In reference to a March 25 article - I would like to start by thanking the sheriff and county attorney for recommending approval of our license renewal. Every year we have to go office to office to get the necessary signatures on the application, which usually means at least three trips to Wadena to try and catch everyone in the office. So it would have been nice to have a face to face heads up that there was a problem instead of reading about it in the paper.

I subscribe to the Staples World and read it every week, then leave it out for my customers to read. We all have some good laughs over the misprints, misquotes and sometimes just plain made up stories (and I’m not talking about your April 1 edition.) But this time it was a little too personal.

You implied everyone working at Wahoo is facing charges when your article stated that “Ladd told the board that neither she nor Sheriff Mike Carr Jr. could sign the Wahoo Valley renewal form because Wahoo Valley had failed two compliance checks and four of its employees were now subject to gross misdemeanor charges for selling liquor to an underage person.”

For the record, in the six years we have owned and operated Wahoo Valley we have failed two compliance checks and from the May 2009 failure one employee was charged and paid his fine. The business also paid an administrative or municipal fine to Wadena County. As far as we know, that was the end of it.

If we had four employees (we have three) and they were still subject to charges ten months later, I would hope they would have been notified by now.

To my knowledge there were three other businesses that failed compliance checks around the time Wahoo did in 2009 and there was a total of four individuals charged with gross misdemeanors as a result of these failures - at least according to the Wadena Pioneer Journal. Evidently there was no problem with their license renewals this year.

I don’t know if that statement was an actual paraphrasing of County Attorney Kyra Ladd or the reporter, Rin Porter’s own words, but I hold my local paper to the same standards as I hold anyone. Look me in the eye and tell me the truth. It is an editor’s job to make sure of the facts of all stories covered in their paper and I would hope before you imply someone is subject to charges you would double check your source.

Anyone working where liquor is sold can be subject to gross misdemeanor charges (in the event they do something in violation of the law) but you are not subject to charges just because you work where they have failed compliance checks, which is what your article implied. Your job is to report the facts and leave the opinions to the opinion page.

Your article just reinforced what one of my poli sci professors taught us the first day of class - never believe something just because you read it in the paper. Words and numbers are easily manipulated.
Sharon Long
Co-owner/operator of
Wahoo Valley