Olson’s Cheers & Jeers: Quiet heroes rescue four sisters from Lake Superior’s rough waters

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The manager of Silver Bay Marina was essential in the rescue of four paddle boarding Champlin sisters who ended up stranded on an island near Black Beach in rough water. Ettel brought Lake County Sheriff’s Office members to the area in a former U.S. Coast Guard watercraft designed specifically for challenging swell and made visual contact with the girls, telling them to sit tight. A Coast Guard helicopter from Traverse City, Mich., eventually made the trip and completed the rescue, just hours after their parent called for help. Cheers to the publicly unidentified but highly trained and experienced responders who delivered the sisters to safety. These rescuers are the quiet heroes of public safety work who risk their own welfare to help those in need.

Xiong, DFL-Maplewood, was stopped on suspicion of his second DWI since January 2022. Even worse than the alleged infraction was his weak explanation that he was “driving home after a family gathering,” just before 4 a.m. Xiong went on to thank law enforcement “for doing their job to keep the roads safe” and said he had “begun the work of talking to my family and to my Senate colleagues about the situation.” Seems that it’s past time for Xiong to speak with someone about finding help at a chemical dependency treatment facility. Two DWI arrests in less than four years does not signal a healthy relationship with alcohol or respect for the safety of others.

Hopkins High alum Courtney Dauwalter electrified multiple running communities — dirt and road, hometown and afar — with her surprise entry in the Twin Cities Marathon. It’s rare to get this sort of energy around a single entrant in the fall race, but read about the 40-year-old Dauwalter and you can see why everyone is so stoked about this generational talent’s return to the hometown roads even though she now lives in Leadville, Colo. She’ll be arriving for the Oct. 5 race a month after the Ultra Trail du Mont Blanc, a mountainous, multiday 100-mile race in Chamonix, France, that she’s won three times. Dauwalter’s former Hopkins coach Mike Harris said, “People are going to be drawn down to see Courtney.” She’ll be easy to spot in the race-day crowd with her big smile and customary baggy shorts. As the French might say, “Bonne chance and allez,” Courtney, at Mont Blanc.

The Ward 10 council member made a public and profane attack on Mayor Jacob Frey over the weekend. Chughtai, a supporter of mayoral candidate and state Sen. Omar Fateh spoke at SPI Fest, a musical festival in Uptown. “We are going to transform this city,” Chughtai said. “F--- Jacob Frey, f--- fascism and f--- Donald Trump.” The ill-chosen words are a wildly unfair conflation of the incumbent mayor with Trump and fascism. Frey has been a consistently strong opponent of Trump and his policies. Chughtai represents the Uptown area of Minneapolis, but all of Minnesota deserves better than this bottom-feeding language from the City Council’s vice president. Challenger Lydia Millard’s statement was right on: “I believe you can be tough without being toxic.”

Nash, R-Waconia, brought a sliver of levity to a much anticipated but otherwise uneventful meeting of the Advisory Committee on Capitol Security on Wednesday. In his opening remarks, Nash saluted the State Patrol by noting that in his 11 years on the panel, the Capitol complex had been free from troubling incidents. The one exception being the recent weekend in which a man broke into the main building, then the Senate chamber and, “I’ll put it this way,” Nash said, “[he] violated the Senate’s dress code.” The Senate requires spiffier attire than the House, where jeans are common and ties not required. The man arrested was definitely in violation, as he was naked. The fact that Nash isn’t known for comic zingers made the dry delivery all the more entertaining and underscored his appreciation for the State Patrol’s work at the Capitol.

Hollins, DFL-St. Paul, entered a crop art rendition of the late former House Speaker Melissa Hortman to the State Fair exhibit. The words “sow love” appear beneath Hortman’s image made of yellow and brown mustard seeds, mung beans, French lentils, red lentils, flaxseed, wild rice and amaranth, among other seeds. Hollins received a second-place ribbon but described creating the work as her meditation on Hortman’s life and legacy. “I think sowing love instead of hate and resentment is aspirational; we’re all striving to be better than we are and it’s so easy to let anger and sadness consume us,” Hollins wrote on Instagram. “But it’s our love for the people and the state of Minnesota that motivates us every day and will continue to drive us forward.”