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 • With her arms and legs crossed, Lois Caldwell sits quietly in the courtroom gallery, listening attentively to attorneys question witnesses in a jury trial.

Caldwell, an Adelanto resident, has become a fixture at the Victorville courthouse since she started watching trials almost every weekday for the past five months. The 71-year-old retiree said she had recovered from breast cancer a year ago and was looking for a reason to get out of her house.

After her son told her courts might be interesting, she sat in on a few murder trials — and soon enough, she got addicted.

“When I had to stay home, I had no energy from the cancer treatment,” she said. “Now I get up in the morning and I have something to do. To me, that’s very therapeutic.”

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Kevin Hanley and Michael Kearns woke to the sounds of early morning birds singing and waves washing ashore. They could hear bicyclists and joggers passing by their tent.

As they stepped outside, they saw the vast Pacific Ocean contrasting with the multi-colored sky as the sun rose. The scenery itself made their journey worthwhile as they prepared for another long day of skateboarding.

Hanley and Kearns, both Granite Hills High School grads, skated 130 miles from Norwalk to San Diego last week, spending four nights and five days on the Southern California coast just because they can.

“We’re the kind of guys that like to challenge ourselves and push our bodies to the limit,” Hanley said. “You wake up with the sun in the morning next to the beach and then you skate with your best friend. Doesn’t that sound fun?”

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HESPERIA • The vast desert before Ron Clabo’s eyes reminded him of home, with rocky hills and sporadic shrubs adding a little color to the otherwise brown scenery.

But the two worlds couldn’t be farther apart.

More than 7,500 miles away from his Hesperia home and his wife, Clabo spent 10 months in Iraq as an intelligence analyst for a joint U.S. military unit, hunting down enemy militants.

The Navy reservist left his job as a history teacher at Sitting Bull Middle School in January and came back to the United States the day before Thanksgiving. It was his first active duty since he signed up for the Reserve in 2003.

Clabo expects to share the valuable lessons he learned in the Middle East when he goes back to teaching on Jan. 24 at Apple Valley High School.

“I just thought everything we have is because of this country, and I needed to give something back as well,” Clabo said. “Coming back now, I appreciate the U.S. even more. The fact that we have electricity every day. We have air conditioning.”

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It seems like everything can be done on your cell phone these days — from checking e-mails and surfing the Internet to finding nearby restaurants and unlocking your car.

Users of smartphones, such as Apple’s popular iPhone, download tens and hundreds of applications to make their life more convenient. But only a few will think about creating their own.

Shawn Irvin did just that — and with ease.

The 20-year-old computer information systems major from Apple Valley has recently developed an iPhone app that provides news and information about California State Polytechnic University Pomona, where he attends college. Irvin said he believes that his app, Cal Poly Pomona Central, is the first of its kind among California State University system schools.

“I had been working on iPhone apps for my job and I just wanted to get more experience,” Irvin said. “I basically made that for myself. If I need it, I’m sure there are a lot of people who need it on campus.”

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APPLE VALLEY • Hirokazu Kanazawa reminds you of Mr. Miyagi, the fictional karate master in the 1984 movie “Karate Kid.”

As masters of the traditional Japanese martial art, they both teach young students about life, spreading words full of humor and wisdom.

A big difference? Mr. Miyagi told his apprentice, Daniel LaRusso, that the belt he has is canvas from JCPenney. But Kanazawa holds a 10th degree black belt, which only two out of two million Shotokan Karate members from more than 100 countries do.

Kanazawa, who turned 79 years old last month, traveled across the Pacific to visit an Apple Valley karate gym Thursday, giving lessons to more than 70 local students. American karate masters from around the country gathered at James Woody Community Center to greet him.

“He’s basically a living legend,” said Paul Walker, the chief instructor at Seishin Shotokan Karate in Apple Valley, who studied under Kanazawa. “Everywhere in the world, he’s big. He has a huge following.”

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BIG BEAR LAKE • Jordan Romero blushed with a smile on his face as he entered a Big Bear Middle School gym where nearly 400 students chanted his name to greet him.

The lanky 13-year-old dressed in a T-shirt and shorts, wearing his baseball cap backwards, looked just like any other teenager.

But Romero accomplished something no other kid his age has ever done: He reached the summit of Mount Everest on May 22, becoming the youngest person to climb the tallest mountain in the world.

The Big Bear community celebrated the return of its homegrown hero Wednesday, holding a surprise school assembly and welcome back fair at the Big Bear Middle School, where Romero’s an eighth-grade student.

“It takes so much preparation and you really got to put so much hard work into it,” Romero said about his Mount Everest hike in a press conference on top of Snow Summit. “It does get serious up there. Our motto for the whole trip was no mistakes. ... Although I don’t recommend it to other young kids, I do encourage them to find their own Everest and work hard toward their goals that they set to do and to live there dreams and go for it.”

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