will be inflatables, climbing walls, bungee trampolines and face painting. The day will also feature the West Bend Dance and Tumbline Troupe.

Organizers say they are excited for the family friendly event.

“The fact that we’ve had the support of our community for over a hundred years means a ton to us and we really take that responsibility seriously and this is just one of the ways to give back to that,” said Jessica Micke, Green Bay Packers.

The event is free and is open from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. in the Lambeau Field Atrium.

 

 

MADISON (AP) – Gov. Scott Walker plans to sign the right-to-work bill on Monday at a Milwaukee-area company whose leader spoke out in favor of the measure this week.

Walker announced Friday that he will sign the bill at Badger Meter in Brown Deer.

Badger Meter’s chief executive and chairman Rich Meeusen this week said passing the bill will lead to between 30 and 50 new jobs at his factory. He spoke out after a coalition of more than 400 businesses joined together in opposition to the proposal.

The Assembly passed it Friday morning on a party line vote with all Republicans in favor and all Democrats against.

GREEN BAY – Today Brown County prosecutors are expected to formally charged Matthew Moore, 30, of Allouez with the 2012 murder of Thomas Wick.

At a bond hearing last week, prosecutors said Moore allegedly killed Wick because he owed Wick money. A court commissioner set Moore’s bond at $500,000.

Assistant District Attorney Wendy Lemkuil told the court Moore and his now-fiancée, Katie Heller, knew things about the case that weren’t made public, like the fact Wick was shot in the head.

Thomas Wick

Heller is also expected to be charged today. She was arrested last week for perjury. Prosecutors say she could face more severe charges in connection with the case. Her bail was set at $50,000.

Wick was found in the basement of his 240 Hidden Creek Trail home in Howard on Feb. 27, 2012. Brown County sheriff’s deputies said he was shot to death.

Investigators say a friend arrived that morning to help Wick remodel his basement and that’s when he found Wick lying on the floor dead. Police believe Wick had been lying there for several hours.

Wick owned Bayside Electric, a residential and commercial electrical company.

FOX 11’s Laura Smith will be in court and will have complete details on FOX 11 News at Five.

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — President Barack Obama said the racial discrimination in Ferguson, Missouri, extends beyond that city’s police department, and that law enforcement changes are a prime focus in the civil rights movement.

Improving civil rights and liberties with police is an area that “requires collective action and mobilization” a half-century after an earlier generation of activists changed the nation, the president said.

Those were Obama’s first remarks about this week’s Justice Department report of racial bias in Ferguson. It found officers routinely discriminated against blacks by using excessive force.

“I don’t think that is typical of what happens across the country, but it’s not an isolated incident,” Obama said in an interview that aired Friday on The Joe Madison Radio Show on Sirius XM radio’s Urban View channel.

“I think that there are circumstances in which trust between communities and law enforcement have broken down, and individuals or entire departments may not have the training or the accountability to make sure that they’re protecting and serving all people and not just some,” Obama said.

Obama’s interview was to preview his trip Saturday to Selma, Alabama, to speak from the Edmund Pettus Bridge, where white police officers beat civil rights protesters on March 7, 1965. Obama last visited Selma in 2007, when he was running for the Democratic presidential nomination. At that time, he spoke about the responsibility of those who came after the civil rights generation of the 1960s to carry on the struggle.

In a separate interview with radio host Tom Joyner, Obama said that despite the progress in race relations over the past 50 years, the federal findings about Ferguson show that civil rights “is an unfinished project.”

Obama was in Columbia, South Carolina, on Friday for a town hall meeting at historically black Benedict College. He planned to speak about efforts young people made throughout history to expand opportunity.

The visit was Obama’s first to South Carolina as president.

South Dakota and Utah are the only states he has not traveled to while in office.

Before the college visit, Obama worked the lunch buffet line at a church conference center in West Columbia. The president was accompanied by Rep. Jim Clyburn, D-S.C., and Attorney General Eric Holder.

 

WASHINGTON (AP) — Democrats on the House committee investigating the deadly 2012 Benghazi attacks are demanding that the panel’s Republican chairman withdraw a subpoena for Hillary Clinton’s emails and schedule a hearing for Clinton to testify immediately.

Democrats said in a letter Friday that the subpoena shows the panel led by Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., has taken a “very partisan and political turn.”

Democrats urged Gowdy to immediately publish Clinton’s emails in their entirety to “help clear up any misperceptions.” They said the committee should return to investigating the Benghazi attacks instead of being “a surrogate for the Republican National Committee.”

The 12-member panel is investigating the September 2012 attacks, which killed U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans.

Democrats say Gowdy appeared to be targeting Clinton, the former secretary of state and a leading Democratic contender for president in 2016, “for political reasons” rather than to clarify remaining questions about the attacks.

Committee Republicans said Wednesday they had subpoenaed Clinton’s personal emails pertinent to its probe. The panel said it also has issued a subpoena to the State Department for all other individuals who have relevant information.

Clinton, who served as secretary of state at the time of the Benghazi attacks, is the leading contender for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination, though she has not declared she is running.

The House panel’s announcement about the subpoenas came after it was disclosed that as the nation’s top diplomat, Clinton relied on a personal email account rather than one operated by the government.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — Much of the start of the world’s most famous sled dog race is covered in barren gravel, forcing Iditarod organizers to move the start farther north where there is snow and ice.

A weather pattern that buried the eastern U.S. in snow has left Alaska fairly warm and relatively snow-free this winter.

“If I have one more person say to me to move the Iditarod to Boston, I’m going to shake my head,” said race director Mark Nordman.

The nearly 1,000-mile Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race starts Saturday with a ceremonial run through Anchorage. But the official start two days later has been moved 225 miles north, over the Alaska Range, to Fairbanks to avoid the area that left many mushers bruised and bloodied last year. Iditarod officials said the conditions are worse this year.

In a Saturday, March 1, 2014 photo, Scott Janssen keeps control of his sled rounding the corner near Goose Lake during the ceremonial start for Iditarod 42 in Anchorage, Ak. A weather pattern that has buried the eastern U.S. in snow has left Alaska fairly warm and relatively snow-free this winter, forcing the world’s most famous sled dog race farther north. (AP Photo/Anchorage Daily News,Anne Raup)

The race’s chief executive officer, Stan Hooley, called the conditions “pretty miserable.” And last year was no picnic.

A rescue helicopter picked up one musher last year after making it through the treacherous Dalzell Gorge only to hit his head on a tree stump. Knocked unconscious for at least an hour, Scott Janssen got back on the trail after waking up. But shortly after, he broke his ankle while walking on ice trying to corral a loose dog.

“As an outdoorsman, to have to be rescued from the trail isn’t a wonderful thing,” Janssen said.

This year’s race will feature 78 mushers, including six former champions and 20 rookies. The winner is expected in Nome in about 10 days.

Alaskans can thank the jet stream, which has been delivering warm air from the Pacific, said Dave Snider, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Anchorage.

It is “allowing a lot of cold air to flow out of the Arctic into the Midwest and the Eastern Seaboard, (but) we’re locked into the warmer part of that pattern,” he said.

Anchorage gets about 60 inches of snow in a normal year, but only about 20 inches have fallen this year.

The new route, which puts mushers on river ice for about 600 miles, could level the playing field.

“Nobody has a plan,” said Nordman, the race director. “You’re not going to be stopping and putting your snow hook into the same tree you had the last 20 years. It’s a whole new ballgame.”

Brent Sass of Eureka, Alaska, is running his third Iditarod, and is coming off a win in last month’s 1,000-mile Yukon Quest International Sled Dog Race.

“It doesn’t hurt a guy like me who has only run the race a couple of times,” he said of the route change. “For the guys that have run the race 20 times, it’s not just the normal routine, so it might throw them off a little bit.”

Among the veterans in this year’s race is defending champion Dallas Seavey, and 2014’s bizarre finish will be remembered as much as the poor trail conditions.

A sudden blizzard blew four-time champion and race leader Jeff King out of the race when he was about 25 miles from the finish line.

Aliy Zirkle, who was solidly in second place, waited out the storm at the last checkpoint, 22 miles from Nome. She got back on the trail when Seavey blew through the checkpoint, but lost the race by two minutes, 22 seconds. It was her third straight runner-up finish with no wins.

The route change eliminates the mountainous terrain and treacherous gorge, but it could present mushers with a whole new set of problems with a flat trail on unpredictable river ice. Plus, because it’s an entirely new route, mushers say they can’t rely much on information, even something as simple as the mileage between village checkpoints, provided by Iditarod officials.

By removing the Alaska Range, mushers may assume it will be a very fast race, Seavey said.

“Just because it’s a flat trail does not mean your dogs can all of a sudden do 10 times what they’ve been able to do in the past,” said Seavey, a two-time champion.

“In the end, this race will not be won on tricks or gimmicks. It will be won on good dogmanship,” he said.

 

Watch video of the Wisconsin state Assembly voting on right-to-work legislation.

The legislation was passed by a 62-35 party-line vote after an all-night debate.

For more on the issue and the debate, click on the links to the left.

LOS ANGELES (AP) – When a man battles Darth Vader, Nazis and other evildoers for work, what does he do for fun? Harrison Ford finds his answer in a pilot’s license and the freedom to take to the skies.

But with adventure comes risk, just as Han Solo, Indiana Jones and other daring movie characters Ford brought to life realized. On Thursday, one of Hollywood’s pre-eminent stars added a plane crash to an aviation record that includes both mishaps and service to others.

Ford, 72, who battled Hitler’s henchmen in “Raiders of the Lost Ark” as dashing archaeologist Jones, was flying a World War II-era plane when it lost engine power shortly after taking off from Santa Monica Municipal Airport near Los Angeles. He crash-landed on a nearby golf course.

Bystanders who feared the aircraft might explode or catch fire pulled the actor from the wreckage, and doctors who happened to be playing golf gave him aid, Los Angeles fire officials said. An ambulance then took him to a hospital in fair to moderate condition.

“He had no other choice but to make an emergency landing, which he did safely,” Ford spokeswoman Ina Treciokas said. He is expected to make a full recovery, she said in a statement Thursday.

No one on the ground was hurt.

Ford’s son Ben tweeted Thursday evening from the hospital: “Dad is ok. Battered, but ok! He is every bit the man you would think he is. He is an incredibly strong man.” Ben Ford’s publicist, Rebecca Brooks, verified the tweet Friday in an email to The Associated Press.

Harrison Ford had a cut to his forehead and scraped arms, but it wasn’t clear what internal injuries he might have received, Los Angeles Assistant Fire Chief Patrick Butler said.

“He wasn’t a bloody mess. He was alert,” Butler said.

Ford took off at about 2:20 p.m., the NTSB said. A short time later he radioed he had engine failure and was making an immediate return, according to a recording posted by LiveATC.net.

The plane was flying at about 3,000 feet and hit a tree on the way down, according to witnesses and officials. The plane, a yellow 1942 Ryan Aeronautical ST3KR, had damage mostly confined to the front.

“I would say that this is an absolutely beautifully executed – what we would call – a forced or emergency landing, by an unbelievably well-trained pilot,” said Christian Fry of the Santa Monica Airport Association.

Charlie Thomson, a flight instructor at the airport who saw Ford take off, said engine failure like Ford’s does not make the plane harder to maneuver. “It just means you have to go down,” he said.

Among the first people to reach Ford was a spinal surgeon hitting the links, who said he was stunned to discover the actor at the plane’s controls.

Dr. Sanjay Khurana said he saw the plane “drop like a rock” about 50 yards in front of him. He ran to the plane and found the pilot stunned and complaining of pain below his waist and with a deep gash in his scalp.

Khurana and other golfers pulled him from the wreckage, and the doctor assessed his condition. That’s Khurana realized who he was treating.

The airport’s single runway sits amid residential neighborhoods, and city leaders and many residents advocate closing it, citing noise and safety concerns. Other planes have crashed into homes, and four people died in September 2013 when their small jet veered into a hangar and caught fire.

Ford, who plays the swashbuckling Solo in his fourth “Star Wars” movie set for release in December, shuns attention to his private life but has been publicly effusive about his love of flying.

After arriving in his own plane at a 2001 fundraising gala for Seattle’s Museum of Flight, Ford said he was glad to help “engage kids in the romance and the mystery and the adventure of flying. … I know what it means.”

Ford got his pilot’s license in the 1990s and has made headlines, though he had never been significantly injured. In 2001, he rescued a missing Boy Scout with his helicopter. Nearly a year before, he rescued an ailing mountain climber in Wyoming.

In 2000, a gust of wind sent a six-seat plane Ford was piloting off a runway in Lincoln, Nebraska. He and his passenger were not injured.

He has also volunteered his services during forest-fire season, when helicopters are busy battling blazes.

The actor, who is married to Calista Flockhart of “Ally McBeal” fame, has said his rescues “had nothing to do with heroism.”

“It had to do with flying a helicopter. That’s all,” he said.

The National Transportation Safety Board investigation could take up to a year before a final report. NTSB investigator Patrick Jones said the agency would look at “everything: weather, man, the machine.”

Ford last year wrapped “Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” which was briefly suspended when Ford suffered a broken leg during shooting. He co-stars in a romance fantasy, “The Age of Adaline,” due out April 24.

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Contributing to this report were Associated Press writers Andrew Dalton, Robert Jablon, Justin Pritchard and Sandy Cohen in Los Angeles; Alina Hartounian in Phoenix; and Jake Coyle in New York.