ADELANTO • Hidden Valley Ranch, Diet Pepsi or Tylenol. If you consume any of these popular products, there’s a good chance they were made using mixers from a factory in Adelanto.

Scott Turbon Mixer Inc., founded by Bill and Linda Scott 31 years ago, designs and builds stainless steel mixers for many of the largest food, pharmaceutical, cosmetic and chemical processing facilities. It ships products not just in the United States but to about 20 other countries around the world.

With 40 or so employees, the company has successfully competed against much bigger manufacturers such as SPX, a Fortune 500 company.

How?

Bill Scott knows where to fight. The company goes after a niche market, sometimes even creating one.

“We want to be known as the stainless steel specialist, so when companies call for stainless steel mixing equipment they will call us first,” Scott said.

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VICTORVILLE • While the national and local economies are on the road to recovery, strengthening the housing market and driving down unemployment are crucial for economic growth, experts said at an annual conference Thursday.

John Husing, president of Economics & Politics Inc., one of the guest speakers at the 11th Annual High Desert Leaders Economic Summit, said the U.S. economy is in the process of repair.

The recession may have ended in 2009, he said, but there’s work to be done to propel the economy forward.

“We stopped digging the hole without essentially trying to build the ladder,” Husing said before an audience of hundreds at Victor Valley College’s Performing Arts Center.

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How much money people make can be an intriguing topic. But it’s one that is rarely discussed in polite company.

Doing more with less is a common mantra not only in the workplace but also when it comes to wages.

Charles Brown Jr. gets up at 4:30 every weekday morning and commutes two hours from Victorville to Santa Clarita where he works as a maintenance mechanic for the U.S. Postal Service. His paycheck: about $3,400 a month, or $41,000 a year.

He works until 4 p.m. fixing machines in a giant warehouse. He has a wife who also works and five boys. Even with the double income, rising gas prices are taking a bigger bite out of his pay.

“We have enough to get by, but I’d like to have cushion just in case,” Brown said. “With gas and grocery prices going up, we’d like to have savings for emergency. If my car breaks down, I have no way to get to work.”

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VICTORVILLE • Among one of the most affordable housing markets in Southern California, the Victor Valley attracts firsttime home buyers from all over the state.

But at the same time, the area has become an attraction for investors looking to take advantage of the housing market collapse. Some of those investors are pushing the limits of ethical investment practices.

Along with five other California ZIP codes, the 92394 area has the fifth-highest mortgage fraud risk in the nation, according to the 2010 thirdquarter mortgage-fraud risk report compiled by Interthinx Inc. The ZIP code covers the northwest corner of Victorville and neighboring Adelanto, north of Mojave Drive and west of Interstate 15.

The area’s risk index of 412 indicates it had nearly three times as many mortgage fraud incidents as the national average (144) during the third quarter. Other High Desert cities also scored high on the risk index: Hesperia (316), Oak Hills (303), Apple Valley (288), Adelanto (270) and Phelan (256).

"Mortgage fraud always flourishes when there’s instability in the housing market with borrowers who are in trouble,” said Ann Fulmer, vice president of business relations at Interthinx. “If you look at the overall report, California is always No. 1, 2 or 3. What happened in the Mojave (Desert) is the same thing that’s happened throughout the Inland Empire.”

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VICTORVILLE • Despite temperatures in the low 20s, hundreds of customers lined up for door busters early Friday morning at local discount stores armed with jackets and blankets.

The tough economy definitely forced some to stay up all night after Thanksgiving dinner and get out of the comfort of the house to pinch every penny possible on Black Friday.

“I have more time than money,” said Jimmy Stacey, walking out of Kohl’s in Victorville at 3:30 a.m. with a cart full of merchandise.

The Victorville resident and his wife waited 20 minutes to get to the cashier. They scurried to their car to get to a 4 a.m. door buster at Target.

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