Dani Marie Schofield is arraigned at Jackson County Circuit Court in Medford on Friday. 

Whether it was patients’ experiences in an investigation into alleged drug swapping at a Medford hospital, some substantial Rogue Valley temperature records or the premature mourning of a local llama — numerous stories shaped Southern Oregon in 2024.

The year in headlines at the Rogue Valley Times could hardly be defined exclusively by the Providence Medford Medical Center nurses who took part in the largest nurses strike in Oregon history, the pro-Palestinian demonstrators who interrupted two town halls conducted by U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden or the former Asante Rogue Regional Medical Center nurse arrested this year on accusations she replaced multiple patients’ fentanyl IV bags with tap water. That list of stories the Times covered in 2024, however, would very much be remiss without them.

These are some of the stories from 2024 that the Rogue Valley won’t soon forget.

Schofield arrested, Asante lawsuits swirl

The name Dani Marie Schofield is sure to be oft-repeated in the coming year. The Jackson County District Attorney’s Office has charged her with 44 counts of second-degree assault in connection to Asante Rogue Regional Medical Center patients who were allegedly harmed under Schofield’s care between July 2022 and July 2023. This was after an extensive and prolonged Medford police investigation, according to earlier news reports.

Her criminal trial has been postponed for a third time.

Schofield was arrested in June on charges accusing her of diverting fentanyl from patients and replacing it with non-sterile tap water, causing many of them complications due to infections. The patients had been treated in the intensive care unit at the Medford hospital, and 16 of them died.

Prior to Schofield’s arrest, Times reporter Buffy Pollock spoke with multiple victims and their relatives named in the criminal case about their experiences — not to mention plaintiffs in civil cases that named Schofield and her former employer Asante as defendants. It could be in the new year, however, that the details in prosecutors’ case against Schofield and her defense lawyer’s case begin to unfold.

SRO uproar casts ripples at Medford School Board

The abrupt reassignment of popular South Medford High School Resource Officer Josh Doney sparked shock and surprise from local parents and even a teacher who had included Doney in his lesson plans, but it will best be remembered for the waves of acrimony it sparked among Medford School Board members well into the present.

School board member Michael Williams in July joined faculty members in criticizing administrators’ decision to have Doney reassigned. A flurry of investigations and complaints against Williams have followed, with recent developments including the District Attorney’s office deciding not to prosecute Williams on claims he wore a utility belt containing sharp instruments used in his job as an agricultural hemp inspector — and never used on school grounds as weapons.

Although Williams was not criminally charged, the school board opted to censure him at the most recent meeting.

Nurses strike at Providence

Earlier this summer, nurses at Providence Medford Medical Center joined nurses at five other Providence hospitals in Oregon rallying for pay parity and greater retention.

The Medford nursing contract continues to be stuck in limbo after more than 15 months of negotiations, and as of late December, another unprecedented strike looms for Oregon — this one the first strike involving nurses and other unionized health providers combined.

As of Friday, the Oregon Nurses Association said it could give a 10-day strike notice at any time and will “remain 100% committed to bargaining for a fair contract” during the 10-day period and during a strike.

Rogue X opens

The Rogue Credit Union Community Complex, better known as Rogue X, opened in January “with a splash,” our headline noted. Our archives also noted a couple teething problems: a fallen spray nozzle hurt a child and closed a pool play area in February and slips and safety concerns prompted $75,000 worth of flooring refinishing in June.

For most, however, the 140,000-square-foot indoor aquatic, recreation and event center will be best remembered for the new amenities it brought to the Rogue Valley, including two indoor pools, two water slides and a massive gymnasium with space for eight regulation basketball courts — all wrapped inside the largest building ever constructed in Jackson County. 

Porters leaves the station, and bye-bye Black Sheep

The iconic downtown Medford steakhouse converted from a 1910 train station abruptly shut its doors in May after more than two decades catering to gourmands and Southern Oregonians with something to celebrate.

Similarly, in August The Black Sheep closed and downtown Ashland lost its living room on the Plaza since the early 1990s. In September, Talent pizzeria The Grotto served its last slice. The local restaurants’ closures were among significant dining departures in a year also marked by the end of Shari’s restaurants and Medford’s Cracker Barrel presence fading away.

On the flip side, Medford did get its second Chick-fil-A location in September.  

Wyden, interrupted

In what U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden described as a first in his decades of scheduled town hall events, the senator’s Medford July town hall — Wyden’s 1,093rd in Oregon — was cut short at Rogue X by local pro-Palestinian demonstrators. When the senator returned to the Rogue Valley at Phoenix High School in October, the threat of demonstrators impacting the second public event prompted the Phoenix-Talent School District to close public access. 

The second closure in Jackson County sparked the senator’s thoughtful answers about foreign policy decisions surrounding and his experience being the son of Jewish parents who fled Germany in the 1930s — as well as a pledge to “keep coming back” to the Rogue Valley.

Winter, summer weather records in the Rogue Valley

For Southern Oregon meteorologists, 2024 was a year for watching their almanacs. It started in January with a bout of sunny, unseasonably warm temperatures in Southern Oregon that culminated with a record high of 73 degrees on Jan. 30 — which shattered the daily record set in 1995 and a tied the monthly records set in 1961 and again in 1981.

It was over the summer that another wave of heat records were even harder for the Rogue Valley to miss, starting on the Fourth of July that culminated in six daily records for the month of July. None set a new overall record, however, with this year’s high of 112 degrees falling short of the record 115. Altogether, despite the individual records, Medford saw it’s third-warmest July — slotting ever-so-slightly behind records set in 2014 and 2021.

Local llama drama and a death greatly exaggerated

For evidence that a rhyming animal headline is made all the more charming when it alludes to a quote from the “Unsinkable Molly Brown,” look no further than “A death greatly exaggerated: Llama drama erupts on social media.”

Many locals’ quite premature mourning of Bob the I-5 Llama catapulted the animal to new heights of Facebook fame earlier this year, and phrases like “the rainbow bridge for llamas” captured Times readers’ hearts.