Police arrested two men from Oakland in connection with recent bank robberies in Lafayette and Orinda. Wilber Onyeakachi, 24, and David Nwaonumah, 30, were arrested after a bank teller positively identified Onyeakachi as the robber. Nwaonumah was identified as the getaway driver.

The most recent robbery occurred at 11:20 Wednesday morning at the Citibank on Orinda Way in Orinda.  The robber, allegedly Onyeakachi, entered the bank and handed the teller a note demanding money. After taking around $3,400, the robber fled the scene in a beige Oldsmobile.

When police found the two men in Oakland, they were sitting in the beige Oldsmobile reported as the getaway car.

The other similar robbery was committed at the Wells Fargo Bank in Lafayette on Nov. 9.

The Lafayette Senior Recreation Center will be having a special “Anniversary Celebration and Holiday Luncheon” on Thursday, Dec. 10. The event will start at noon at Zio Fraedo’s Restaurant, located at 611 Gregory Lane in Pleasant Hill.

To purchase a ticket to the event, send a $20 check made out to “Lafayette Senior Recreation Center” to PO Box 163, Lafayette, CA 94549.

The Lafayette Senior Recreation Center began in 1950 as a way of offering different recreational activities to seniors in the area. The center offers events including games, exercise and trips. The group typically meets on the second and fourth Thursdays of each month at the Methodist Church on Moraga Road.

The Saint Mary’s men’s basketball team is looking to follow up on a strong 2008-09 season. So far, so good. The Gaels have played two games so far this season, winning both impressively at home in McKeon Pavillion.

On Friday, Nov. 13, the Gaels beat New Mexico State, 100-68. They followed that up with an 80-58 victory over San Diego State. Their next game is Friday night when they host Vanderbilt at 8:30 p.m.

The Saint Mary’s women’s basketball team is also off to a strong start. The Lady Gaels won their first two games against Chico State, 78-55, and Idaho State, 76-69.

Their best game so far may have been their third game. Despite losing the game, 68-65, the Lady Gaels played tough and nearly pulled off the upset against a strong Cal team in Berkeley.

The Lady Gaels host Nevada on Friday at 5:30 p.m.

A resident reported around midnight Monday that two women stole a package that had been left on a porch. Police immediately began looking for the suspects in the area near Garden and Laurel lanes.

Police spotted the green Mitsubishi SUV that the resident had reported seeing the women get into. When police arrived, one woman was at the front door of a home claiming she needed to make a phone call.

Police were eventually forced to use pepper spray on one of the women and later found the other hiding in the area.

Police found many items in the vehicle the women were driving that police believe were stolen. The women were taken to the Contra Costa County jail in Martinez where they were booked.

When the North Coast Section announced they would be expanding the playoff brackets, they really meant it.

Despite the fact that not one of the three Lamorinda high school football teams had a winning record, all three find themselves in the playoffs.

Acalanes, who finished 5-5, earned the seventh seed and a first-round home playoff game Friday night at 7:00 p.m. against an Analy team that finished 6-4 on the season.

Campolindo, who also finished 5-5, earned the ninth seed and will travel all the way up to Fortuna to play a 7-3 Fortuna High School team on Saturday night at 7:00 p.m.

Despite a losing record at 4-6, Miramonte earned the twelfth seed and will play at the fifth seed, Healdsburg High School, Friday night at 7:00 p.m. Healdsburg finished the regular season at 6-4.

Despite losing to Acalanes in DFAL play and handing the Dons the DFAL title, Miramonte’s boys water polo team went into Saturday’s NCS final confident they could pull out the win. It was also the first time since 2004 that the Matadors weren’t the number one seed in the playoffs. The Matadors squeezed by the Dons, 6-5, to earn their fifth consecutive NCS title in water polo. It is the eleventh time the Miramonte boys have won the NCS water polo crown since 1994.

The Campolindo girls found themselves in the final against a favored Monte Vista team. Monte Vista jumped out to a 4-0 halftime lead that the Cougars couldn’t return from. The Cougars fell to Monte Vista by a final score of 8-5.

Miramonte went into their game with DFAL leader Alhambra knowing they needed the upset to get into the NCS playoffs. The Matadors fought hard and found themselves tied 27-27 with under six minutes left, but Alhambra scored two touchdowns in the final six minutes to win the game. Miramonte finishes the season with an overall record of 4-6 and will miss out on the NCS playoffs.

Campolindo went into their game against Las Lomas looking to improve their seed in the playoffs. Las Lomas needed a win to get into the playoffs and came out strong, taking a 42-7 lead over the Cougars in the second quarter. Las Lomas won the game by a final score of 63-21. Campolindo finishes the regular season with a 3-3 DFAL record and a 5-5 record overall.

Acalanes finished their regular season last week in a 38-27 loss to Campolindo. The Dons finished 4-2 in DFAL play and 5-5 overall.

The Lafayette-Orinda Presbyterian Church will be the location of the Contra Costa Wind Symphony’s “Wind Symphony Favorites” concert on Sunday, Nov. 15. The concert is scheduled to begin at 7:30 p.m.

At the concert, the Contra Costa Wind Symphony will play some of their personal favorite pieces as well as some other well-known pieces. The Symphony will play “Gandalf: The Wizard” from The Lord of the Rings and the score from the film Dances with Wolves

Tickets for the concert will cost $10 and will be sold at the door.

The Lafayette-Orinda Presbyterian Church is located at 49 Knox Drive in Lafayette.

The Moraga-Orinda Fire District Board of Directors will soon be looking for a new member. Pete Wilson, president of the board, has submitted his resignation, effective Dec. 16, a district official said.

Wilson’s wife told me this afternoon that he will be stepping down for health reasons.

While the board vice president, currently Frank Sperling, would typically take over if the president steps down, that won’t be necessary in this case because the board will elect a new president and vice president for 2010 at their Dec. 16 meeting, as they typically do at the last meeting of the year.

The board will discuss the vacancy at their meeting Wednesday.

Wilson, an Orinda resident, was elected to the board in 1997 and has served as president in 2005 and again this year. He was appointed to the old Orinda Fire District board and was part of the group that wrote the application to LAFCO to merge the Moraga and Orinda Fire Districts.

You can read my take on the new Lafayette library here. But if you want City Manager Steven Falk’s take, look no further than the sole item in his Friday summary, where he not-so-succinctlydeftly sums up the long process to get the library built:

After twenty years of fundraising, fifteen years of planning, and the study of thirteen different properties; after choosing the most central site in Lafayette, with half of the people living north and half south, half east and half west, with two schools just blocks away; after designing and constructing with the great Art Miller and Terry Murphy the most beautiful stone, wood, and glass Veterans Memorial Building in California; after more than 700 people dropped by on a rainy day to check out the architecture competition and vote for their favorite library design; after Roger Falcone and Bob Fisher dreamed up the Glenn Seaborg Learning Consortium and then went out and convinced twelve of the Bay Area’s top cultural institutions that this was an idea worth supporting; after Ann Merideth fired two different grant writers and locked herself in her office for several months to write the State grant application; after a hair raising day in Sacramento with presentations by Richard Whitmore, Roger Falcone, Gloria Duffy from the Commonwealth Club, and Elizabeth Stage from the Lawrence Hall of Science, where the Library Bond Board deliberated until late in the afternoon, never once mentioning the Lafayette grant application; after Assemblywoman Lois Wolk finally spoke up and said, “What about Lafayette? Wasn’t that the most innovative application we received?”; after Anne Grodin, on the drive home somewhere around Davis after winning the $11.9M State grant, said on a cell phone to a reporter, “We’re not driving, we’re FLYING home!”; after Wade Killefer and Barbara Flammang presented most elegant granite and teak concept to the Design Review Commission (and finally delivered the construction drawings); after the low bid was awarded to Lafayette’s own Jerry Overaa and Company; after Jerry said to the City Manager, “You couldn’t have designed a more complicated and difficult project to build”; after Gwenn Lennox and Kathy Merchant took over the fundraising and friendraising efforts, marshalling the forces of a thousand volunteers and treating the community to a dozen celebrity studded events; after the Friends of the Lafayette Library made the first major gift of $1M; after the Cronks and the Mulvaneys and the Lesher Foundation, and so many others made lead gifts that led the way toward a $14M fundraising effort; after Tony Coe and his amazing staff and project management crew kept pushing and prodding, checking and rechecking, and fixing problems on the fly; after Mayor Don Tatzin devoted a year of his life to help with the project, work with the tenants, and develop a sustainable financial plan for the building; after Linda Peterson suggested that we hire the Oakland Museum of California to manage the selection and manufacture of public art for the building; after the dimensions had to be recalculated, after the Community Hall floor buckled, after the first granite arrived with pink splotches and the new stuff had to be harvested and shipped from India; after Anne Cain and Susan Weaver and their hardworking librarian crews moved more than 50,000 books into the new building; after Rhonda Andronico and Rene Rogers planned what some people are saying was the best party they have ever been to; after tomorrow morning at 10AM, after Brian Goggin unveils his “Speechless” sculpture, the Lafayette Library and Learning Center will be open.