Sonora High School junior Ben Grace will tell you that the hardest part of losing weight — and keeping it off — is willpower.

When his willpower wanes, he just gets back out there and trains for the next athletic event in his school’s weights and sports class.

He is an inspiration to watch, teachers say.

Grace, 16, runs every day during lunch and is enrolled in two physical education classes a day.

“Ben’s freshman year he was 259 pounds,” said physical education teacher Dan Dona.
   

Timber harvested this year in the Stanislaus National Forest is scheduled to exceed last year’s amount by several million board feet — or hundreds of extra logging truck loads.

Last year, around 23 million board feet were sold from the national forest. This year, U.S. Forest Service officials expect to sell 32 million board feet.

One board foot of wood is one foot long, one foot wide and one inch thick.

Sonora police officers arrested two men allegedly attempting to break into newspaper boxes with stolen tools Wednesday.

Officers responded to a 7:28 a.m. call from a citizen reporting that two men were breaking into a newspaper stand on the 700 block of Mono Way with what appeared to be a large cutting device.

Officers contacted the two men and identified them as Sean McIntyre, 48, and Robert Epperly, 25, both transients, according to a press release from the Sonora Police Department.
   

The City of Sonora is set Monday to consider a contract with an outside consultant to complete environmental impact work for the Wal-Mart expansion project.

If the contract is approved, Augustine Planning Associates Inc. will work with the Wal-Mart consultant Michael Brandon & Associates to oversee the preparation of staff reports on the environment impact report process for the city Planning Commission.

The goal is two-fold, according to City Administrator Greg Applegate.
  

The man who was charged in connection with a fatal hit-and-run in October pleaded guilty Monday to a felony count of leaving the scene.

Two other felony counts of driving under the influence against Nicholas Brian McMahon, 30, of Blue Bell Avenue in East Sonora, were dropped, according to court files.

McMahon faces sentencing on April 5.
  

A series of state citations that nearly forced Angels Camp to pay for a $1.5 million upgrade to its water treatment plan was formally rescinded in a letter received Tuesday by the city.

The three-page note largely brings to a close an issue that deadlocked the council for months — due to the May 2009 death of Councilman Paul Raggio — and contributed to the resignation of Plant Manager Carol Woolf.

“It’s such a big deal,” said Mayor Jack Lynch. “Everyone is very, very pleased about it.”
 

A Valley Springs man was assaulted Wednesday night after confronting a man who was prowling around the house across the street with a flashlight.

Joe Brum, who lives on the 4300 block of Hartvickson Road, sustained minor cuts to his abdomen after the prowler swung an unidentified sharp object at him during a scuffle.

The suspect then fled on foot, according to a Calaveras County Sheriff’s Department report on the incident.
   

A 21-year-old Valley Springs woman said she escaped two men who may have been trying to kidnap her Wednesday night.

The woman was walking home about 10 p.m. on Silver Rapids Road when a silver late-model Mazda pulled alongside her, according to a Calaveras County Sheriff’s Department report.

The car, which had a tinted rear window and whose passenger-side headlight was out, held two men, she said.
  

Ted Hamilton brings real-world experience to the job.

He’s studied in England, Japan, Italy and even Iran, a country where he rubbed shoulders with the richest of the rich and some of the most impoverished people in the world.

Hamilton even worked with Iran’s king, or shah, just before the country’s 1979 Islamic Revolution that branded the country an enemy of the United States.

Such experiences come in handy when your job is teaching Columbia College students the ins and outs of world politics, geography and international relations.

In addition to relaying to his students textbook information gathered from years of study, Hamilton said he can “describe the smells of Calcutta (India) when the rains come” and the experiences of “bargaining in the bazaar of Tehran (Iran).”

Lake Don Pedro area residents will meet Friday at Don Pedro High School to discuss starting a charter school to serve K-12 students.

The school would be called “Golden Lakes Charter School,” a press release from the charter-school committee said.

It would serve children in the Don Pedro area, especially those who attend Lake Don Pedro Elementary School in the Mariposa Unified School District, or those in the Big Oak Flat-Groveland Unified School District going to Don Pedro High School.