Hail to four-time champs
For a few moments on Sunday afternoon, the color scheme at Ace Hardware on West Galena Boulevard in Aurora changed from red to blue. The change came in celebration of Rosary High School's fourth consecutive state swimming championship, won the day before.

Auroran wins Rhodes Scholarship
Daniel D. Shih of Aurora has won a Rhodes Scholarship to study at Oxford University in England, widely considered to be among the most prestigious honors in academia.

Board member advocating for DuPage kids
Everyone agrees the DuPage Children's Advocacy Center will need some TLC one of these days. County Board member Jim Healy of Naperville wants to put as many of the pieces in place as possible, as far ahead of time as possible. Not all of his colleagues are sure that's the way to go.

Trail advocates seek forest protection
The outcry over tree maintenance along portions of some well-used DuPage County trails isn't new. It arises periodically, paralleling the limbs of old hardwoods rooted at the center of the controversy.

Who needs a helping hand?
She is in her mid-40s, has a college degree and worked in administration of a law firm. In fact, she has worked all her life, since she got out of school... until now. For the first time, this woman has found herself unemployed.

Community food drive entering final days
A man recently came to the Interfaith Food Pantry in the afternoon, almost two hours after the normal food distribution time. He had missed normal hours because of his part-time job, which doesn't pay well enough to get enough food for himself or his daughter.

Plank Road Panther(s) still a mystery
It was exactly a year ago that Elgin deer hunter Pat Crawford started looking through the photos recorded by a motion-activated camera in the back of a friend's tree nursery along Plank Road. Among the deer pictures he had hoped for, he discovered the blurry image of what seemed to him to be a leopard-like cat. That set off a series of news stories we ran last year