Police say four teenagers, two wearing ski masks and one armed with an assault rifle, forced their way into 72-year-old man's house to rob him Monday, but the man scared them away with shots from his own handgun.

An outdoors group is working to turn an abandoned portion of railroad into a trail that eventually could extend to Morganton and other outlying areas as part of a historic route stretching across the region.

The longstanding plan by Caldwell County Pathways resurfaced at a Caldwell Railroad Commission meeting on Thursday, when a representative reported it is has made progress in seeking legal assistance before converting the decommissioned part of the railroad into a walking and cycling path.

The school’s third graduating class has a 98.6 percent graduation rate. Students earned 3,971 college credits and 49 associate’s degrees. Fifteen were CCC&TI honor graduates.

Even students who don’t finish with an associate’s degree leave with an armload of academic credits; this year’s average was 60 per student.

Nick Hunsucker sits in a little cell at the Caldwell County Detention Center awaiting trial for murder. He is accused of bludgeoning his mother, Kathy Eller, with a golf club Dec. 18, 2011, in the apartment they shared off Mayfield Drive. Eller died four days later.

Evidence, including blood swabs and stains, taken from the home were sent to the State Bureau of Investigation Crime Lab in Raleigh for DNA testing. Nearly a year later, in November 2012, prosecutors and Hunsucker’s attorney, Herb Pearce, were still waiting for test results, so Superior Court Judge Beverly T. Beal issued a rush order and asked the DA’s office to send a letter to the crime lab asking to expedite the processing of evidence.

The evidence and lab results have yet to be returned to Caldwell County.

Lenoir residents could see an increase in water and sewer rates over the next year as the city prepares to sink millions of dollars into a sewage treatment plant that has come under federal scrutiny for environmental violations in recent years

City officials are considering raising the sewer rate by 4 percent, or slightly more than 85 cents per month, as a way to meet requirements to receive a $600,000 grant from the state Clean Water Management Trust Fund to go toward the $3.8 million cost of renovating the Gunpowder Creek treatment plant in Hudson. They also have proposed a 1.8 percent increase, or slightly more than 40 cents for 5,000 gallons of water per month, in water payments.

The cultural scene in Lenoir and other parts of the county offers festivals and film screenings during summer months. But it apparently is not enough to dissuade younger residents from “moving elsewhere because they don’t feel like working on” creating other kinds of social outlets, like in arts and entertainment.

“I’m tired of hearing people say, ‘I wish this was here, I wish that was here,” Chris Zelensky said.

That approach has led Zelensky in the past month to scour the region for artists and musicians, using social media sites like Facebook to promote Lenoir Alive, the first art crawl in downtown Lenoir, which takes place today 6-8 p.m.

In elementary and middle school, Zach Blevins was one of those kids who pose a conundrum for educators: He was too smart.

That is, he was too smart for the traditional model of classroom education, which involves a lot of sitting down at desks. He figured things out quickly, leaving him with a lot of time to sit and wonder just when in real life he would ever apply the algebra he was learning.

“School, even though I didn’t ever really enjoy it, has always been easy for me,” Blevins said.

“It bored him a lot,” said Zach’s mom, Pamela Blevins. “Until the middle college, and that challenged him.”

On Monday night, the Caldwell County Schools will ask the Caldwell County Board of Commissioners to borrow $14.5 million to build a new middle school for the Hibriten district.

School officials say the school system can make the annual debt payments without an increase in the system’s budget or a tax increase, largely because they’ve anticipated this need for so long.

A downtown Lenoir bookstore is preparing to close at the end of the month, after years of struggling to generate enough sales to stay open as the only independent book store in the city.

The planned closure May 25 of Venti’s Casa Bookstore and Cafe, on whose storefront windows going-out-of-business signs appeared Tuesday, is the result of a combination of factors, including the departures a family member and friend who helped run the business.

Rhodhiss will increase its price for water and sewer service in 2013-14, if the town council approves the proposed budget for the upcoming fiscal year.

A bill in the N.C. Senate to overhaul the state’s economic development structure would abolish state funding for existing regional economic development organizations, which has raised apprehension among local and regional officials.

Senate Bill 127 did not have input from local economic development officials before it suddenly was introduced in the Senate Commerce Committee late Thursday, said Dana Clark, the chairman of the Lenoir Tourism Development Authority and chairman of the hospitality and tourism management program at Appalachian State University.

“There’s real frustration on our part because not a lot of communication is going on,” he said at a meeting Tuesday morning of the Caldwell County Economic Development Commision. “We don’t know what they are doing, and they don’t seem to be asking our opinion.”

Google has never before hired interns to work at any of its data centers around the world, but it is starting with Lenoir.

Next week, up to eight Appalachian State University students will begin working at Google for just under three months, Enoch Moeller, the data center’s operations manager, said Tuesday at a meeting of the Caldwell County Economic Development Commission.

Google considers it a pilot project. If it’s successful, it may be tried at other data centers, and the Lenoir data center may involve other universities, Moeller said.

Dr. Seuss-style decorations will fill the room, including decorations made by CCC&TI’s compensatory education students. Steve Stone, the county superintendent, will lead a Seuss-themed cakewalk.

At this event, which is CIS’s main fundraiser, no one wants to forget what it’s all about.

On Monday night, the Caldwell County Schools will ask the Caldwell County Board of Commissioners to borrow $14.5 million to build a new middle school for the Hibriten district.

School officials say the school system can make the annual debt payments without an increase in the system's budget or a tax increase, largely because they’ve anticipated this need for so long.

Havard Oliver’s home off Indian Grave Road had been broken into more than once on Sunday mornings while he and his wife were in the nearby Indian Hills Baptist Church. He wanted to catch the intruder in the act the next time it happened.

It wasn’t long after she took responsibility for a group of horses a couple of years ago that the reputation of Karen Guerra and her Oak Hill ranch started spreading across the country and overseas.

The rising stature of some of the show horses trained for equestrian competitions by Guerra already has captured the attention of breeders, mainly from Holland, Greece and other parts of Europe. And in emails and phone calls in the past year, they have expressed interest in what has emerged as the largest ranch of Friesian horses, a breed traced to the Netherlands, in western North Carolina.

The J.E. Broyhill Civic Center erupted with cheers, whistles, hoops and hollers from high-school students, teachers, counselors and parents on Monday – but it wasn’t a pep rally.

Well, not exactly. The subject of celebration wasn’t homecoming or a playoff game.

It was 50-some students onstage, all just a few months away from a four-year college or university.

This was Caldwell Early College High School’s College Decision Day. The assembly, like others that take place at schools around the county in the weeks leading up to graduation, gives seniors a chance to announce their choice of college to their peers.

Looking over the list of community projects started or given a boost by the Lenoir Service League during its 70 years of existence, you can’t help thinking that Lenoir would look quite a bit different without it.

The total amount the group has raised comes to more than $2 million, funding everything from large projects ($5,000 for the initial fund to build a public library, $37,000 to start the Shelter Home for victims of domestic violence, and $198,000 to help build an in-patient hospice facility, to name just three) to small ones (in May 1947, the league helped a family buy a cow).

Members who gathered Saturday at Cedar Rock Country Club for a luncheon to celebrate the league’s 70th anniversary said they take great pride not only in the projects they either started or helped sustain but in fostering a sense of community spirit.

The nearly 100 people milling around outside Lenoir's United Presbyterian Church on Pennell Avenue Saturday morning could have been plucked from any town festival or farmer’s market crowd. There were parents and single people, children ran past and tossed bean bags, and women and men watched.

They could be anyone.

Just like the cancer victims they had gathered to support.

The Friszell family came together in bits and pieces, from different places.

When Charmion and Todd Friszell got married, they knew they wanted kids. Charmion had always worked with children -- she's now the principal at Gamewell Elementary.

But the years passed, and it wasn't happening.

Then one day, Charmion was reading the newspaper over coffee. She came across a story about a family that had fostered to adopt, and she knew.

Two Hudson men have been arrested in what the Caldwell County Sheriff’s Office is characterizing as an organization “supplying a lot of people in Caldwell County with methamphetamine,” according to a news release.

During the investigation, over a half ounce of methamphetamine, a 2010 Chevrolet Z71 truck, digital weighing scales, packaging material, and covert safes were seized. The meth seized has a value over $2,000, the news release said.

The investigation has come to a close, but more arrests are expected.

A West Caldwell High teacher who was suspended on April 26 because of an altercation with a student during class is returning to the school.

The Caldwell County Public Library now is part of an online network allowing patrons access to millions of reading and other resources from across North Carolina.

The library has migrated its 73,000 materials, ranging from novels and books on local history to research collections and periodicals, to the online network. The library staff was trained on use of the network, including a vast cataloging system, in late March.

The county library system joins 12 others, some of which serve multiple counties and totalling 55 libraries, as part of NC Cardinal, formed by the State Library of North Carolina a couple years ago after a survey of libraries of varying sizes across the state showed wide interest in exchanging resources.

If you had the right police scanner, you may have heard chatter about bombs, hostages and victims in Caldwell County on Friday afternoon.

They put in two years of their lives – sometimes three or four or even more.

They drape themselves in hot, black polyester and don mortarboard caps.

They walk carefully across the stage, maybe turn their heads to acknowledge the cheers of mothers and fathers and cousins and wives.

Then they take the strings of their tassels in their hands, move them from right to left, and it’s time:

Time to be nurses and accountants and landscapers. Time to move on toward a bachelor’s degree, maybe. Time to find a better-paying, better-loved job.