STORIES FROM THE PAST
50 years ago
The Loo brothers of El Centro have high stakes in Sunday’s Carrot Carnival Championship Drags at the Holtville drag strip. Stakes like:
Over a year of long nights in the garage working, planning, building.
Nearly $10,000. The brothers — Sonny and Jack — will unveil their own cars, built over the past year, for the first time Sunday.
And then, they hope, they’ll continue competition through California and the Southwest.
40 years ago
CALEXICO — Concepcion Leyva Vizcarra says the world was indeed a different place in the late 19th Century when she was a young woman in Baja California.
On Saturday, she and family members will celebrate her 100th birthday.
Recently, she told a visitor young people today maintain a fast pace and have more pressure on them compared to her own rather insulated adolescence.
The daughter of a musician, she was born March 21, 1877, in El Triunfo, a small town in Lower Baja California.
Through a family interpreter, she said was “very much” looking forward to her birthday celebration.
The family decided to hold the celebration Saturday to allow relatives to attend from various parts of the state and as far away as Wyoming.
She said her family came to Nogales, Ariz. in 1922 and lived in Phoenix about 10 years. In 1932, the family settled permanently in the Valley.
30 years ago
Interstate 8 through Imperial County will be eligible for a 65 mile per hour speed limit if President Reagan sign a bill passed by Congress on Wednesday, state officials say.
California is ready to quickly raise the speed on 1,299 miles of nine major freeways in all.
Gov. George Deukmejian, the California Highway Patrol and near-unanimous majorities of both the state Senate and Assembly are already on record as favoring the higher speed limit.
20 years ago
WASHINGTON (MNS) — Although the Calexico area temporarily gained 47 more U.S. Border Patrol agents Monday, Imperial County Sheriff Oren Fox said the extra help will do little to alleviate increasing drug traffic and illegal immigration in the area.
“Based on the amount of drugs that we know are being seized, tremendous amounts of drugs are still coming into the country,” said Fox, whose deputies have been enlisted to aid the Border Patrol.
The 46 Border Patrol agents deployed to the Calexico area will be stationed there for only 30 days.
Of that number, 16 agents were redeployed from other areas of the El Centro Sector.
Another 30 agents fresh from the Border Patrol academy are to be assigned to the El Centro Sector in about a month.
The number of marijuana seizures in Imperial County has increased by more than 300 percent since 1993, while it has dropped by almost 44 percent in San Diego.
Ted Hampton, assistant chief patrol agent of the Border Patrol’s El Centro Sector attributed the drop on the number of seizures in San Diego to an increased law enforcement presence in the area.