Woody Guthrie’s song “Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos)” is not about the town in the foothills of the Santa Cruz Mountains. But you’d be forgiven for thinking that it is, because in the 74 years since Guthrie wrote it, the song has become even more relevant to this—and every other—region of California, a state where 1 in 3 workers are immigrants.
On January 29, 1948, Guthrie read about a plane that had crashed the day before in Los Gatos Canyon, near Coalinga in Central California’s San Joaquin Valley. Among the 32 passengers killed were 28 migrant farm workers being deported to Mexico. Guthrie, who lived in New York at the time, was angered that while the names of the flight crew were printed, the national press did not extend that dignity to the farm workers who died—instead, they were referred to simply as “deportees.”
In response, Guthrie wrote the lyrics to “Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos),” which was really more of a poem until it was set to music in the ’50s by a schoolteacher named Martin Hoffman.
Guthrie’s lyrics showed a surprisingly sophisticated understanding of what immigrant laborers from Mexico faced under the Bracero program that began with the Mexican Farm Labor Agreement in 1942, and lasted until 1964—limited protections for officially processed workers (who were, among other things, given physical examinations and sprayed with DDT at “reception centers”), and increasingly harsh penalties for those in the country illegally: “Some of us are illegal, and others not wanted/Our work contract’s out, and we have to move on/Six hundred miles to the Mexican border/They chase us like rustlers, like outlaws, like thieves/Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye Rosalita/Adiós mi amigo, Jesus y Maria/You won’t have a name when you ride the big airplane/And all they will call you will be ‘deportee.’”
It’s a powerful statement from a folk songwriter who by that point—at age 35—was an American legend, but whose incredibly prolific output in the 1940s was already coming to an end. For a long time after his death in 1967, some considered “Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos)” to be Guthrie’s last great song, although the release of the Mermaid Avenue albums by Billy Bragg and Wilco in the late ’90s and early 2000s proved that Guthrie had continued to write remarkable lyrics through the rest of his life.
Like the Mermaid Avenue songs, “Deportee” wasn’t popularized by Guthrie himself. It was when Pete Seeger began playing it in the 1950s that it caught on; since then, it has been covered by dozens of artists, from Judy Collins to the Byrds to Bob Dylan and Joan Baez to Bruce Springsteen, Concrete Blonde and Dan Bern.
In fact, no one knows the sheer number of artists who’ve covered the song quite like Dave Alvin, who decided he needed to hear how every single one of them had interpreted it before he and Jimmie Dale Gilmore could cover it themselves on their 2018 collaborative album Downey to Lubbock.
Alvin working on the ‘Downey to Lubbock’ album. As producer, he wanted to bring out sides of his friend’s talent that no one had heard before. PHOTO: JOE MURRAY
“That was a difficult one. Jimmie really wanted to do it, and I was game to do it,” says Alvin. “But the night before we went into the studio to cut it, I was up all night watching 150 versions of ‘Plane Wreck at Los Gatos’ on YouTube. Because, well, I didn’t want it to sound like all the others. There are some great versions, you know? And because it’s one of those things that had been done so many times, it’s like, ‘OK, how do I navigate this minefield?’”
The way Alvin discovered what he wanted their version to sound like was by first figuring out what he didn’t want it to sound like.
“I’ve used accordions on a lot of my records, I’ve used mandolins and things like that,” he says. “But with this, it was ‘no accordion, no mandolins,’ because that’s the first thing you hear in recordings of ‘Plane Wreck at Los Gatos.’ So it was like, ‘Okay, let’s try to make it ambient.’”
The result is a haunting, aching version that sounds like it’s sweeping over the very landscape once worked by the tragic figures Guthrie memorialized.
“Jimmie brings a lot of the heartbreak to it,” Alvin says. “Other people bring the politics to it. They’re both valid. But with this it was like, ‘Okay, what do we do musically around his voice?’ Because when he sings it, he means every goddamn word.”
“That song has always just touched me so deeply,” Gilmore says. “Because, you know, living in Texas, we have a little house down on the border, down in Terlingua. Butch Hancock [one of Gilmore’s bandmates in the Flatlanders] lives there full-time, and now we spend as much time as we can there. So we’re real connected with people that are affected by all the insanity of the border and the wall and all that stuff—all the stupidity. And I realized that Woody Guthrie, in this really subtle kind of way, had spoken to the ages about that. That’s why I started doing the song again.”
QUICK TO CLICK
To Gilmore—the Texas native who got his start in the early ’70s with legendary Lubbock alt-country band the Flatlanders, before finding solo success in the Americana radio wave of the ’90s that local stations KFAT and KPIG pioneered—the process that produced “Deportee” is an example not only of Alvin’s skill as a producer, but also of how much the duo complement each other.
“By the time we were making the record, Dave and I had already discovered that we were a very good team,” he says. “Dave fills in the gaps of expertise in the studio that I don’t have. I just don’t think in that way. I think purely in songs.”
It’s also an example of the dizzying organic quality of their musical partnership, which despite their 30-year friendship didn’t come about until Gilmore’s booking agent suggested it out of the blue in 2017. Both of them jumped on it.
“When Dave and I were on the road, we would just pull something out of a hat, because we didn’t rehearse or anything,” says Gilmore. “[‘Deportee’] was one of the ones that popped up, and after that Dave would request it.”
Guthrie’s song wasn’t the only tune they both knew, as they quickly discovered.
“We figured it was going to be a song swap thing. We knew that we got along well with each other, so we knew that would be fun. It was like an experiment, you know, like, a funny experiment,” says Gilmore. “But playing acoustically, both of us started doing the kinds of things we did before we were in bands. So, the stuff that you’re doing when you’re learning how to play. And both of us were blues fanatics. I don’t think we even had a rehearsal, we just jumped into the first gig, and almost immediately I’d start doing a song and he would just jump right in on it. He would already know it completely, or know it well enough that he could learn it within the first verse. And his playing—he’s such a much better guitarist than I am, that just really added something, it was really exciting to me. Then we started getting into harmonies and stuff. And then, really quickly on that tour, Dave said, ‘Hey, we’ve got to make a record together.’”
BACK TO THE BLUES
Alvin, of course, had gotten his start in the Blasters, which he and his brother started in 1979 in their southeast-L.A. hometown of Downey. Though it was a roots-rock band influenced by everything from rockabilly to blues to country, the Blasters were hugely popular within the L.A. punk scene, which had a bit of an Americana streak to it all through the ’80s. (Alvin also joined X for a while, and played in X’s country side project the Knitters.) Alvin’s love of the blues came out again on his first solo record, 1986’s Romeo’s Escape, and subsequent records.
His passion for the genre is no surprise considering that he spent his formative early-teen years hanging out at L.A.’s iconic Ash Grove club, which lasted from 1958 to 1973 and drew blues greats like Howlin’ Wolf, Willie Dixon, Mississippi John Hurt, and Muddy Waters. What Alvin didn’t know until he started performing with Gilmore is that during a short, pre-Flatlanders period in which Gilmore had lived in L.A., he’d also hung out at the Ash Grove, and had even gotten to be friends with Lightnin’ Hopkins, one of Alvin’s musical idols.
The Ash Grove gets a mention in the album’s title track, a burning blues-rocker that cleverly lets both musicians testify to their musical histories, while at the same time imagining what would happen if Alvin—whose most popular album is King of California, and is so Cali to the core that he wrote a song about Highway 99—transplanted himself from Downey to Lubbock, and Gilmore did the opposite.
On their first tour together, Alvin and Gilmore discovered they had begun their careers playing a lot of the same songs. PHOTO: DANIEL JACKSON
“I’m a wild blues blaster/From a sunburnt California town/And I got a loud Stratocaster/That can blow any roadhouse down,” sings Alvin, while Gilmore replies in the next verse, “Well, I’m an old flatlander/From the great high plains/Like wanderlust and wonder/West Texas wind blows through my veins.”
The funny thing is that neither move would be such a stretch. After all, one of Alvin’s best songs is “Abilene,” about the Texas city (and a girl named after it), and Gilmore did dip his toes in the California hippie-cowboy life.
“You know, there’s not that much difference, really, between Downey and Lubbock,” says Alvin. “They’re both flat.”
Once he understood the depth to which Gilmore shared his passion for the blues, Alvin sought to bring that out on record for the first time.
“The thing about Jimmie Dale is he’s an incredibly unique songwriter with an equally unique voice,” says Alvin. “His records, some of them captured him perfectly, and others, maybe not quite so much. But, you know, you can say the same about me. But one thing that kind of got overlooked or pushed aside was Jimmie Dale’s a hell of a blues singer. And when we started doing the gigs together, the more blues stuff I played, the more blues stuff Jimmie Dale would pull out. And I was like, ‘Man, you should make a record of that.’ So when we went to make the record, I was kind of leaning towards the two things Jimmie Dale’s never done—he’s never made a bluesy kind of record, and he’s never been in a rock ’n’ roll band. I mean, a flat-out rockin’ band, you know? It was great on the tours that we did together to watch him rockin’ out sometimes, like he was leading his high school band. I saw that in him, and he always, I think, saw that in himself, as well. I think that that’s one of the reasons we worked very well together.”
SECOND CHANCE
The pandemic, of course, derailed plans for more touring, but it wasn’t just that. In May of 2020, Alvin was diagnosed with prostate cancer, the beginning of a two-year battle that included months of chemotherapy and radiation. He kept his health struggles private, but Gilmore says the band knew something was very wrong while they were touring in 2019.
“On the last tour, Dave was showing some signs,” he says. “It never impacted his performance, and he didn’t talk about any health issue or anything, but you’re traveling in a van together, you know? I mean, it was subtle, because Dave would not complain, ever, about anything. And when it really got serious, he didn’t want to talk about it.”
The cover art for the ‘Downey to Lubbock’ album is a painting by another Americana legend, Jon Langford of the Mekons.
Eventually, though, Alvin did open up about it to his close friends, and Gilmore and his wife went and spent a week with him after his surgery. The rest of the world, however, still didn’t know.
“He didn’t want us to talk to the press about it,” says Gilmore, “until he got to a place where he felt like he had kind of conquered it. Which happened, he did get to that place. But it was … it was frightening.”
In April, Alvin announced he was cancer-free. Explaining his health situation now, he says, “It’s good as of this moment, which with the cancer monster is the best that you can hope for. It can come back at any moment. So I am knocking on wood that it doesn’t, and proceeding as if it won’t.”
For a musician who in Gilmore’s estimation of his friend “wants to be playing his music for real people live every night,” their new tour together, which comes to Moe’s Alley on Tuesday, June 21, is everything Alvin could want. Although he’s pretty damn happy about life in general right now.
“To be alive, to be out of a hospital, is a great feeling. It’s the greatest feeling ever,” he says. “I gotta admit, there’s times where I’m not this cosmic about it, but overall, the way I view things now is I had a pretty good life. That was a nice chunk of cake. And now what I’ve got, you know, is the frosting part. These upcoming gigs just mean the world to me. I’m living for them. Because it’s like even the bad notes will be frosting. And I predict there will be some bad notes. But what the hell? They’re frosting notes.”
JIMMIE DALE GILMORE AND DAVE ALVIN play at 8pm on Tuesday, June 21 at Moe’s Alley, 1535 Commercial Way in Santa Cruz. $30/$35. moesalley.com.
“It’s like the nonprofit Hunger Games,” says Ray Cancino, the Chief Executive Officer of Community Bridges.
Cancino is referring to the latest funding recommendations for local community organizations that the county announced last week. Nonprofit leaders were in disbelief as they looked at their awards for the next three-year cycle: some larger organizations had funding for their programs cut in half compared to the previous funding rounds, jeopardizing the future for vital programs that county residents rely on. Some smaller programs weren’t funded at all, leaving leaders scrambling to find new funding sources ahead of the new fiscal year in three weeks.
Overall, 128 organizations applied for awards, requesting a total of $16 million. 35 organizations were recommended for an award, splitting up the $6 million the county and City of Santa Cruz dished out for the nonprofits.
Cancino says these recommendations will lead to drastic changes in the resources available to county and city residents. His warning was echoed by the dozens of people who showed up at the Board of Supervisors meeting last Tuesday, many of whom shared how these potentially defunded programs have changed their lives.
Community Bridges—a nonprofit that serves families, children and seniors from low-income backgrounds—will likely see an $800,000 cut in funding from the county. It may even be forced to end programs like its Santa Cruz County Early Education Child Care—or at least reduce its open slots and resources.
The reason for the unexpected changes is a shift in the funding process. In 2015, the county and the City of Santa Cruz worked together to create CORE, an application process intended to give newer organizations a shot at money that the county and city allocate for local community organizations. Multiple county supervisors say the old way of handing out county dollars was uncompetitive, and limited pathways for new organizations to get money.
“There are a number of service providers who have not had access to this money for 35, 40 years,” Human Services Director Randy Morris said at the Board of Supervisors meeting. “To create a level playing field, we put in place a technical assistance program to help make sure all service providers had an opportunity to apply for these funds.”
But nonprofit leaders across sectors question whether a level playing field is what was ultimately achieved, and why a more abstract sense of “fairness” is being prioritized over the practical services these programs provide.
“We all as nonprofits trusted the county, and the Human Services Department specifically, to redesign the CORE program to really do two things,” Cancino says. “To find equity in our social services and to provide better return on investment for our community. Now we hear [Human Services Department] says its goal is to get new programs funding and new services, irregardless of the impacts of existing service.”
As nonprofits search for revenues to cut—a difficult task within the financially restricted, already strained nonprofit sector—the new CORE process is becoming a battle for survival.
“If you’re going to ask for more money,” County Supervisor Ryan Coonerty said at Tuesday’s meeting, “you’re going to need to tell us which organization we should take that money from, and why we should give it to you instead.”
The Core of CORE
When Sandy Davie opened her email to see that the Toddler Center was not recommended to receive funding from the county, her heart dropped.
“It felt like a bomb hitting my chest,” says Davie, the organization’s director. Her voice is tight, and she asks if we can take a break from speaking. “I’m sorry, I’m not usually like this. But the county and the city are saying childcare doesn’t matter.”
The CORE funding makes up around 20% of the Toddler Center’s budget. That money is set aside to provide a sliding scale of services for lower-income families. Without that money? Well, you can do the math, says Davie.
“Basically, we’ll only be able to provide childcare to the upper middle class,” she says. “But this is bigger than just us.”
Davie thinks the entire childcare sector is at risk of seeing major cuts. The county only funded one childcare program, Walnut Avenue Family & Women’s Center. Community Bridges’ Family Resource Centers are expected to be defunded, with programs similarly gearing up to discontinue subsidized child care services.
Davie says data shows low-income families in Santa Cruz County have limited access to childcare services, and that this limited access negatively affects low-income households. She was asked to prove the importance of childcare, so she used this data in her CORE application. So she wonders on what basis applications were evaluated, and if there was an effort to look at the impacts defunding these programs will have on a sector comprehensively.
“I’m using all of the data you gave me and I’m proving to you childcare is important. And for the decision to come out, basically, childcare is not important?” says Davie. “There’s a tension between the data and the results.”
CORE used a grading system for the work that organizations are doing around the county. Programs were split up into small, medium and large tiers, and graded based on the corresponding rubrics for each tier. Answers to the questions were graded by a diverse and trained group of 58 panelists, and a program’s final grades were then used to determine funding.
But the questions, and how answers were weighted, seem arbitrary, some leaders say. Cancino points to a question that asks organizations what kind of impact their program will make in the community. That question is only worth 5% of the total points, despite being one of the most consequential determinants of a program’s value, says Cancino.
The county, for its part, defends its process, saying there were multiple stakeholder meetings held for organizations to have input on the different elements of the application, and that the resulting process is one that all organizations gave feedback on.
“There were 12 opportunities for the current service providers to share their perspective about how to prioritize a particular population, or a particular region, or for a particular provider to say why they felt they deserved more money,” says Morris. “There were also 64 training sessions provided before the applications that ended up supporting 298 participants. The rankings are fair.”
Davie says she went to these training sessions. She says she was often one of the few Directors there: many other larger organizations sent grant writers, because the process was tedious and required significant research and writing. Davie wonders if this limited smaller organizations’ shots at funding.
Davie also disagrees with how the county is portraying the previous award system as not competitive or friendly to new programs—and as a teacher at Cabrillo in History, she’s one for historical accuracy.
“I had a person working for the county that was dedicated to going and visiting the places to see what was happening, in addition to rigorous reporters,” Davie says. “There was a lot of oversight and interaction between the county and the nonprofits that were being funded.”
Ultimately, what leaders across organizations repeated was that although the CORE process might be flawed, there’s only so much that can be done with the $6 million budget—especially in the context of $16 million of requested funding.
“Ultimately, the process isn’t going to matter very much,” says Cancino. “Because these budget policy conditions are unsuited to the reality of where we are at right now.”
Where’s the Money?
The county’s budget is estimated to reach the billion mark for this year—an increase of 27% compared to the last fiscal year. With that influx of cash, nonprofit leaders wonder where all that money is going, as they fight over the $6 million that was divided up between 36 programs.
The top two categories that the county’s funds go to are employee salaries (46%), and services and supplies that include things like office expenses and building maintenance (33%). When looking at the breakdown of which departments get the most money, the departments receive as follows: Health and Human Services (38%); Land Use and Community Service (18%), and Public Safety (16%).
The Health and Human Services Department (HSD) receives the largest chunk of money out of the all county departments: nearly 400 million. Yet the CORE funding program, which falls within the HSD, only sees around 9% of that money.
Part of the reason, says Supervisor Ryan Coonerty, is because the HSD has separate awards and contracts that it hands out to nonprofits. The other part is that the county is providing homeless services and mental health services.
“To the extent that people want us to reallocate other general fund dollars,” says Coonerty, “that means cuts to parks, roads and public safety. There’s no pot of money out there that’s left unspent.”
Coonerty also promises that the county has plans in the works to soften the blow for some of the programs that were left with no funding this cycle, and to provide supplemental services in the areas needed.
“I and other board members have heard that these funding allocations have some very real impacts on important community programs,” says Coonerty. “So we’re looking at how we reduce some of those impacts.”
In the next few weeks, organizations dissatisfied with their funding allocations will be working on their appeal case, which they will present at the county’s next meeting on June 28. That’s when the final awards will be announced.
Still, Coonerty emphasizes that the sum of money will be the same—it will just be sliced differently.
“I don’t think it’s good for organizations to be pitted against each other,” says Coonerty. “But if what you’re doing is standing up and asking us to fund your organization, you’re implicitly saying that we need to cut somebody else. So whether you want to say it or just want the board to do it and not take responsibility for that, the reality is the same.”
ARIES (March 21-April 19): “The whole point for me is to change as much as possible,” says Aries actor Keira Knightley. What?! Is she serious? Her number one aspiration is to keep transforming and transforming and transforming? I guess I believe her. It’s not an entirely unexpected manifesto coming from an Aries person. But I must say: Her extra bold approach to life requires maximum resilience and resourcefulness. If you think that such an attitude might be fun to try, the coming weeks will be one of the best times ever to experiment.
TAURUS (April 20-May 20): Taurus poet May Sarton relished “the sacramentalization of the ordinary.” What a wonderfully Taurean attitude! There is no sign of the zodiac better able than you Bulls to find holiness in mundane events and to evoke divine joy from simple pleasures. I predict this specialty of yours will bloom in its full magnificence during the coming weeks. You will be even more skillful than usual in expressing it, and the people you encounter will derive exceptional benefits from your superpower.
GEMINI (May 21-June 20): Here’s a message I hope you will deliver to the Universe sometime soon: “Dear Life: I declare myself open and ready to receive miracles, uplifting news, fun breakthroughs, smart love and unexpected blessings. I hope to be able to give my special gifts in new and imaginative ways. I am also eager for useful tips on how to express my dark side with beauty and grace. One more perk I hope you will provide, dear Life: Teach me how to be buoyantly creative and sensitively aggressive in asking for exactly what I need.”
CANCER (June 21-July 22): In August 2021, a Canadian man named Jerry Knott bought a ticket for a lottery. He stuffed it in his wallet and lost track of it. Two months later, he found it again and checked to see its status. Surprise! It was a winner. His prize was $20 million. I propose we make him your role model for now, my fellow Crabs. Let’s all be alert for assets we may have forgotten and neglected. Let’s be on the lookout for potentially valuable resources that are ripe for our attention. More info on Knott: tinyurl.com/RememberToCheck
LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): Hundreds of years ago, people in parts of Old Europe felt anxiety about the Summer Solstice. The sun reached its highest point in the sky at that time, and from then on would descend, bringing shorter and shorter days with less and less light. Apprehensive souls staged an antidote: the festival of Midsummer. They burned great bonfires all through the night. They stayed awake till morning, partying and dancing and having sex. Author Jeanette Winterson expresses appreciation for this holiday. “Call it a wild perversity or a wild optimism,” she writes, “but our ancestors were right to celebrate what they feared.” Winterson fantasizes about creating a comparable ceremony for her fears: “a ritual burning of what is coward in me, what is lost in me. Let the light in before it is too late.” I invite you to do something like this yourself, Leo.
VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): Virgo author Elizabeth McCracken says, “I don’t dream of someone who understands me immediately, who seems to have known me my entire life.” What’s more meaningful to her is an ally who is curious, who has “a willingness for research.” She continues, “I want someone keen to learn my own strange organization, amazed at what’s revealed; someone who asks, ‘and then what, and then what?'” I hope you will enjoy at least one connection like that in the coming months, Virgo. I expect and predict it. Make it your specialty!
LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): Libran author Stig Dagerman said that when he was sad as a child, his mother kissed him until his mood lightened. When he was older and sad, his mama said, “Sit down at your desk and write a letter to yourself. A long and beautiful letter.” This would be a good task for you right now, Libra. Whatever mood you are in, I invite you to write a long and beautiful letter to yourself. I further recommend that you carry out the same ritual once every six weeks for the next nine months. This will be a phase of your life when it’s extra crucial that you express soulful tenderness toward your deep self on a regular basis. You may be amazed at how inspirational and transformative these communications will be.
SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): Sometimes, the arrival of a peculiar event in your life is a good sign. It may mean that Fate has sent an intervention to disrupt a boring phase of inertia or a habit-bound grind. An unexpected twist in the plot may signal a divine refreshment. It could be a favorable omen announcing a helpful prod that’s different from what you imagined you needed. I suspect that an experience or two fitting this description will soon materialize in your life story. Be alert for them. Promise yourself you’ll be receptive to their unexpected directives.
SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): Sagittarius author Edna O’Brien long ago shed the strict Catholic faith in which she was raised. But she still harbors spiritual feelings colored by her tradition. She says, “Ideally, I’d like to spend two evenings a week talking to [novelist] Marcel Proust and another conversing with the Holy Ghost.” I suspect a similar balance of influences will be healthy for you in the days ahead, Sagittarius. My advice is to connect with an inspiration you drew sustenance from while growing up. Spend equal time consorting with deep-feeling smart people who will stimulate you to rearrange the contents of your rational mind.
CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): I’ve composed a message for you to deliver to your best allies. It will help you be clear about the nature of your energy exchanges. Say something like this: “I promise to act primarily out of love in my dealings with you, and I ask you to do the same with me. Please don’t help me or give me things unless they are offered with deep affection. Let’s phase out favors that are bestowed out of obligation or with the expectation of a favor in return. Let’s purge manipulativeness from our dynamic. Let’s agree to provide each other with unconditional support.”
AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): Author Lauren Collins tells us, “Bilinguals overwhelmingly report that they feel like different people in different languages. It is often assumed that the mother tongue is the language of the true self. But if first languages are reservoirs of emotion, second languages can be rivers undammed, freeing their speakers to ride different currents.” I bring these thoughts to your attention, Aquarius, because the next 12 months will be an excellent time for you to begin becoming bilingual or else to deepen your fluency in a second language. And if you’re not ready to do that, I encourage you to enhance your language skills in other ways. Build your vocabulary, for instance. Practice speaking more precisely. Say what you mean and mean what you say 95 percent of the time. Life will bring you good fortune if you boost your respect for the way you use language.
PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): Piscean-born Robert Evans has been an amateur astronomer since he was 18. Though he has never been paid for his work and has mostly used modest telescopes, he holds the world record for discovering supernovas—42. These days, at age 85, he’s still scanning the skies with a 12-inch telescope on his back porch. Let’s make him your role model for the coming months. I have faith you can achieve meaningful success even if you are a layperson without massive funding. PS: Keep in mind that “amateur” comes from the Latin word for “lover.” Here’s the dictionary’s main definition: “a person who engages in a study, sport or other activity for pleasure rather than for financial benefit or professional reasons.”
Homework: What is still worth waiting for? What is no longer worth waiting for? Newsletter.FreeWillAstrology.com.
I love a fine Malbec—and Martin Ranch makes a great one. Under their Thèrése Vineyards label (Martin Ranch makes wine under three different labels), the 2017 Santa Clara Valley Dos Niñas Vineyard Malbec ($42) is a cut above many imported Malbecs. This one has all the nuances of a true Malbec due greatly to some fine fruit from Dos Niñas Vineyard in the Santa Cruz Mountains—it was my favorite at a recent tasting event featuring many Martin Ranch wines. With its deep ruby-colored core and lip-smacking ripe fruit flavors, this impressive Malbec was awarded a silver medal in the 2021 Sunset International Wine Competition and given 90 points by the September 2021 Wine Enthusiast. “Blackberry, boysenberry and vanilla coat the palate, while luscious plum tannins finish off this beautiful wine,” winemakers Dan and Thèrése Martin say. “It’s perfect with boeuf bourguignon.” They suggest you enjoy it now and for the next several years.
Martin Ranch Winery, 6675 Redwood Retreat Road, Gilroy. 408-842-9197; martinranchwinery.com.
Father’s Day Ribs and Reds at Burrell School Vineyards
Spoil your dad and bring the whole family to a wonderful ribs and reds event. Chef Kyle Davis will be cooking up his “world-famous” Santa Maria ribs with country-style sides and plenty of Burrell School wines to enjoy, including some cellar wines and new releases.
1-4pm. $55. Email ky**@***********ol.com for more info. Burrell School Vineyards and Winery, 24060 Summit Road, Los Gatos.
Safe Catch Salmon
My husband and I did a two-week road trip to New Mexico last month, visiting friends and national parks along the way and back. Among the snacks and picnic fare, we took little pouches of Wild Pacific Pink Salmon with us. Produced by Sausalito-based Safe Catch, every salmon is sustainably caught, and mercury tested. Skinless and boneless, these pouches are ideal for a quick sandwich or a light meal. Flavors include Plain, Rosemary Dijon, Italian Herb and Citrus Dill. safecatch.com.
Before attending culinary school in San Francisco and then moving to Santa Cruz, Steve Elb cooked on tanker and freighter merchant marine ships. In Santa Cruz, Elb spent several years as head chef at the wharfside Sea Cloud Restaurant before taking it over two decades ago. Although French-trained and influenced, the Olitas Cantina and Grille owner and chef went in a different direction, which he dubs “Cali-Mex”—California’s Tex-Mex.
Olitas’ second-story ocean view pairs perfectly with a menu featuring fusion favorites like the lobster quesadilla loaded with Maine lobster and a bursting-with-flavor sauce made from its shells. The tacos, enchiladas and seasonal farmers market specials are equally good. Olita’s is open every day except Mondays from noon-9pm (opens 4pm on Wednesdays). Elb recently spoke about his love for Mexican food and what it was like cooking on the open seas.
What inspires you about Mexican food?
STEVE ELB: Robust flavors and just the simplicity of the ingredients. It’s peasant food, just like the Italian food I grew up eating. I rarely cook food that I don’t personally enjoy, and I’ve always loved Mexican food. And cooking is cooking; once you understand proper technique, it’s easy to switch gears and get creative. Passion is important too, and Mexican food really excites and inspires me. Whereas with French food, one spends a lot of time manipulating ingredients and the flavors are more subtle, Mexican food is more straight up, and the flavors jump off the plate.
What was it like to cook on a boat?
It’s homestyle cooking for about 30-40 people, breakfast, lunch and dinner seven days a week. I was a young knucklehead in my 20s, enjoying traveling and making money. We called it a “floating jail,” it was all men and no women, and we couldn’t go anywhere. I enjoyed it, though, because it was foot-loose and fancy-free. But it’s tough and rough out there, and I knew that as long as no one complained about my food and threw me overboard, I was doing a good job.
Olitas Cantina and Grille, 49B Municipal Wharf, Santa Cruz, 831-458-9393; olitassantacruz.com.
Supposedly, breakfast is the most important meal of the day. I mean, it’s right there in the name—it is literally breaking the fast that you have been (theoretically) engaging in since last night’s dinner. A good breakfast sets the table for a successful day like no other meal can, and I had long been hearing such good things about Zachary’s morning offerings that I decided to try them for myself.
Now, by morning, I mean almost afternoon. Like 11am, at the earliest. This is the time a night owl like me considers ideal for breakfast. Luckily, they serve it all day, from 7am-2:30pm Tuesday-Sunday. I walked in recently and was greeted immediately and offered not only a table, but also coffee right away—a nice service touch. Once seated, my prompt, friendly and efficient server came by and offered to help with the menu. But I already knew what I wanted: the ham and egg breakfast and the famous sourdough pancakes that have been made using the same starter since the 1989 earthquake. Waiting for my food, I basked in the ambiance. Rich hardwood floors are complemented by industrial accents in a space bigger than it looks from the street, with a mostly open concept and an airy and roomy feel thanks to high ceilings. The whole place had classic local-favorite diner feels. The food showed up in short order, and as I looked at my table, now full of all the good breakfast things, my only question was where to begin?
I decided to start with the ultimate foundational breakfast item: eggs. I got them scrambled, which are easy to do, but not so easy to do well. Good scramblers take constant attention and love, and mine got plenty of both. They came out light and fluffy with just a little chew, and had no browned spots, burnt edges or crispy skin-like parts. The ham was impressive, too. I got thick cut slabs, resembling two gigantic Trivial Pursuit pie pieces made of pork that tasted like they had just been carved off a homemade holiday roast. Lightly seared, lean and meaty, they had just a touch of smokey flavor. Even for a cured product, it had a fresh taste—no lunch meat vibes here.
From there, it was time to try their signature home-fried potatoes. I was given a local’s hack to order them extra crispy, and I was more than glad that I did. Not only were they some of the best home fries I had ever had, the portion was generously hearty to say the least. There were onions mixed throughout, and the savory seasoning blend was on-point and present, yet not too bold for breakfast. My texture-fiend palette was wooed by the crispy chunks and edges throughout, and the extra cooking also imparted subtly bitter notes that rounded out the flavors of the entire meal.
It was then time to try the homemade toast. Even many fine dinner houses do not bake their own bread, and the fact that Zachary’s does is impressive. Options include sourdough and oatmeal molasses, but I opted for the dark rye. I got two thick, lightly toasted slices that definitely had that homemade thing going on: dense and bready with good chew, juxtaposed with a yeasty light and fresh flavor. And I found it to be a milder rye, with just enough of that uniquely spiced and nutty signature taste.
The sourdough pancakes were a strong finish. The real maple syrup with predominant notes of caramel was a perfect complement, and the pancakes themselves certainly lived up to the hype. They were light, thin and restrained with regards to sweetness. They weren’t dense or heavy at all like many other pancakes can be, and the flavor was delightfully delicate with just a kiss of sourdough tang for levity and complexity. The entire meal was simply delicious and a great value, too—I feel like I damn near had half the menu on my table and my bill was only $20. I can’t believe it took me so long to get here, and I’ll be back.
Zachary’s, 819 Pacific Ave., Santa Cruz, 831-427-0646; zacharyssantacruz.com.
The grant aims to provide bilingual and bicultural grief support and physical, emotional and mental health assistance to families throughout Santa Cruz, Monterey, San Benito and South Santa Clara counties coping with the loss of a child or struggling with a child who is seriously ill.
“We are proud to support the ongoing work of Jacob’s Heart, which provides families with the compassionate care they need as they navigate difficult situations,” Irene Chavez, senior vice president and manager of Kaiser Permanente in Santa Cruz County, said. “We believe the family-centered approach to care Jacob’s Heart provides to families will give them the resources, tools and support they need during what can be an extremely challenging time.”
Kaiser presented the grant to Jacob’s Heart on June 7 at the organization’s headquarters in Watsonville.
“We’re grateful to be working with Kaiser Permanente to provide more emotional support to children and their families,” Jacob’s Heart executive director said. “At Jacob’s Heart, we envision a community where every child with cancer or in remission from cancer has a strong, supported, and informed family empowered to fully participate in their care.”
California’s firefighting agency has been slow to react to a mounting mental health crisis within its ranks as firefighters around the state say Cal Fire has failed to get them what they need — including a sustainable workload, easier access to workers’ comp benefits and more counselors.
While climate change is driving enduring drought and ferocious fires ravaging California, nature can’t be blamed for all of Cal Fire’s problems:The state’s fire service, which prides itself in quickly putting out wildfires, has failed to extinguish a smoldering mental health problem among its ranks.
Many firefighters told CalMatters they are fatigued and overwhelmed, describing an epidemic of post-traumatic stress in their fire stations. Veterans say they are contemplating leaving the service, which would deplete the agency of their decades of experience. Some opened up about their suicidal thoughts, while others — an unknown number since Cal Fire doesn’t track it — already have taken their own lives.
Interviews with Cal Fire firefighters, including many high-ranking battalion chiefs and captains, and mental health experts paint a picture of the state agency’s sluggish response to an urgent and growing crisis:
Cal Fire has an unyielding policy of 21-day shifts and forced overtime. Staffing is insufficient as firefighters battle thousands of fires year-round, sometimes for 40 days in a row, year after year. The nonstop work and increasing overtime are contributing to on-the-job injuries and post-traumatic stress disorder.
The workers’ comp system is difficult to navigate for firefighters suffering from post-traumatic stress, even suicidal thoughts, beginning with skepticism among managers about the legitimacy of their unseen wounds. Some say to get help or be reimbursed for mental health care, they have to hire lawyers, who told CalMatters that claims are routinely denied.
In California’s rural areas, where many Cal Fire employees are based, there are inadequate numbers of qualified mental health care providers. And many won’t accept workers’ compensation cases because of the extensive paperwork and low compensation. As a result, firefighters say they can’t find help when they desperately need it.
Work conditions and stress are driving an exodus from the department, which loses invaluable institutional knowledge and field experience. Last year 10% of Cal Fire’s permanent, non-seasonal workforce quit.
Firefighters say suicidal thoughts and PTSD are rampant. But Cal Fire collects no incidence data on suicides or PTSD. Experts say the agency can’t develop an effective program to combat them if they don’t understand and monitor their scope.
Cal Fire’s behavioral health unit ramped up slowly despite the growing problem. Although created in 1999, it had no permanent budget and no permanent employees for 20 years. It began with one staffer — and six years later there were two. Now it has 27 peer-support employees, who assist a permanent and seasonal workforce of more than 9,000.
Cal Fire’s growing budget reflects the priority California places on fighting wildfires as they intensify and spread. The agency’s base budget for wildfires has grown by nearly two‑thirds over the past five years alone, from $1.3 billion in 2017‑18 to $2.1 billion in 2021‑22. The total budget, which includes resource management and fire prevention, has also increased about 45% in the same period, to $3.7 billion.
The California Legislature has maintained a laser focus on combating wildfires, in part because of the breathtaking cost to suppress them: In the last 10 years, Cal Fire has pulled $7.5 billion from the state emergency fund to fight fires, including about $1.2 billion in the past year.
Despite the large investment, the funds have not kept pace with staffing needs: Days with extreme fire risk have more than doubled in California over the last 40 years. Every year, Cal Fire responds to nearly half a million local emergency calls in addition to thousands of wildfires. Last year alone, almost 9,000 wildfires scorched the state; the millions of acres burned in recent years have set new records.
When asked about the problems facing his crews, Cal Fire Chief Joe Tyler, who was appointed in March, acknowledged in an interview with CalMatters that “the fatigue and working long hours on large, destructive fires” is taking a toll on their health and wellness across the state.
Tyler vowed in the interview to make the mental wellbeing of his employees “my number one” priority. “I recognize that the cumulative toll is taking an effect on our people. To be honest, it’s taken a toll on me as well,” he told Calmatters, adding that he once worked a fire for 56 straight days.
Asked why the agency he oversees is failing to protect its firefighters from PTSD, California Resources Secretary Wade Crowfoot said “there’s no absolute, silver-bullet solution.”
“We’ve taken a big step forward,” he said, with a proposal in Gov. Gavin Newsom’s 2022-23 budget to add $400 million for relief staffing and permanent Cal Fire personnel.
“They need to be able to come off the front lines during fire season, and have periods of rest, reconnect with families. It’s an incredible strain. In some cases firefighters haven’t been home for months,” Crowfoot said.
“This is a complex challenge that requires resources and support in a lot of ways. I would not suggest that if we are able to get funding for staffing, it will solve the problem.”
The dangerous work of California’s firefighters is honored at the California Firefighters Memorial on the state Capitol grounds in Sacramento. PHOTO: Miguel Gutierrez Jr./CalMatters
Former Cal Fire Chief Thom Porter, who retired last year after three years as the agency’s commander, said “more needs to be done” to address the agency’s staffing problems, long hours and PTSD among firefighters.
“Part of what needs to be done is recognition that we don’t have enough firefighters in service at any level — state or local,” Porter said. “We need our elected officials at all levels to increase those numbers. People can’t recover from these kinds of stressors without rest away from the job.”
Overworked, Under Stress
An administrative claim notice from Cal Fire’s firefighters’ union had a Dickensian tone, like a logbook from a 19th century sweatshop: Forced overtime, punishing working conditions, little sleep, workplace injuries, an inhuman system of indenture.
“Employees have been known to work 30 days or more without any time off due to forced overtime, and the most egregious cases include employees on duty for 49 days or more straight without a day off. Overworked beyond the point of exhaustion,” says the claim, which union attorneys sent in February to the state’s Division of Occupational Safety and Health (Cal OSHA) and the Labor Workforce Development Agency.
“CAL FIRE employees have sustained physical injuries and routinely experience fatigue, sleep deprivation, stress, and mental distress,” the union wrote, describing the emotional toll, including divorce, alcoholism and substance abuse, of what it called “excessive hours.”
“Other CAL FIRE employees are quitting their job to find relief from the pressure,” the union attorneys wrote. “Even worse, some employees’ emotional distress is so severe that they have committed suicide or experienced suicidal ideation.”
The document requested that the state’s workplace regulatory agencies investigate unsafe work conditions at the fire stations, which are staffed by Cal Fire under contracts with cities and counties.
The staffing problems stem from Cal Fire’s contractual obligationwith local stations in 36 counties to handle all emergency calls, including structure fires, rescues and medical aid, while also being dispatched to battle wildfires statewide.
Gary Messing, a labor lawyer for Cal Fire’s union, Local 2881, said California is out of step with the work rotations of other first responders. Cal Fire has shifts of 21 days, while federal firefighters work 14-day shifts. The union is negotiating with Cal Fire over the issue as part of its collective bargaining process.
“The solution is easy to articulate and hard to accomplish: Reduce the number of hours,” Messing said. “Our people work 72 hours a week. The first thing that could be done is to put Cal firefighters on a 56-hour week. That’s a start.”
The Legislative Analyst’s Office noted in a recent analysis that despite bumps in firefighting staffing and budgets, California’s relentless fires “can still strain response capacity.” In 2020 alone, Cal Fire was unable to dispatch personnel and equipment to thousands of fires: “Roughly 7,900 requests for fire engines, 900 requests for dozers, and 600 requests for helicopters could not be filled.”
The proposed Fixing the Firefighter Shortage Act of 2022, which has been approved by the Senate but has not yet cleared the Assembly, could address some of Cal Fire’s staffing problems. The bill would add about 1,300 firefighters to the state’s ranks at an estimated cost of almost $300 million per year; it would also increase the number of firefighters per engine and attempt to stop forced overtime.
“We are at critical mass, guaranteed, right now,” said Mike Orton, a Cal Fire captain and former Marine who has undergone counseling for PTSD. “These people in fire stations are not going to get relief for years because the state system takes so long to work. The people who are working here are jumping ship like no other. People like me are pulling the ejection handle.”
Unlike most workers, when firefighters make a mistake because of stress or fatigue, their actions can endanger the public.
“At the end of the day, all of the well-intentions in the world, and the mental health awareness, the opportunity to go to trauma retreats, doesn’t help when the bell goes off,” Orton said.
“How do we face the public and say, ‘We decided to close your station today because these guys are tired.’ That’s not a decision our managers are going to make.”
One of the core problems is the simple, intractable math: As fires are more frequent, burning longer and more difficult to fight, California does not have enough firefighters to perform all the tasks the state asks of them.
“If you can’t fill all the positions in your battalion, the way the system Is designed, nobody goes home until the positions are filled,” said Battalion Chief Jeff Burrow, referring to daily work shifts. “If I can’t fill those positions, I’ve got to reach out to the battalion next to me, and nobody in that battalion gets to go home. It just spreads. We run out of people all the time.”
‘Denial, Denial, Denial’
California’s workplace insurance system instructs stressed workers to follow a prescribed path to get relief: Report the problem to your superior, talk to a peer counselor to get referred to a mental health professional, keep your receipts and apply for workers’ comp.
Medical help is the endgame. Workers’ compensation benefits, paid by the state, cover the costs, which average $60,000 for first responders’ cases, according to a Rand Corp. estimate. But the barriers to firefighters’ claims are myriad.
Randy Thrash, who manages Cal Fire’s Occupational Health Program, said finding clinically competent mental health providers outside of large cities is a “huge challenge. They are difficult to find in the rural areas where a lot of our staff lives.”
Even when mental health clinicians can be located, it’s another struggle to identify those willing to take workers’ comp insurance patients, Thrash said. “They don’t want to deal with the billing and reporting requirements of workers’ comp. They prefer to deal with private insurance.”
That creates another layer of bureaucracy for a firefighter seeking help: If someone receives a PTSD diagnosis from a private insurer, those medical records — which are confidential by law — must be made available to the state. If that doesn’t happen, the diagnosis must be verified by a state-qualified medical examiner. The process can take months for a firefighter to be reimbursed for medical care.
A current bill, introduced by three Democratic senators, would cut the time period to investigate PTSD workers’ comp claims from 90 to 60 days, and states that if the claim is not rejected within that timeframe it would be presumed to be eligible for compensation.The proposal has cleared the Senate and is in the Assembly.
The long wait for workers’ comp insurance “is hugely frustrating,” said Gena Mabary, Cal Fire’s injury and accommodation manager. “When you are dealing with psychiatric stress, you are already stressed out. It adds another layer of stress. It means that sometimes people won’t go through the process.”
Cal Fire workers’ comp claims for mental health problems “are more frequent. I am expecting them to increase still more,” Mabary said. No data, however, was available.
“Comprehensive national data on first responder mental health do not exist,” said a 2020 Congressional Research Service report on federal efforts to address the mental health of first responders. The authors reported that barriers to accessing mental health services are particularly problematic among firefighters, where a “culture of not seeking help” exists.
Mynda Ohs, a San Bernardino-based counselor specializing in treating first responders, said Cal Fire “has no idea how to proceed with a mental health injury versus a physical injury.”
One of her Cal Fire patients suffering from PTSD had to hire an attorney to pursue a claim, and even then the case took two years to resolve. “They put him through the ringer, ” Ohs said. “It’s more trauma on top of trauma.”
In 2020, a state law recognized that all first responders engage in stressful and dangerous occupations, and made PTSD “presumptive” for workers’ comp benefits — codifying that a mental injury is a legitimate medical claim, although it must still be proven. That law sunsets at the end of 2024.
Before the law was enacted two years ago, California firefighters’ PTSD cases were denied workers’ comp benefits 24% of the time — almost three times more often than their claims for other medical conditions, according to a RAND Corp. report. They were also denied more often than PTSD cases filed by people in other occupations.
Yet the current system is still stacked against those filing claims, according to an attorney representing firefighters who dispute workers’ comp rejections. He said many are denied.
“Denial, denial, denial,” said San Diego attorney Scott O’Mara. “It’s very, very common. Adjusters’ training is to contain and control costs. They need to pull back and allow these people to get the care. They delay and deny treatment. It’s horrendous.”
Workers’ comp claims begin with an adjuster at the state’s nonprofit insurance provider, the State Fund. If the claim is denied, challenges can move their way, slowly, to the state’s Division of Workers’ Compensation, which is the final arbiter.
Battalion Chief Brad Niven successfully navigated the workers’ comp insurance system for his mental health claim after he began considering suicide, but not without difficulty. He said he has at least 18 friends and peers who have faced the same problems he did.
“I’ve heard horror stories from people whose boss has not supported them, who say, ‘You are making this stuff up, you are not sick. You are trying to get out of coming to work’. You have to sit down with a psychiatrist and you have to relive those experiences. People who have issues, myself included, don’t want to relive them,” Niven said.
“They are looking at it from a financial standpoint, not wanting to approve the claim, not wanting to pay it out. You are guilty until proven innocent. You have to go above and beyond to prove your case.”
Turnover: ‘People are Leaving in Droves’
Far from being walking recruitment posters for Cal Fire, many fire service veterans bluntly said they are ready to leave the organization they love — and they give that unvarnished advice to their colleagues. The agency is losing experienced employees who either accept quieter, better-paid first responder jobs or opt to retire and collect a pension.
Burrow said his Riverside staff is operating at about 50% capacity. “You’d be hard-pressed to talk to someone in the department right now that isn’t looking for other avenues in their life,” he said.
He added, “people are leaving in droves.”
“My entire battalion — we have people leaving all the time or retiring earlier, which is where I’m at,” said Burrow, 49. “For the people that work for me, I advise them to move on. I can’t in good conscience tell them to stay. We have people quitting the academy now. That was unheard of 20 years ago. That speaks volumes.”
Cal Fire officials initially disputed that people are leaving in large numbers, saying their staffing levels have been fairly consistent.
But data released at CalMatters’ request shows that about 10% of its workforce quit last year. The number of firefighters and other personnel who left in 2021 was 691, nearly twice the average for the previous four years, according to numbers provided by Cal Fire spokesman Chris Amestoy.
‘For So Long It Was In The Dark.’ And Often, It Still Is
There have been few attempts at legislation to address the mental health of the state’s wildland firefighters.
A 2017 bill would have created a peer-support program for a broad range of first responders that included a strict confidentiality component. It made it through the Legislature and to then-Gov. Jerry Brown in 2018 for his signature.
In the month that the bill sat on the governor’s desk, two Cal Fire employees committed suicide, according to Assemblymember Tim Grayson, the bill’s author. Brown ultimately vetoed it, objecting to the scope of the confidentiality, which he said could jeopardize workplace safety.
Grayson, a Democrat from Concord, revived the measure the next legislative session, with a more-narrow focus on creating a pilot program of peer support for local or regional firefighters. That legislation was signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom, although it has a sunset provision in two years.
Grayson said it took three years to convince colleagues that mental health problems were increasing at Cal Fire, in part because the agency collects little data.
“There’s been a shift — people are talking about this. For so long it was in the dark,” he said. “We’re talking about lives here. Not just lives of the firefighters, but their family and children, everybody is impacted by the wellbeing of our first responders. It would behoove us to invest in the mental health and wellbeing of our first responders. They do lay their lives on the lines for us.”
Porter, Cal Fire’s recently retired chief, said firefighters are starting to open up more about their PTSD and share their heart-wrenching stories.
“It’s been an incredibly moving experience to have people opening their personal lives and talking about things that never would have been talked about before. In my career, up until the last three years, I have never heard some of this. It’s alarming,” he said.
But getting help is problematic in a service where tough-guy traditions persist. Mike Ming, who oversees Cal Fire’s employee support program, saw firsthand the “walk-it-off” mentality as a young firefighter. When he told a supervisor that a traumatic work experience was bothering him, “He said, ‘Suck it up, buttercup,’ and told me to pull up my skirt.”
While that attitude is fading, Ming said, there remain “some holdovers, some 30-year grumpy captains. We do also have in management some folks who say, ‘I sucked it up, why don’t they suck it up?’ I don’t know if we are ever going to get away from having some aspect of that.”
Dennis King, 76, who retired as a battalion chief after 22 years with Cal Fire, may be one of those holdovers. He wonders “if the pendulum has swung so far.”
“The state has always had a very liberal policy. The phone rings in the morning at the station and I go, “Who’s calling in sick today?’ Everyone says, ‘I think I have the flu.’ We have people who are serial hypochondriacs. There’s always people who are going to take advantage of this system.”
Today, when mental health issues are raised among wildland firefighters, it’s still in hushed tones. There’s a stubborn stigma attached to discussing PTSD or trauma.
“They will always tell you there’s no punitive action against anybody who admits to PTSD,” said Mike Feyh, a former captain with the Sacramento City Fire Department. “But it does affect their career. There were very few times that I saw someone who has struggled with a mental health issue rise to the top of an organization or take a leadership position. They kept it to themselves.”
Ernie Marugg, a former Cal Fire battalion chief who is in the process of seeking a medical retirement for PTSD, said the agency culture is, “If you need help you are weak and if you are weak I don’t want you around me. It’s like you are contagious,” he said.
A Slow Reckoning At Cal Fire
Until recently, Cal Fire’s behavioral health program was bare-bones. The program had only one staffer when it began in 1999 and six years later, there were two. Now Cal Fire has 27 employees in its peer-led program — all of them with their own stories of addiction, suicide attempts and trauma — to help a statewide workforce of 6,500. These peers do not offer formal counseling, they mostly listen, and then, if warranted, send employees to therapists for help.
But Cal Fire still doesn’t collect much data on mental health, and what information it does gather is often squirreled away in departments that don’t talk to each other. Some Cal Fire staffers bemoan the agency’s antiquated and cumbersome data management.
For example, its behavioral health program collects numbers of “contacts” — calls to a helpline and visits in person from a peer advisor. But, rather than focusing solely on issues such as PTSD, the numbers include those seeking advice about an array of other topics, such as parenting, financial problems and legal issues.
When CalMatters asked Tyler, the Cal Fire head, why his agency doesn’t have data on incidence of PTSD and suicides, he said he will soon meet with the behavioral health team to discuss “strengths and weaknesses and threats to the program.” He said the data related to mental health needs to be improved.
The 2012 Strategic Plan, Cal Fire’s guiding document updated every seven years, devoted two pages to the value of physical fitness and calisthenics. There was no discussion of PTSD or mental health.
Cal Fire now preaches the importance of mental health awareness and the no-strings approach to asking for help. The latest plan, from 2019, for the first time acknowledges suicide as a problem.Now each station house has pamphlets and fliers tacked onto bulletin boards with information about PTSD and suicide prevention. Classes about PTSD and suicide awareness have recently been added to the Cal Fire academy’s curriculum.
Behavioral health experts point to the U.S. Armed Forces as a model for integrating mental health programs alongside physical well being.
The Defense Department has studied and reported on the health of American troops for 30 years. In 2021 the military asked the Rand Corporation to perform a similar analysis, considered a critical tool to understanding the impacts of the long deployments and inherent dangers. “Exposure to traumatic events, combat in particular, is a well-known hazard of military service. PTSD can contribute to military attrition, absenteeism, and misconduct,” the report said.
The U.S. Forest Service, which manages the nation’s largest wildland firefighting force, says it is focusing on PTSD like never before.
“Over the past several years, understanding the mental health impacts on firefighters has become a high priority,” said E. Wade Muehlof, a deputy national press officer with the Forest Service in Washington, D.C., citing the length and intensity of the fire season as factors.
The federal agency has an expanded employee assistance program and a new provider with on-call “trauma-trained clinicians.” In addition, it tasked a new behavioral health steering committee with developing programs.
But even as the need has come into sharper focus, a gap in services for first responders remains.
The nonprofit National Fire Protection Association identified an acute shortage of programs to treat PTSD and trauma among firefighters. Its 2021 national assessmentfound that nearly three-quarters of fire departments do not have behavioral health programs for their employees. Of those that do, 90% offer help for post-traumatic stress but few other mental health services.
“We are really good at preventing fires, why don’t we work on preventing this?,” said Patrick Walker, a Cal Fire battalion chief. “There’s a tendency to kick people when they are down, instead of pulling them up. That’s got to change.”
A Life Saved
Intervention, if it comes in time, can save lives. Niven can attest to that.
In late 2019 the battalion chief, who is based in Sonora, was struggling with depression and suicidal thoughts. They became overwhelming after he drove through an intersection where, five years earlier, he was unable to save the life of a young woman hit by a logging truck.
He couldn’t shake the memories. “I thought to myself, ‘Is this it? Am I going to commit suicide?’,” Niven, 47, said in an interview.But he didn’t reach out for help, “I thought I could fix it.”
During a flight to Sacramento, he made a plan: He would kill himself by jumping off the top floor of the airport parking garage.
A flight attendant who saw him crying sat next to him and asked how she could help. She arranged for Niven to text a friend, who put him in touch with a counselor from Cal Fire’s employee support program, who then stayed with Niven on the phone for two hours after the plane landed.
After that, Niven received counseling and the support of a supervisor, who told him what every employee in pain wants to hear: I got your back.
If you are having suicidal thoughts, you can get help from the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 or suicidepreventionlifeline.org.
On Tuesday, Santa Cruz Police arrested a Watsonville man after he allegedly traveled to the Santa Cruz Municipal Wharf to meet who he thought was an underage girl for sex.
Valentin Rodriguez, 62, was charged with meeting a minor for lewd purposes. He was booked into Santa Cruz County Jail but was not in custody on Thursday.
Rodriguez teaches diesel mechanics at Hartnell College in Salinas.
According to Santa Cruz Police spokeswoman Joyce Blaschke, the 14-year-old girl Rodriguez thought he was meeting was an “independent, non-sworn investigator” that was live-streaming a “sting” operation.
Rodriguez reportedly exchanged several inappropriate messages online with the decoy.
The group that set up the sting, CC Unit (Creep Catching Unit), says on its website that it’s dedicated to catching and exposing online predators. Members pose as underage children online and then confront and record the people who agree to meet them.
Since it was founded in 2018, the San Diego-based outfit says it has caught 240 people, 25 of whom have been arrested.
Blaschke says that an SCPD officer asked a CC Unit member to send a text message to Rodriguez, making his cell phone buzz.
“The reporting party produced compelling evidence for probable cause to arrest the suspect Valentin Rodriguez for arranging to meet with a person assumed to be a juvenile with the intent to engage in sex and lewd acts,” Blaschke stated in a press release.
Detectives have obtained warrants for Rodriguez’s home, vehicle and electronic devices. The investigation is ongoing. It is not yet known if there are actual underage victims.
Blaschke says that police do not recommend that citizens conduct sting operations to protect the investigation’s integrity. She added that confronting suspects could be dangerous.
As four candidates take a comfortable lead in the race for two seats on the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors, efforts to win the November runoff race will begin in earnest.
With roughly half of the ballots counted, Fourth District candidates Watsonville City Council members Jimmy Dutra and Felipe Hernandez had garnered 1,152 and 862 votes, respectively, as of Wednesday afternoon. The two-edged out opponent, Ed Acosta, who received 345 votes.
That district covers much of unincorporated Watsonville. In 2012, Greg Caput, then a Watsonville City Councilman, defeated incumbent Tony Campos and has held onto his seat against several challengers.
Dutra attributes his success to walking his district and connecting with potential voters.
“I was out there personally talking to people, having conversations with them, and I did that for three months straight,” he said. “I think that connection is what people here in this community appreciate.”
Dutra also says his message of supporting South County resonates with his potential constituents.
“A lot of people, including myself, feel that we do not get the resources or finding that we deserve in this part of the county,” he said. “People feel that we’re forgotten.”
He also says he got support from voters who appreciated his opposition to a housing project on Ohlone Parkway being built on contaminated soil.
“People told me they were voting for me because of that vote,” he said. “I put the health and safety of our community first.”
Hernandez did not respond to requests for comment.
In District 3, Shebreh Kalantari-Johnson had received 2,333 votes to opponent Justin Cummings’ 1,900. Ami Chen-Mills got 880.
Cummings says he is cautiously optimistic
“If we’re heading into a runoff, we’ll be looking forward to keeping up the momentum,” he said.
Cummings says that his connections with the diverse spectrums of the community helped push him to the runoff.
He also says he garnered support for his mayorship during 2020 when the community was reeling from the pandemic, the CZU Lightning Complex fires and the social unrest fomented by the murder of George Floyd.
Kalantari-Johnson says she focused her campaign on reaching out to voters, walking the district and making phone calls.
“I think that paid off,” she said.
Also resonating with constituents, she says, is that, if elected, Kalantari-Johnson would be the only woman on the board, which white men currently populate.
She says her work with nonprofit organizations and on the city council propelled her to the runoff.
“Voters want a leader who is in action, and who is really trying to work toward solutions and who is a collaborative thinker and can work across sectors and work across the county,” she said. That’s what the voters want, and they’ve seen it in me either through my professional work or my work on the City Council, and they know I can put it to scale at the county level.”
The four will face off in the Nov. 8 election.In the California Assembly race, 29th District incumbent Robert Rivas edged out Republican challenger Stephanie Castro with 65% of the vote. At the same time, in the 30th Assembly District, Democrat Dawn Addis and Republican Vicki Nohrden appear headed to the November runoff, having so far garnered 43.4% and 33.4%, respectively.
