Area briefs

Former legislator wins Wichita mayoral primary

Wichita — Carlos Mayans, a Cuban refugee and former state legislator, emerged from a field of 15 mayoral candidates with 28 percent of the vote Tuesday in a hotly contested primary election that drew a record turnout.

Mayans was outspent by political newcomer Bill Warren, a theater owner, and trailed him in the pre-election polls. But he got 12,085 of the approximately 46,500 votes cast to 8,555, or 20 percent, for Warren.

The two men, both 54, will face each other in the April 1 general election. The winner will succeed seven-term Mayor Bob Knight, who was prohibited by law from running again.

Mayans spent five terms in the Kansas House as a Republican lawmaker.

KU First

Entrepreneurs pledge $60,000 for scholarships

Two Wichita Pizza Hut entrepreneurs have pledged $60,000 to Kansas University scholarships, officials announced Wednesday.

The gift from Eric “Ric” Knorr and his wife, Darlene Knorr, includes $25,000 to establish an unrestricted fund in their names, $25,000 for a medical school scholarship named for Darlene’s son, Monte Maska, and $10,000 that will be added to a scholarship the couple established in 1984 to honor his parents, both KU graduates.

The Knorrs’ gift counts toward the $500 million goal of KU First: Invest in Excellence.

Ric Knorr graduated from KU in 1964. He is president of K Bar M Pizza Co., which owns seven Pizza Hut franchises.

Darlene Knorr, a Fort Hays State University graduate, also owns and manages seven Pizza Huts.

Space shuttle tragedy

KU graduate searches for Columbia wreckage

Corsicana, Texas — A Lawrence woman is one of thousands of people working in conjunction with NASA searching for pieces from the space shuttle Columbia.

Rachel Treanor, 27, a Kansas University graduate, was one of eight employees with Tetratech EMI, a Lenexa environmental consulting firm, sent to help with the search. The group arrived Saturday and will stay one more week, she said.

“It’s been exciting,” Treanor said in a telephone interview Wednesday. “It’s also been a lot of hard work. We’ve been putting in 14 and 16 hours a day.”

Treanor said NASA officials had instructed her and others not to talk specifically about what they were doing or where searching was being conducted.

Treanor graduated from KU in 1998 with a bachelor’s degree in environmental science.