Just two months after being diagnosed with neurodegenerative disease Multiple Sclerosis, a local woman is on the brink of winning $10,000 for MS research through a national fundraising competition sponsored by Kevin Bacon.

The contest, called Six Degrees after the trivia game “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon,” relies on the number of donations rather than the size.

Robin Maxwell, a 38-year-old triathlete and mother of two, is in third place having raised nearly $11,000 with 635 donations. The top six contestants will receive an additional $10,000 for their cause after the contest ends at midnight Saturday, March 31. The leading contestant– raising money for autism research– has nearly 1,200 donations, and Maxwell says she’s pushing hard to make sure she doesn’t fall out of the running.

Numbness in her feet bothered Maxwell this fall, but she chalked the sudden symptom up to overtraining since she had been running longer distances in preparation for her first marathon. When the tingling sensation began to creep up her shins, however, Maxwell decided to seek medical advice and eventually got the devastating news. While she says she has had dark moments, she’s focused her competitive drive and high energy on raising money for research.

“I want there to be a cure in my lifetime,” she says. “I have the ability to speak up and to fundraise and to raise awareness.”

Donations of any amount can be made at the Six Degrees website and must be in by midnight March 31.

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At a 4pm press conference, Albemarle police Lt. John Teixeira corrected himself and told reporters that police did not, in fact, “blow up” anything at Brownsville Elementary and Henley Middle School this morning, but rather that a package had been “disrupted” using a water cannon and that another “item” had been otherwise “neutralized.”

The only other new information revealed about the suspicious items found just before 7 this morning were that they had been left “out in the front area of the schools.”

Pressed by reporters about what led police to suspect danger, Teixeira said, “It’s like playing a game of poker. You only have so much in your hand when you’re going up against somebody, and you don’t want to let them know what you have in your hand.”

Asked whether this amounted to a simple prank, Teixeira said, “I consider this to be a felony; a felony is not a prank.”

As for whether Brownsville and Henley will open its doors for classes tomorrow, Albemarle schools superintendent Pam Moran said parents should monitor the county schools website or call the school closings hotline at 296-5886. Teixeira told anyone with information that could aid the investigation should call the police department at 296-5087 or Crimestoppers at 977-4000.

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Despite helping cement their role in music history, Bill Siddons may always face second-guessing over his management of the Doors, the late 1960s rock and blues band whose albums have sold over 50 million copies and counting.

Siddons, in Charlottesville today and tomorrow as part of a music business symposium, began working for the Doors while still a teenager but never quite managed to rein in the excesses of frontman Jim Morrison. Backers of the Jim’s-still-alive conspiracy theory still wonder about Siddons’ decision not to peek inside the casket when Morrison died in Paris at the age of 27.

“Yeah, I recognized when somebody pointed out, when I got back, that that was my professional responsibility,” explains Siddons. “But I didn’t go there professionally. I went to help Pam.”

Pam was Pamela Courson, Morrison’s girlfriend who took his surname and lived (more)

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At about 11:45pm today, police robots detonated two suspicious packages found early this morning by custodial staff at Brownsville Elementary and Henley Middle Schools. At a press conference at the Moose Lodge near Crozet, Albemarle police Lt. John Teixeira said there were threats at two different schools.”We have multiple agencies– city, state, federal, local– working on this,” he said. “That should tell you how serious it was.”

Teixeira says a police investigation is currently under way but refused to answer any questions specific to that investigation, except to promise, “We’re going to find out who did this.”

When they arrived for classes, students at Brownsville and Henley were transported to nearby Western Albemarle High School. Brownsville officially closed at 11:30; Henley closed an hour later. County buses transported those students without rides back home. All activities at Western Albemarle– including all sporting events and practices– will go on as scheduled.

Albemarle County Schools Superintendent Pam Moran says (more)

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“We are involved in a bomb threat this morning,” says County spokesperson Lee Catlin, who hastily convened a press conference after “suspicious circumstances” at Henley Middle and Brownsville Elementary disrupted the academic day.

Albemarle police Sergeant Scott Cox escorted media over to the nearby Moose Lodge and revealed that the two things found around 7:15 this morning were an envelope and a cylinder. The state bomb squad and the FBI have been summoned.

Catlin urges parents to keep Henley and Brownsville students home if they haven’t already gone to school or to retrieve them from the spot where they’ve been diverted, Western Albemarle High School. She says that classes for Western students are ongoing until further notice.

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The Crozet area is in an uproar this morning, as two county schools have been closed and their students “diverted” after reports of suspicious packages found at both Henley Middle and Brownsville Elementary.

Traffic is snarled, and County spokesperson Lee Catlin confirms that the side-by-side schools along Route 250 have been “sealed off” behind a “perimeter” due to what Catlin would describe only as “suspicious circumstances.”

More as it develops from the Hook’s reporter on the scene.

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