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Friends and Neighbors: Everyone has a story

Filming ‘Survivor’

LAKE PLACID — Katie Uhlaender, a five-time Olympic skeleton racer living at the Olympic Training Center, is flying to Fiji today to be part of the crew filming the 43rd season of the television reality show “Survivor.” “Survivor” is one of the most popular contest reality TV ...

Remembering a past love

Peru resident Robert Rokos met the love of his life in a bathhouse in New York City. It was 1973, not long after the birth of the city’s gay liberation movement. Rokos was 25 and white, Donald Townsel was 18 and Black, but their differences didn’t keep them apart. What started as ...

Love, carved in ice

SARANAC LAKE — Some people buy flowers for their sweethearts on Valentine’s Day. Others send greeting cards. Liam Ward uses a Makita die grinder with an 8-inch rotary knife spinning at 8,000 RPM to carve his and his wife Emily’s initials in the Ice Palace every year — a secret, ...

Truck driver talks life on the road

SARANAC LAKE — Bonnie Kerfoot delivered Bitters and Bones’ new brewing setup on a covered flatbed trailer Wednesday morning, after making the 3,000-mile drive from Portland, Oregon. Kerfoot’s home is in California, but she lives on the road, driving supplies, gas and antennas all over ...

Long-lost siblings finally meet

SARANAC LAKE — As Lauren Peters, 49, and Richard Auer, 54, sit across from each other at a picnic table at Berkeley Green park, they interrupt each other, filling in the blanks of each other’s sentences and questioning small details like the siblings they are. This despite the fact that ...

There and back again

SARANAC LAKE — Sean Ryan, 27, pulls out a chair at the Hotel Saranac upstairs lobby, takes off his Buffalo Bills mask and sits down. He’s taking a break to talk about his first semester at North Country Community College, where he’s a freshman in the Radiologic Technology ...