The City of St. Joseph has announce it is kicking of its 2015 St. Joe FIT program this weekend.

The program was developed by the City of St. Joseph Parks, Recreation and Civic Facilities Department in partnership with the City of St. Joseph Health Department and the St. Joseph Youth Alliance.

St. Joe FIT 2015 offers three different fun and free ways to participate:
1) Attend free fitness classes at the St. Joseph REC Center every other Saturday
morning; 2) Become a “St. Joe Trail Blazer” by walking and/or biking the entire trail
system in St. Joe; 3) Sign up to attend the “Eat Healthy-Be Active” workshop series.
Participants can track personal progress and qualify for St. Joe FIT 2015 prizes by registering on the 100 Missouri Miles website and joining the St. Joe FIT group, found at www.100missourimiles.com under the heading “Groups”.

This Saturday, April 18, is the kick-off event for St. Joe FIT. Join us at the REC Center, 2701 Southwest Parkway for free fitness classes. Free classes will continue to be offered
through St. Joe FIT every other week from April 18th – August 22nd, 2015. The schedule for this Saturday will be:
 8:00 a.m. – Kickboxing with Kali
 9:00 a.m. – Zumba with Drew & Jaclyn
 9:00 a.m. – Step & Flex with Gail
 10:00 a.m. – Pilates with Melissa
 11:00 a.m. – Yoga with Melissa

Tuesday, April 22nd at 6:30pm marks the launch of the St. Joe Trail Blazers. In addition to the fitness classes, St. Joe FIT 2015 will feature ways to explore the hike and bike
trails that run throughout our community. Every Tuesday evening, a different starting point is selected for walkers and cyclists to meet. The schedule can be found on the City
website 2015 St. Joe FIT Brochure . Participants, or “Trail Blazers”, will walk or bike a specific segment of the hike & bike trail each week and by the end of the season, will
have gone the entire length of the built trail system in St. Joseph. The walks will be led by staff from the City of St. Joseph and bike rides will be led by the St. Joseph Youth
Alliance as part of the Trips for Kids program. The Trips for Kids program will offer bikes and helmets to borrow, if you do not have your own (helmets are required). For more
information about the biking portion of St. Joe Fit, contact the St. Joseph Youth Alliance at 816-232-0050.

The third way to participate in St. Joe Fit is to attend an Eat Healthy-Be Active workshop, which will be held on Thursday evenings at 6:30pm at the REC Center. Each
workshop consists of 6 weekly sessions and provides an opportunity to come together in a fun and interactive setting to learn about eating healthier and putting more activity in
your life. Session topics are: Enjoy Healthy Food That Tastes Great, Quick; Healthy Meals and Snacks; Eating Healthy on a Budget; Tips for Losing Weight and Keeping It
Off; Making Healthy Eating Part of Your Total Lifestyle; and Physical Activity is Key to Living Well. Handouts, videos and activities help participants make healthier choices.

Registration for the six week workshop can be completed over the phone by calling 816-236-1491.
All St. Joe FIT 2015 participants will receive a free water bottle for joining, and St. Joe FIT 2015 short- sleeve t-shirts will be available for purchase. In addition, prizes will be
awarded as the participant reaches different milestones in the program:
 100 Missouri Miles – Hooded Sweatshirt
 50 Missouri Miles – Cloth Drawstring Bag
 St. Joe Trail Blazer (A special distinction for conquering the entire length of the
urban trail system) – Long sleeve t-shirt
In order to qualify for incentive items, fitness activities must be registered through the 100 Missouri Mile website and the St. Joe FIT group, found under the heading “Groups”
at www.100missourimiles.com. There is no cost to register, and assistance will be available at each event to help register or log miles, which can be earned in a variety of
ways. In order to offer the program at no charge, funding has been provided by the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services, Chronic Disease Primary Prevention
program. Chronic diseases and conditions—such as heart disease, stroke, cancer, diabetes, obesity, and arthritis—are among the most common, costly, and preventable
of all health problems. By offering frequent and affordable opportunities to get and stay fit, the City of St. Joseph is supporting citizens who are working towards a healthier life.
For more information, contact the REC at 816-271-5512, the Health Department at 816-236-1491, or St Joseph Youth Alliance at 816-232-0050.

The St. Joseph Chamber of Commerce hopes to increase its membership base by 200 next week.

The Chamber will be hosting a two and a half day event with more than 150 volunteers working in teams against the clock and each other to sign up new Chamber members.

“The purpose of the membership event is to grow the Chamber membership base and to help spread the word to local businesses that aren’t Chamber members about what the Chamber does for our local economy,” said Kristi Bailey, Chamber Dir. of Communications and Marketing.

Currently, the St. Joseph Chamber has 1,000 members and about 16 percent of businesses that are on the City of St. Joseph business license list.  Bailey said they feel like they should be at around 20-percent with around 4,000 licensed businesses in the City of St. Joseph.

“We think if we could add 200 business to our membership roster that would get us to about the 20-percent mark so we would be more on par with other chambers of our size,” Bailey said.

The event is organized by Jimmy Cusano and a group called Your Chamber Connection. Bailey said the group’s specialty is high energy membership campaigns that allow volunteers to conduct out-of-the-box membership fun while building the membership base.

“It’s about business,” said Mr. Cusano. “The Chamber of Commerce is the business community. This brings everyone together to build our Chamber. It’s a membership-based organization and most people don’t like membership drives. With a Membership Event like this, they come together in a competitive, fun setting and tell the Chamber story. When others hear about everything the Chamber does, all of a sudden you have a great deal of enthusiasm for the Chamber, and a great deal of support.”

The Chamber’s membership event will kick off Tuesday with individual volunteers working in teams to make calls to their connections in an effort to bump up membership.

The event will end with a celebration Thursday.

Young students in St. Joseph School District Gifted and Talented program (GATE) took first place in the skit competition and third place in the writing competition at the State Future Problem Solving Team Competition, hosted by Battle High School in Columbia.

Fourth graders Josh Donaldson, Sophia Nguyen, and Hailey Boss, and third grader, Allison Gentry were the award-winning writing team, competing against fourth – sixth graders across Missouri. They were the youngest students involved in the competition.

The writing competition is based on a scenario set about 30 years in the future, so the students must collaborate and be very creative with their responses. In two hours, the SJSD Team took the scenario on enhancing human potential, analyzed it from 16 different perspectives, determined the greatest underlying problem, proposed and analyzed possible solutions, selected the best solution and developed and wrote up an action plan.

The skit competition team consisted of Donaldson, Nguyen, Boss and Gentry, as well as third grader Sylvia Nguyen. In two and a half hours, they planned, wrote, made costumes and practiced a skit that they then performed on stage. These students were two to four years younger than many of the other competitors in their division and they were the only group to perform their skit without the use of notes. The GATE Team sang and danced to songs they wrote to existing tunes.

Future Problem Solving is a very rigorous yet creative competition designed by E. Paul Torrance of the Torrance Center for Creativity. In Future Problem Solving, teams and individuals use their knowledge and skills to find solutions for problems after looking carefully at all their options. They learn to base their efforts on what is known and not what is assumed. The also learn to use research and how to support their arguments. The expertise they gain from this competition will help them solve problems their entire lifetime.

“The GATE Team should be proud of this outstanding achievement, receiving a first and a third on their very first attempt at the Future Problem Solving skit and writing competition,” said Deb Ballin, the team’s coach and GATE teacher. “Students that successfully complete this process learn so much more than content – they learn to think.”

This Afternoon A chance of showers and thunderstorms, mainly after 3pm. Partly sunny, with a high near 76. Southeast wind around 9 mph. Chance of precipitation is 30%. New rainfall amounts of less than a tenth of an inch, except higher amounts possible in thunderstorms.

Tonight Showers and thunderstorms likely, mainly after 1am. Mostly cloudy, with a low around 58. East southeast wind 5 to 8 mph. Chance of precipitation is 60%. New rainfall amounts between a tenth and quarter of an inch, except higher amounts possible in thunderstorms.

Saturday Showers and thunderstorms. High near 68. Southeast wind 6 to 10 mph. Chance of precipitation is 80%. New rainfall amounts between 1 and 2 inches possible.

Saturday Night A chance of showers and thunderstorms. Mostly cloudy, with a low around 55. Southeast wind 5 to 9 mph becoming light south after midnight. Chance of precipitation is 50%. New rainfall amounts between a tenth and quarter of an inch, except higher amounts possible in thunderstorms.

Sunday Showers and thunderstorms likely. Mostly cloudy, with a high near 65. South wind 5 to 14 mph becoming northwest in the afternoon. Winds could gust as high as 20 mph. Chance of precipitation is 70%. New rainfall amounts between a quarter and half of an inch possible.

Sunday Night Partly cloudy, with a low around 42.

Monday Mostly sunny, with a high near 60.

Monday Night Partly cloudy, with a low around 38.

Tuesday Sunny, with a high near 62.

Tuesday Night Partly cloudy, with a low around 42.

Wednesday Mostly sunny, with a high near 66.

Wednesday Night A chance of showers and thunderstorms. Mostly cloudy, with a low around 45. Chance of precipitation is 30%.

Thursday A chance of showers and thunderstorms. Partly sunny, with a high near 63. Chance of precipitation is 30%.

A free self-defense class for girls and women will be held Saturday in St. Joseph.

The Kiwanis Club of St. Joseph is providing volunteer and financial resources to bring in the TAKE program in to educate girls and women in the community with resources to defend themselves.

“This is to teach defense for girls in middle school on up,” Dick Sipe with the Kiawanis Club said. “It enable young women to escape from a dangerous situation.”

The class is will be held this Saturday, April 18 from 10 a.m. to 12 at the Keatley Center located at 1202 S. 28th St. in St. Joseph.  Sipe said the class is free but registration is required so participants will need to show up early to sign-up.

According to the program’s website, Roger and Kathy Kemp founded the TAKE Defense program in 2005 after their 19-year-old daughter Ali was murdered while working at a neighborhood pool in Johnson County, Kansas.

Sipe said the goal is to try and prevent such tragedies from taking place in our community.

“We think it’s important for St. Joseph, for the women of our community,” Sipe said. “We hope to make this an annual event.”

Sipe said more than 20 community sponsors has stepped up to help put on the program.

The class is free and open to girls from middle-school on up.  Sipe said the hope is to have around 200 attend.

The Special Olympics track meet at Savannah Middle School has been rescheduled due to weather concerns.

The meet was originally scheduled for Saturday, April 18.

Due to a high possibility of thunderstorms in the forecast it has been rescheduled for May 9th.

Livingston county officials have rescued an injured Owl from the side of the highway.

According to the Livingston County Sheriff’s Office a report came in early Friday morning of an injured owl alongside U.S. Hwy 36 east of Chillicothe.

Chief Deputy Michael Claypole responded and said he found a large owl near the highway with a broken wing.

“The caller said it was flopping around and they were afraid it was going to get into traffic and cause an accident,” Claypole said.

He then called Leslie Patek with the Livingston County Humane Society.

Working together they were able to secure the owl.

Patek said they hope to send the Owl to the Lakeside Nature Center in Kansas City for treatment and release.

The cause of Wednesday night’s IHOP fire has fire inspectors scratching their heads.

“Basically the fire started in a void which is a completely empty space,” said Steve Henrichson, St. Joseph Fire Department Inspector. “There’s nothing in the space where this fire started that should have started the fire.”

Fire crews responded to IHOP located at 3804 N Belt Hwy shortly after 9:15 Wednesday.

When crews arrived staff had already evacuated the building.

“The fire itself didn’t take took long to put out,” Henrichson said. “It was chasing the hot spots.”

He said the fire started in the wall in between the bathroom and a mechanical room and then went into the attic.

The building was equipped with a sprinkler system which Henrichson said did help contain the blaze.

“The sprinkler system did its job,” Henrichson said. “It put off enough water that the fire couldn’t spread.”

However, due to the location where the fire started the sprinkler system was not able to put out some of the fire which allowed it to spread into the attic and get into the substructure.

In order to get rid of all the hot spots fire fighters had to attack using another method.

“We don’t normally cut a lot of holes in the roof it was just once it got into the attic it got into the substucture,” Henrichson said. “We ended up having to cut it out.”

Crews had to cut four holes in the roof to get rid of all of the hot spots. He said the scene was not cleared until around 11:30 p.m.

Two inspectors from the St. Joseph Fire Department and an inspector with the State Fire Marshall have investigated the fire and at this point Henrichson said they have ruled it undetermined.

Damages are estimated at $100,000.

Henrichson said the restaurant will most likely be closed for 1 to 2 weeks while crews repair the building.

“Right now there’s nothing else to follow up on,” Henrichson said.

In an effort to help other families recovering from the aftermath of an abduction Jaycee Dugard addressed the media for the first time since her interview 4-years-ago with Diane Sawyer at Missouri Western Wednesday to talk about the JAYC foundation.

“Something very important to my family was that we had a place to connect and rediscover each other in a very non-threatening, very safe environment and that’s exactly what we’ve created with the JAYC foundation,” Dugard said.

In 1991 Dugard was kidnapped at the age of 11 by two strangers from a bus stop in her hometown of Lake Tahoe.  After 18-years of physical and emotion abuse she was reunited with her mother and family in 2009. During her time in captivity she also gave birth to two daughters.

Dugard was one of the keynote speakers during Western’s third annual conference on Child Abuse: Education, Prevention and Investigation.

“I’m really excited to be here and to be able to share the foundation and what we do,” Dugard said. “The more important thing is the connection of families and that there is hope after trauma, whether it be abduction or even taken by a family member…any kind of post-trauma. It’s really important that you give the sense that there is hope for re-connection with your family and that it’s never too late.”

Dugard was joined by Dr. Rebecca Bailey, a clinical psychologist and forensic psychologist who specializes on complex case scenarios and Jane Dickel who is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker.

“I think that it’s really important that the community has a big role in how these families can adjust, ” Dr. Bailey said. “Cause this also happens to the community.  Jay didn’t happen to go back to the community she was abducted from but that could very well be the case.”

Dickel said the simplest thing to do it based on what the JAYC Foundation’s message is, “Just Ask Yourself to Care.”

“That’s really easy to say but a lot more difficult to sometimes put into play,” Dickel said. “The importance of just asking yourself to care about even little things and the power of choice.”

During Wednesday evening’s presentation Dickel said just noticing who people around you are could lead to the rescue of individuals in situations like Jaycee’s.

Dugard talked about coming home again during the presentation after not seeing her family for 18-years and the difficulty she faced reunifying her two daughter and herself into the environment.

Because of her experience she said she wanted to create the foundation to help families receive reunification assistance to aid in their recovery.

“When something like this happens to an individual the whole family is just lifted up and dumped on their heads.  There is no normal anymore there’s a new normal that they can learn from the services but it effects immediate family, extended family and what was normal before just isn’t going to be normal anymore,” Dr. Bailey said.

Today
Partly sunny, with a high near 73. Calm wind becoming southeast 5 to 7 mph in the afternoon.

Tonight
A slight chance of showers and thunderstorms. Partly cloudy, with a low around 55. East wind 5 to 7 mph. Chance of precipitation is 20%.

Friday
A chance of showers and thunderstorms, mainly after 1pm. Partly sunny, with a high near 76. Southeast wind 6 to 10 mph. Chance of precipitation is 30%. New rainfall amounts of less than a tenth of an inch, except higher amounts possible in thunderstorms.

Friday Night
Showers and thunderstorms likely. Mostly cloudy, with a low around 57. East southeast wind 5 to 8 mph. Chance of precipitation is 60%. New rainfall amounts between a tenth and quarter of an inch, except higher amounts possible in thunderstorms.

Saturday
Showers and thunderstorms likely. Mostly cloudy, with a high near 70. East southeast wind 7 to 10 mph. Chance of precipitation is 70%. New rainfall amounts between a quarter and half of an inch possible.

Saturday Night
Showers and thunderstorms likely. Mostly cloudy, with a low around 54. Chance of precipitation is 60%. New rainfall amounts between a quarter and half of an inch possible.

Sunday
A chance of showers. Mostly cloudy, with a high near 67. Chance of precipitation is 50%.

Sunday Night
A chance of showers. Mostly cloudy, with a low around 42. Chance of precipitation is 30%.

Monday
Mostly sunny, with a high near 60.

Monday Night
Partly cloudy, with a low around 38.

Tuesday
Mostly sunny, with a high near 63.

Tuesday Night
Partly cloudy, with a low around 43.

Wednesday
A chance of showers. Partly sunny, with a high near 64. Chance of precipitation is 30%.