Preservation comes at a price.

Byline: Tom Lochner, Contra Costa Times, Walnut Creek, Calif.

Dec. 18--RODEO -- A Rodeo woman has rescued a piece of this town's history from vandals. But now she faces a possible trespassing charge.

Jill Holmes, 52, was walking through the abandoned Hillcrest Elementary School in late summer when she found scrapbooks, photo albums, yearbooks from the 1950s to '70s and other memorabilia strewn about the open library. "I scooped up as much as I could," said the Hillcrest alumna, whose daughter, son and two grandsons also attended the school.

"This is albums of all of us," she said, referring to the generations of students who went to Hillcrest. Holmes also salvaged newspaper clippings from the 1950s and 1960s, as well as a 45-page undated history of modern-day Rodeo's origins in the 1880s as a town of slaughterhouses and an annual livestock roundup -- …