The family of a fallen St. Paul firefighter received a $50,000 donation on Tuesday so they will have “one less thing to worry about.”

The MN 100 Club wanted to help with lost wages and funeral expenses for the family of Timothy Bertz, said the nonprofit formed to provide emergency financial assistance to the families of first responders killed or critically injured in the line of duty.

Bertz, 52, graduated from the St. Paul Fire Department academy on Dec. 17, worked at the training facility on Dec. 19, and had a sudden and major medical event at home on Dec. 20, according to the fire department. He died at the hospital on Dec. 22.

Another nonprofit, the Front Line Foundation, also gave money to his family last month saying, “Bertz dedicated his life to protecting others with courage, humility and an unwavering sense of duty.”

““First Responders need us now. Every day they leave behind families to go to work to protect us, and sometimes they don’t come home. We need to stand in the financial gap and help protect those families as they navigate after a loss,” said Dave Moran, president of the MN 100 Club.

The MN 100 Club has given more than $500,000 to first responders and their families since it was formed in 1972, according to treasurer DeeDee Jankovich.

“We know that it can take weeks or even months for death benefits to be realized,” said MN 100 Club Board Member and former State Fire Marshall Tom Brace. “Our purpose is to make sure that families have one less thing to worry about.”

For more information on how to support Minnesota First Responders, please visit www.mn100club.org.

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By MARK THIESSEN

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — The life of one of the most remote grizzly bear populations in the world is being documented by the animals themselves, with collar cameras that provide a rare glimpse of how they survive on Alaska’s rugged and desolate North Slope.

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Twelve of the 200 or so grizzlies that roam the frigid, treeless terrain near the Arctic Ocean have been outfitted with the cameras as part of a research project by Washington State University and the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.

The videos they record — many partially obscured by the undersides of whiskery muzzles — show the bears playing or fighting with companions, gnawing on a caribou, snarfing up berries, napping on a beach, and swimming in a pond looking for fish.

Packing on the pounds for winter

The bears hibernate about eight months of the year.

“They really have a really short window to obtain enough food resources to pack on enough fat to survive that period,” said Washington State doctoral student Ellery Vincent, who is leading the project with state wildlife biologist Jordan Pruszenski.

“We’re interested in looking at kind of a broad scale of how they’re obtaining the food that allows them to survive through the year and what exactly they’re choosing to eat,” Vincent said.

Among other things, the state is interested in learning to what extent the bears hunt musk oxen. There are about 300 of the shaggy ice-age survivors on the North Slope, according to Pruszenski, but the population is not flourishing.

Eating carcasses, caribou calves and berries

Videos from the first year of the project show that after emerging from hibernation, the bears eat the carcasses of caribou or musk ox that have died over the winter. Then they attack caribou calves. As soon as the tundra greens up, the bears shift their menu toward vegetation, especially blueberries and soapberries, also called buffaloberries.

They don’t fatten up the way salmon-eating bears do. Those bears can reach up to 1,000 pounds. These Arctic grizzlies are small in comparison, reaching up to 350 pounds, Vincent said.

To initially fit the bears with the collar cams, the researchers tracked them through the snow by helicopter last May. Pruszenski fired tranquilizer darts from the air, with Vincent keeping track of injection times and helping determine when the bear was safe to approach on the ground.

They placed the collars on the bears, keeping them loose enough that the bears could grow into them as they put on weight, but not so loose that they would fall off as the bears go about their rough-and-tumble lives.

“It is not difficult, but there is a lot of thought that goes into making sure the collar is adjusted properly,” Vincent said.

The researchers darted the bears again in August to replace the collars and in September to download data. The researchers also measured the bears’ weight gain and body fat.

When those collars came off, the state wildlife department replaced them with GPS collars.

That data could determine how oil-field development is impacting bears and help identify where they den during the winter, areas that oil companies must avoid when they build winter roads between drill sites.

Short clips, but deep insight into bear life

The cameras can record up to 17 hours of video. In the spring and summer, they took a short video clip — four to six seconds — every 10 minutes. In the fall, due to the encroaching darkness, they recorded clips every five minutes during daylight.

Despite their brevity, the clips provide a rare perspective of how the bears thrive on the desolate North Slope, an area that covers about 94,000 square miles but is home to only about 11,000 people. Nearly half of the residents live in Utqiagvik, the nation’s most northern community, formerly known as Barrow.

“One thing that’s really nice about these bears is that when they’re foraging on a particular food they tend to do that one thing for a long period of time, so these bears will spend pretty much their entire day eating, so the chances of us actually seeing what they’re doing are pretty high,” Vincent said.

The cameras also caught an encounter between a bear and pack of wolves.

It occurred after the bear had emerged from hibernation in May. He was not eating yet, so there was no adverse interaction with the wolves over food, she said. There were no wolves visible in the next clip, indicating it was a peaceful exchange.

“I think they both decided that it wasn’t worth it, so they just looked at each other, then moved on,” Vincent said.

The study will continue for another two years, with plans to add collars to 24 more bears.

The Timberwolves made their first trade of the deadline season Tuesday afternoon, and have nothing to show for it.

Minnesota traded veteran guard Mike Conley to Chicago as part of a three-team deal in which the Wolves also give secondary pick swap rights for their 2026 first-round draft selection to Detroit. A source confirmed the move, which was first reported by ESPN.

In return, Minnesota gets nothing more than cash considerations.

The move will currently be billed as a flexibility producer that opens up a roster spot and moves the Timberwolves below the first apron of the salary cap. Those traits make Minnesota’s legitimate pursuit of acquiring Giannis Antetokounmpo a touch easier.

But should no such move come to fruition, Conley’s departure will serve as nothing more than a cost cutter. The Timberwolves are now less than $4 million away from getting underneath the luxury tax entirely, which would serve as a major financial boon for new majority owners Alex Rodriguez and Marc Lore.

ESPN’s Bobby Marks reported Minnesota’s luxury tax bill dropped from $24 million to $3.8 million with Tuesday’s move.

Conley was on the books for north of $10 million this season but his play had declined in his 38-year-old campaign. While the floor general was still careful with the ball on offense and a strong team defender, he didn’t score in either of Minnesota’s last two games in Memphis. And his 3-point shooting has fallen off a cliff in recent months.

Yet Conley still possessed value as an on-floor leader for Minnesota, a team sometimes deficient in the decision-making department.

It was Conley’s arrival amid the 2022-23 campaign that truly turned around the Rudy Gobert era in Minnesota, both in that season and, more notably, in the two years that followed. He fast-tracked the center’s assimilation into the Timberwolves’ scheme and locker room.

Conley is a major reason the Wolves reached consecutive Western Conference Finals.

ESPN’s Brian Windhorst reported Minnesota could have received Chicago guard Coby White in the trade and didn’t. White is the type of scoring threat Minnesota could desperately use off the bench, and would have filled in nicely as the Timberwolves’ No. 7 man in their rotation — a spot vacated by Conley.

A thin roster just got thinner, with more onus now falling on the likes of Jaylen Clark, Bones Hyland and potentially even second-year wing Terrence Shannon Jr. upon his return from injury. All three of those players have shown promise but struggled with consistency.

Conley may potentially be bought out by the Bulls, at which point he can sign with another contender of his choosing and chase the NBA title that has long eluded him.

As for Minnesota, sending Conley to Chicago without making a roster improvement will only make sense if the Timberwolves use the ensuing 48 hours to make the team better. Acquiring Antetokounmpo from Milwaukee would certainly fit that bill.

If no such move takes place, the motivations behind Tuesday’s maneuver will require further examination.

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A St. Paul man with a violent criminal history has been sentenced to seven years in prison for his role in a daytime carjacking and armed robbery.

Oscar Zuniga (Courtesy of the Ramsey County Sheriff’s Office)

Oscar Zuniga, 30, received his sentence in Ramsey County District Court on Monday after pleading guilty to aiding and abetting first-degree robbery in connection with the March 2 incident in the city’s Greater East Side neighborhood that ended when his accomplice crashed into another vehicle.

The length of the prison sentence was negotiated between the defense and prosecution as part of a November plea agreement, which also included an aiding and abetting first-degree carjacking charge being dismissed at sentencing. Zuniga had four prior convictions defined as crimes of violence under state statute, but the prosecution agreed to waive its request for an aggravated sentence as part of the plea deal.

According to the criminal complaints against Zuniga and his accomplice:

Officers responded to Rose Avenue west of White Bear Avenue about 1:30 p.m. March 2 on a report of a carjacking. A 34-year-old man reported that he picked up a friend and that two other men were with her — he knew one as Rico and the other only as Mouse.

Police identified Rico as Joesiah Ramon Wakon, 22, of St. Paul.

The man said that his driving had been erratic when he picked her up and that she convinced him to let her drive the Toyota Tundra, which was his father’s vehicle.

Mouse, later identified as Zuniga, pulled a handgun and said something like, “Don’t move — I’ll kill you. Empty out your pockets” and held the gun to the back of the man’s head. The man gave Mouse his wallet and phone, and exited the Tundra.

Mouse pointed the gun at his friend and yelled at her to drive away in the Tundra. Officers searching the area saw the vehicle and tried to pull it over at Arcade and East Seventh streets.

The Tundra stopped briefly near Margaret Street and a woman got out of the backseat. She later told police that the other woman, who was being forced to drive the truck, was giving her a ride when the robbery happened.

Meanwhile, Zuniga and Waukon told the driver not to stop for police, the complaints said.

Waukon then got into the driver’s seat and kept going. They let Mouse out along the way.

The woman with Waukon told him to stop for officers, but he said, “I can’t — I’m not going to jail,” according to the complaints.

Officers lost sight of the Tundra, but found it again at Fourth and Hancock streets and pursued, as the pickup went 65-70 mph and ran a red light on Earl Street at Minnehaha Avenue. He drove into oncoming traffic on Maryland Avenue.

As the Tundra approached the entrance ramp to Interstate 35E, the truck struck another car, spun out and lost two tires. Squads pinned in the Tundra and took Waukon into custody.

Joesiah Ramon Waukon (Courtesy of the Ramsey County Sheriff’s Office)

In June, Waukon pleaded guilty to auto theft and fleeing from police in a vehicle, while an aiding and abetting carjacking charge was dismissed as part of a plea deal. He was given a 15-month prison sentence and three years of probation in November.

In 2014, Zuniga was convicted of first-degree aggravated robbery and aiding and abetting first-degree aggravated robbery for two separate incidents over two consecutive days in October 2013, court records show. He was convicted of simple robbery in 2022 and second-degree aggravated robbery in 2023.

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