Tony Wheat Has Been Sorry for So Long
Tony Wheat is Washington state’s longest incarcerated inmate and was once on death row for the murder of three gas station attendants. He has spent the last 50 years trying to serve others in jail, winning the respect of corrections staff and fellow prisoners.
The Trouble With Shaken Baby Syndrome
After three decades and thousands of accusations and fractured lives, medical and legal experts are challenging shaken baby syndrome as a diagnosis. And as one family’s saga demonstrates, we can’t wait any longer to get it right.
“Do you have identification?” Robyn asked the woman. No. “A court order?” The largest deputy in the group, maybe six-five, 250 pounds, placed his boot over the doorsill. I’m the court order, he said. They weren’t leaving without Eliana. Robyn scanned the street. At least five patrol cars lined the curb. Every home on the street glowed, the silhouettes of onlooking neighbors framed in the windows. After a 30-minute standoff—the deputies demanding entry into the house, the Felixes refusing—and after tearful phone calls to friends for advice, Robyn woke Eliana in her crib, bundled her, and passed the toddler to the caseworker. The child cried out for Nathan—“My daddy! My daddy!”—and disappeared into the backseat of the caseworker’s car.
Ground Control to Mr. Meline
When a beloved teacher is killed, his students figure out a way to pay tribute to him by sending him into space. A story of loss, mental illness, and an inspiring educator:
“For as long as Nae’Ana Aguon could remember, she wanted Mr. Meline as a teacher. Her older brother had been in Mr. Meline’s class years earlier, and she had visited the classroom, a classroom like no other at Spanaway’s Camas Prairie Elementary: telescopes, models of NASA shuttles, Star Trek posters, a mobile of the solar system. And every year Meline’s class built a comet—rocks, dirt, dry ice—then studied the comet with the intensity of a science team in a sci-fi film who’d discovered it in some exotic location.
“Mr. Meline didn’t disappoint when Nae’Ana reported to room 33 on the first day of school in early September 2012. He handed out a word search, a jumble of letters from which the students excavated NASA-related terminology. And then the launch: not of a rocket, but of the man.”
