Alex Breckenridge

Maybe Adrian Gonzalez thought the Padres would never get around to trading him. According to real estate records, just before the team finally did send their all-star first baseman packing to Boston, Gonzalez and his wife, Betsy, bought an 11,000-square-foot, seven-bedroom, 10-bath home on La Jolla’s Muirlands Vista Way. Cost: $7.2 million That’s a lot of house for the off-season. Or maybe he hopes to pick up some spare change operating a small hotel?

Case closed: When SDPD officer Emery Campbell was killed in the line of duty, he left behind two badges – No. 47 and No. 48. One of the badges, police were sure, belonged to Campbell. But which one? Some good, modern lab work solved that mystery. And No. 48 has finally taken its rightful place in a display of badges at the San Diego Police Department Museum. The lab found a trace of blood on badge 48 – nearly a century after Campbell last wore it – when he was gunned down in a shootout on Aug. 27, 1913.

Personal foul: The death last week of football great and Monday Night Football color man Don Meredith took San Diego radio veteran Jack Woods back to the early ’90s and a story-swapping session with Frank Gifford. Gifford, who’d once shared a broadcast booth with Meredith, had recently married a much-younger Kathie Lee. When, three years later, she announced she was expecting, Gifford, by then 60, phoned his old buddy Meredith to share the news. Meredith was silent for a moment, and then said, “Frank, I’ll find the son of a bitch and kill him.” A couple of years later, Kathie Lee was expecting again, and Gifford, 63, again called Meredith. “Don,” he said, “I want you to be the first to know, Kathie Lee is pregnant again.” Meredith was silent for a moment, and then said, “Frank, I’m so sorry. I must have killed the wrong son of a bitch.”

San Diego seen: Seth Combs, a local writer/blogger who quit CityBeat last summer, is launching a web ’zine called GFYSanDiego.com. (The initials should give a hint to its attitude.) Although not all contributors are lined up, Combs says one intriguing potential has made a soft commitment: a Nevada prostitute who reportedly hails from San Diego, and blogs under the pseudonym Brothel Babe . . . The 50 elaborately decorated gingerbread houses in the Manchester Grand Hyatt’s Toys for Tots Village are more than a labor of love. Created by students from the Monarch School, Barrio Logan’s Perkins Elementary and Southeastern San Diego’s Kimbrough Elementary – the houses are designed to draw votes from visitors. A $1,500 donation from Hyatt will go to the Make-A-Wish Foundation in the name of the winning entry’s school. The winner will be announced Jan. 17 at a party for the students and their families.

This little piggy: Margaret Jassoy, one of the many admirers of Father Joe Carroll, was saddened to learn he’d lost a toe in his long battle with diabetes. Jassoy says a friend of her family lost a toe in a waterskiing accident. And, like Father Joe, he kept his sense of humor. Next to where the toe had been, he tattooed: “Went to market

Summit County saw a decline in all real estate activity in November, including sales, refinances, foreclosure sales and the initiation of new foreclosure cases. The decline is typical of the season. “It’s the time of year when people are occupied with the holidays,” Register of Deeds John R. Buckley Jr. said. “Interest rates remain very attractive and we are still seeing a large number of refinances, but we see volume drop across the board every year at this time. It is as predictable as the increase in volume we anticipate each spring.”

Summit County recorded 455 deeds in November, down from 527 in October. The market nevertheless remains statistically stronger than it was in 2009. With 6,849 sales recorded in the first 11 months of the year, compared to 6,494 sales recorded during the same period in 2009, Summit County has seen a 5 percent increase in its volume of sales. Values also remain 5 percent higher than last year. The average 2010 sale price climbed to $307,739 in November, up from $294,478 at the same point in 2009. Finally, with $2.1 billion in sales through the first eleven months of the year, the total value of Summit County sales is up 10 percent over last year’s total for the same period.

The refinance market has benefited significantly from low interest rates over the last several months. Summit County recorded 2,660 mortgages in November, down slightly from 2,690 in October. But that monthly volume remains considerably stronger than what

saw this time last year. The 2,660 mortgages recorded last month, for example, represented a 42 percent increase over the 1,877 mortgages recorded during the same month in 2009.

Refinances were down sharply during the first half of 2010, with a 34 percent decline in volume through July. That figure has improved steadily each month since, with 21,505 mortgages recorded through November. With 24,294 mortgages recorded during the same period in 2009, the decline in volume has been cut by two-thirds, to 11 percent.

activity slowed significantly in November. The 42 foreclosure deeds processed in Summitt County in November are the fewest recorded in a single month since February of 2007. A significant, while less dramatic decline was also seen in the number of notices initiating new foreclosure proceedings in November. The 105 notices recorded represented the smallest volume of notices placed on record in a single month since March of 2009. “People watching the market are understandably encouraged to see a decline in foreclosure figures,” Buckley said. “But the problem here is that it is not at all clear why these numbers fell so dramatically last month. The question remains whether we are seeing a significant volume of foreclosures being avoided or whether action is merely being delayed

Real-estate agent Bill Bernier hit a client with a lock box during an argument and violated a restraining order issued against him after he threatened St. Paul inspections employees. But other than a seven-month suspension, Bernier kept his state real estate license and stayed in the business for another five years.

Bernier's license was revoked in April after a pattern of troubles that culminated in his failure to provide documents to

buyers and the Minnesota Department of Commerce.

Criminal convictions do not automatically cost real-estate professionals their licenses. State law dictates that licensed real estate agents and brokers must report to the Commerce Department if they are convicted of any felony or a gross misdemeanor that involves fraud, misrepresentation, conversion of funds or a similar violation. They are required to disclose any criminal convictions, other than traffic violations, when they apply for a license.

Nicole Garrison-Sprenger, spokeswoman for the Commerce Department, said she could not discuss why Bernier's license wasn't revoked earlier.

"It is also important to note that there is nothing in the law that dictates which scenarios result in the department denying a license and which do not," she said in a statement.

Garrison-Sprenger said licensees also have to provide a written explanation of why they got in trouble, and the department "will determine the appropriateness of allowing the licensee to maintain the license."

Bernier, whose real estate business in South St. Paul had focused on foreclosed properties, said he isn't happy that he lost his license, but he's moving on. He said his main business now is as a landlord.

He denied being the aggressor in any of his confrontations, but admitted that he didn't get all his paperwork right. "None of us are angels," he said.

Bernier didn't try to fight the revocation because once the commerce department decides something, "there's no beating them," he said.

History of problems

In December 2003, three St. Paul employees in the city's licensing and inspections office reported that they felt threatened by Bernier. Bernier told one employee, "you better tell your people to watch out because someone might kill one of them," according to the city's petition for a restraining order. He asked another employee if she remembered Don Juenemann, a housing code inspector who was murdered while on the job in 1997, and said she shouldn't be surprised if the same thing happened to other inspectors.

Bernier told a police investigator that someone would kill another inspector, but "it won't be him because he has too much to lose," the petition said. In an interview, Bernier admitted that he made the comments, but said he was making an "observation," not a threat.

The assault happened at the end of 2004, when one of Bernier's clients fired him. Bernier went to the man's house to retrieve a lock box and the two began arguing. The criminal complaint states that Bernier repeatedly hit the client with the lock box, leaving visible injuries. Bernier was convicted of gross misdemeanor fifth-degree assault.

Last week, Bernier said the client attacked him first and the lock box "probably did hit him" because Bernier was holding it in his hand at the time.

In 2003 and 2004, the commerce department received three additional complaints about Bernier, including one from the Minnesota Association of Realtors. In 2005, an administrative law judge recommended the department take disciplinary action.

Bernier "has acted in an increasingly aggressive manner in dealing with the frustrations inherent in the job of a real estate broker," Judge Kathleen Sheehy wrote in 2005. "The Department has established that [Bernier's] threatening statements to [St. Paul] personnel and recent use of physical aggression toward a client demonstrate that, at least at the present time, he is not qualified to act as a real estate broker."

His license was suspended from November 2005 until May 2006.

In June 2008 and March 2009, Bernier pleaded guilty to separate misdemeanors for failing to provide truth-in-sale-of-housing reports to home buyers. In June 2009, Bernier began working with Oxford Dixon to help him sell his St. Paul house to a neighbor before it went into foreclosure.

Bernier had Dixon sign blank purchase and listing agreements and when Dixon finally saw the finished paperwork, the price was $10,000 less than what he and his neighbor had agreed on, according to the state's charges. Dixon fired Bernier, and Bernier sued him in conciliation court and lost.

Dixon said he wishes he had known about Bernier's history before he hired him