Friends and colleagues of Beau Rasmussen distributed this flyer following his disappearance Sunday. Courtesy image.

An East Bay man is missing after his pants, wallet and other personal effects were found on Ocean Beach following the Bay to Breakers on Sunday, his friends say.

Beau Rasmussen was in town to meet up with friends who were running the race, said friend and colleague Ian Black.

“They split up and noon and said they would meet up at the beach,” Black told the Ocean Beach Bulletin.

But Rasmussen never showed up. Instead, someone found Rasmussen’s belongings on the beach, and called the wind and solar development company where he works.

Friends think Rasmussen may have gone swimming in the ocean.

Black said he and other friends have filed a missing persons report with the San Francisco Police Department and have contacted the Coast Guard about Rasmussen’s disappearance, but the Ocean Beach Bulletin could not independently confirm that information with the SFPD by deadline. Black and several other people were set to search the Ocean Beach area Monday afternoon and evening, he said.

According to a flyer that friends and colleagues have distributed, Rasmussen is 27 years old, about 6 feet 2 inches tall and 195 pounds. They ask anyone with information to call (925) 961-7397 or (510) 999-0852.

Mikaela Lynch of San Francisco, a student at Sunset Elementary School, disappeared from her family’s home in Lake County Sunday, May 12. Photo: Clearlake Police Department via Lake County News.

The body of Mikaela Lynch, the 9-year-old autistic girl missing in Lake County, has been found near her family’s vacation home.

Lynch, a student at a San Francisco public school in the Sunset District, disappeared from her family’s Lake County home on Sunday and had not been seen since.

Clearlake Police Chief Craig Clausen told the Lake County News that the body of 9-year-old Mikaela Renee Lynch was found in Cache Creek after 11 a.m.:

The girl’s family had been scheduled to make a statement but after the discovery of her body they did not appear. Chief Clausen asked that their privacy to be respected.

At the command post, located at the Mormon Church on Lakeview Way, volunteers continued to come and go on Wednesday afternoon. Tearful volunteers were seen leaving the briefing in which they were told the girl had been found.

Clausen, who said the investigation is wrapping up, didn’t offer further details on the case or the discovery during the short press briefing at the command post.

A San Francisco Unified School District official who asked not to be named told the Ocean Beach Bulletin that Lynch attended a special program at an SFUSD school in the Sunset District.

Lynch was a “sweetheart” with an “ever-present smile,” her godfather, Mike Dowling, told the San Francisco Chronicle.

Lynch had the mental capacity of a 1-year-old and was unable to speak, officials have said. She liked water but did not swim.

A Xerces blue butterfly, Glaucopsyche xerces, from the collection of the California Academy of Sciences. Photo: Tom Prete / Ocean Beach Bulletin

In the early 20th century the Sunset District neighborhood emerged on top of a massive field of sand dunes that covered most of western San Francisco, creating affordable homes for thousands of families but dooming a tiny, brilliantly beautiful creature to extinction.

The Xerces blue butterfly, no bigger than the end of a man’s thumb and boasting wings the color of a clear summer sky, lived nowhere else but the Sunset District and a few other spots in western San Francisco. What once was a favorite of Victorian-era collectors is believed to be the first American species of butterfly to become extinct through the urban development of its habitat.

Butterfly fades with the Sunset

Some sources place the species’ end in 1943, but according to entomologist Bob Langston, who studied similar species for many years, it actually came a few years earlier.

“I believe it was in 1936. Harry Lang from Davis found the last few,” Langston said. “It was before building the actual neighborhoods, but the neighborhoods came along soon afterwards.”

Langston said public and government attitudes at the time favored development over preservation, and famous developer Henry Doelger, whose sales office recently became San Francisco Landmark 265, turned the former Great Sand Waste into today’s Sunset District.

“Have you heard of Doelger homes? Well, they just bulldozed away,” said Langston. “They didn’t care. At that time, the more development the better.”

That development removed the Xerces blue’s main food for its caterpillars, the silver lupine, from the Sunset District. Although the plant is still widespread in other areas of coastal California and Oregon, without an abundant local source the butterfly couldn’t hang on.

“It couldn’t evolve into something that fed on something different,” Langston said.

The extinction of the Xerces blue may not have been widely considered important when it happened, as entomologist Langston said, but since then it has prompted the creation of the Xerces Society, an international nonprofit organization dedicated to the preservation of invertebrate species and their habitats.

 Preserving an extinct species on the end of a pin

Photo: Tom Prete / Ocean Beach Bulletin

The Xerces blue isn’t completely gone from San Francisco, however. In the basement of the Academy of Sciences in Golden Gate Park, in a climate-controlled storage vault, the entomology department has three drawers of them, arranged neatly in rows on the ends of pins.

On a recent afternoon, academy entomologist Norm Penny wheeled a glass-covered tray of the little butterflies out of the vault.

The Xerces blue, known to science as Glaucopsyche xerces, was sexually dimorphic, Penny said. So only the males were really blue while the females were brown, a difference readily apparent in the academy’s specimens.

Some, facing down, show the bright blue wings of the males and the dull gray-brown hues of the females, while others are turned upside down to show the distinctive spot patterns by which scientists distinguish the Xerces blue from closely related species.

A close-up look at the tag that accompanies each individual butterfly shows where and when it was collected, such as a perfectly intact male that has outlasted his species for decades, collected June 23, 1935.

Similar species hanging on

The Xerces blue had a close relationship not only with the plants that fed its caterpillars, but also with other insects that depended on those caterpillars for food.

Those insects didn’t feed on the caterpillars, however, but rather from them. As the caterpillars fed they exuded honeydew, a sort of sugary liquid, and some native species of ant collected and ate the honeydew, also protecting their caterpillar food source from other insects.

As odd as that arrangement may sound it’s not uncommon and a number of other butterfly species have a similar relationship with ants, including some butterflies closely related to the Xerces blue.

One such species is the Mission blue butterfly. A federally endangered species, the Mission blue feeds on lupines just like the Xerces blue did.

It hadn’t been seen in San Francisco for three years, though other populations exist to the south on San Bruno Mountain and to the north in Marin, but three years ago it was reintroduced to the Twin Peaks area.

Butterfly effect?

Photo: Tom Prete / Ocean Beach Bulletin

Sometimes it can be hard to pinpoint the effect the disappearance of one species has on an ecosystem or on people, particularly a species as localized and specialized as the Xerces blue.

But Penny recalled what one colleague said to him about the significance of losing a species here and a species there.

“‘It’s like an airplane flying along losing an occasional rivet,’” the colleague said. A loss or two might not be noticed in the short term.

“(But) at some point you’re going to lose one and the whole plane’s going to come down,” said Penny.

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This article has been modified to correctly state the number of years the Mission blue butterfly is believed to have been absent from San Francisco.

OB Pic contest winner Michelle Wernette holds a finished print she completed in a class taught by Eric Rewitzer (background) of 3 Fish Studios. Photo: Tom Prete/Ocean Beach Bulletin

In March the Ocean Beach Bulletin and 3 Fish Studios offered readers the chance to win a free linoprint art class from 3 Fish, and the winners recently collected their prize on a day of fun and new experiences.

Every submission to the Bulletin’s OB Pic of the Day during the month of March was entered to win the class, and earlier this month 3 Fish Studios and the Bulletin selected winners Heather Carrico, Virgil Ereso, Michelle Wernette and Ed Young.

The winners of the OB Pic photo contest gathered Sunday, April 14, to turn their photos into handmade linoprint art in an exclusive class at 3 Fish headquarters on Irving Street.  Under the guidance of Eric Rewitzer of 3 Fish Studios, the four winners and Ocean Beach Bulletin publisher and editor Tom Prete worked for several hours on their new skills.

In essence, linoprints are made in a simple process. Images are carved in reverse on a sheet of linoleum using woodworking tools, with areas intended to come out light carved away and areas intended to be dark left alone. Then ink is applied to the linoleum, with ink clinging to the un-carved areas, and paper is pressed to the inked surface to create a print.

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This post is made possible in partnership with 3 Fish Studios, with original, affordable paintings and prints.

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In practice, however, there is a great deal of individual style that can be imparted during the process, resulting in unique variations on the same basic techniques. Even the slight differences in pressure used from one pass of a tool to the next give character to the finished artwork.

Photo: Eric Rewitzer

“Resist perfection,” Rewitzer advised the class.

That relaxed attitude helps newbie artists worry less about making mistakes and more about having fun, and is deeply ingrained at 3 Fish, where Rewitzer and his wife and fellow artist, Annie Galvin, often greet visitors to the studio with a cup of coffee or a beer from the tap in the kitchen.

Throughout the class, the studio was busy with a stream of customers picking up artwork they’d purchased, people from the neighborhood stopping by for a chat and a beverage, and visitors discovering the studio for the first time. 3 Fish’s back deck, shaped like the state of California, supplied a ready place for class participants to take a break as well.

The class Rewitzer taught for the OB Pic contest winners is available to everyone, with all the materials and tools provided. Check the 3 Fish Studios website for availability and scheduling. 3 Fish Studios is at 4541 Irving St., between 46th and 47th avenues. Linoprints and other artwork by Eric Rewitzer, plus art by Annie Galvin, are available at the studio and through the 3 Fish Studios online store.

Check out more pictures from the OB Pic contest class at 3 Fish Studios:

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Two large trees crushed the backstop structure of the softball field at Parkside Square near Vicente Street and 28th Avenue. Photo: Tom Prete / Ocean Beach Bulletin

UPDATE 10 p.m. April 9 – Two large Monterey cypress trees crashed down next to each other but in opposite directions Monday near Sloat and Sunset boulevards, and by Tuesday afternoon the trunk of one of the trees still blocked a pedestrian path on Sunset.

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High winds whipped Ocean Beach and the Sunset and Richmond districts Monday, toppling trees and closing the Great Highway.

Residents told the Ocean Beach Bulletin that damage ranged from wind-blown trash to toppled construction signs and even a blown-over 35-pound barbecue grill.

The Ocean Beach-Kelly’s Cove website, which operates a webcam and weather station at the Kellys Cove area at the north end of Ocean Beach, recorded gusts up to 62.3 miles per hour, but winds nearby reached 75 miles per hour, according to national weather authorities.

Check out these photos of wind damage from around the Ocean Beach area:

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James Mitchell of Sunset Shapers cleans up and repairs his Noriega Street surf shop after burglars broke in Saturday morning. Photo: Tom Prete / Ocean Beach Bulletin

Thieves smashed in the front door of Ocean Beach-area surfboard shop Sunset Shapers early Saturday morning, damaging the store and making off with several boards.

But James Mitchell, who owns the Noriega Street shop, has been able to find some levity in the situation from how the police found four suspects and recovered the stolen boards.

About 2:30 a.m. Saturday, Noriega Street resident Andy Wernette woke up to the sound of breaking glass. He looked out his window and saw three burglars taking surfboards out the door to a car where another person was waiting, he said.

“They all had on hoods,” he said.

Wernette said he yelled at the three men, and although they paused at the sound of his voice they didn’t look up. Although he knows Mitchell from the neighborhood, he didn’t have his phone number so he tweeted a message to @Sunset_Shapers instead.

Mitchell heard from Wenette and his alarm company at about the same time, he said.

“I rode my bike down real quick,” Mitchell said, and the police were already on the scene when he arrived.

Meanwhile, Wernette had met with police officers, and in the process of showing them around the scene he and an officer discovered a key piece of evidence.

“They left a wallet. With a driver’s license,” Mitchell said.

Then, perhaps missing the wallet, the suspects drove by the scene and Wernette was able to point them out to police, and an SFPD investigator followed the suspects to a house a few blocks away.

A pile of glass shards is all that remained of the front door of Sunset Shapers surf shop after an overnight burglary Saturday morning. Photo: Tom Prete / Ocean Beach Bulletin

Mitchell said police told him they arrested four suspects in a house near 47th Avenue and Taraval Street, and he recognized two of them as Ocean Beach surfers — one of them from when he had been in another local surf shop just days before.

“I recognized one of them just because I had been in Aqua on Tuesday,” he said.

Mitchell said that based on photographs police showed him, all of the suspects are in their early 20s, and three are white while one is of Asian or Pacific Islander ethnicity.

The suspects’ mistakes didn’t start with leaving a wallet at the scene of the break-in and then driving back to get it, Mitchell said. While they took eight boards, most of them with Sunset Shapers store logos on them, they were all used loaner boards, Mitchell said. A cash register and a large rack of significantly more valuable new boards just a few feet away weren’t touched.

He said he doesn’t think the suspects really knew what they were going to do with the boards, since they would stand out to local surfers and weren’t that valuable.

“I think they were just stupid, drunk or high” he said.

“They probably thought about [getting into the shop], not what they were going to take.”

A sign above the counter at Sunset Shapers didn’t deter burglars early Saturday morning. Photo: Tom Prete / Ocean Beach Bulletin

Mitchell said he estimated his loss from the robbery at somewhere around $8,000 to $10,000 including the value of the surfboards, damage to three other boards that weren’t stolen and damage to the store. In spite of the inconvenience and the cost, Mitchell intended to keep the shop’s regular hours Saturday.

At neighboring businesses, surprise at the break-in was mixed with disappointment that a well-respected business owner was the victim.

“That hurts my feelings,” said Hilary Passman of the Devil’s Teeth Baking Company, noting that Mitchell is involved with a neighborhood merchants association, helped organize a Noriega Street fair and holds free barbecues outside the shop in good weather.

“They’re real cool, yeah,” said Danny Pritchard at JM Liquor. “I’m sorry to hear they got broken into.”

Lauren Linagen, a clerk at Sunset Pet Supply, said outer Noriega Street’s merchants are very active in the neighborhood, particularly Sunset Shapers.

“They’re really involved in what we do out here,” Linagen said.

Burglars have struck two Ocean Beach surf shops in the past year. Mitchell said he saw a man throw a pumpkin through the window of Mollusk in October and called police, and last summer Aqua on Sloat Boulevard suffered an expensive burglary.

Aaron Stewart said the store never recovered the stolen property, including a computer with important business information on it.

The store’s loss “was in the tens of thousands of dollars,” Stewart said.

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Taraval Street’s somewhat spartan final two blocks are headed for a makeover under a new plan. Photo: Tom Prete / Ocean Beach Bulletin

Outer Judah and Noriega streets have steady foot traffic, bustling businesses and growing recognition outside the Sunset District, and now some of that vitality may be coming to the end of Taraval Street.

Thursday evening, Congregation B’nai Emunah will host the third community meeting for the Taraval Streetscape Improvement Project, an effort to improve sidewalks, crosswalks, lighting and other street features of the final two blocks of Taraval Street.

While businesses including the Riptide bar and Bashful Bull Too cafe do serve not only the surrounding neighborhood but also visitors from beyond, the aim of the streetscape project is to make the end of Taraval more inviting for pedestrians and to update its appearance to make it more attractive to local residents and visitors alike.

At two earlier meetings, residents reacted favorably to a proposal to install a parklet with plants and seating near the Bashful Bull Too, but had mixed feelings about other suggestions such as sidewalk trees and a “gateway” feature at Taraval and the Great Highway.

Thursday’s meeting will provide an opportunity for people to give more input on proposed features and designs, and ask questions of city staff members working on the project.

The Taraval Streetscape Improvement Project is being paid for with $1.2 million from the voter-approved 2011 Road Repaving and Street Safety Bond.

Thursday night’s meeting runs from 6-7:30 p.m. at Congregation B’nai Emunah, 3595 Taraval St. at 46th Avenue. More information about the project, including preliminary designs and notes from previous meetings, is available at the Department of Public Works’ Taraval Streetscape Improvement Project website.

Supervisor Katy Tang, who previously worked on the project as an aide to former supervisor Carmen Chu, is expected to attend the meeting. The streetscape project is based in large part on work by Sunset District resident Ashley Summers, now one of Tang’s aides, who wrote a master’s thesis on the renovation.

Preliminary design for Taraval Streetscape Improvements

Taraval Streetscape Improvement Preliminary Design

UPDATE 10:15 a.m. March 29 – A man found dead in the water at Ocean Beach Thursday reportedly has been identified as 30-year-old Alex Peer of San Francisco.

SF Gate reports that an autopsy will be conducted to determine how Peer died.

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Early-morning beach walkers discovered the partially clothed body of a man in the water at Ocean Beach near Judah Street Thursday morning, a National Park Service spokesman said.

“A body was noticed by passers-by on the beach about 7:30,” said Howard Levitt of the Golden Gate National Recreation area, which oversees Ocean Beach.

“They called 911. San Francisco Fire Department responded, as well as park police,” Levitt said.

Levitt said the San Francisco Medical Examiner’s Office was called and transported the body off the beach.

Levitt said the body of what is believed to be a white man may have had only underwear on, and did not have any identification. He said he didn’t have any other description of the body and wasn’t sure if it bore any injuries or how long it may have been in the water.

“Tsunamis are rare, but it’s something that can occur and has occurred in the past,” said Logan Johnson, a warning-coordination meteorologist with the National Weather Service.

Johnson said a test warning was scheduled to go out at 10:15 a.m. over the Emergency Alert System, the system most people know for its tests that loudly interrupt all television and radio broadcasts.

No alert was seen at that time by a reporter watching KPIX-TV in San Francisco, though the regular broadcast was briefly interrupted by an emergency-test signal at about 10:45 a.m. Johnson said via email that the message went out as planned on KTVU-TV, though it came a few minutes late.

In addition, San Francisco emergency officials reportedly will activate the city’s outdoor warning loudspeakers, the same ones that are tested at noon every Tuesday.

“”Once you get the warning you don’t have a lot of time to decide exactly what you are going to do, so that’s why we do the planning for it,” Department of Emergency Management representative Rob Dudgeon told KGO-TV.

However, no test warnings could be heard by a reporter in the southern Sunset District a few blocks from Ocean Beach. At 4:51 p.m., a Twitter account belonging to the SFDEM responded to an inquiry from the Ocean Beach Bulletin by saying that no outdoor alert test had been scheduled.

“@OBBulletin no test in SF Bay Area. We headed north to Humboldt to observe theirs, which was today,” @EM4SF tweeted.

Tsunami inundation zone map for San Francisco:

Tsunami Inundation SouthSFNorthSF Pacific Coast San Francisco

Police and fire equipment blocked 38th Avenue at Vicente Street Monday evening at the scene of a house fire. Photo: Tom Prete / Ocean Beach Bulletin

Fire broke out in a home on 38th Avenue in the outer Sunset District Monday evening.

Assistant Fire Chief Tom Siragusa of the San Francisco Fire Department said that around 6 p.m. a resident called to report smoke in the garage of of 2575 38th Ave., between Ulloa and Vicente streets. The resident suspected an electrical problem so he turned off the power to the house.

When firefighters arrived, there was a fire inside the walls of the house behind an electrical transformer, Siragusa said.

“We know what the origin is and we know what the location is, but we don’t know what the cause is at this point,” he said about 20 minutes after the fire was reported.

San Francisco firefighters had to open the walls of a house on 38th Avenue to fight a fire there Monday evening. Photo: Tom Prete / Ocean Beach Bulletin

Siragusa said a combination of nine trucks, engines and other vehicles responded to the fire with about 33 members of the Fire Department.

Only one person was in the building at the time of the fire, and no firefighters or civilians were injured in the fire, Siragusa said.