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.

A former Collettsville School secretary is accused of stealing more than $40,000 in school funds over a two-year period.

Emily Yvonne Hawkins, 38, was arrested Wednesday by the Caldwell County Sheriff’s Office and charged with 10 counts of embezzlement.

A couple of weeks have passed since cheesemaker Liza Plaster welcomed the return of a small group of  “star milkers” that had lived away from her dairy farm for four months.

But the purpose of the goats, which struggled to adapt to the change in living conditions at a Greensboro dairy cattle farm, carries a different meaning at this tranquil goat farm in Happy Valley. It is where they, along with Plaster, now are settling into a life outside of what remained the most substantial cheesemaking operation in the county.

Merrium Johnson Throneburg’s love for Hudson happened slowly.

People involved in the day-to-day life of this little foothills town talk about it with fierce pride. They relish its small-town hospitality. They’re proud of its dinner theatre and its yearly Butterfly Festival and the Hudson Uptown Building, the renovated school that now is part of the center of downtown.

One provision of a Senate bill seeking to cut taxes by $1 billion would hit some Caldwell County nonprofit organizations hard.

The proposed legislation, unveiled by Senate Republican leaders Tuesday, would deprive nonprofit organizations of refunds on the sales taxes they pay.

For Caldwell Memorial Hospital, which also runs nonprofit the Caldwell Memorial Foundation, that amounts to some $900,000. For the Habitat for Humanity in Caldwell County, it comes to about $15,000. About 275 charities in Caldwell County are eligible for the refunds.

The Caldwell County Health and Human Services building at 2345 Morganton Blvd. SW is scheduled to be closed to the public for most of Friday, starting at 10 a.m. and lasting the rest of the day, for an emergency drill involving hundreds of emergency management and other officials across the region.

Passersby might notice ambulances and other emergency-response vehicles rushing to the building on Morganton Boulevard in the early afternoon, when officials expect the start of a mock emergency scenario, county spokeswoman LouAnne Kincaid said.

Officials are asking the public not to call 911 to ask what is happening at the building, she said.

Mil Mil, the Chihuahua mix that police say was stabbed by its owner’s son, has been returned to its caretaker after an overnight stay at Lenoir Veterinary Hospital.

Work crews took advantage of a dry Tuesday to clean up from the floods that hit the region late Sunday and Monday.

Steve Cardwell was leaving his parents' house about noon Saturday when he heard a woman screaming. The next thing he knew, a man flung a small dog out of a nearby house into the front yard.

Heavy rains swelled rivers and wreaked havoc in spots across Caldwell County Sunday night and Monday.

But the weather caused less trouble in Caldwell than it did elsewhere in western North Carolina. A Norfolk Southern worker was killed in a mudslide as he checked tracks near Black Mountain early Monday, a rockslide temporarily closed the westbound lanes of Interstate 40 at the McDowell-Buncombe county line, and trees downed by strong winds termporarily interrupted electricity for thousands of people.

Updated: Heavy rains swelled rivers and wreaked havoc in spots across Caldwell County Sunday night and Monday.

But the weather caused less trouble in Caldwell than it did elsewhere in western North Carolina. A Norfolk Southern worker was killed in a mudslide as he checked tracks near Black Mountain early Monday, a rockslide temporarily closed the westbound lanes of Interstate 40 at the McDowell-Buncombe county line, and trees downed by strong winds termporarily interrupted electricity for thousands of people.

At least seven Caldwell roads crossing streams or rivers were barricaded and closed to traffic Monday.

Throughout the day, it was the town’s charms on display more than any wares or services set up by the vendors lining Hudson’s main thoroughfare. 

Then came the last sound, the sound that means it’s all starting, the sound that means spring is here and winter is over and the kids are out on the ball field and ready to play.

She’s quick to point out she’s a rap artist, not a singer. Her music is raw, edgy and in-your-face. The studio is her home, where she can be herself. Anywhere else, she is like a fish out of water.

“I was always the oddball,” says Jazmin Villanueva. “I’ve tried to be okay with everybody, tried to fit in.”

Villanueva, 24, is building an East Coast reputation under the name “Jagi Blanco.” She was recently nominated for Best Female Hip Hop Artist at the Queen City Awards, as well as Entertainer of the Year. She is about to release her third CD, “Queen of Queens,” due out in July.

All around the county, business owners are working to pump up their social presence in hopes of reaching audiences whose time, increasingly, is spent with their smartphones.

“A lot of kids forget during the summer,” said Annamarie Stuckey, the school’s media coordinator. “They’re off from school, and they’re off. And you’re not really off – you should be reading all the time.”