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Freddie Spellacy, San Bernardino real estate figure and founder of the city's network of Neighborhood Cluster Associations, died Tuesday morning of natural causes after battling dementia. She was 84.

"She was a focused, driven business woman. She built up a successful business in San Bernardino with my father," her son John said.

The Spellacy familty did a lot of traveling, John reminisced. A business-related trip to Washington, D.C. was also an opportunity to take the family to the nation's capital. In 1972, Freddie took the "entire clan" of some 30 people to celebrate Christmas in Hawaii.

John is the oldest of three children Spellacy had with her husband Jim. She had another three children from a previous marriage. Jim had another four children.

"It was a his, hers and ours situation," John said.

Spellacy co-founded Spellacy & Associates with her husband in 1976. She led the way in the creation of the Neighborhood Cluster Associations in the 1990s.

"She was always trying to improve the city. That was her passion," John said.

A 1997 article in The Sun reported that Spellacy kept a map of San Bernardino divided into 40 sections, each boundary marking the territory of a different neighborhood association. The reporter, Greg Patton, characterized each association as a battalion fighting "against blight, crime, drugs and - maybe above all else - apathy."

'I'm a gung-ho person for underdogs and I think San Bernardino is an underdog now," Spellacy said in that article. "It didn't used to be. People started taking potshots at us about 10 years ago and they haven't quit.''

Spellacy came to San Bernardino during World War 2 to work as clerk and typist at Norton Air Force Base.

Kismet Evans, who until recently worked with San Bernardino-based Young Visionaries Youth Leadership Academy, is scheduled to receive the California Peace Prize.

The California Wellness Foundation is scheduled to award the prize to Evans and two others Wednesday during a ceremony in Los Angeles.

"I am so humbly overwhelmed at receiving such an award as this," she said.

Evans, a former drug user who has been both incarcerated and homeless, said she began her advocacy work in 1999.

"A jail house prayer turned into a decade of kept promises," she said.

Evans, 47, lives in Riverside. Her current activities includes work with groups that she respectively founded and co-founded Men of Valor and Excellence and Inland Empire Veterans Stand Down.

She said the prize's $25,000 will be used to support her organizations.

Here's the announcement from the California Wellness Foundation.

"Kismet Evans has worked over the past decade to provide drug, alcohol, and violence- intervention counseling for youth and to increase public awareness of the trauma that incarceration has on families and communities. Most recently, she was a program manager for the Young Visionaries Youth Leadership Academy, where she worked to prevent violence and teen pregnancy through academics and job development among gang-affiliated and other youth at risk.

"In the 1990s, Evans was incarcerated for drug-related offenses and experienced periods of homelessness. After a year of outpatient drug treatment, she realized that she wanted to help others. She first worked at MFI Recovery Center, a co-ed residential treatment program in Woodcrest, California, and continued her work at Inland Valley Recovery Center, in a program for female parolees and their children. She founded Men of Valor and Excellence, a recovery transitional program, and co-founded Inland Empire Veterans Stand Down, a program that connects homeless veterans and their families to resources.

"Born in Fullerton, California, Evans graduated from California Paramedical Technical College, as salutatorian. She is a member of the Inland Empire Women's Business Center and Women's Circle of Success and she volunteers for the ASK Mentoring Outreach program. She has received accolades from policymakers and community leaders. Evans lives in Riverside, California.

By Andrew Edwards
Staff Writer
SAN BERNARDINO -- Sgt. Stephen Cook, who "eats, breathes and sleeps military," has ventured out on his third deployment into hostile territory.

Cook, 29, has been to Iraq and Afghanistan. He has survived combat and 147-degree temperatures. He participated in secret missions that he described as "every soldier's dream."

A few years ago, Cook craved a chance to serve on foreign soil. But now things are different.

This will be the first time he goes to war as a father.

"He's kind of heartbroken that he's going to miss his son's first everything," fiancee Jessica Vasquez, 24, said Friday from their San Bernardino home.