Everyone has seen the work going on at the corner of 122^nd St. E. and Shaw Rd.  Most have wondered as I have about just what was happening as there were no signs that I remember seeing posted to tell about the project.  Well, Carol Silvernail has done some digging and has a few facts about the project to share with us.

 First the Good News:  There is none.

Second the Bad News: In Carol’s words.

Sunrise Terrace has seen the work currently going on at the corner of 122^nd and Shaw Road.  Many of you have wondered what was happening as we did not see any signs posted to tell us about the project.  Carol Silvernail and Kirk Hall dug into the Pierce County website this weekend for information.  If you want to read about the project look up documents for parcel number 0419114042.  Click on external links to see the correspondence and permit numbers, starting in 2018.  The most recent permit number appears to be 911959.  While we didn’t receive notification apparently according to the County web site a yellow sign was posted on Shaw Road in July 2019 and neighbors in the immediate adjacent lots were notified.  Since we didn’t know about the project however there were no public comments on record. 

The permit has been approved for 20 single family units on the west end of the plot and 100 attached townhouses within the 6.08 net developable acres.  In a hearing examiner’s report dated 11/05/2020 it was stated the homes would be priced “fee simple for entry level purchasers” with a total of 372 parking stalls and 952 average new daily trips.  The report also stated traffic will be of “no significant adverse impact on local roads” and no left turn lane into the development is necessary.  The main entrance will be across from the Shell station on 122^nd and an emergency entrance will be on Shaw Road.  The name of the development is Shaw Heights. 

At this point there’s probably not much we can do to express our concern about the high density and impact on traffic but the name that appears as the county contact is Associate Planner Donna Rhea.  Her email is donna.rhea@piercecountywa.gov and her phone number is 253-798-3288.  Mitch Brells and Paul Barber, from the Pierce County Engineering Dept, have also reviewed the project.  Mitch and Paul know our neighborhood well from past issues. 

Kirk’s commentary:  Well Pierce County has done it again.  First, they shut down Shaw Rd for months and ended up with a section of road with a large planter box down the middle and a double wide sidewalk on the east side, effectively blocking expansion of the road to another lane without major expense, leaving us with essentially the same two-lane road we had before.  Then because Shaw was closed for so long people sought another way to get to South Hill, and found it in 122^nd, which greatly increased traffic up 122^nd. Pierce County has made no provisions for the increased traffic which causes real problems at certain times of the day.

Second, Pierce County has approved a road from the huge subdivision of Tehaleh to go straight down into the valley, where many of the vehicles will then go up 122^nd. Because no provisions have been made to find an alternate route (perhaps extending 128^th St. into the valley) or widen and control traffic on 122^nd St. things are going to get much worse for the people who live along or must enter 122^nd St. E., when this project is completed.

And this brings me to the Third point. 952 average trips daily (does that mean that we must double that number to 1,904 to get the number of cars on the road because to me a trip is one in and one out) will be put on the road daily at a place where there is already congestion. To me this doesn’t seem like “no adverse impact on local roads”, especially considering the already bad traffic situation.

I have to wonder what Pierce County is thinking. To me the logical steps would have been to start at Meridian and connect either 120^th St or 122^nd St as directly as possible to Meridian as these streets have short sections that could be completed for the connection.  The roads (and all of 122^nd) would have to be widened to at least three lanes and appropriate traffic lights installed. Then we could talk about putting more traffic on 122^nd.  The way it is now traffic will eventually become truly horrible, then years later County will recognize the problem and finally do something about it (hopefully before the year 2051).

Ross  Connors experienced a break in on Friday early morning from 1:46:30 am on his camera until about 1:58 am.  And, then it has been told to us that they moved over to the white house on the corner of Military and 138th, went through the yard and didn’t find anything to steal so they moved on.  There were 2 people, who seemed to know the exact things they were looking for.  They opened all of the compartments on Ross’s truck and took several large ticket power tools and some smaller stuff.  I do not have a list yet.  But, all the compartments were locked and so was the cab of the truck.  It looks as though the jimmied the locks taking a few seconds to open all of them pick what was the most valuable. A police report has been made.

Ross is interested in knowing about the rest of the neighborhood and if they saw activity on their cameras.  It appears that they must have parked their vehicle at some other place and walked to Ross’s. We would be very interested in having a picture of their vehicle and if possible their license plate.

You can contact me if you have any information on the people pictured or their vehicle.

Yesterday I received an e-mail from one of the people in the Neighborhood asking if I had an Amazon Account. I responded that I did not have one but asked what she needed.  I was surprised by the answering request because I really did not know the person who sent the e-mail.  This is what I received:

I am sorry for bothering you with this mail, I need to get an Amazon gift card for my Niece, Its her birthday but i can’t do this now because I’m currently traveling and i tried purchasing online but unfortunately no luck with that. Can you get it from any store around you? I’ll pay back as soon as i am back. Kindly let me know if you can handle this.

 Await your soonest response.

Thanks,

The request did not ring true for several reasons. To name a few: (1) I did not know the person well enough for them to have made such a request. (2) The supposed inability to purchase a gift card online was suspicious. (3) The wording of the request was strange. (4) Why didn’t the person write a family member with this request?

Finally, I did something I should have done before I answered the e-mail.  I looked at the e-mail address, then went to the Neighborhood Directory and compared the e-Mail address of the sender with the e-mail address for the person in our Directory.  The results were enlightening.  The person who sent me the e-mail had an address like this xxxxxx1@comcast.net, while the person in our Directory had almost the same address of xxxxxx@comcast.net .  That 1 in the e-mail address made quite a difference.

I sent an e-mail to the man and wife whose e-mails were in the Neighborhood Directory and this is what I received back:

My email has been hacked.  Sorry.

I asked permission to write a Blog Post about this incident and got this reply:

Yes, that seems to be the second email that was sent if someone responded.  Do write it on the Blog Post.  They also wiped my address book clean.  I’ve lost all my email addresses so that should be fun to reconstruct.  I was also unable to change my email password on the main computer, so finally go it done on my laptop.  It has been a messed up afternoon and evening, not to mention what it has done to my friends and acquaintances.

This seems to be a variation on the old scam where a supposed family member or friend contacts you saying they broke down and need money for car repair or whatever.  The Bad Guys also destroyed her address book, making it difficult for her to warn people once the scam was discovered.

I suspect that if I had complied and bought the Gift Card I would have probably been asked to send the card number to the supposed “Niece”, and I would have been out the money I had spent to purchase the Gift Card.

If you get an unusual request by e-mail, first do what I should have done immediately, Call or e-mail (using a known good e-mail) the supposed sender and check whether they sent the message.  Remember – There a lot of wicked people out there who want to separate you from your money.  Take care.  Don’t be a Victim.

This is a continuation of a post I put up on 3 October 2014 (if you want to check out the original, titled “Where’s My Package?”).

Once again, we received notice that a package had been delivered, went to retrieve it, and found no package.  So, this time I checked my camera system to determine whether I had been the victim of “Porch Pirates”.  To my relief (if you want to call it that), there was no sign of a package delivery at my residense.  I checked my front door camera, my driveway cameras and  my cameras which show 138^th Ave. Ct. E. and 117^th St. E.  I saw no record of a delivery van when the package was supposed to have been delivered.  Then I surveyed the time from early morning until after we received the e-mail telling us that the package had arrived.  No sign of a delivery van that entire day.  I contacted the carrier and explained that I had received an e-mail telling me that my package had arrived, but I had cameras and knew that no delivery man entered my property.  I stated my cameras also surveyed the roadway and I could say for certain that no delivery van had been on 136^th Ave. Ct. E. on the day my package was supposed to have arrived.

I asked the carrier to contact the driver and ask him where he had dropped my package. I was told that they would “try” but I would probably have to wait until the driver finished his rounds.  They promised to call me back.   Not very satisfactory, especially since the followup call back never came.

Further sleuthing convinced me that the carrier was using an unmarked van and it had probably dropped my package off at a neighbors.  Their house number is the same as mine, just one street over from mine.  A quick call elicited the information that my neighbor had just arrived home and found my package at her front door. Soon thanks to her husband, who brought the package over, I was actually in receipt of my package.

I was able to track down my package because I had access to my cameras and Neighborhood snapshots in our neighborhood repository.  In this case it probably only saved me about 5 minutes because when I called the neighbors my package had just been discovered.  Thank goodness for good neighbors.

It’s nice to have cameras.  If someone had stolen the package from my front door, I would have had a pictorial record of them, from several cameras, all time stamped and evidence  to show police. The pictures would have been far better than you can get from the 1080P that even the better doorbell cameras have.

Before I started this post, I contacted Dav Eide, and he told me that he too had a missing package recently.  Dav knew it had never arrived because he also has a camera system.  In his case, the vendor shipped a replacement which was lost, probably by delivery to the wrong address.