10 YEARS AGO

FEB. 3, 2016

A feature story by Oliver Good recounts how, when Cheyenne Sawyer was but a wee 3-year-old, she dreamt of visiting Disneyland.

Instead of endlessly nagging her parents, Stacey and Tabitha Sawyer, she started saving coins she found. The entire family and even the Tooth Fairy contributed. By the time she was 7, she had amassed more than $1,000.

With her parents covering the rest of the cost, the family took what Cheyenne called an “awesome” trip to the iconic California amusement park. While there, they found a few dropped coins. Cheyenne is saving them to pay for a trip to Florida’s Disneyworld.

Hillsboro Middle School student Mary Elena Heyen won the Marion County spelling bee Jan. 27 at Goessel. Marion Elementary School fifth grader Jaeden McMillan placed second. Goessel Middle School student Brooke Nafziger took third.

Dirty politics will quite literally dominate a city council race in Marion.

Candidate Michel Soyez is running because competing candidate John Wheeler has allowed the city to dump dirt on property Wheeler owns that Soyez says will cause drainage problems at his home on S. 1st St.

Marion High School FFA members are fleshing out plans for a community. FFA president Elizabeth Meyer said one thing the FFA was considering was assigning garden plots to local food bank patrons so they could grow their own produce.