A life-threatening experience motiviated new mayor from cities towards Alaska

Mayor Cindi Lagoudakis spent her adolescent years in a city, gripped in its pace, from New York to Southern California she lived, without a hint of Petersburg in her future.

Until one night in college at 23 she was walking home from studying, when she turned around to see two men running toward her in a frenzy, one holding a knife and the other yelling for her money.

Lagoudakis was not aware of the abduction that was about to happen, but it would upend any trust she had for the hot, fast city. Nothing was clear until she spotted the blade just before the first assailant fitted his arm undernea...