News Worth Knowing: Armadillo Willy's Fire and More Los Altos Headlines

We know how fast the week goes by. But sit down, have a cup of coffee and take a moment to catch up. You'll feel you know what happened in Los Altos this week.

It started Monday evening with a lost windsurfer, and ended with a fire that shut down San Antonio Road for a few hours. Take a look.

1.

A small fire burning inside a wall at restaurant  Thursday afternoon triggered the closure of San Antonio Road and shut down the restaurant through Friday.

The restaurant reopened for business in time for Saturday lunch service, but before that it attracted quite a bit of attention from motorists who suddenly were re-routed from a major artery Thursday.

Los Altos closed off both directions of traffic on San Antonio Road from El Camino Real to Sherwood Avenue while crews ran a hose across the street to the closest hydrant.

Armadillo Willy's president and CEO, Bob Deagen, credited observant staff for noticing smoke seeping out, and is grateful it didn't happen at night, when an undetected fire could burn for a long time and cause significantly more damage.

The fire was contained to a small area about six feet wide, Deagen said, and it was extinguished by the which sent three apparatus and seven firefighters.

2.

The VTA the Valley Transportation Authority  buses you see plying El Camino Real, such as the workhorse 22 line, may all be hybrid and electric in a decade. Many already are.

Labor Secretary Hilda Solis stopped in the Bay Area to applaud VTA's progress in converting to low-emission, American-made diesel electric hybrid buses and electric buses, which 18 percent of the fleet are. The 90 buses are built by Gillig, is based in Hayward, at a cost of $33,000 apiece. The technology made possible through American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) money.

3.

Cathy Caton's rescue near the San Mateo Bridge July 19 was the kind of event the Coast Guard can only hope for most times.

The 62-year-old windsurfer from Los Altos went missing the evening of July 18, after her sail mast became separated from the mast connector on her board.

The experienced windsurfer, spent 13 hours overnight in the water after setting out about 5 p.m. from the East Third Avenue shoreline in Foster City. But her ocean-grade wetsuit and focused thinking are what made the difference, her husband, Steven Hamman, said.

4.

When in doubt, anthropomorphize a heritage orchard fruit. It can't hurt and almost anything affirmative might help. That seems to be the thinking with downtown bristling with unfriendly "Road Closed" construction signs for months on end, and business leaders at a boiling point.

Enter Apricot Annie, ambassador to downtown Los Altos for those who find it frustrating, confusing and better left alone. Which, is a lot of people, judging by how desperate merchants have been sounding at recent city council meetings.

Last week, the city deputized the affable, hands-on Recreation Director Bev Tucker to be project information manager for a few months while First Street is torn up. In short order, Tucker created Annie (a manager who can doodle!), arranged for weekly update meetings open to the public at the chamber, and set up Twitter and Facebook accounts to get the message out.

Who knows, said Los Altos Village Association executive director Nancy Dunaway. You might see Apricot Annie in costume on the street, long past construction. "I think she has legs," Dunaway said. Which, indeed, she would have to.

5.

June continued the spring rally of home sales in Los Altos and Los Altos Hills, but data also suggest that continued economic uncertainty has kept buyers hard-nosed, our real estate columnist Winnie Yip Fong reported.

Aggregate sales figures for the month of June showed the number of sales in June topped that of May by 45 percent.

Sales have gone up by 17 percent compared the same time last year, too. The median home price in Los Altos was $1.66 million, which was 11 percent higher than last year. In Los Altos Hills, sales went up by 25 percent, though the median price, at $2.2 million, was down slightly by 1 percent from last year.

But the picture is not completely rosy compared with last month, especially in Los Altos.

Just a month after hitting a 29-month high of $1.75 million in Los Altos, the median home price is down by 6 percent. The average days on market has shot up from 21-29 days, and on average, the percent of list price buyers paid has also gone down slightly from May.

See the June figures in the story linked above.