PREVIOUSLY:

• Sheriff’s Office Asks for Public’s Help to Locate Missing McKinleyville Man

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Press release from the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office:

On Nov. 8, 2025, at approximately 12:55 p.m., Humboldt County Sheriff deputies were dispatched to Mad River Beach in Arcata for the report of a human body that had washed ashore.

Upon arrival, the deputies located the deceased body of an adult male.  No signs of physical trauma were observed. The Humboldt County Coroner responded to the scene and took over the investigation.

The Humboldt County Coroner’s Office has positively identified the human remains discovered as that of 33-year-old Corey Shannon-Johnson of McKinleyville, who was reported missing on Nov. 1, 2025.

Shannon-Johnson’s next of kin have been notified and an autopsy is scheduled for later today to determine the cause and manner of death.

The Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office extends our deepest sympathies to Shannon Johnson’s family during this difficult time. 

Photo via the campaign website.

Press release from the Colby Smart campaign:

Colby Smart, an educator, community leader, and lifelong advocate for rural and coastal Northern California, today announced his candidacy for the U.S. House of Representatives as an independent.

Born in Lake County and raised in a working-class family, Colby has spent his career serving the public through education. He has resided in Humboldt County for nearly three decades, where he and his wife raised their three children. As Deputy Superintendent at the Humboldt County Office of Education, he has led initiatives in workforce development, global education, curriculum and instruction, and community partnerships that strengthen local economies and opportunities for young people.

Beyond his work in education, Smart has been deeply engaged in community service and civic leadership. He serves on the boards of the College of the Redwoods Foundation, the Greater Eureka Chamber of Commerce, and is a member of Rotary International. Smart also collaborates with the California Global Education Project to expand opportunities for international learning and exchange, and works with local foundations to promote workforce and global education initiatives.

With California’s 2nd Congressional District newly redrawn under Proposition 50, Smart says the region deserves leadership that listens to everyone. “When maps change, representation should change with them to ensure equal representation,” Smart said. “No community should ever feel ignored or taken for granted.”

Dr. Smart’s campaign priorities include:

• Revitalizing rural economies through sustainable industries, workforce training, and small-business innovation.
• Strengthening public education for all students, regardless of ZIP code.
• Promoting public-private partnerships that create jobs and invest in local prosperity.
• Protecting natural resources while supporting tourism, agriculture, and responsible growth.
• Restoring trust in government through accountability, transparency, and service.

“I’m running because District 2 deserves representation that puts people before politics. Northern California needs leadership grounded in service, not party lines — leadership that stands up for every voice and works for the common good.”

About Colby Smart

Colby Smart is an educator, community advocate, and Deputy Superintendent at the Humboldt County Office of Education. A lifelong Californian with deep roots in rural and coastal communities, he has devoted his career to improving schools, supporting small businesses, and strengthening local partnerships. His community service has included leadership roles with the College of the Redwoods Foundation, the Greater Eureka Chamber of Commerce, Rotary International, the Humboldt County Historical Society, and the California Global Education Project. Smart is committed to practical, people-first leadership that brings unity and opportunity to Northern California.

Learn more at www.colbysmart.com.

Press release from the Arroyo campaign:

Natalie Arroyo, currently serving as Humboldt County’s elected Fourth District Supervisor, has officially launched her 2026 campaign to continue representing Eureka, Myrtletown, and the Samoa Peninsula communities of Samoa, Finntown, and Fairhaven. She announced her candidacy on Saturday, November 8th at Madaket Plaza in Eureka overlooking Humboldt Bay, surrounded by a crowd of supporters and community partners. The primary election will take place on June 2, 2026.

Longtime Finntown resident, Peninsula Community Services District Board President, and maritime industry expert Leroy Zerlang welcomed the crowd, sharing stories about Madaket Plaza and his many years working closely with Natalie to improve the Samoa Peninsula. Captain Zerlang was followed by local engineer Sheri Woo, who serves on the Humboldt Bay Municipal Water District Board of Directors and frequently engages with Supervisor Arroyo on matters related to everything from energy services to community celebrations. Sheri warmly introduced Natalie Arroyo through many anecdotes of their time together.

Natalie shared several examples of recent positive accomplishments and her passion for serving the community at the local government level, especially in this moment. She thanked the many fellow community leaders present for their collaboration and care in serving Humboldt County. The announcement was followed by a reception just steps away at Phatsy Kline’s Parlor Lounge inside the Historic Eagle House, featuring the lovely music of local duo Ponies of Harmony.

Natalie is thrilled to be bringing her breadth of experience and heartfelt enthusiasm to this role once more. A longtime Eureka resident, Natalie has previously served as a Eureka City Councilmember, watershed restoration specialist, trail planner, college educator, and a proud veteran. Natalie’s message for voters in her district is: “Simply put, I love Humboldt County and am honored to serve as your representative in District 4. These are challenging and dynamic times, and I bring experience, relationships, and knowledge you can count on. Thank you for the opportunity and I hope to earn your vote for a second term!”

Natalie has already been endorsed by Congressman Jared Huffman, Senator Mike McGuire, and Assemblymember Chris Rogers, with more endorsement announcements soon to come. You can learn more and connect with the campaign by visiting www.arroyoforsupervisor.com

Grant was born on January 2, 1943, in San Rafael, and passed away on October 26, 2025, following a short illness.

He was the firstborn child of George and Dorothy O’Neill. Grant grew up in Marin County until age nine, when the family moved to Eureka, where he spent the rest of his life. He loved the outdoors and the beauty of Humboldt County.

From a young age, he took great pride in his work. His first job, delivering newspapers, he took very seriously: he would rise early to wrap the papers, then hop on his bike to deliver them before dawn. His next venture was gathering cascara bark in the woods; after carefully removing the bark, he packaged it to sell to local pharmacies. As a teenager, he also spent time as a commercial fisherman. These experiences shaped the strong work ethic that defined his life.

Grant played Little League and was a strong baseball player. He enjoyed duck hunting in his youth and loved working on the many cars he owned during his teen years, and later, owned a white Corvette that he treasured.

He attended Lincoln Elementary School and graduated from Eureka High School. While at Lincoln, he met one of his closest friends, Gene Hanson. Later on in life they worked together at Louisiana-Pacific Pulp Mill. They remained lifelong friends.

In the 1960s, Grant worked for Del Norte Box. After that business closed, he went to work for Louisiana-Pacific Pulp Mill. In the 1980s, he became co-owner and operator of Discount Tires with his brother-in-law, Lee Hobbs, a business of which he was very proud.

He finished his working career at Schmidbauer Lumber as a forklift driver and retired from Schmidbauer in 2013. Grant made many friends there and stayed in touch even after retirement. Work always came first for him, and it was hard for him to imagine stepping away.

During his first marriage, Grant welcomed his son, Darin, on July 2, 1967. He loved boating and camping, and the family spent many summers at Trinity Lake with relatives and friends.

Several years after his first marriage ended, Grant met the love of his life, Debbie Minns. They were married on Christmas Eve, 1995, and would have celebrated their 30th anniversary this December. They married when Brian and Darin were already adults, and their families blended naturally. Grant and Debbie built a beautiful life together, as best friends who were always devoted to one another. Grant often said Debbie was the best thing that ever happened to him.

Because his family had little when he was growing up, Grant cherished what he worked so hard to have and took excellent care of it. His home was immaculate, his cars were pristine, and his garden, especially the roses, was always beautiful.Grant was a happy man with a great sense of humor who loved helping others. In his neighborhood, he was known as the “Mayor of Montecito.” He was always doing things for his neighbors and anyone else he could help. On trash day, you could regularly see him bringing in everyone’s garbage cans.

He had many friends, too many to count. Out in the community, there was always someone who would stop to talk with him. He loved attending Music by the Bay and visiting with friends. He was loved by many. Grant loved animals, especially his cat, Levi, his best buddy, who will miss him dearly.

He was preceded in death by his parents, George and Dorothy O’Neill, and his brother-in-law, Lee Hobbs.

He is survived by his wife and best friend, Debbie; his son, Darin; his stepson, Brian (Lena); his granddaughter, Brianna Harrison; his sisters, Sharon Soules (Walt Mello) and Peggy Hobbs (Dave Suchar); his sisters-in-law, Shari York (Gary) and Paula Georwick (Gary); his nephew, Lee Hobbs Jr. (Julie); his nieces, Melissa Woods (Rizz), Lindy Hobbs (Fernando), and Natasha James (Tyler); and his cousin, Curtis Cress (Erin). Grant helped raise his granddaughter, Brianna, and loved her deeply. He also had a special bond with his niece, Lindy.

The family extends heartfelt thanks to the neighbors, family and friends who have offered support after Grant’s passing.

In Grant’s memory, please do something kind for someone else, pay it forward, or think of him when you are in your garden. He will be missed forever.

A memorial for close family and friends will be announced at a later time.

Joe Murguia
Jan. 23, 1991 - Nov. 3, 2025

Joe was a vibrant and compassionate individual whose presence brought light and warmth to all who knew him. His passing is a profound loss to his family and friends. Joe would always tell stories about growing up in Tijuana and crossing over the boarder everyday to San Diego to go to school. Joe ended up moving to Eureka and found comfort in living there after his lifestyle change. He made a lot of connections through his job at T-Mobile. Every customer he connected with and would always try to make them feel seen.

Joe was known for his joyful spirit, generous heart and unwavering kindness. He had a unique ability to make others feel seen, valued and uplifted. Whether through a smile, a thoughtful word or a simple act of kindness, Joe left a lasting impression on everyone he encountered. His legacy is one of love, laughter and deep connection a life lived with authenticity and heart. As we reflect on Joe’s life, we are reminded of the importance of embracing each moment and cherishing the people around us.

His memory will forever be woven into the fabric of our hearts, and the impact he made will continue to resonate through the lives he touched.

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This week on the EcoNews Report, we’re excited to share that the comment period for Eel River dam removal has finally opened! Tune in to hear co-hosts Tom Wheeler of EPIC and Alicia Bales of the Redwood Chapter of the Sierra Club talk with Alicia Hamann of Friends of the Eel River about this important moment.

The Wild and Scenic Eel River offers an unparalleled opportunity to restore native fish populations. With vast, high-quality habitat protected in wild landscapes and fish that retain their wild genetics, dam removal will reconnect hundreds of miles of prime spawning and rearing habitat, restore natural sediment flow, reduce methylmercury buildup, and improve downstream water quality.

Taking down the Eel River dams is the single most important step toward recovering the river’s once-abundant salmon, steelhead, and lamprey runs. Supported by Tribes, fishers, recreationists, and conservation groups, the Free the Eel movement invites everyone to help heal a century of harm and restore this iconic river.

Learn more and find information about upcoming comment workshops and instructions for submitting comments at eelriver.org.

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Col. Thomas H. Monroe, Sr. will mark his 95th birthday on April 28. Those many years have special meaning to a man who spent the prime of his life away from home but never lost touch with his deep roots in Humboldt County.

His devotion to the nation spanned the two major wars and service under Generals John J. Pershing and Douglas MacArthur. This same spirit of service was devoted to civic projects in his home community after retirement from the military.

He traces his Humboldt County heritage back to the Albee family, early settlers who came overland from the Midwest. His great-grandfather, Joseph Albee, settled on a ranch in the Redwood Creek area in 1852 and was killed by Indians in 1862. Joseph Albee’s daughter, Ann, married Col. Monroe’s grandfather, Welton Alanzo Monroe. The Colonel’s father, Alanzo Judson Monroe, was born at Hydesville in 1858 and his mother, Lucretia Huntington, was born at Rockford, Ill.

The Albee name was ever present in Col. Monroe’s youth. George Albee, his great uncle, taught him chemistry at Eureka High School. George later became superintendent of schools and the high school’s Albee Stadium was named in his honor.

Col. Monroe likes to tell a story involving his grandfather, Charles A. Huntington, who was a Congregational Church minister. While serving as an Indian Agent and teacher at Neah Bay, Wash., Huntington told a group of Native Americans about the Biblical account of the flood brought on by 40 days and 40 nights of rain. One of his listeners replied, “It rains here 90 days and 90 nights and we’re not flooded out.”

The Monroe name carries with it the traditions of longevity and military service. Col. Monroe’s brother was Brig. General Hammond McDougal Monroe, who died on Jan. 25, 1985 at the age of 91. The Colonel’s two sons are Col. Thomas H. Monroe, Jr., who lives in Eureka, and Col. Putnam Waldner Monroe of Austin, Texas. All four men graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.

Col. Monroe was born in Eureka on April 28, 1890 in a cottage at Del Norte and E streets, the site of the present First Baptist Church. He remembers that the one-story cottage had the distinction of being a “highrise” with a number of steps leading to the entrance.

This was because the house was built over huge redwood stumps and blasting talent had not been available for their removal prior to construction.

Growing up in early-day Eureka left him with a number of other vivid childhood memories:

Like the time, at age 4, when something came over the backyard fence while he was in the yard with his mother. The family bulldog picked up the object before he could get to it. It was food laced with strychnine and the dog died.

Or the time when Henry Way, pond tender for the Occidental Mill, fished out a large octopus.

Then there was the organ concert at church when, at age 14, he was charged with the responsibility of pumping the leather bellows. At a point in a selection when all stops were open, the bellows broke. At first the organist thought he had “goofed off,” and it was all pretty tense until the truth emerged.

His first taste of schooling came as a 5-year-old when he attended a kindergarten school operated at D and 6th streets by Mrs. Henry Way, wife of the Occidental Mill pond tender.

From there he attended elementary grades at the one-room Lincoln School, Grant School, Brown School and Pioneer School. He recalls that some teachers were strict on discipline and “if you got a licking at school you would get a licking at home.” In one of the more exciting schoolroom incidents at Pioneer School, a male teacher lost his patience and started to pull young Monroe out the door. The student clung to a desk and finally both boy and desk went tumbling outside. The colonel recalls that this incident led to a request that he apologize to the teacher and apologize he did.

He was sent to a preparatory school at Portland, Oregon, for a year in 1906 and returned to get his high school education at Winship School. He graduated from Winship, Eureka’s first high school, in 1909.

He was elected student body president at the high school and played on the football team. “In those days we used a donated football and furnished our own playing equipment.”

Memories of high school include the building of a tennis court with a wood surface, membership in the Sequoia Yacht Club, where students could swim in a pool built of timbers and caulked like a ship’s hull, and summer work experiences.

During the summer of 1907, he worked in a sash-and-door factory at Samoa. The next summer he joined two friends on a pack trip into the Klamath River country, and in the summer of 1909 he got a job with a relocation survey crew working in the Eel River canyon for the Northwestern Pacific Railroad.

In December of 1909, he took a competitive examination for West Point at University of California at Berkeley. An entrance test followed in January, and he entered West Point in the class of 1914 on March 1. His sponsor was Congressman Englebright of Grass Valley.

A memorable event in his cadet years was being in attendance at the inauguration of President Woodrow Wilson following his election in 1913. The ceremony gave him an unexpected glimpse of a dashing second lieutenant in the cavalry who had graduated from West Point in 1909 and was to become General George S. Patton. At the inauguration, Patton, on horseback, had words with an unauthorized man who had taken over the speaker’s podium. The man wouldn’t move until Patton finally threatened him at close range with his saber.

After graduating from West Point, Col. Monroe’s first assignment as a second lieutenant in the infantry was at El Paso, Texas, with General John J. Pershing. It was here, at Camp Cotton, that Pershing was assembling troops and material for the much publicized punitive expedition against the notorious Francisco (Pancho) Villa, Mexican bandit and revolutionary. The action was ordered by President Wilson after Villa’s band raided Columbia, New Mexico in 1916 and killed a number of American citizens.

It was at El Paso that Col. Monroe asked General Pershing for a month’s leave to marry his fiancee, Clara Waldner, in Eureka. The general said “no,” but allowed a three-day leave. The bride-to-be hurriedly traveled by train to El Paso, and the wedding took place on March 27, 1915.

The bride soon returned home and the groom went on to Columbia, New Mexico and the jumping off base for the expedition into Mexico. Col. Monroe was made adjutant of a motor truck battalion of 1,100 vehicles. It was the battalion’s job to supply the troops engaged in the pursuit of Villa.

President Wilson had ordered that Villa be captured dead or alive, and the expedition trailed the renegade for 11 months from March, 1916 to February, 1917, but failed in its objective. World War I was at hand, and in this same year Pershing was appointed commander in chief of the American Expeditionary Force in France.

Col. Monroe returned to the Sixth Infantry Regiment at El Paso and was then assigned to an officers’ training camp in Tennessee. His regiment became part of the 54th Infantry, and he became a battalion commander. He was sent overseas from New York in July, 1918, and landed at Liverpool, England. From there, his outfit went on to Winchester, England and Le Havre, France.

He recalls, “We were known as the ‘Sightseeing Sixth’ because we marched all over France and never got into a serious battle.”

But it wasn’t all that easy. There is the memory of battling large rats in the trenches, being hospitalized with dysentery and viewing the Verdun battlefields where reminders of the recent dead lay all about. It was at Verdun that a million men died in the bloodiest battle of World War I.

After the Armistice and his return to New York, Col. Monroe came home to Eureka on leave before reporting for a two-year assignment with the ROTC at the Georgia Military Academy. Then came a one-year stint at Georgia Tech, followed by one year of duty as head of the ROTC in the Fourth Corps Area in Atlanta.

Other assignments included the Command and General Staff School at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, temporary duty with the Chemical Warfare Corps at Edgewood Arsenal, Maryland, organizer of the Chemical Welfare Board for the Army and service as secretary of the board for three years.

In 1929, Col. Monroe was transferred back to the infantry and assigned the Philippine Command at Fort McKinley. It was here that he became acquainted with General Douglas MacArthur. After knowing and working with a number of generals. Col. Monroe rates MacArthur the “greatest general of modern times.”

In 1930, Gen. MacArthur put Col. Monroe in command of Camp Baguio, a Philippine resort of 250 rooms for Army and Navy personnel. A year later, the colonel was sent to the Army War College in Washington, D.C., for more study.

In 1932, Gen. MacArthur ordered him to Fort Benning, but that order was canceled. Instead, Col. Monroe was assigned to the War Department’s general staff under Gen. MacArthur to work in the British Empire Section G2 (intelligence).

Col. Monroe in 1941.

In 1936, he was sent to Oakland as an instructor for the California National Guard, a duty he remembers as “pleasant with a lot of good friends.” World War II brought him the assignment of antitank officer with the Sixth Army in June of 1942. In September of that year he took command of the 15th Infantry, a part of the Third Division at Fort Lewis, Washington. From Fort Lewis he went to Fort Ord near Monterey, to Camp Prickett, Virginia, and then to North Africa on November 7, 1942, where he served in an area from Casablanca to Tunis.

In July, 1943, he was ordered back to the U.S. to serve as instructor at the Army-Navy Staff School, Washington, D.C., where he headed the Intelligence Section.

After his retirement from the Army on May 1,1946, Col. Monroe returned to Eureka and devoted his time and talent to civic affairs. He served as public relations director for the Eureka Chamber of Commerce and Civil Defense director for the county. He received a state appointment as director of civil defense for the entire North Coast District. He has always shown a keen interest in community history and is a member and past president of the Humboldt County Historical Society.

The Colonel has four grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren. His wife died in 1976.

His home is in a scenic wooded section of Monroe Lane in the Redmond Road area of Eureka. He retains a lively interest in the community, in reading and in corresponding with his many friends. Two hobbies in his retirement years have been fishing and gardening. He says, “I can’t do much of that anymore, but I still have a martini every night at five.”