Roger Pollock looks like a pillar of the community.  He is on the board of Oregon Partnership, a statewide non-profit promoting healthy kids and communities through drug and alcohol awareness and prevention programs.  Pollock has been the subject of many profiles over the years in The Oregonian and the Portland Business Journal and he is the man behind Buena Vista Custom Homes who recently announced entering the Central Oregon housing market for the first time ... [full story]

Q: My wife and I purchased our new home in December, 2004. The builder financed 100 percent of the purchase price of $146,500 at 5 percent, which was great. We added around $10,000 in upgrades that we paid for out-of-pocket, which actually brought the purchase price to $156,500. At the last minute, the builder asked us to do a lease option for a year to help him on his taxes, and we agreed as long ... [full story]

Four San Diego State students recently logged on to a computer and did what thousands of other college students do these days during their spare time. They were having fun on MySpace.com, posting personal party pictures and commentaries about life in college. Some included references to drinking alcoholic beverages and snide remarks about recent soccer practices, according to a student colleague of the four. But because the four students were athletes - in this case women's soccer ... [full story]

In the face of intense globalization in virtually every level of society, it is important to keep in touch with local news and community events.  It seems that the smaller our world becomes, the more important it is to maintain a feeling of what we can actually see happening around us with our own eyes.  This is precisely the vision of Bend Weekly • keeping journalism local.  Who better to report on the topics that ... [full story]

FBI Agents and members of the FBI's Innocent Images Task Force arrested Christopher Frederick Smith, age 49, on charges that he used the Internet to entice a minor for sex. The arrest, early Wednesday morning, was without incident at SMITH's home in Eagle Crest, Oregon. The FBI also served a search warrant at the home. SMITH is a teacher at Redmond High School in Redmond, Oregon. The Redmond Police Department and the Deschutes County Sheriff's ... [full story]

On Friday, May 26, a ribbon-cutting ceremony was held to celebrate improvements made to the summit road and parking area atop Newberry National Volcanic Monument's Lava Butte. Forest Service officials, project engineers and contractors attended the event along with the public. Improvements included widening the road using red cinder native to Central Oregon.  Red cinder roads are a historic feature of the region and are visiible on Bend's Pilot Butte and along the Cascade Lakes National Scenic ... [full story]

Oregon State Fire Marshal Nancy Orr announced Bend Fire Department's Deputy Chief Gary Marshall as the 2006 Golden Sparky Award winner during the May 19th Oregon Fire Service Meritorious Awards at the Portland Metropolitan Exposition Center in Portland. The Golden Sparky, first awarded in 1977, is the highest award given to the fire service personnel by the State Fire Marshal.  It honors outstanding achievement in fire prevention and fire safety. Marshall's innovative program FireFree! Get in ... [full story]

Motorists hoping to stretch their fuel dollars by boosting their vehicles' fuel efficiency should be wary of the promises of gas-saving additives, fuel-line devices and other supposed enhancers, AAA warns. With Idaho's current average price for regular grade gasoline just pennies short of the record price of $2.95 set last September, some motorists may be persuaded to experiment with one or more of the many fuel additives or devices that promise to dramatically improve a vehicle's ... [full story]

Cascade Bancorp (headquartered in Bend, Oregon) and its wholly-owned subsidiary, Bank of the Cascades, today announced that Patricia L. Moss, President and CEO of Cascade Bancorp and CEO of Bank of the Cascades, is a finalist for the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Of The Year(R) 2006 Award in the Pacific Northwest. According to Ernst & Young, the awards program was designed to recognize outstanding entrepreneurs on a regional, national and global level who are building ... [full story]

"Let your food be your medicine and your medicine be your food"- Hippocrates, father of medicineThere are a few key concepts that must be understood before we discuss wellness nutrition.  The goal of any wellness intervention including nutrition is to increase health and well-being. So we must start out with, what is health?Health, by definition, is a state of consistent balanced cell function. All living things, including humans, are composed of individual living cells working ... [full story]