Event focuses on farmworker safety
About 700 people packed the Mello Center in Watsonville Saturday afternoon for Harvesting Equity, an event where safety, living wage contracts, housing and immigration reform for farmworkers took center stage.
At the podium were Mireya Gómez-Contreras, Ann Lopez and civil rights activist Dolores Huerta.
To launch...
‘A force of nature’: Land conservation pioneer Diane Porter Cooley dies
PAJARO VALLEY—Diane Porter Cooley, whose family history dates back to Santa Cruz County’s infancy, and whose conservation efforts of both farmland and forest helped build the underpinnings of the county’s environmental ideology—and reshape the way the nation viewed agricultural land protection—died Thursday in her...
PV trustees approve evaluation tool, superintendent contract
The Pajaro Valley Unified School District Board of Trustees on Wednesday approved a plan to use a specialized assessment tool to help teachers better focus their math lessons where students need it.
Revenge of the nerds: Watsonville’s comics, fantasy event returns May 1
WATSONVILLE—In September, a hastily-organized event dubbed Nerdville drew more than 800 comics fans, collectors and geeks of every ilk to celebrate superheroes and share their love for a genre that has captivated the world since The Phantom debuted in 1936.
Friends of Watsonville Parks and...
Victim in Pleasure Point kidnapping incident found dead
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...
Classes continue at Cesar Chavez Middle after authorities determine threat is unsubstantiated
WATSONVILLE—Hours after school officials warned that a challenge posted on the social media site TikTok could prompt young people to call in fake bomb and gun threats to their schools, a school in Watsonville received just such a threat.
An anonymous message dated Dec. 17...
Shark found near East Cliff
A juvenile Great White Shark was found washed up on a Santa Cruz beach near 26th Avenue recently.
County remembers 58 homeless who died in 2019
SANTA CRUZ—For two decades, Santa Cruz County has held a ceremony to remember the homeless people who died during the year.
The annual Homeless Persons’ Memorial Day has long been a somber occasion, often marked by stories of the deceased people. Too often, it is...
