Star Tribune
At 87, still chopping firewood and telling stories
ALEXANDRIA, MINN. – Arlys Kakac was standing outside her farm shed when I stopped by recently to visit.
Wearing jeans and an old work jacket, she looked tired. At 87, she had just finished putting up the season’s wood supply with a few helpers. Wood sat heaped in the shed in two massive mounds.
“Arlys,” I said, “I hope I’m like you when I’m 87.”
Arlys is my husband’s aunt. Her strength was forged in childhood through poverty and a level of responsibility and hard work that I have never known. She milked cows at 11, dropped out of school at 15, applied for a farm loan at age 16, was rejected and went back to the bank at ages 17, 18, 19 and 20. At 21, when the local banker finally figured she was old enough, she bought her first 80 acres and started a dairy.
They don’t make them like Arlys anymore.
The second oldest of 10 children, she had to be, as she put it, “both mother and father” to her nine siblings. Her older sister was often ill, but Arlys was the strong one, the one who cut firewood for the family and slept on the couch in the winter so she could keep the fire going. As a teenager, she made the loan payments on the family house.
Arlys left school because the farm mechanics program was full and the school tried to steer her into its arts program instead.
So, she hired out as a farmhand. The farmers she lived with never fed her so she survived by drinking warm milk from the dairy cows. After two months, when she went home for a visit, her father saw her thinness and said she couldn’t go back. She signed on with a different farm family and that family doted on her.
A heavily traveled bridge over Hwy. 169 in Brooklyn Park that was hit from below days ago by a truck driver reopened late Friday morning following repairs, state officials said Friday.
More than 17,000 motorists who use the 77th Avenue/Brooklyn Boulevard/Elm Creek Boulevard bridge were forced to find an alternate route while the serious damage to several concrete beams was fixed, said Minnesota Department of Transportation spokesman Kent Barnard.
Barnard said the bridge was back in business at 11:49 a.m.
While the bridge over the northwest metro highway was closed, Hwy. 169 below remained open in both directions, as did ramps to and from 77th/Brooklyn Boulevard/Elm Creek Boulevard, Barnard said.
Star Tribune
Guilty of gun, drug counts against Derrick Thompson, still charged with killing 5 in crash
A federal jury Friday returned guilty verdicts on gun and drug charges against Derrick John Thompson in connection with the Minneapolis crash that killed five women in June 2023 after he sped off Interstate 35W in and slammed into the car they were riding in.
The verdicts on the fourth day of the trial in U.S. District Court in St. Paul were guilty for all counts: possession with intent to distribute 40 grams or more of fentanyl, being a felon in possession of a firearm and carrying a firearm “during and in relation to a drug trafficking crime.”
While Thompson, 28, of Brooklyn Park and the son of former DFL state Rep. John Thompson, now awaits sentencing in this case, he also has third-degree murder and criminal vehicular homicide charges pending in Hennepin County in connection with the crash. In the meantime, he remains in federal custody in the Sherburne County jail.
The crash victims were Sabiriin Ali, 17, of Bloomington; Sahra Gesaade, 20, of Brooklyn Center; Salma Abdikadir, 20, of St. Louis Park; Sagal Hersi, 19, of Minneapolis, and Siham Adam, 19, of Minneapolis. On the night they were killed, the women were heading home after running errands before a friend’s wedding the next day. Their funeral was attended by thousands, and an online fundraiser to support the victims’ families raised more than $450,000.
A still image from body cam footage shows a bleeding Derrick Thompson near the scene of the crash that killed five women in June 2023 in Minneapolis. (U.S. District Court)
During this week’s federal trial, Thompson’s defense attorneys argued that the drugs and a loaded Glock pistol with an extended magazine discovered in the Escalade actually belong to his brother Damarco John Thompson — whom both the prosecution and defense said was a passenger in the SUV and fled the scene along with Derrick Thompson.
Damarco Thompson has not been arrested or charged with any crimes connected to the crash.
Police found three phones in the car, one for each brother and another they shared. They found video, text and voice messages on Derrick Thompson’s phone documenting narcotics being weighed for sale and negotiations over drug purchases.
A black leather bag carrying the gun and drugs was found beneath a distinctive blue cap Damarco Thompson was captured wearing earlier that night as he dropped Derrick off to rent the Escalade at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. The bag held a loaded Glock handgun with an extended magazine and more than 2,000 blue pills containing fentanyl, 14 grams of powdered fentanyl and 35 grams of cocaine.
DULUTH – The memorial service for an unassuming northern Minnesota park ranger who died while attempting to rescue a Wisconsin family amid wind and wicked waves on Namakan Lake is set for Sunday in the gymnasium at Falls High School in International Falls.
Grossheim, 55, died Sunday trying to bring to safety a man and his two sons, who were stranded on an island. Five-to-eight foot waves were reportedly rolling on the lake in Voyageurs National Park. Grossheim’s park service boat capsized. The family was able to swim to safety, but the longtime park ranger known for his commitment to safety did not resurface. His body was found hours later. Grossheim was wearing a life preserver, according to law enforcement officials.
Betsey Warrington of Kabotegama, Minn., described Grossheim as a private, unassuming person who everyone loved. He likely did thousands of good things that no one ever heard about, she said.
“If he saw something that needed to be done, he just did it,” she said Friday.
Grossheim, of Kabotegama, married Jill Chytil in 1996 and together they lived a quiet life.
Various organizations have banded together to support Grossheim’s family in the aftermath.
The MN 100 Club, which provides financial contributions for lost wages and funeral expenses when a First Responder is killed or critically injured in the line of duty, said this week that it will give $50,000 to Grossheim’s family.
