How parents of the '80s can connect with their kids
How this local lounge singer went from crime-fighting to 'Fly me to the moon'
How this local lounge singer went from crime-fighting to 'Fly me to the moon'
Washington Post on Parenting
My then-14-year-old and I were in the car, driving after one of those stifling hot travel baseball tournaments that drain the doubleheaders out of you.
A few minutes into our trek on I-95 north, as my son was attempting to de-baseball after roughly 12 hours of sun and grounders at shortstop, Journey came on the classic rock station, and this '80s chick blasted it. "Steve Perry had the best voice of that era," I remarked. Then Foreigner came on and I turned that higher. "Lou Gramm might've been the third best vocalist then. I'd put Dennis DeYoung of Styx at number two."(more)
How this local lounge singer went from crime-fighting to 'Fly me to the moon'
How this local lounge singer went from crime-fighting to 'Fly me to the moon'
How this local lounge singer went from crime-fighting to 'Fly me to the moon'
Northern Virginia Magazine
Rob Patrick was once a fed who spent his time arresting high-profile criminals. Today, you can find him singing Sinatra at local clubs in the DMV. As an agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in Falls Church investigating firearms trafficking in the late 1980s, Rob Patrick, 58, remembers arresting some of the first East Coast Crips, a gang notorious for extortion and murder and using weapons like 9 mm TEC-9s and Uzis.
“They were major players distributing crack cocaine in the area...(more)
Are abdominal injuries football's next concussion story?
How this local lounge singer went from crime-fighting to 'Fly me to the moon'
Are abdominal injuries football's next concussion story?
USA TODAY Sports
At Taylor Haugen’s first game of the year, in 2008, the Niceville (Fla.) Eagles were playing their rival. The sophomore wide receiver reached up to catch a pass and was pummeled from the front and back. He tried to join the huddle on the next play, but struggling, his coach called him off the field.
Her child wincing in pain, Kathy Haugen rushed to the fence behind the sideline. “When he came off the field, I knew. I just knew,” she said, describing her son as pale and gray. The team doctor believed it was an internal injury.
“I was devastated. He lost consciousness in the ambulance, and never regained it,” she said, her voice trailing off...(more)
When painkilling becomes an addiction for young athletes
Diabetes in play: High school athletes don't let it stop them
Are abdominal injuries football's next concussion story?
USA TODAY High School Sports
Cameron Weiss' mom remembers the competitive streak in her blonde-haired, smiling boy who started soccer at age 5. “When all the little 5-year-olds would cluster at the ball, he’d be right in there, trying to get the ball,” she said, laughing. By the time he was playing football for La Cueva High School in Albuquerque, N.M., he was thriving in competition, becoming a wrestler, too.
But it began to unravel. He broke his collarbone at football practice sophomore year. An urgent care center prescribed him the opiate Percocet — an oxycodone painkiller, which he took immediately and again after surgery. But after he healed, his mom says, he broke his other collarbone in wrestling...(more)
Diabetes in play: High school athletes don't let it stop them
Diabetes in play: High school athletes don't let it stop them
Diabetes in play: High school athletes don't let it stop them
USA TODAY High School Sports
At a camp three years ago when he was 12, wrestler Zach McCauley’s blood sugar level dropped. He says he hadn’t passed out yet, but was dozing in a corner. The coaches hadn’t shared the information McCauley had diabetes, and one saw him “sleeping.”
“One of the coaches started throwing Post-it notes at me, saying, ‘This isn’t nap time!’ But my brother was there, and he said, ‘He’s a diabetic, he’s not napping.’” They ran to get the athletic trainer, who gave him juice immediately. He felt better quickly, spared from going unconscious.
That incident is the only troubling one varsity wrestler McCauley, 15, recalls, as he manages life with diabetes...(more)
Legendary Cross Country Coach Jim White of McFarland
Diabetes in play: High school athletes don't let it stop them
Diabetes in play: High school athletes don't let it stop them
USA TODAY High School Sports
Retired McFarland High School cross country coach Jim White speaks with joy in his voice in a phone interview from Hollywood, where they had an advance screening of Disney’s McFarland, USA, a based-on-a-true-story movie about the 1987 rise of a California state cross country championship contender from fields of migrant workers. The movie opens Friday.
“Have you seen the movie yet?” he asks. “It’s really good. We showed it to 300 people last night at Pepperdine, because I went to school there. It was wonderful; they gave us a standing ovation for five minutes!”
White is happy with Kevin Costner’s portrayal of him. “I don’t think they could’ve picked anybody better for me than him. We just loved it.”
He was impressed with Costner’s knowledge of his coaching style, and Costner influenced the script by telling them they had initially been portraying him in the wrong way, which wouldn’t lead to success, White says. (more)
Pro figure skaters like Olympian Michael Weiss teaching skating for hockey players
Pro figure skaters like Olympian Michael Weiss teaching skating for hockey players
Pro figure skaters like Olympian Michael Weiss teaching skating for hockey players
USA TODAY High School Sports
You might not expect an Olympic figure skater to use the word “explosive” when teaching young hockey players on the ice.
After all, figure skating is the epitome of quiet grace and elegant power, right?
But three-time U.S. national champion Michael Weiss, 38, is doing just that, teaching explosiveness to high school hockey players at an ice rink in Reston, Va. At a freestyle session after school one day, parents watch as their girls – perhaps the next Gracie Golds — glide and spin. But in the far end, Weiss draws on the ice with a marker, mapping a drill for a hockey player... (more)
Mom advocates for CTE awareness following son's suicide after football career
Pro figure skaters like Olympian Michael Weiss teaching skating for hockey players
Pro figure skaters like Olympian Michael Weiss teaching skating for hockey players
USA TODAY High School Sports
As the national spotlight is on the first acknowledgement by an NFL official of a link between football and the brain disease CTE this week, Karen Zegel of Philadelphia wants to tell her family’s story, too.
She blames her son’s suicide in 2014 on CTE, or chronic traumatic encephalopathy, found in autopsies of many former football players.
Patrick Risha was a coach’s son and a football star in a Western Pennsylvania town deeply engrained in the game and then went to the Ivy League at Dartmouth.
Ten years out of college, Patrick struggled to manage the demands of his daily life and his frustrations grew. He hung himself at age 32...(more)
Is yoga the secret weapon for an athlete's body?
Pro figure skaters like Olympian Michael Weiss teaching skating for hockey players
Trek to the big screen: the real 1987 McFarland, USA runners share their paths
USA TODAY High School Sports
Yoga has increasingly become a part of training for college and high school athletes. Cleveland Cavaliers forward Kevin Love has been a proponent of yoga and has integrated yoga into his lifestyle and training regimen. You can watch a video of Love above.
Every morning Eastern Kentucky forward Eric Stutz puts on a Pandora yoga station, sits cross-legged, meditates and breathes his way into poses for the next hour. He repeats the routine at the end of the day.
Perhaps a 6-8, 225-pound college basketball player is not who first comes to mind when someone says yoga lover. But that’s exactly who Stutz is, thanks to the benefits he has gained after a year of steady yoga practice...(more)
Trek to the big screen: the real 1987 McFarland, USA runners share their paths
Does this new Northern Virginia medical campus hold the key to conquering cancer?
Trek to the big screen: the real 1987 McFarland, USA runners share their paths
USA TODAY High School Sports
When the Disney machine rolls into your farm town to tell your high school team’s story — you know, the one where you toiled as a kid for hours with your migrant worker family, pruning trees, picking peaches, raking walnuts and hoeing weeds, then you raced home to practice a grueling 6-mile run called for by a coach building against-all-odds champions, oh that little story? — it’s thrilling and humbling.
Just ask Danny, David or Damacio Diaz, who, along with their 1987 cross country teammates are portrayed in the new movie, “McFarland, USA,” about the unlikely rise of a high school cross country powerhouse from California’s Central Valley fields fueled by Hispanic and Latino migrant workers...(more)
Gehrig's speech inspires others diagnosed with ALS
Does this new Northern Virginia medical campus hold the key to conquering cancer?
Does this new Northern Virginia medical campus hold the key to conquering cancer?
USA TODAY Sports Weekly
Eric Von Schaumburg, 30, of Chicago loves baseball. A White Sox fan who feels the words of Lou Gehrig's famous speech. The 75th anniversary was Friday.
"I remember doing school projects on Lou Gehrig and running around the house, saying, 'I consider myself (myself myself) the luckiest man (man man) on the face of this earth (earth earth).' I thought it was the coolest and most inspirational speech ever. Then, things came full circle," the former high school second baseman writes when contacted by e-mail, as he can no longer talk.
More than a year ago, Von Schaumburg noticed his speech was slurring...(more)
Does this new Northern Virginia medical campus hold the key to conquering cancer?
Does this new Northern Virginia medical campus hold the key to conquering cancer?
Does this new Northern Virginia medical campus hold the key to conquering cancer?
Northern Virginia Magazine
Talk to oncologist Dr. John F. Deeken, acting CEO of the Inova Schar Cancer Institute, and you’ll feel revitalized by his energy and hope in the fight against cancer here in Northern Virginia. In recent interviews with Northern Virginia Magazine, Deeken laid out Inova’s vision for the new Schar Cancer Institute—set to open in April in Fairfax after two years of construction.
“It’s a large, beautiful new cancer center for clinical care and treatment and diagnostic testing and radiology and chemotherapy,” he says. Though at press time an exact opening date in April had not been announced, over 300 employees will work at the 336,815-square-foot building located at 8081 Innovation Park Drive...(more)
Catching Breast Cancer Early: Three NoVA women share their stories
Here’s how Northern Virginia is tackling the nationwide opioid crisis
Catching Breast Cancer Early: Three NoVA women share their stories
Northern Virginia Magazine
Nancy Zimini of Manassas, then 49, was surprised when the radiologist at Sentara Hospital asked to capture extra images of her right breast during her yearly mammogram. Eighty-five percent chance it’s nothing, she was told. “But there was this tiny gray-and-white cluster.”
Zimini agreed to a biopsy in which a needle extracts suspicious cells during a computer-aided mammogram or ultrasound. A senior vice president for Airports Council International, she was accustomed to weighing decisions quickly. So when the core biopsy showed ductal carcinoma in situ, or DCIS, a stage 0 noninvasive breast cancer confined to the ducts, she was clear. “Do whatever you need to get it out,” she said...(more)
Chasing Ghosts In a Civil Rights Era Cop Killing
Here’s how Northern Virginia is tackling the nationwide opioid crisis
Catching Breast Cancer Early: Three NoVA women share their stories
Police Magazine
"Chasing Ghosts"
A Maggie Award Winning Story for "Best Feature" from Western Publishing Association
Maevella Moore, 75, is like any doting mama and grandma. She beams with pride when she talks about her grandchildren, about how the kids and grandkids have gone to college and married, and how one grandchild is in law school. She'll say how she's even a great-grandma now to a 7-year-old.
And like a proud wife, she talks about her husband. She'll tell you about how O'Neal Moore worked the late shift as one of the first black deputies of the Washington Parish (La.) Sheriff's Office. She remembers how he'd be quiet when he got home at 2 a.m. so as not to wake their young daughters, then ages 9, 7, 4, and 9 months. She laughs when she talks about how the next day, the children "would run and jump on him, calling out, 'Daddy!' ...He loved those four little girls," she says...(more)
Here’s how Northern Virginia is tackling the nationwide opioid crisis
Here’s how Northern Virginia is tackling the nationwide opioid crisis
Here’s how Northern Virginia is tackling the nationwide opioid crisis
Northern Virginia Magazine
Opioid overdoses have become the leading cause of unnatural death in Virginia. As the state confronts the national public health crisis, local doctors are on the front lines.
Dr. Karla Lacayo remembers a 21-year-old who was brought in to the emergency room by an alert friend who said she was sleepy. As the triage nurses wheeled her in, she turned blue. With the hallmark symptoms of an opioid overdose—slowing respiratory rate, arousal difficulty, constricted pupils—they immediately gave her naloxone, a drug that reverses overdoses. But, resuscitated, she sat up, pulled out her IV—and walked right out the door, despite being counseled that she had just nearly died of an opioid overdose. “My heart was thinking, this girl will be back … and I hope not dead. Her addiction had taken over her. She didn’t want help...(more)