From the archives

As the stock option cloud over Apple Computer Inc. darkened, investors tried to determine the week of Aug. 5, 2006 whether the company’s popular products are powerful enough to overcome the potential accounting and legal risks facing the maker of the iPod and the Macintosh.

The possibility that the improper handling of employee stock options might erase some of Apple’s past profits or, even worse, plunge its renowned CEO, Steve Jobs, into a legal morass spooked some investors. Apple shares fell as much as 6.7 percent during Friday’s trading on the Nasdaq Stock Market before rebounding to close at $68.30, down $1.29, or 1.9 percent.

"You can’t spin this as good news,” Standard & Poor’s analyst Richard Stice said.

Community mourns fallen officer

An estimated 2,400 people filled the pews the week of Aug. 5, 2006 at St. Mary’s Cathedral and another 600 stood watching the funeral of San Francisco police Officer Nick-Tomasito Birco, who was killed in the line of duty one week prior.

Birco, a five-year veteran of the San Francisco Police Department, moved to San Francisco from the Philippines when he was 4 years old and stayed in the Bay Area his entire life. He was a resident of South San Francisco.

Museum opens doors to future plans

The reclusive Coyote Point Museum Board of Directors held a rare press conference the week of Aug. 5, 2006 announcing its decision to allow a group of supporters one month to raise $300,000 and save the financially strapped nonprofit.

The board voted in a closed-door meeting to allow the group calling itself Save Coyote Point Museum a month to raise half of the year’s estimated deficit.

Financial records showed the museum faced severe money troubles for six years and had an endowment of $3.9 million.

Part of the museum’s trouble stemmed from not being able to find a permanent executive director.

Doctor charged in student’s suicide

A Colorado doctor who approved and filled an online Prozac subscription for a 19-year-old Stanford student who later committed suicide was headed toward trial after a judge refused to dismiss criminal charges the week of Aug. 5, 2006.

First, though, the defense for psychiatrist Dr. Christian Ellis Hageseth III, 65, planned to argue San Mateo County had no legal right to prosecute an incident which fully took place in another state.

Hageseth was charged with one felony count of practicing medicine without a valid California license.

McKay, a freshman at Stanford University and former student at Menlo-Atherton High School, purchased 90 capsules of generic Prozac via credit card at the online pharmacy site which was then shipped from Mississippi. Hageseth, according to the federal suit, signed off on the prescription without a consultation.

From the archives highlights stories originally printed five years ago this week. It appears in the Thursday edition of the Daily Journal.