Star Tribune
Caregivers act as caregivers in St. Paul play
Wonderlust Productions’ co-artistic directors Alan Berks and Leah Cooper spent two years gathering tales and observations from caregivers for their play, “Thank You for Holding: The Caregiver Play Project.” (Jerry Holt/The Minnesota Star Tribune)
A few minutes into the scene on the park bench, the man mentions that he found himself caring for his wife quite unexpectedly. “I woke up one day to the reality that we don’t have as much control as we thought.”
Then he delivers a short monologue: “It’s part of our love story. She is always still exactly the same person to me. No matter what happens to her body, or mind. She is always a whole person, and I know she sees that I see her, and she feels less alone and less scared. It was unthinkable to me before that two people could be so intimately involved with each other. The things I now do for her — wiping her, dressing her. The things she allows me to do for her. The total trust it requires and love for her to allow me. The unconditional love we share, body, mind and spirit, and I feel this incredible reverence.”
Christin Lindberg recognizes that monologue. It contains some of her exact words.
Lindberg, a Minneapolis resident and research scientist for the Amherst H. Wilder Foundation, participated in one of the story circles. She talked about being a caregiver for her late husband, Roger Bechtel.
Lindberg and Bechtel had been together just five years when he was diagnosed with ALS (often called Lou Gehrig’s disease). Bechtel died in 2021, just one grueling year after his diagnosis.
Lindberg joined the story circle at the suggestion of a member of Wonderlust’s board of directors, a former theater student of Bechtel’s at Carleton College in Northfield, who knew their back story.
A 25-year-old Minneapolis man died following complications from a gunshot wound to the neck Wednesday, nearly three months after being shot in south Minneapolis.
Johnny Birzavi Sanchez Sanchez was struck by gunfire near 31st Street East and Clinton Avenue in the city’s Central neighborhood on July 25. Minneapolis police responded to the area around 1:30 a.m., where they rendered aid until paramedics arrived. Preliminary information indicated that shots were fired from a nearby vehicle at Sanchez, who was riding a motorcycle, striking him in the neck.
He was taken to HCMC and later transferred to North Memorial Health Hospital in Robbinsdale, where he died Oct. 16.
No arrests have been made in the case, a police spokesman confirmed Friday.
There have been 59 homicides so far this year, compared to 50 at this point in 2023, according to a Star Tribune database.
“We do not have enough beds to house people,” she said. “We cannot arrest our way out of this issue… What are we going to do with individuals who have been declared incompetent, and we have nowhere to send them?”
Justin Lewandowski, organizing director of the Hamline Midway Coalition and a former Beacon staffer, acknowledged that many participants had specific concerns about Kimball Court. He said the coalition has scheduled another meeting from 6:30-8 p.m. Nov. 7 at Hamline University’s West Hall, room 240, to discuss the building.
Representatives from St. Paul Police, Beacon Interfaith and Jalali are expected to attend.
“We are angry. Who’s not angry? I would be worried if we weren’t upset about these things, but we have hope and we have strength in each other. Am I right?” Lewandowski asked.
Resident Teresa LePiane said all the other issues that the coalition touched on, including the desire for increasing vacant building fees, more affordable housing construction and public transit ridership, were legitimate neighborhood concerns. But she had expected a town hall about the most pressing problems of the neighborhood to have included the quality of life in and around Kimball Court.
“The quality of life in our neighborhood has gone downhill radically over the last couple years, since Beacon took over Kimball Court, and I hold them primarily responsible for the chaos, for the open drug use,” she said. “That’s a dereliction of their duty to us, and I feel like the City Council are not hearing us.”
Star Tribune
Two sentenced for distributing meth that led to two fatal overdoses in northern Minnesota
Two men found guilty of distributing methamphetamine — and tied to two fatal overdoses and a woman’s critical injuries — were sentenced Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Minneapolis.
Dylan Adrian Day, 34, of Minneapolis was sentenced to more than 14 years in federal prison; Bryan Joseph Hodapp, 37, of Gilbert, Minn., will serve just more than 13 years.
The two are connected to the deaths of Mitchell Dale Saltzman, 41, of Virginia, Minn., and Raymond John Lossing, 55, of Cook, Minn., who were found dead by family members in May 2022 in Biwabik Township in northern Minnesota. Two women were taken to a Duluth hospital where one was in life-threatening condition.
A Lake Superior Violent Offender Task Force investigation found that Hodapp had arranged a drug deal between Saltzman, who traveled with one of the women, and Day in the Twin Cities area, according to a news release from St. Louis County.
