Heritage Hall volunteer Loita Hawkinson has shared Kirkland’s history more than 20 years.

Loita Hawkinson loves a good mystery. As a volunteer with the Kirkland Heritage Society, it comes with the territory.

For more than 20 years, when she’s not working at the Tree House Consignment Store in Redmond, Hawkinson spends her spare time researching Kirkland’s past, conducting oral histories and then heading out into the community and sharing the results.

Meeting with the self-styled “Old Timers” at their monthly breakfast meeting at Georges Restaurant recently, Hawkinson held up a laminated map of Houghton. The amateur historian asked if they could remember a notable resident who once owned the Klenert Ranch and had a road, now known as 68th Street, named after him. Old Timers Dick Shinstrom, Arnie Berkey and Russ McClintock remembered a few details, but most shook their heads.

“One of his relatives used to work at J.C. Penney’s as a clerk,” one of them volunteered.

According to Hawkinson’s findings, the resident was John Cort, a Seattle Gold Rush era theatre impresario who raised his family at homestead – which included a “Film Factory” on 68th Street for more than 30 years.

Hawkinson sifted through records and old newspaper clippings for the mysterious Mr. Cort, tipped off to his Houghton homestead by two local sisters remembering bicycle rides down “Cort Road”. He’s best remembered not for his empire of 117 theatres across the Pacific Northwest and Midwest and Broadway shows in New York City, but for being the world’s first to illuminate a public theater with electric lights, in Seattle.

Like a detective interviewing witnesses, Hawkinson was ready with a pad and pen taking notes, trying to solve the mystery. But the people she interviews aren’t bystanders in a crime, they’re witnesses to the town’s history.

“If any of you want the impact of your life to carry on, write it down in your own words,” she said. “Don’t leave it to people like me to write.”

Hailing originally from Escanaba, Mich., Hawkinson was raised in Billings, Mont. where she went to high school and college. She moved to Seattle first in 1969 and then Kirkland in 1976.

“Kirkland was a far gentler place, then” she said.

Loita Hawkinson, 61, youthful put away dreams of becoming an FBI agent long ago, but the knack for solving a good mystery and “setting the record straight” is something she’s carried with her all her life.

“She does virtually everything,” said Kirkland Heritage Society president Lynette Weber, laughing. And that includes teaching local youngsters, too.

Local Cub Scouts from Troop 567, Den 6 paid a Feb. 4 visit to the offices of Kirkland Heritage Society in Heritage Hall. The Kirkland Heritage Society celebrated “Founders Week”, Feb. 15-21, in honor of city-founder Peter Kirk’s birthday on Feb. 15. The pack of youngsters, led by Den Leaders Jeff Masiwchuk and John Schill, were interested in learning their local history and earn a scouting badge along the way. Scouting in Kirkland has a long history, as Heritage Hall archivist Loita Hawkinson explained. She said the first cub scout pack in the state of Washington got their start in Kirkland by local resident Mae Belle Esty, the first female den leader in America.

“It’s neat for the kids to see the history of where they live,” said Kathy Fries, a mother to one of the cub scouts.