Deputies in Spokane Valley are investigating the discovery of a body at the Oxford Suites Wednesday morning.

A 46-year-old woman was found dead on the fifth floor of the hotel around 9 a.m. Wednesday.

While authorities are investigating there is nothing suspicious about the nature of her death.

For years now it's been up to a Fairchild aircrew to let everyone know the Armed Forces Torchlight Parade was starting. But with the sequestration in effect, that role will fall to a group of local Felts Field pilots.

In the past, a carefully timed KC-135 tanker flyover right down Sprague Avenue always got the first floats moving at the parade. This year the sequestration has forced Fairchild Air Force Base to cut a lot out of its budget. No float in the parade that honors its own airmen. No tanker flyover.

That's where Larry Tobin comes in.

"It's important for the parade and veterans to do this parade kickoff," Tobin said.

At exactly 7:45 p.m. Saturday night, Tobin and three other pilots will take to the skies in their Stearman biplanes and buzz the parade route, the squadron of trainers first doing a flyby and on their second pass execute a missing man formation in honor of the fallen Fairchild aircrew killed in a KC-135 crash in Kyrgyzstan earlier this month.

In 2008, three-year-old Kyra Wine became the victim of the worst case of child abuse in Benewah County history, her injuries so severe doctor's amputated her feet. Now, five years later, she's an active, happy eight-year-old girl.

The abuse Kyra and her sister Amanda endured is heartbreaking and unimaginable but now they are thriving.

"Every birthday, yeah, every birthday is special," Kyra's grandma, Deanna Wine said.

For her eighth birthday, Kyra didn't ask for anything special.

"I just let them get whatever they want," Kyra said.

Making the gifts on her grandma's kitchen table an even bigger surprise; a birthday is always a big deal when you're a kid, but when you're Kyra, each candle carries more than a wish. They're a symbol of survival, a light of hope.

"When this all happened with Kyra the doctors said that basically she had hours," Deanna said. "If she hadn't been taken to the hospital she had just hours to live."

On June 17, 2008 Benewah County Sheriff's deputies responded to a home for a welfare check on Kyra, then three-years-old, and her six-year-old sister Amanda. They couldn't have found them any sooner.