A search was due to resume Sunday for a 60-year-old hiker missing after two avalanches struck separate groups Saturday during heavy snowfall in the mountains near Snoqualmie Pass east of Seattle, a King County officials said.

In one incident, an avalanche struck three people on Granite Mountain near milepost 47 about five miles west of the pass along Interstate 90, leaving one missing and one injured, King County sheriff's Sgt. Katie Larson told NBC News. The slide carried the snowshoers about 1,000 feet, NBC station KING of Seattle reported. 

In the other incident, a slide hit a group of 12 snowshoers at an elevation of about 4,800 feet in an area north of the pass, KING reported.

Rescuers were bringing the group Saturday evening. A woman who was in the group told KING her survival instincts kicked in.

"Horrible experience, fear, avalanche came down like water ... water shape ... so we held onto trees and we survived," Kay Seo said.

KING reported that one man was buried up to his armpits and a woman with a dog was found after the dog led rescuers to her.

Snoqualmie Pass is along Interstate 90 about 50 miles east of Seattle. It is a popular skiing and snowshoeing destination in the winter and early spring.

The mountains in the region have been hit by spring snowfall in the past couple days, with the Alpental ski area at Snoqualmie Pass reporting about 11 inches of new snow. The Northwest Weather and Avalanche Center reported considerable avalanche danger above 4,000 feet and moderate danger below that level on Saturday, with the risk increasing in the afternoon.

The heavy snow and resulting vehicle accidents caused authorities to close westbound lanes of Interstate 90 over the pass Saturday night. 

Centralia Police Dept.

Police said they received cell phone video from an anonymous source of a child taking what appeared to be a bong hit while his mother -- identified as Rachelle L. Braaten, 24, of Centralia, Wash. -- held the pipe.
*Editor's note: This image has been pixelated to protect the identity of the child.

This is not the kind of higher education most parents support.

A Washington state mother is accused of letting her 22-month-old toddler smoke marijuana from a bong,  police said.

Police said they received cell phone video from an anonymous source of a child taking what appeared to be a bong hit while his mother -- identified as Rachelle L. Braaten, 24,  of Centralia, Wash. -- held the pipe.

And when police went to couple’s home, they found 30-40 marijuana plants as well as firearms.

The child’s father Tyler J. Lee, 25, was accused of unlawful possession of a firearm and manufacturing marijuana.

The woman is being accused of unlawful delivery of a controlled substance to a minor as well as manufacturing marijuana.

The boy and another child were taken into state custody after the arrests.

A Seattle TV station obtained the cell phone video from Centralia police and posted it online. The video appears to show a child dressed in camouflage shirt briefly putting his face to the top of a lit water pipe.

Lee was released on Monday pending charges, KOMO-TV reported. Braaten was booked into the Lewis County Jail and was still listed on the jail roster on Tuesday afternoon. Her bail was set at $20,000.

In November, Washington state voters approved Initiative 502 making it legal for anyone 21 or over to possess up to an ounce of marijuana, 16 ounces of “solid marijuana-infused product” (pot brownies and such) or 72 ounces of “marijuana-infused liquid.

However, it is still illegal to grow marijuana for recreational purposes in the state. The Washington Liquor Control Board was given until Dec. 1 to develop rules for implementing the law.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Prisoners working in a nearby park helped save three boys whose kayak overturned in a Washington state creek, fire officials said Thursday.

Three brothers -- ages 8, 10 and 16 -- were floating down Salmon Creek near Salmon Creek Regional Park Wednesday afternoon when their kayak overturned, Clark County Fire District 6 Chief Jerry Green told NBC News. The park is in Washington state just north of Portland, Ore.

Ten prison inmates from the Larch Corrections Center near Yacolt, Wash., were doing park maintenance when they heard screams for help and responded quickly, fire officials told The Columbian newspaper in Vancouver, Wash.

Inmate Nelson Pettis, 37, jumped into the strong current, floating downstream until he could grab the two younger boys and help them to a pile of floating debris, according to the newspaper.

"I don't think I was thinking at all," Pettis told The Columbian. "I was just really concentrating on getting them to safety."

Inmate Larry Bohn, 29, helped Pettis with the rescue: "They (the boys) were saying thank you repeatedly. They just seemed really scared," he told the newspaper.

The 16-year-old boy was able to swim to shore, Green told NBC News.

Inmate Jon Fowler, 28, waited for the rescue team to arrive and helped them inflate their rescue boat, The Columbian reported. Members of the Vancouver, Wash., Fire Department and Clark County Fire District 6 were part of the rescue team.

The water was "very cold" and estimated to be moving at 25 mph, Green said. The brothers were treated for mild hypothermia, but otherwise there were no other injuries, he said. Two of the inmates were also treated for hypothermia, Portland, Ore., NBC affiliate KGW reported.

Bohn and Pettis reportedly had taken off their shirts, wrapping them around the kids to keep them warm, The Columbian reported.

The boys' names were not released.

Green said he was "extremely impressed" with the prisoners' efforts and the fact that they jeopardized their safety.

"(They) stepped up and did what was the right thing to do," Green said.

"I don't think we're heroes by any means," inmate Fowler told The Columbian. "I think we just did what any good person would do."

Nancy Simmons, a spokesperson for the Larch Corrections Center, told NBC News the brothers want to thank the inmates who helped and a meeting with their family is in the works.

This correction facility houses inmates who are not there for violent crimes and who generally have four years or less left on their sentences, Simmons said.

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Police in Seattle are investigating how a large package of marijuana wound up being delivered to the stock room of a local Kmart store.

Police said the package -- 10 pounds of marijuana wrapped in garbage bags and encircled by packing peanuts and pages from a Korean newspaper soaked with cleaning fluid -- arrived at the store shortly after noon Monday.

Delivery information on the package shows it was originally to be shipped by UPS from Los Angeles to Philadelphia, police said, but it never made it to the City of Brotherly Love.

Instead, the return address was to a longstanding Kmart in the north end of Seattle.

Store employees called police, and the marijuana was placed into evidence.

“Today’s Blue Light Special: 10 Pounds of Weed,” quipped the Seattle PD’s blog headline announcing the marijuana’s seizure in an obvious joke on the chain's venerable in-store sales gimmick. A call to the Seattle Kmart's manager was not answered.

Though owning pot is legal in Washington state, that big of a stash wouldn’t appear to pass the legal sniff test.

Voter-approved Initiative 502 makes it legal for anyone 21 or over to possess up to only an ounce of marijuana, 16 ounces of “solid marijuana-infused product” (pot brownies, cookies and such) or 72 ounces of “marijuana-infused liquid.”

Washington’s Liquor Control Board is working on rules to implement the state’s new recreational marijuana law and faces a Dec. 1 deadline.

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Jessie Stensland / South Whidbey Record

Peggy Sue Thomas, a former beauty queen charged with first-degree murder in the 2003 killing of a 32-year-old man, listens to her attorney Craig Platt at a hearing last week in Island County Superior Court in Washington state.

Two days after Christmas 2003: A man walking his dog through the woods on Whidbey Island in Washington state spots a yellow Chevy sports utility vehicle, its door open, its driver with a bullet in the head.

The victim is Russel Douglas, 32, and when police search his cell phone records, according to court documents, they find that he has recently been in touch with Peggy Sue Thomas – a 6-foot-tall, single mother of two who was crowned Ms. Washington in 2000.

South Whidbey Record

Peggy Sue Thomas was crowned Ms. Washington state in 2000. She attended the national competition in Las Vegas that same year.

She won the evening gown division at the national competition, where she proclaimed, according to a profile in the Seattle Weekly, that the greatest ethical challenge facing women was “raising children with morals, even with all the violence, sex and drugs in the media.”

Years after she graced the national stage with that sobering message, prosecutors alleged that she lured Russel Douglas, the estranged husband of a longtime friend, to the woods under the pretense of giving him a Christmas gift. There, investigators claimed, her lover shot Douglas point-blank.

On Thursday, a week before her first-degree murder trial was scheduled to begin, Thomas, 47, pleaded guilty to first-degree rendering of criminal assistance with three additional years for the involvement of a gun – a crime that will likely result in a four-year sentence. That’s the maximum amount of time under the state’s sentencing guidelines for that crime.

Read the charging document (.pdf)

Thomas has, by all accounts, lived a storied life.

She was born on Whidbey Island in a busy home filled with stepsiblings and half siblings, including a brother who was later killed in an Alaska bar by a man he had beaten in an arm-wrestling contest, according to the Seattle Weekly. Her stepmother was murdered. A sister later hanged herself.

Thomas attended beauty school, did a stint in the Navy and married several men, including an Alaska businessman whose horse, Mine That Bird, won the Kentucky Derby in 2009. She drove a Lexus with a vanity plate that read, according to the Weekly: FIRYRED, presumably a nod to her auburn-colored hair.

Island County Detective Mark Plumberg wrote in a statement that when he called Thomas after finding Russel Douglas dead at the wheel, she told him that she was a limousine driver in Las Vegas.  

Plumberg said Thomas told him that she had been in touch with Douglas over the holidays – but only to give him a gift to pass along to his wife, Brenna Douglas. 

But then came telephone tips in 2004, including one from a Florida man who said a friend, James E. Huden, told him that he had killed a man on Whidbey Island and that he had not been able to find the shell casing, Det. Plumberg wrote in his statement. That fit with the crime scene, where the shell casing of a .380-caliber pistol was found, according to court documents.

The Florida man added that Huden was having an affair with a woman named Peggy, who lived in Las Vegas, and that the two had been on Whidbey Island over the holidays, court records say.

Meanwhile, a retired police officer in New Mexico turned in a .380-caliber pistol he believed had been used to kill Russel Douglas, according to court records. The retired officer knew Huden and said that he had picked up the gun before leaving for Washington state, and then dropped it off upon his return. The Washington State Patrol crime lab identified the gun as the one that discharged the bullet that killed Russel Douglas.  

The crime lab also detected "a latent fingerprint" belonging to Peggy Sue Thomas, court records say.

As police interviewed witnesses, Huden departed for Mexico, where he called himself Maestro Jim and taught guitar, the Seattle Weekly reported. While he was abroad, Island County prosecutors charged him with first-degree murder. 

The Seattle Weekly quoted Sgt. Michael Beech as saying on the television program “Washington’s Most Wanted” that investigators believed that Huden was “hired, a contract, to kill Russel Douglas.”

In 2011, Huden's wife, Jean Huden, told investigators that her husband told her about the killing. U.S. Marshals arrested Huden in Mexico in June 2011. He was found guilty of first-degree murder in July 2012 in Island County Superior Court and was sentenced to 80 years in prison.

Peggy Sue Thomas was arrested a month later in New Mexico near her houseboat, which court records say she had recently renamed “Off the Hook.”

Bail was set at $5 million.

Plumberg suggested a possible motive in court records: Thomas and Brenna Douglas had worked together at a hair salon, and Thomas owned the house in which the Douglas family had lived. The detective said one witness had told him that she had heard Russel Douglas had been abusive toward his wife and their children. The Seattle Weekly reported that Brenna Douglas had filed a restraining order against her husband, saying that he had punched her and threatened to kill her.

As for Thomas, her attorney Craig Platt told the Seattle Times Friday that the plea deal provided his client some relief. Thomas has maintained her innocence.

“She accepts the outcome, but for her it’s the lesser of two evils,” Platt said. 

Officials and a Native American tribe in Washington state are offering $13,750 for information leading to the conviction of whoever killed four bald eagles near a lake last week, according to local media.

Authorities tell The Seattle Times they suspect the bald eagles were shot from the trees and dropped into a Snohomish County lake, where their bodies were found floating. The incident occurred east of Granite Falls, the Herald newspaper of Everett reported.

"I've never seen anything like this in 11 years...it's egregious," Sgt. Jennifer Maurstad of the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, told NBC station KING of Seattle.

Marustad told The Seattle Times it appears the birds were shot with a small-caliber rifle.

Investigators say the black market for eagle parts can be lucrative, potentially fetching hundreds of dollars, the newspaper reported. Parts could be used in things like high-end artwork or cultural ceremonies, according to The Seattle Times.

"I don't think he (the killer) had any intention of profiting from them," Maurstad told The Seattle Times. "I think it was just a spur-of-the-moment opportunity."

Without a permit, killing a bald eagle -- America's national bird -- is a serious offense.

In the United States, the bald eagle and the golden eagle are protected under multiple federal laws, according to the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service. Per the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act, felony convictions can lead to a maximum fine of $250,000 or two years in prison. Civil penalties are also subject to thousands in fines and imprisonment. Bald eagles are also protected under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and the Lacey Act. The bald eagle was removed from the Endangered Species federal list in 2007.

The act is also a misdemeanor under Washington state law, according to The Seattle Times.

The Stillaguamish Tribe, a Native American group based in Arlington, Wash., has pledged $10,000 toward the reward fund.

"The Tribe is shocked and offended at the wanton wastage of wildlife and supports the efforts of state authorities to investigate and prosecute this case," the tribe said in a statement Friday.

Updated at 7:59 a.m. ET: NORTH BEND, Wash. -- Rescue crews on Sunday suspended their efforts to find a Florida skydiver outfitted in a wing suit, who disappeared after jumping from a helicopter Thursday afternoon.

Kurt Ruppert, 29, of Lake City, Fla., is a seasoned skydiver, according to a friend, and when he disappeared he was wearing a brown-and-green jumpsuit that has swaths of fabric beneath the armpits that allow the wearer to glide like a flying squirrel. 

About 145 volunteers over the weekend canvassed a nine-mile area near North Bend, Wash., that includes 4,200-foot Mount Si, the steep flanks of which are covered with trees. The peak is popular with hikers even though the last summit scramble can be treacherous. At the foot of the steep side of the mountain is the flat, sprawling Mountain Meadows Farm.  

Ruppert was skydiving with two friends, and they were taking turns jumping from the helicopter. The friends were waiting at a grassy landing area, but no one saw whether Ruppert's chute deployed. 

"The guys on the ground could not see where he jumped from their angle, and the pilot couldn't see when he went out the door because he was focused on flying," said King County Sheriff’s spokeswoman Cindi West.

Ruppert’s parachute was blue, West said, but she said she was told that wing-suit fliers don't deploy parachutes until they reach an altitude of 2,000 feet.

"The speed and height of the jump would enable him to travel a large distance in a short amount of time," West said.

As rescue teams searched, officials tracked his cell phone and flight pattern to better discern where he might have fallen. Nineteen agencies assisted in the rescue effort.

Authorities know the flight pattern of the aircraft, but a number of factors have made it difficult to find Ruppert.

"It's dangerous and difficult,” West said. “The footing is bad and there are lots of cliffs."

Ruppert isn’t dressed or equipped to stay out overnight, authorities said.

Ruppert has been skydiving seven or eight years and is good at handling a wing suit, said a friend, Art Shaffer, owner of Skydive Palatka in Palatka, Fla.

Shaffer jumped with Ruppert at midnight on New Year's Eve and said Ruppert left Tuesday to jump with friends in Washington.

Ruppert is single and once owned a landscaping business, said Shaffer, who is in contact with Ruppert's family and friends.

"We've got our fingers crossed," he said.

The search resumed Sunday morning at the Mount Si trailhead in North Bend, Wash.

This article includes reporting by The Associated Press and NBC News' Isolde Raftery.

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The images out of Washington state toward the end of 2012 — all-night parties celebrating legalized pot and same-sex marriage — sparked hope among liberal activists that the tide has turned on these two issues.

Even though national polls show more openness to pot and gay marriage nationwide, it raised the question — why Washington?

Oregon, the state’s blue neighbor to the south, has not successfully mounted campaigns to approve pot or same-sex marriage. California has had a messy relationship with both issues, and Idaho swings solidly right.

There are a number of unique factors that made Washington ripe for these liberal reforms, experts say.

"There’s a libertarian streak in Washington, and there are more atheists. Religion is part of this," University of Washington Professor John Findlay told NBC News. The state is one of the least religious, with only about half of Washingtonians telling the Gallup poll in 2008 that religion plays a part in their daily lives.

Beyond pot and same-sex marriage, Washington also allows physician-assisted suicide (as do Oregon and Montana) and was one of four states that decriminalized abortion before Roe v. Wade in 1971. To top off its liberal cred: A Democrat has been in the governor's office since 1980 — longer than any other state.

Cliff Despeaux / Reuters

Washingtonians light up near the Space Needle in Seattle after the law legalizing the recreational use of marijuana went into effect in the state.

But to describe Washington as a purely liberal state is to oversimplify its politics. Outside of the Puget Sound area, Washingtonians have more in common with Red State residents than they do coffee-craving Seattleites.

"Without Seattle, we’d be Idaho," says pollster H. Stuart Elway. Seattle-area voters accounted for one-third of the state total.

Washington has no income tax, and the possibility of implementing one is rarely mentioned, even during tough economic times; in 1998, voters nixed affirmative action; two years later, they approved $30 license plate tab renewals, a dramatic fee reduction that cut into city and state coffers, hiking up bus fares and leaving potholes unfilled.

What ties all these measures together, beyond a "live and let live" ethos, is the state's initiative and referendum process, which gives voters, not lawmakers, the power to set policy much more directly than in other states.

Findlay says the initiative process can be traced back to the state’s early days, when Washingtonians, buoyed by the progressive and populist movements, didn't trust their politicians. While politicians in most other states manage what goes on the ballot, Washingtonians can pay $5 to submit an initiative or referendum. Get 241,153 valid signatures (120,557 for a referendum) and that measure is inked on the ballot.

"There’s a legacy of distrust of the Legislature stemming from 100 years ago that has continued to shape politics for more than a century," Findlay said.

Although 24 states and the District of Columbia have an initiative process, it has been most used by the Western states, particularly California, Oregon and Washington, making them laboratories for special interest groups.

Take marijuana, for example, where outside money was a big part of the campaign. Drug Policy Action in New York fronted $1.6 million; Progressive Insurance CEO Peter Lewis, who supports drug reform and lives in Ohio, donated about $2 million.

Elaine Thompson / AP

King County Executive Dow Constantine, right, embraces Pete-e Petersen as her partner, Jane Abbott Lighty, watches after Constantine issued the the county's first marriage license to a same-sex couple. On the night that same-sex marriage became legal in Washington state, many of the state's issued marriage licenses beginning at midnight.

Given their success in Washington and Colorado, Drug Policy Action is looking to push similar campaigns in California and Oregon in 2014 or 2016. Both states have legalized medical marijuana and in California, medical pot has becoming a booming business since it was approved in 1996. A 2007 federal study estimated that Californians consume one million pounds of pot a year.

"We have these results in Colorado and Washington under our belt, so that sort of fertilizes the ground," Dale Gieringer, who heads the California office of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, told Reuters. 

Outside money also played a role in the battle over gay marriage, but so too did some Washington billionaires, including Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft, and Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, who collectively gave more than $3 million to the campaign to approve same-sex marriage.

"The populist and progressive movements are over, and the feelings are over, but there’s this tool," Findlay said. "A lot of us complain about those things, but it doesn't matter, because it’s going to shape politics in this state. This is the tool we have that most other states don’t have. It’s part of how we do things here. And it doesn't work exclusively for progressives or conservatives."

Other reasons floated for the state’s unique positions on issues: Unions have long had a stronghold in the state, as have female politicians -- the state was home to Dixie Lee Ray, the fiery former governor whose motto during her 1976 campaign was “Little lady takes on big boys.”

But, as Elway noted, Washington’s votes often come down to the Seattle area. Elsewhere on Election Day, conservative Washingtonians watch in dismay as their leads are turned upside down as results from the metropolitan area trickle in.

State Republican Party Chairman Kirby Wilbur told the Seattle Times that the votes speak for themselves.

"Washington has always been a socially liberal and economically conservative state," he said.

To be fair, Washington may not be so far ahead of the rest of the country on social issues such as pot and same-sex marriage, according to Mark Smith, who teaches political science at the University of Washington.

Smith noted that 53.7 percent of Washingtonians approved same-sex marriage. Polling figures show a similar, if slightly lower, level of support nationwide.

"We’re not that far ahead of the nation,” Smith said. "The whole nation is trending; we’re just further along than the rest of the country."

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Darrell Gulin / Corbis file

A flock of dunlin stand on a Washington state beach in 1990.

Nearly 100 shorebirds were killed when a vehicle was driven into a flock on a beach in southwest Washington state, NBC station KING of Seattle reported.

Wildlife officers and sheriff's deputies who were called to the scene Thursday afternoon found 92 dunlin dead on Long Beach. The Wildlife Center of the North Coast said the trauma was consistent with a collision with a motor vehicle, KING reported.

Seabirds and shorebirds are protected by law. Wildlife officers have shown that a vehicle must be traveling much faster than the posted 25-mph speed limit on the beach in order to hit these types of birds, KING said.

The dunlin is a type of sandpiper known for large flocks that exhibit swift, synchronized flights and can hit speeds up to 110 mph,  according to the Audubon Society website. 

A $500 reward was offered by Wildlife Center of the North Coast for information leading to the person who hit the birds. Information can be reported to Sgt. Dan Chadwick of the state Fish and Wildlife police at 360-581-3337, KING said. 

This article is based on reporting by Susan Wyatt of KING 5 News.

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