Canary Chugging Back to Life for Hobby Shop Owner Bovee

La Mesa hobby shop owner Steve Bovee says his first memory is living in National City near the railroad tracks and watching the trains whiz by.

“At 4 years old, I knew that schedule,” said Bovee, the third owner of since it came to La Mesa in ’76. “[My dad] got me hooked. I basically learned to read with various Model Railroader magazines.”

At Camp Pendleton, he renovated the base railroad—later used during Desert Storm to send supplies to San Pedro. On a smaller scale, he acquired an entire set of skills to build model railroads—from art and engineering to electronics and history.

Ken Jones, a retired chemistry teacher from Mira Mesa High School and a fixture in the shop, says tiny trains are an addiction that he likes for one simple reason: they “don’t talk back.”

And now that Bovee has survived the bulk of the economic recession, he’s looking  to the future. He says the shop is again seeing sales numbers of three and four years ago.

“It’s like the canary and the coal mine,” he said. “When the canary dies, you know there’s something wrong with the air. But the canary’s coming back to life.”

CAMP IS CHAMP: Joan Osteen says many of the children who come to summer day camps at the La Mesa Community Center don’t want to leave.

“We have children that have started here at 5 years old and have come back every year because they like it so much,”  she said. “They go until they can no longer participate in the camps, but then they come back as leaders.”

With summer just a stone’s throw away, day camps at the are now open for registration. Arts, sports and even math programs are offered—even classes for adults, too. For more information, call 619-667-1333.

And Osteen’s favorite childhood memory of summer camp? Uh, she doesn’t have one. She never went to camp.  But she says she can recall  spending summers outdoors with friends and family.

“We played outside and went to the beach,” she said  “This is going to really date me, but I rollerskated and played jump rope.”

A BUG’S LIFE (AND DEATH): David Faulkner was involved in the riveting David Westerfield child-slaying case of Danielle Van Dam in 2002. But not as a sharp-tongued lawyer. Faulkner testified as a bug expert. 

Today (Friday), Grossmont College’s  local chapter of the American Criminal Justice Association will host forensic entomologist Faulkner about his work in that kidnap-murder case.

Faulkner, who has a collection of nearly 2,000 insects pinned and labeled for reference, says the talk will focus on the discrepancy between the time a victim is reported missing and the time of death as determined by the insects present in the body.

“You deal with the insects,” Faulkner said when asked how he handles cases involving minors. “You kind of disassociate with the human aspect [and] let that play out in court. My drama is with the insects and how long they’ve been there.”

He added: “That may sound like a callous answer, but I've worked over 450 death investigations,” of which 30 to 40 involved victims under 18.

The presentation begins at 6 p.m. in Room 51-575. It is open to the public, but for adults only. For more information, visit grossmont.edu/aoj/lae.asp.