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Man gets 6 years for setting house on fire during burglary Monday Jan 2, 2017 at 12:01 AM By Shaun Hall Grants Pass Daily Courier Ian Whetstone wrecked more than a house when he burglarized a home Oct. 1 on Southwest I Street and set fire to it. He also threw Martha Anderson's life into a spin. Most everything was destroyed in Anderson's home, which she was renting. Her cat, Rosie, died in the blaze. Her two dogs, Cisco and Pancho, narrowly avoided the same fate. Now she is living in a Grants Pass motel, awaiting reconstruction of the house. And the retirement she had been planning in 2017 has been put on hold. "I'll never get back to the way I was," Anderson said Thursday, standing outside the Josephine County Jail, where Whetstone, 23, had just been sentenced to six years in prison. "There was too much financial loss." Why Whetstone torched the house might be something for a psychiatrist to ponder, but in a recorded jailhouse conversation, he said it was to cover his tracks, according to prosecutor Josh Eastman. Whetstone's lawyer, Charlie Stoll, blamed drugs for the mayhem. "He's a different person when he's not using meth," Stoll told the court. "This crime is the product of a horrible addiction." But Circuit Court Judge Michael Newman wasn't so sure. "What I don't understand is setting the fire," the judge said just before sentencing Whetstone. "That's just taking it to another level." For his part, Whetstone told the judge his actions were "due to my drug addiction." "I'm sincerely sorry, from the bottom of my heart," he said, looking toward Anderson and her landlord, Linda Althouse. When Whetstone walked out of the house that day, he left behind Anderson's tiny chihuahuas, who inhaled smoke and were found in respiratory distress. Rescuers revived them by giving them oxygen through specially designed pet masks. The dogs eventually were taken to an animal hospital, where the bill for their two days of care ran to $4,000. Anderson's son put that tab on his credit card, but she plans to pay him back. "I don't have that kind of money," she said. A GoFundMe account has been opened for her. Losses for the house and contents exceeded $50,000, with insurance picking up much of the cost, but not the veterinary bills. Figuring out who did the damage that day was made easier because Whetstone had dropped a Circle K discount card with his name on it at the scene. Interviewed later by Grants Pass police, he confessed to burglarizing the place, but said he had an accomplice and that the home was not on fire when he left. Over a period of three years, Whetstone was a one-man crime rate — 13 cases of drugs and theft filed against him since 2013 in Josephine County. That included a 50-day jail sentence earlier this year after he was caught prowling cars near the intersection of Northeast Savage and 10th streets. In the case at hand, Whetstone pleaded guilty to burglary, arson and animal abuse. Newman sentenced him to 50 months in prison, plus 22 months in prison on unrelated theft counts. "Six years is a long time to be put away," Newman told him. "You're going to lose a lot of your young adulthood." Anderson figures Whetstone was half-crazed when he broke in. She imagined the worst that could have happened, if she had been home. "That meth scrambles your mind," she said. "Drugs and alcohol take away the caring." Anderson had arrived home that day as firefighters were mopping up and rescuers were tending to her dogs. The dogs now come with her to her job at Wildlife Images, where she works as a landscaper. In the back of her truck Thursday, the dogs seemed snug in their cushioned crates and little doggie blankets. "I'm doing my best to move on," she said. "It's just taking a long time. I'm dealing with it pretty well. It might get me a little upset."