Thirty Years Ago
Thank you for your article on our boss, Lowell Blankfort (“Press Passes,” March 30). We commend Paul Krueger’s skill in capturing the personality of this Star-News co-publisher quite accurately (in the view of his editorial staff).

What did surprise us, however, was Blankfort’s assessment of our insignificance as a staff. We read with chagrin his claim: “With our wives and the other management helping, Reb and I could still put this paper out ourselves.”
— LETTERS: “CHAGRIN AND BEAR IT,” Star-News Editorial Staff, April 6, 1978

Twenty-Five Years Ago
The Business Journal’s drastic retrenchment was of little surprise to Carabet’s former boss, Union financial editor Don Bauder. “I told Denise from day one that it wouldn’t make it,” Bauder recalls. He says the “crazy mix” of local businesses and the lack of a core industry to generate advertising were the Business Journal’s unleapable hurdles. “San Diego isn’t a Seattle, where you’ve got a Boeing and aerospace, or a San Francisco with its banking and Silicon Valley,” says Bauder.
— THE INSIDE STORY, Paul Krueger, April 7, 1983

Twenty Years Ago
Leo Daboub would like to announce the daily arrival at the Tijuana airport of cells from lamb fetuses making their way on a strange journey. These cells begin their lives in Frankfurt, Germany, where they’re extracted from their mothers/hosts, flash-frozen, and loaded onto Lufthansa flights to Mexico City, with an Aeromexico connection to the border city. From the airport, Daboub’s employees will be picking up the cells and transporting them to the Hotel Fiesta Americana on Agua Caliente Boulevard. There, the final destination for the fetal cells will be the rumps of men and women who’ve been led to believe that such “live-cell therapy” will make them more youthful and robust.
— CITY LIGHTS: “THE SALE OF CELLS,” Jeannette De Wyze, April 7, 1988

Fifteen Years Ago
The trial of Dale Anthony Akiki, the disabled 35-year-old La Mesa man accused of molesting and abusing preschoolers at a church-run nursery school in Spring Valley, will soon be in full swing. Meanwhile, another court battle related to the notorious case may be on its way.

Two of Akiki’s alleged victims and their legal guardian, using the name “John Doe,” are suing radio station KFMB-AM and talk-show host Stacy Taylor for invasion of privacy. The suit stems from a March 18 broadcast on which Taylor read a letter, on the air, from an Akiki sympathizer, in which the two minors’ grandfather was “identified by name” as one of the chief instigators of the prosecution.
— CITY LIGHTS: “RADIO BLABBERMOUTH HIT IN TOT-SEX PRIVACY CASE,” Thomas K. Arnold, April 8, 1993

Ten Years Ago
John Moores and his San Diego Padres haven’t yet said the “V” word out loud, but plenty of other locals, including sports writers and editorialists for the Union-Tribune, have been mouthing it. The word is Virginia, specifically northern Virginia. That’s supposedly the team’s final destination if taxpayers here don’t ultimately ante up to build a new downtown baseball stadium.
— CITY LIGHTS: “THE NORTHERN MCCOYS,” Matt Potter, April 9, 1998

Five Years Ago
After the service, Bishop Mason told me that two of the biggest black churches in San Diego have “incredibly large” numbers of gay men and lesbians. “And the preachers at those same churches will from time-to-time gay bash from their pulpits. But church loyalty is strong in the black community. The relationship is very complex. I’ve seen gay men and women, after hearing such a sermon, kneel before the altar and repent of their so-called ‘sinful’ lifestyle. A few hours later, these same people go out to gay bars. I think it would be better if they just turned away from gay life altogether than subject themselves, time and again, to self-hatred and repentance they don’t mean.”
— SHEEP AND GOATS, Abe Opincar, April 3, 2003