Panelists (from left to right) Roberto Gomez, Tony Wallin, Ray Watson, Joshua Bates, Tyler Parr and Humboldt County Sheriff William Honsal.
Almost a year after the death of George Floyd and the ensuing national calls for police reform and accountability, a group of Humboldt County law enforcement officers sat with a couple of ex-convicts for a discussion on criminal justice with local youth.
For the Humboldt Independent Practice Associations Boys to Men support groups, the discussion started weeks before they recently met with the panel at the McKinleyville Middle School gym for a conversation about justice. This is very hard and much needed work in our community, and areas across the nation, Vanessa Vrtiak, the school-based health center program coordinator, said in an email to the
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Perilous Plunge participants take the leap for the Redwood Discovery Museum in 2017.
Wednesday afternoon was their scheduled weekly supervised visit with their mom; every week they d come into the same room with the same books and toys, while I sat on an office chair at the door jotting down notes. Before I became a staff writer at the
Journal, I worked with Humboldt County youth at an afterschool program, a summer camp and at the foster care agency. Some of my job included monitoring supervised visits like these. Mom played with daughter. Mom engaged in a conversation with her son and asked him about school. Mom brought snacks. Mom read a book to them.
click to flip through (3) Shutterstock Bags and bags filled with recyclables were piling up in Kathy Hutchinson’s shed. She had been waiting for the Eureka Recycling Center to resume paying for California Refund Value bottles and cans after it closed in March due to COVID-19 restrictions, but the eagerly anticipated reopening was short lived. The center briefly resumed its CRV redemption services last September but an overwhelming demand caused traffic congestion and hazards on Broadway, which caused Humboldt Waste Management Authority to discontinue the service, which wasn t penciling out financially anyway. In 2010, Humboldt County had a total of 10 CRV redemption centers but at the beginning of last year only five remained. Now there are none, as centers in Fortuna, McKinleyville and Redway all closed their CRV programs in 2020, which partially led to the flood of demand that prompted the Eureka Recycling
Cumulative COVID-19 cases, recoveries and deaths in Humboldt
As the Journal s editorial staff gathered (virtually) for the annual ritual of deciding the year s top 10 stories the most impactful and memorable things that happened on the North Coast it was inescapable: The stench of COVID-19 was everywhere. From shuttered schools, closed businesses and laid-off workers to local government s frantic planning efforts, death and illness COVID-19 was the top 10 stories in Humboldt County. Every. Single. One.
But that was a depressing realization we couldn t entirely square with. After all, there were other monumental stories in 2020 that will forever change Humboldt from huge forest fires and an institution in crisis to the fight for racial justice and the decades-long effort to restore a river s health. Omitting those, we felt, was letting the pandemic win. So we opted to give COVID-19 the space and prominence it deserves, while offering readers five additional stories that any