Information about the Wapato Honda is coming to light, sort of like the lake in which it is submerged.

First off, the car is a 1997 Honda Civic, silver, with a sun roof. And it was stolen.

Sgt. Ed Troyer of Pierce County Sheriff’s Department researched the Oregon license plate, ZUM 409, and came up with a family in Ashland.
Their daughter came to Tacoma to study business at University of Puget Sound. While she was still a freshman, someone made off with her car.

I called her mom in Ashland, and, smart woman, she wanted to check out our Web site and talk to her husband and daughter before she went on the record. If they decide to be interviewed about the unhappy celebrity of their aquatic vehicle, you’ll be the first to know.

Meanwhile, that car is still in the lake, and it does have to come out. Wapato Lake has enough problems without adding a sedan’s worth of brake fluid, anti freeze, oil and gas.

The Pierce County Sheriff’s Department has offered to send its dive team down to assess the job, and Metro Parks has accepted.

Troyer said the team will likely arrive at the beach near the bath house around 7 a.m. Friday. Don’t expect the car to come out, but you are welcome to watch the divers in action.

The folks on McKinley Hill are hosting an arts festival and street fair Saturday.

It’ll take place along six blocks of McKinley Avenue from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. There will be games, arts and crafts, food, a pet parade and more. The Tacoma Christian Center will also give away school supplies to more than 1,000 kids.

David Doxtater, the executive director for Tall Ships Tacoma 2008, said organizers are a few weeks away from releasing financial and attendance figures from last month’s festival.

Organizers are still in the process of crunching revenue numbers – including the numbers of boarding passes and sailing excursions – and reconciling them against the expenses.

“We should have some more information pretty quickly,” he said. “We’re just doing our normal accounting.”

He said he didn’t know if early indications point to a profit or deficit for the festival. But he said early estimates put the attendance figure at about 300,000 people. That number is 100,000 lower than the original estimate, but he said this figure doesn’t include the crowds on Ruston Way for the Parade of Sail.

But even the attendance figure should firm up once they can compare it to financial data, Doxtater said.

“We’ve got to wait for our financials,” he said. “It’s all about waiting for that now.”

More work on our potholes package today. But we'll let you know if any other cars decide to find themselves in any other overly polluted lakes.