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Capt. James Bauman of the Lake County Sheriff's Office reported that deputies arrested Paul John Mendez on Thursday morning.
Bauman said the sheriff's office received information about Mendez during what began as a “relatively routine call” for service on Jan. 4.
At that time, a sheriff’s patrol deputy received information that Mendez allegedly had been molesting a minor, Bauman said.
After further investigation by sheriff’s detectives over the course of this week, Bauman said Superior Court Judge Richard Martin signed a warrant for Mendez's arrest on felony charges of oral copulation with a child under 14 and three counts of assault with the intent to commit rape.
On Thursday morning, Mendez was located in front of the Lakeview Market in Lucerne and arrested without incident pursuant to the warrant, according to Bauman.
Mendez was booked at the Lake County Jail where he remains in custody with a bail set at $500,000.
In an effort to safeguard the victim's confidentiality, Bauman said no further information would be made available on the case at this time.
Mendez's arrest follows two others reported by local officials this week involving rape or lewd and lascivious acts with children or young teens.
On Tuesday, Lake County Sheriff's deputies arrested 18-year-old Austin Duncan for allegedly raping a 13-year-old girl at a Lucerne motel on New Year's Eve. He's facing felony charges of rape by force and lewd and lascivious acts on a child under the age 14.
Clearlake Police on Monday arrested Christopher Adam Sanders, 28, of Lucerne for lewd and lascivious acts with a juvenile.
Duncan remained in the Lake County Jail on $30,000 bail as of Thursday evening, while Sanders had posted his bail – which was set at $100,000 – and was released.
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CLEARLAKE – A leadership transition is taking place at St. Helena Hospital Clearlake, as the current new president and chief executive officer leaves to take a new position and her successor prepares to come on board.
After nearly three years as the hospital's president and CEO, JoAline Olson is moving on to a new position. However, she is staying with the parent health care system, Adventist Health, as vice president of clinical innovation.
"We are pleased that JoAline has accepted this new position for the Adventist Health system," Scott Reiner, senior vice president of Adventist Health, said in a written statement. "Her past experience as both a patient care executive and president/CEO will bring a wealth of insight and expertise as we redesign the patient experience and leverage our Adventist heritage of health and wellness.”
Succeeding her in Clearlake will be Terry Newmyer, who also will lead the hospital's sister facilities, St. Helena Hospital in Napa County and the St. Helena Center for Behavioral Health in Vallejo.
Newmyer has held key roles at Florida Hospital in Orlando, the largest hospital in the country.
He led a $100 million campaign while serving as chief development officer of the hospital foundation and secured alliances worth over $90 million with companies such as Walt Disney World, GE, Philips and Nike as the hospital's senior vice president for business development.
"Terry is a very dedicated leader who has demonstrated a real passion for high-quality, mission-driven health care,” said Reiner. “He brings a diversified portfolio of experience in areas of growth and development.”
The leadership change takes effect in early February, according to Adventist Health.
Olson told Lake County News that Adventist Health timed the start time of her new job to coincide with Newmyer's hire.
As vice president of clinical innovation, Olson said she'll be based in St. Helena. "With my new position I can kind of work anywhere."
She said Adventist Health has asked her to work on completing new innovations at St. Helena Hospital that can be replicated at the Clearlake hospital and other Adventist Health facilities.
"Clearlake will always be part of the scope of what I'm looking at," she said.
Some of the innovations she'll work on include wellness and lifestyle programs currently being developed at the St. Helena Center for Health, and a high quality patient experience that focuses on individualized care.
That patient experience effort, Olson said, is one of the things Adventist Health is focusing on for the new emergency department being built in Clearlake.
She'll also oversee the new Martin O'Neil Cancer Center, and lead a systemwide effort to improve philanthropic efforts at all 18 Adventist Health hospitals.
Olson has been with St. Helena Hospital in several leadership roles for 20 years, with 11 of those spent as president and CEO. During her tenure St. Helena Hospital achieved status as one of the nation’s Top 100 Heart Hospitals and earned many awards for quality, patient and physician satisfaction.
She led the funding and construction of the first comprehensive cancer treatment center in the North Bay, which will open this fall on the St. Helena Hospital campus in Napa County and serve residents of Lake County and beyond, Adventist Health reported.
Olson was in charge of the effort to combine the leadership of St. Helena Hospital Clearlake with the Napa County hospital, which Adventist Health said was done in order to maximize resources and improve services and care for Lake County residents.
“It's the best of all worlds now because one can have some autonomy, which is always fun as a leader,” she said; at the same time, the two rural hospitals' leadership can contribute to strategy and take advantage of the larger organization's resources.
In Lake County in particular Olson oversaw a $10 million investment in facilities.
Among them is the new emergency department, set to double the size of the old one, with construction to begin in April; remodeling the hospital's surgery suites and front entrance; a new family health center in Kelseyville that opens in March; and building a multi-specialty medical office in Hidden Valley Lake.
She called the Hidden Valley Lake office “a wild success.” It now features a full-time internal medicine physician and is getting busier every day. Visiting specialists host clinics on a regular basis; they may see as many as 25 patients a day.
“Our goal has been to bring additional health care services to the Lake County communities, and we've succeeded in Hidden Valley, we've succeeded in Clearlake and now Kelseyville will have a brand new clinic,” said Olson.
Newmyer will bring new perspectives to the Napa and Lake County hospitals, said Olson. “One of our objectives is to have more horsepower here instead of less.”
She's confident of a good transition at the Clearlake campus, thanks to Linda Gibson, senior vice president of operations, who she said is very good at patient care and quality.
Olson admitted that there has been a lot of change at St. Helena Hospital Clearlake in the last few years, from name changes and construction to new faces.
Prior to her tenure, there were two interim CEOs who followed Kendall Fults at the hospital's helm. Fults left in 2006 and now works at another Adventist Health hospital, Central Valley General, where he is senior vice president of clinical operations.
Despite the county's economic troubles, health care is still hiring current positions but not adding many new ones, said Olson.
She said she just received a memo from the California Hospital Association, which noted that health care is seeing a definite impact due to the economy.
“The ability to borrow money has hit health care just like it's hit everywhere else,” said Olson.
That's caused some health care organizations to put capital projects on hold, which hasn't been the case for Adventist Health. Any projects current under way are continuing, but new ones aren't being approved.
If the economy worsens, the question will be how that affects people's use of the health care system, Olson explained.
She said they've already seen a small downturn in usage of the emergency department, as well as people waiting for elective surgeries. “It all ripples.”
Olson said she has enjoyed working with her staff, governing board and committees and witnessing their enthusiasm for health care.
“My greatest personal and professional satisfaction is really being able to see firsthand the care and the compassion and the commitment that the professionals have for the community of Clearlake and also for St. Helena Hospital Clearlake,” she said.
E-mail Elizabeth Larson at
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Austin Dion Duncan, 18, was arrested Tuesday, according to Capt. James Bauman of the Lake County Sheriff's Office.
Duncan is alleged to have raped a 13-year-old Lucerne girl at a rental motel room on Lucerne on New Year's Eve, Bauman said.
The young victim didn't report the incident until the night of Jan. 4, when she told her mother what had happened, said Bauman. When the mother found out, she took her daughter to Sutter Lakeside Hospital.
Sheriff's deputies responded to the hospital on the report of the alleged rape and molestation just after midnight on the morning of Jan. 5, Bauman said.
Bauman said the girl told the investigating deputy that she and some friends were at a motel room celebrating New Year's Eve when she allegedly was forced to have sex with Duncan.
The victim was subsequently released from the hospital later on Monday morning, said Bauman.
At the same time, sheriff’s detectives began locating and interviewing potential witnesses to the incident, he said.
Bauman said by early Tuesday afternoon, deputies had found Duncan at his residence in Upper Lake, where he was arrested without incident.
Duncan, whose booking sheet says he is a student, was booked at the Lake County Jail on felony charges of rape by force and lewd and lascivious acts on a child under the age 14.
He remained in the jail Wednesday evening, according to jail booking information. Bauman said bail is set at $30,000.
Bauman said Duncan also is suspected of allegedly having unlawful sex with a 15-year-old Upper Lake girl in a case that was reported to the sheriff’s department in October.
That case, said Bauman, is currently under review by the District Attorney’s Office for a felony complaint.
On Dec. 2, Duncan was the subject of a nearly daylong search by local law enforcement and Search and Rescue near Upper Lake, as Lake County News has reported.
Sheriff's deputies had tried to contact him for a reason that officials have not revealed. That prompted Duncan to run across Highway 20 and into the Reclamation Road area. A family member suggested at the time that he had been upset over the death of a relative.
After evading deputies for several hours, he fell and hurt his back and called 911 for help. He was located in wild berry bushes and transported to the hospital. He was not arrested at that time.
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The Northern California Ocean and Coastal Protection Act provides protection to the unique and productive marine environment along Northern California’s outer continental shelf (OCS).
“For the economic and biological health of our country, it’s critical that we permanently protect this unique area from the environmental hazards of off-shore drilling,” said Congressman Thompson. “Unfortunately in the last Congress drilling became a political drama, rather than a policy debate. My legislation is one aspect of a broader campaign to restore sensible, science based policy and ensure the health of our oceans for generations.”
During the last Congress, the ban on OCS drilling expired, which leaves the North Coast susceptible to drilling in as little as three years.
The moratorium on OCS drilling had been a bipartisan agreement in Congress since 1982, but came under regular attack, and was not renewed in 2008.
In order to make sure that the North Coast of California is permanently protected, Congressman Thompson introduced his legislation today.
“Our coastline is home to one of the four most important upwellings in the world, which together support 20 percent of the ocean’s fish,” Thompson said. “Drilling on the North Coast doesn’t make sense, either from an economic standpoint or an environmental perspective. By permanently banning drilling, we can provide our coast with the protection it needs, regardless of who is in charge in Washington.”
Upwelling regions are coastal areas that support extremely abundant and productive marine life. This is because an upwelling brings cold, nutrient-rich waters up from the ocean depths that, when combined with sunlight, enhance seaweed and phytoplankton growth.
The seaweed and phytoplankton provide energy for some of the most productive ecosystems in the world, including many of the world’s most important fisheries, such as the North Coast fisheries.
Drilling for gas and oil off the Northern Coast of California could cause serious harm to the unique and productive ecosystem and abundant marine life found off the coast, including the fish many local North Coast economies depend on.
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Lakeport Police Chief Kevin Burke, whose agency reopened its public office hours on Monday following a two-week city furlough, said there were two burglaries of note in the city in late December – one at the Blockbuster video store and the second at the now-closed Carlos and Vinny's restaurant.
Blockbuster, located on Lakeport Boulevard, was the victim of a “smash and grab” early on the morning of Dec. 20, Burke said.
The perpetrators smashed in the business' front window on the northeast side of the building and took two Playstations. Burke said police were dispatched to the area at about 5:30 a.m. Dec. 20 when the break-in triggered the alarm.
About a week and a half later, at some time on the night of Dec. 29 or early on the morning of Dec. 30, a break-in occurred at Carlos and Vinny's restaurant on S. Main Street, Burke said.
He said the suspects, who aren't known at this time, smashed a window on the north side of the business, which has been closed since late November.
The building's property manager reported that most of the business' contents were there but believed alcohol had been stolen, said Burke.
“At this point we haven't confirmed exactly what was taken,” he said.
Besides those two notable exceptions, there were a few cases of vandalism and driving under the influence during the holiday period, which Burke said weren't out of the ordinary for Lakeport.
For the most part, the rest of the county was quiet for the Christmas and New Year's season.
Lt. Mike Hermann of Clearlake Police called the holidays “pretty uneventful.”
“We had a few minors arrests, just two DUIs, but nothing out of the ordinary,” he said.
The same appeared to be the case for the county at large.
“Fortunately, it appears to have been a slow holiday,” said Capt. Jim Bauman of the Lake County Sheriff's Office.
No DUI arrests outside of Clearlake or Lakeport were reported in the jail logs during the California Highway Patrol's maximum enforcement period from Dec. 31 through Sunday, although there had been three arrests during its increased enforcement period around Christmas.
E-mail Elizabeth Larson at
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Clearlake Police arrested Christopher Adam Sanders, 28, early Monday, according to a report from Lt. Mike Hermann.
Hermann said the Clearlake Police Department is continuing to investigate the incident that led to Sanders' arrest.
He said portions of the allegedly crime occurred within the city limits.
Hermann said additional incidents also were reported to have occurred within the county's jurisdiction. In order to avoid jurisdictional conflicts, it was determined that the Clearlake Police Department would lead the investigation.
No other information is being released on the case is being released at this time, Hermann said.
Sanders, whose booking sheet indicates he works as a plumber, remained in the Lake County Jail Monday night.
E-mail Elizabeth Larson at
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