Local News

WATSONVILLE — Watsonville Police have arrested two men who allegedly burglarized a jewelry store, minutes after the same store was burglarized by a different suspect. Jorge Garcia, 29, was arrested less than 24 hours after stealing from Fatima’s Fine Jewelry on the 300 block of Main...

PLEASURE POINT—The man found dead late Tuesday morning in a vehicle in the Santa Cruz Mountains has been identified as Tushar Atre, who was kidnapped from his Pleasure Point home about seven hours earlier. Atre, 50, was taken from his upscale oceanfront home about 3...

WATSONVILLE—Watsonville Community Hospital has a new owner. Halsen Healthcare announced Tuesday that the $30 million sale was finalized at midnight. “This is the first day that Halsen actually owns Watsonville Community Hospital,” Chairman and CEO Dan Brothman said. Halsen was holding a celebratory afternoon barbecue for its...

WATSONVILLE —  For more than 30 years Nicholas Diaz spent long workdays buried in the back of televisions and other broken appliances. He was living his dream of being a neighborhood repairman. That dream came to a horrific close Sept. 1 when he died in a car...

Editor’s note: This is the second entry in a multi-part series concerning housing in the Pajaro Valley. For the first part see the Sept. 13 edition of The Pajaronian or click here.   WATSONVILLE—Perhaps one of the biggest reasons why Watsonville struggles to keep up with its growing...

WATSONVILLE—Thanks to helping hands at the Watsonville Public Library, free library service at your home is a phone call, or email away.  LibraryLink is a long-standing outreach service designed to bring the trove of library materials to the homes of those who cannot easily leave...

SANTA CRUZ — The Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday updated the county’s rules for development around Watsonville Municipal Airport, a set of regulations that now align with those of the state. The Airport Combining Zone District plan creates six safety zones for the...

Coastal Cleanup Day collects 7,700 pounds of debris MONTEREY BAY REGION—More than 2,000 volunteers collected more than 6,000 pounds of trash and over 1,700 pounds of recycling from 64 beaches, rivers and inland areas across Monterey and Santa Cruz Counties in Saturday’s Coastal Cleanup Day.  The annual...

SANTA CRUZ COUNTY —Strawberries remain the county’s biggest crop, with an estimated value of $220,653,000 on approximately 2,578 planted acres. That’s according to the 2018 crop report released Thursday by Santa Cruz County Agricultural Commissioner Juan Hidalgo. The report showed an overall production value of more...

Special events Elkhorn Slough Reserve Open House & Native Plant Fair (Sept. 28) Celebrate the 40th anniversary of the establishment of the Elkhorn Slough National Estuarine Research Reserve — and National Estuaries Week — at the Elkhorn Slough Reserve Open House & Native Plant Fair from...