Home Care In Chapin, SC

"It’s just important for me to release that creativity," local artist Nicki Peeples said.

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CHAPIN, S.C. — The town of Chapin just got much more vibrant with the addition of a new mural and a new interactive art trail.

"This one is going to be all about Lake Murray. Chapin is known as the capital of Lake Murray, so I really wanted to highlight that in this mural," Nicki Peeples, a local artist, said.

Peeples is the face behind the paintbrush of Chapin's newest mural at 115 Clark Street. She began this project at the end of August and said she hopes to finish it in the next month or two.

She said she's always needed to create art.

"It's just important for me to release that creativity. For years my mom owned a cookie store and we hand decorated cookies and after that closed, I really just needed that outlet, I needed that way to express myself," Peeples said.

Peeples said each of the letters that spell out Chapin will have a unique scene inside.

The mural and the Chapin Arts Trail, which includes other murals and art forms in town, are made possible through a grant from the Central Carolina Community Foundation.

An interactive brochure and guide to the trail are available at the town hall, local art studios and the chamber of commerce.

Visitors can scan a QR code for clues to a scavenger hunt on different art plaques around town. They're entered into a prize drawing if they finish the hunt successfully.

"There's tons of research that shows that artistic presence in a community adds richness to the community. And when you think about people go visit somewhere, the things that they talked about when they come back are the things that drew them in emotionally or aesthetically, so that might be natural beauty, but very often it's things that are art things," said Crooked Creek Art League Community Arts Manager Barbara Teusink.

There's still more painting to go, but Peeples said she hopes folks come by to watch the progress and enjoy the finished product.

For the first time, deputies in Lexington County have charged someone under a new law criminalizing sexual extortion in South Carolina.

The defendant is a 14-year-old boy from Chapin who allegedly threatened to release doctored nude images of a female classmate, according to a statement issued Friday by the Lexington County Sheriff’s Department.

The boy, whose name is not being released because he is under the age of 18, was arrested and released to the custody of his parents. He will appear in Lexington County Family Court at a later date, according to a statement released by law enforcement.

“Based on interviews with the students involved, someone took the face of a female classmate and digitally edited other nude images to make it look like the female was depicted in the images,” Lexington County Sheriff Jay Koon said. “We worked with school district officials to get to the bottom of this and determined a charge of sexual extortion against one student was warranted because he threatened to publicly share the images.”

If convicted, the teen faces a charge of misdemeanor sexual extortion under the new law.

Koon has said it doesn’t matter that the images were not real.

“This issue is something we are taking very seriously,” Koon said. “With today’s technology, it’s all too easy to prey on innocent people. Those who try this should know ‘Gavin’s Law’ is a tool for us to charge anyone who intimidates or blackmails another person with explicit images, whether real or fake.”

Gavin’s Law was named in memory of Gavin Guffey, 17, a Rock Hill teen who took his own life after becoming the victim of an online sexual extortion scheme.

Gavin Guffey, the son of Rep. Brandon Guffey, R-York, sent illicit photos of himself to someone he believed to be a college-aged woman. After the pictures were exchanged, Guffey said Gavin and his family were extorted for money, which eventually led to his death.

After his son’s death, Brandon Guffey campaigned to pass the law, which makes the act of blackmailing someone with sexually explicit photos of themselves a felony offense. It is punishable by up to five years on a first offense and up to 20 years on a third offense.

The new law considers it an aggravated felony if the victim is a minor or vulnerable adult, or suffers great bodily injury or death as a result of the extortion.

“We have to do all we can to stop this,” McMaster said at the bill signing this summer. “Some of these criminals, they have to learn the hard way.”

Penalties under Gavin’s Law are significantly reduced if the defendant is a minor. In addition to being downgraded to misdemeanor sexual extortion, the defendant must be sentenced by the family court, according to the law.

The court may order as a condition of sentencing behavioral health counseling from an appropriate agency or provider, according to the new law.

An earlier version of the bill included a 15-year mandatory minimum sentence, however this was opposed by Guffey.

“The last thing that I wanted, just as my son made the mistake of sending the image, is another 17-year-old looking at 15 years in jail because he said or did something stupid,” Guffey said, “I don’t believe in taking any kid’s life away over something like that.”

This story was originally published September 30, 2023, 2:43 PM.

One of the sites the town is considering redeveloping, with permission from Lexington-Richland 5, is the district's abandoned building next to the Chapin library.

CHAPIN, S.C. — Town leaders are looking for your help if you live, work, commute through, visit family in or frequent the Chapin area.

Thursday night at 6 p.m., the town of Chapin is hoping to get a better picture of what residents want for the future of their town.

Their public workshop will include input from locals, as well as planners and designers to envision what everyone expects of the town in the coming years.

The Lexington Richland 5 abandoned school site next to the Chapin library is just one of the locations being considered for redevelopment by the town in their comprehensive plan from two years ago.

The town explains this plan designated the future land use as part of a town center serving as a focal point and gathering place for locals. Right now this area is also home to the former community theater and storage buildings.

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Claire Dorbandt, a lawyer who works next to this property says she'd like to see something new out her office window.

"I think Chapin has a lot of potential and can certainly improve in that area, so something to of course bring people in, congregate and if we could bring in some more revenue, that would be great too," Dorbrandt said.

Other locals have vocalized there's already too much traffic, and anything like a town center would create more of it. They explained they'd prefer more green space.

"It's very early stages, all encompassing. We are just trying to gather as much information. It'll be with our market research specialists," said Dylan Francis, town of Chapin communication specialist.

Francis says the town's recent survey about a new master plan got about 300 responses.

"People want new restaurants, people want a town center, a town green, they want more facilities for events," Francis said.

He adds that with new opportunities of potentially new land and partnerships, talking to the public was the next step that made sense.

According to town leaders, there will be more meetings in the future as this is a multi-year master plan.

CHAPIN, S.C. (WIS) - A new development in Lake Murray will have a large economic impact on the area.

The Vice President of Marketing for Lake Murray, Micah Decker, said WhiteWater Landing, the last of the Timberlake property, will most likely be one of the last large developments on the water.

WhiteWater Landing continues American Land Holding’s $40 million investment in three of four surrounding counties of Lake Murray including Saluda, Newberry, and Lexington, and will represent a value of over $250 million dollars in current and future custom home construction read a press release.

Dean Sinatra, Managing Development Partner of American Land Holdings (WhiteWater Landing) said:

Decker added the new development will bring an economic impact of over $250 million dollars in current and future custom home construction.

“Capital City/Lake Murray Country Regional Tourism Board has enjoyed working with American Land Holdings for the last 5 years. This developer is in tune with the future of residential development by maximizing scenic landscapes, amenities, and more, to lure families to the pinnacle of the lake living experience,” states Miriam Atria, the organization’s President and CEO.

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Chapin, SC 06/27/2023 (Paul Kirby) – Extremely high winds struck areas out of the Lexington County town of Chapin Monday night causing many people to continue to be without power as crews worked throughout the day Tuesday to try and get multiple communities back online. Homes were damaged by falling trees and many roads were completely blocked by debris as crews continue to work to return the area to some sort of a semblance of normalcy. The first reports of the severe weather began coming in just after 10:30 p.m. in the vicinity of Wessinger Road and Putnam Drive. Wessinger Road is the only road in and out of a peninsula that juts out into Lake Murray and is bounded by Bear Creek on one side and John’s Creek on the other.

Putnam Drive was completely closed by the storm and remains that way late Tuesday. The storm knocked the utility infrastructure down snapping poles into splinters and bringing the power lines down across the road all along its length. Large trees were snapped off and laying across the asphalt as late as 4:00 p.m. Tuesday afternoon. A number of homes in the area were damaged by falling trees and the high winds. Crews were still working to clear the road to provide access to the end of that point.

Ben Kirby, a resident of Indian Summer Point off Libby Ariel Circle within a mile of Putnam Drive, said that a cooperative group of utility crews that included Mid-Carolina Electric, Dominion Energy, and the sub-contractor Sumter Utilities, were all in the area replacing power poles and utility infrastructure so that they could begin restringing electric wire sometime in the future. Kirby said his power went out about 10:30 p.m. Monday night and he didn’t expect it to be restored for several days. He had used his chainsaw to clear enough of the road into his home so that he and his neighbors could drive in and out if they needed to. He said that many of his neighbors had whole home generator systems that kept their homes comfortable. Kirby was using smaller generators to keep his refrigerators and freezers running but said he would probably stay with family tonight so that they could have air conditioning until their power was restored.

Emergency radio traffic coming into Lexington County’s 911 Center Monday night indicated that the worst of the storm first ripped down Putnam Drive, then crossed Bear Creek. The storm quickly began to ravage trees, homes, and utility infrastructure out on the Amick’s Ferry Road peninsula. Timber Lake Country Club reported Tuesday that they have as many as 60 to 70 trees around their golf course that were down, and the first 9 holes of the course were extremely dangerous due to storm damage. Many homes in the Timberlake area were also damaged by the high winds as were homes and buildings in the surrounding areas of that community.

The County of Lexington had employees of its Emergency Management Division working Tuesday assessing the storm damage. They also asked anyone who had photos of storm damage from that area to call 803-785-2449. Photos can be sent to the county using the email address tshehow@lex-co.com. All emails should include the home address in the subject line.

Chris Jackson, a noted local and national weather authority based out of the Midlands of SC, said that he felt this damage was not done by a tornado but rather straight-line winds from a microburst. Jackson said that the damages from these types of storms can be identical or even more severe than small or weaker tornadoes. He also said that they don’t get the attention they deserve because they don’t cause the same fear factor that the word tornado carries. The National Weather Service usually classifies a storm such as this as a tornado only after studying the images of the radar. This can show rotation in several different colors where winds moving away from a central core may be one color and then as it rotates back toward the core in a circular motion another color. They also can use other indicators. Jackson often explains on his social media pages like https://www.facebook.com/MySCWeather/ how all this works. As of Tuesday evening, there was no indication that the NWS was going to contradict Jackson and classify last nights weather event as a tornado either.