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Sentence
Munster Police Department determined
Hernandez was driving 57 to 65 mph in a
35 mph zone during the time of the crash.
Tom Alexander described his son, who
called him “Dad man,” as having a contagious smile and quick wit.
“Trevor just made people feel good
about themselves,” he said.
Tricia Alexander, Trevor Alexander’s mother, said her son had spent the
night before the crash at a friend’s party
watching a Chicago Blackhawks game.
She first learned about the crash from
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TEDx
“What is Northwest
Indiana’s ‘wow,’ and what
can it do to reproduce it?”
said Bob Bouwer, senior
pastor of Faith Church in
Dyer.
A sell-out crowd of
100 community leaders
gathered at County Line
Orchard in Hobart for
Northwest Indiana’s inaugural TEDx event, which
was organized by young
professionals who met
during the campaign for a
South Shore Rail expansion and wanted to get
more people talking about
the region’s future.
“The young and talented people who had the
vision for doing this take
great interest in the community, and want you
to go forth and multiply
the ideas presented,” said
emcee John Cain, executive director of the South
Shore Arts Center and the
Northwest Indiana Symphony Orchestra.
In video presentations,
speakers discussed how
great leaders like Martin
Luther King Jr. and Apple’s
Steve Jobs inspired action
with belief, and how nonprofits have been stuck at
about 2 percent of the U.S.
gross domestic product for
the last 40 years, because a
bias against high overhead
has made it difficult to
advertise and hire talented
leaders who could grow
their scale.
Economist Brian Wesbury started the day with
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Farm
The park is seeking
proposals from the private sector to lease the
farm on a long-term basis.
The length of the lease is
expected to be 10 years,
but longer terms will be
considered.
“We’re open to ideas,”
said Liz McConnell, a park
administrator.
McConnell said all proposals will be considered
as long as they comply
with the Cultural Landscape Report, available on
the National Park Service
website.
Properties included in
a lease are the outbuildings and fields at Chellberg Farm. McConnell
said while the farm is not
currently operational,
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Fire
$1,750 to the city stemming from the scrap operations there.
Kristina Kantar, corporation counsel for the city
of Hammond, said the city
sued Diaz and went before
Lake Superior Court Judge
Jesse Villalpando in September to recover unpaid
fines.
Villalpando ordered
Diaz to pay $1,219, Kantar
said.
Novak said the Hamm o n d sc ra p m e ta l
operation involved Diaz
burning the beds off
of flat bed trucks and
salvaging the remaining
steel to sell for cash to
scrap yards. Semis, vehicle
parts and piles of charred
tires and wood littered
LI | Friday, November 14, 2014 | Page A5
Trevor Alexander’s step-brother who
wasn’t sure if her son was involved.
She recalled for the court how a
Munster officer and worker from the
coroner’s office knocked on her door the
morning of April 15, 2012.
“That was the end of my life as I knew
it,” Tricia Alexander said.
Trevor Alexander’s twin sister, Tieg
Alexander, told the court she has battled
depression and panic attacks since her
brother was killed.
“When he died, I didn’t know how to
live without him,” she said.
Tieg Alexander said she will never be
able to grow old with her twin brother,
and he won’t ever get to give a funny
a talk about what caused
the 2008 financial crisis
that triggered the Great
Recession, which he said
is commonly misunderstood. The Federal Reserve
kept the interest rate low
at about 1 percent between
2001 and 2003, prompting
people to buy larger homes
in nicer neighborhoods
that they might not have
been able to afford if interest rates were higher. The
potential losses from bad
loans added up to more
than $200 billion, which
is a large sum but small
compared to the $15 trillion size of the economy.
Mark-to-market
accounting, which values
assets and liabilities based
on the estimated current
market price instead of
historical cost, exacerbated the danger that bad
bank assets posed to the
overall economy, and the
economy improved after
Congress did away with
it, Wesbury said.
Excellence By Design
owner Norma Williams
shared her personal story
about how she went from
being a struggling single
mother to a successful
owner of a painting company that creates employment opportunities for
disadvantaged women.
She urged people to make
an impact by finding their
passion, which in her case
is helping women “the
world has thrown away.”
“The African proverb
is it takes a village to raise
a child, but what happens
if the village leaders are
broken?” she said. “We’ve
the structures have been
maintained and remain in
good condition.
“All of the buildings are
in great shape,” McConnell said. “The barn was
freshly painted a couple of
years ago.”
The National Park Service also will consider
including the Charles P.
Nelson house across the
street from the farm, to be
used as a residence.
Plans to preserve and
p ro te c t t h e fa r m a n d
visitor enjoyment will be
sought during proposal
evaluation. The National
Park Service is also looking for compatibility with
the park’s educational
programming.
“ We w i l l e n te r ta i n
a ny a n d a l l p ro p osa l s
in the RFP (requests for
proposals)” said McConnell.
Diaz’s Gary operations on
Wednesday.
Dan Goldblatt, spokesm a n fo r t h e I n d i a n a
Department of Environmental Management, said
Thursday state inspectors
canvassed Diaz’s Gary
scrapping operation and
Green Tree Enterprises
Wednesday as part of the
investigation into the fires
there.
“We found no solid
waste violations at the
compost site,” Goldblatt
said. “IDEM is going to
send the scrapper a violation letter for open dumping. The air inspector may
also be issuing the scrapper a violation for open
burning.”
The IDEM investigation, he said, is ongoing.
Diaz did not return calls
seeking comment Thursday.
traded in a community
mentality for an island
one.”
H e r c o m p a ny h i re s
women who are underqualified but get on-thejob training, including
some who are in county
work-release programs.
She encouraged others to
step up to help women and
children who have been
left behind by society.
“I can offer a steppingstone of hope for women
in need, but I only have
so many stones to offer,”
Williams said. “The community needs to come
together. Whether you’re
a baker or a banker, everyone has something they
can offer.”
Bouwer talked about the
speech during her wedding.
During the hearing, photos were
shown of Trevor Alexander playing in
leaves and another of him with his twin
sister.
Hernandez told the court he considered Trevor Alexander a brother and was
sorry about the crash. He said he doesn’t
have any memory of the crash.
“I went over this a thousand times in
my mind,” he said. “I’d lay awake questioning if I had done it or not.”
Defense attorney Timothy Ormes
argued Hernandez should be sentenced
to probation, citing multiple letters of
support from family and friends. Ormes
said his client graduated from Purdue
power of “wow,” such as
how a restaurant’s housemade ketchup and monstrous portions of pancakes ensure it’s packed
every weekend because of
a positive word-of-mouth
reputation. The senior
pastor also stressed the
aphorism “if it’s alive, it’s
meant to multiply,” which
inspired him as he took
over a 250-member church
in Dyer and attracted a
following large enough to
outgrow a new $9.2 million church building in 12
months, to the point where
it had to establish satellite
churches.
Faith Church now has
11 sites in Northwest Indiana and Chicago’s south
suburbs and aspires to get
University Calumet and wants to become
a history teacher.
Parry argued Hernandez should get
prison time because of his blood-alcohol
level and speed during the time of the
crash. Parry also said Hernandez has
admitted to using marijuana and drinking alcohol while out on bond on the case.
Vasquez said though Hernandez had
no criminal history, he couldn’t ignore
the information about the blood-alcohol
level and speed in the crash.
After he was sentenced, Hernandez
took off his coat and was handcuffed by
court bailiffs. He looked back at the gallery before the bailiffs escorted him out
of the courtroom.
to 20 by 2020, including
locations under development in Brazil and the
Dominican Republic.
Bouwer’s church grew by
wowing people, and he
said everyone has something unique and special
they can wow others with.
“What about you is
a wow skill?” he asked.
“Once you discover that
knowledge, get better at
it.”
I n s p i ra t i o n a l ta l k
abounded at the event.
LaPorte Mayor Blair Milo
encouraged people to draw
inspiration from Walt Disney and try to create the
happiest place on earth
in Northwest Indiana in
a talk that emphasized
happiness as an economic
development strategy.
The online retailer Zappos.com created a corporate culture of happiness
so it would provide better
customer service, inspire
more customer loyalty
and ultimately increase
profits. Milo said such
an approach could made
the overall economy more
productive in an increasingly globally competitive
world.
“As Walt Disney said,
all your dreams can come
true if you have the courage to pursue them,” she
said.
Anyone who wasn’t able
to attend can go online to
view the videos, which
will soon be posted to www.
tedxcountylineroad.com.
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