Overview of the boundaries of the Six Rivers Lightning Complex as of the morning, with individual fire names.

Press release from the Six Rivers National Forest:

Six Rivers National Forest Crews working the fires last night were able to hold a majority of the work accomplished by the day shift. High overnight humidity helped slow any progress. The incident will enter into unified command with Cal Fire at 7:00 am today. Additionally, the Trinity County Sheriff’s Department, Humboldt County Sheriff’s Department, California Highway Patrol and CalFire are also in unified command with the Forest Service.

All uncontained fires within the complex continue to have potential to increase in size with uphill runs, moderate range spotting, as well as extreme fire behavior.

Much of the steep and nearly inaccessible terrain has heavy ground fuel accumulations from the winter ice storm which could result in uncharacteristic fire behavior. The active fire area has has little recent fire history

Given the full-suppression tactics on this fire, crews will continue to fight fire aggressively in order to keep fire as small as possible. Personnel are working to find areas to fight fire directly while continuing to provide community defense for Willow Creek, Seely, Mcintosh, Salyer Heights and other areas along the Trinity River.

Thanks to the hard work of many firefighter personnel, zero structures have been lost.

Additional crews, engines, and other resources are arriving continually.

Weather:

Smoke and inversion strength will be the main weather drivers across the complex today. Tonight winds are expected to be light with good humidity recovery.

Evacuations:

The fire threatens communities along the Trinity River. Five main fires burn North and South of Highway 299. Primary areas of focus are the communities along the 299 corridor, Waterman Ridge, Friday Ridge Road, and Ammon Ridge.

Evacuations continue around Willow Creek, Friday Ridge, Salyer and Trinity Village. Additional fire growth could impact communities and residences along the Route 1 road. To find the latest evacuation information go to Humboldt County Office of Emergency Services (https://humboldtgov.org/2383/) or Trinity County Office of Emergency Services (https://www.trinitycounty.). Evacuation zones can be found at https://community.zonehaven. If you are under an evacuation warning, take the necessary steps to be ready to leave.

Evacuation Center:

American Red Cross
Trinity Valley Elementary School
730 Highway 96, Willow Creek, CA 95573

Animal Evacuation Center:

Hoopa Rodeo Grounds
1767 Pine Creek Rd., Hoopa, CA 95546
(707) 492-2851

**The Hoopa Rodeo Grounds has several single pens and larger pens for whole herds. Call directly if you need directions or help transporting your large animals. They cannot house sheep, goats, poultry, or small animals, but they can potentially help arrange for temporary foster placement. If you can foster, please reach out regarding your availability and capacity.

Road Closures:

State Route 299, State Route 96, and Route 1 remain open to through traffic. Residents are encouraged to visit http://quickmap.dot.ca.gov/ to check for state highway closures.

The following roads into evacuation zones have been closed. Residents may still use these roads to travel out of evacuation order zones:

• Horse Linto Creek Road at Saddle Lane

• Country Club Road at Kimtu Bridge

• Friday Ridge Road at Hwy 299

Smoke:

Heavy smoke and strong inversions continue to affect the health of those who are not yet evacuated. Please check https://www.ncuaqmd.org for air quality resources.

Incident Information:

For more information on the Six Rivers Lightning Complex go to our Inciweb page at:

• InciWeb http://inciweb.nwcg.gov/

• Six Rivers National Forest Facebook: www.facebook.com/SixRiversNF

• Six Rivers Forest Website: www.fs.usda.gov/srnf

• Fire Information Call Center: (707) 356-9442 (8 am-8pm daily)

• email 2022.lightningcomplex@firenet.gov

Convicted murderer Demetrius Coleman and his girlfriend Alma Ahumada-Mendoza were sentenced today for defrauding the state of thousands of dollars in unemployment insurance while Coleman was sitting in jail.

Coleman.

This morning Judge Kaleb Cockrum sentenced Coleman to three years in state prison, with the term running concurrently with his sentence of life without the possibility of parole. Ahumada-Mendoza was placed on six months of informal probation and may be required to repay the stolen money.

The couple admitted receiving $31,800 in unemployment benefits as Coleman was behind bars awaiting trial for the August 2019 drive-by shooting of Johnny Mack Renfro. Renfro, 26, died in the driveway of a Rio Dell residence.

Deputy District Attorney Carolyn Schaffer said outside court this morning that the couple “filled out a fraudulent application” for unemployment insurance.

Coleman was sentenced last month for the murder but has not yet been transported to state prison. Ahumada-Mendoza is out of custody.

Attorney Joe Judge represents Ahumada-Mendoza, with attorney Zack Curtis representing Coleman.

The restitution hearing is scheduled for Aug. 30.

PREVIOUSLY:

• LIFE: As He Continues to Protest His Innocence, Convicted Rio Dell Murderer Demetrius Coleman Sentenced to Life in Prison With No Possibility of Parole

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Also in Cockrum’s courtroom this morning, attorneys confirmed they are ready to start trial on Sept. 5 in the case of murder and torture suspect Daniella Patricia Moore.

Moore.

Both Deputy District Attorney Stacey Eads and Public Defender Luke Brownfield, standing in today for Deputy Public Defender Casey Russo, told the judge they are prepared for trial to begin as scheduled.

The trial is expected to last several weeks, with the jury first deciding on guilt. If Moore is convicted, jurors must then decide whether she was legally insane when 19-year-old Hannah Hayhurst was killed in July 2019.

Moore was arrested for the alleged torture and murder when her infant twins were just four months old. No connection between Moore and Hayhurst was revealed during Moore’s preliminary hearing. Hayhurst was allegedly tortured and killed with a pair of scissors, and it appeared some of her organs had been yanked out of her body.

PREVIOUSLY:

In Texas and California, new laws call on the people of each state to watch and report their neighbors — and reap a reward for doing so. Unusual, yes — although it’s a concept that dates back to the earliest days of the American republic.

But what do Civil War-era legislators raging about sick mules and wet gunpowder have to do with Texas Senate Bill 8, its “heartbeat” abortion law, and California Senate Bill 1327, its newest gun act?

They all set out bounties, with the state entrusting its citizens to enforce the law and promising remuneration to those who do.

The Texas law, passed in 2021, bans abortions if a doctor detects a fetal heartbeat, usually at about six weeks — but it’s not up to the state to enforce it. Instead, people anywhere in the United States can sue anyone who helped a Texan get an abortion. Successful lawsuits offer at least $10,000 per reported abortion, and the defendant, not the state, pays the plaintiff.

As U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts noted, the law ran contrary to abortion rights guaranteed under Roe vs. Wade, then the law of the land. Instead, he wrote in a concurring opinion, “Texas has employed an array of stratagems designed to shield its unconstitutional law from judicial review.”

Opponents included the firearms industry, which started getting nervous about the implications for gun owners.

Sure enough, by the time the U.S. Supreme Court later jettisoned Roe’s right to abortion, perhaps making the machinations of Texas unnecessary, California was already fighing fire with fire.

Last month, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bounty law targeting not abortion but guns. It allows private citizens to sue anyone for $10,000 for selling, distributing or importing ghost guns or assault weapons.

A new legal challenge to the Texas law was filed in April. Gun rights supporters have promised to challenge California’s law as well.

Entrusting the public to enforce the laws and paying them with bounties was once how this country kept the lights on — or at least, the lanterns lit.

“Before you had a really strong central state, and before you had a professional civil service, a lot of government services were provided on a bounty or a fee-for-service basis,” said Stanford Law School professor David Freeman Engstrom.

To catch wrongdoing back then, the state had to rely on people watching their neighbors – and maybe hauling them to court.

Today the U.S. government rewards people who report fraudulent war contracts, terrorism, violations of federal environmental law and Medicaid fraud. The state of California allows financial rewards for people who sue to enforce its Proposition 65 toxics warning law.

And, of course, there’s bail-jumping, for which we still have “professional” bounty hunters, though the subjects of bail bounties sign a contract surrendering many of their rights.

Not all bounties pay in money, Engstrom said — under federal environmental laws, a nonprofit is only able to recover attorney’s fees from a successful injunction against a polluter, or to protect an endangered species of frog. But the nonprofit is also able to demonstrate to its members that they’re “doing important work out in the world,” he said.

The Texas and California bounty laws are relatively novel now, said University of Georgia School of Law professor Randy Beck, but he worries about what could come next.

“There’s a long history with these things that is not very happy,” Beck said. “There’s a good reason that legislators have stopped using them, and I think I’m worried that a bunch of legislators are repeating history that we don’t want to repeat.”

‘We’ve created a monster’

One of the first bounty laws in history was enacted in England in the early 1300s. Local officials were supposed to set uniform prices for wine, but some of them were also winesellers. That conflict of interest complicated King Edward II’s effort to reassert political control over a fractious kingdom.

But he couldn’t be everywhere. So, he deputized every man in England: If they found local officials selling wine, the Crown would seize that wine – and the person who made the complaint would receive one-third of the seizure.

Across the pond and 500 years later, Abraham Lincoln was tiring of fraudulent war contractors. The Union Army had been sold lame horses, sick mules, rancid food, guns that wouldn’t fire and artillery shells filled with sawdust. Sometimes they erroneously purchased them twice.

U.S. Sen. Jacob Howard of Michigan in 1863 led the charge for what would become the False Claims Act, the gold standard for bounty laws that, in its modern form, triples the damages for fraud and allots the person who reports it one-third of the award. The idea, said Howard: “Setting a rogue to catch a rogue, which is the safest and most expeditious way I have ever discovered of bringing rogues to justice.”

For most of its history, the U.S. government operated on bribes and bounties, argued Yale law and history professor Nicholas Parrillo.

His book “Against the Profit Motive” details how until the early 1900s, states often left unpaid tax collections to bounty hunters and rewarded them with a portion of the proceeds. Bounties also went to naval officers who captured enemy ships and took a percentage of their value.

People would rush to punish murder and thievery, Parrillo wrote, but getting communities to follow federal laws that the community itself didn’t agree with – or care about – was impossible without incentives.

The concept may evoke romantic notions of the California Rangers chasing the Five Joaquins Gang through the goldfields for a $6,000 bounty. But bounties had a darker history in the 1800s. The Fugitive Slave Act offered rewards for catching escaped slaves, and Mexico once offered bounties for Native American scalps.

U.S. lawmakers had created a system that encouraged bounty hunters to maximize their earnings by finding the most crimes, not the most serious crimes. That meant punishing people for the smallest technical violations of the tax code.

“When officials live by bounties, it becomes impossible for laypersons to attribute good motives to those people,” Parrillo explained.

Parrillo read from a lengthy speech by Maine Republican Thomas Brackett Reed, former Speaker of the House in the 1890s: “What community ever bestirred itself against frauds on the internal revenue, against moonshine distilleries, against smuggling, against a hundred other things which are crimes against the United States?

“You need to have the officials stimulated by a similar self-interest to that which excites and supports and sustains the criminal.”

And that, it should be noted, was in a speech in favor of bounties.

“American lawmakers recoiled from what they had done,” Parrillo said “They said, oh my god, we’ve created a monster, we need to shut it down right now.”

So out went bounties, and, eventually, in came paid professional IRS agents and beat cops, creating a system of salaried civil service employees. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, Congress and state legislatures gradually removed bounties and replaced bounty hunters with paid police.

Lincoln’s False Claims Act remained in effect, though Congress significantly diluted it in 1943, after a successful False Claims Act lawsuit worried military contractors during World War II. Then came the 1980s, when the Department of Defense was charged $7,000 for a coffee pot and $640 for a toilet seat.

At a hearing, Rep. Andy Ireland of Florida read from a list of fraudulent sales to the military during the Civil War and harkened back to the False Claims Act. “Here we are 120 years later,” he said, “and we are still confronted with the same problems in military procure­ment.”

“American lawmakers recoiled from what they had done. They said, oh my god, we’ve created a monster, we need to shut it down right now.”
— Nicholas Parrillo, Yale Law and History professor

The act came roaring back, and today, Engstrom said, it’s the “purest form” of a bounty statute.

And California created its own modern version of bounty hunting with voter-approved Prop. 65. Since 1986, the state has invited residents to report violations of the environmental law that seeks to warn people about carcinogenic chemicals or those that affect reproduction in the products they consume.

The state permits citizens to bring private lawsuits for violations – and reap the rewards if they prevail in court or the company they sued decides to settle.

In 2019, the California Chamber of Commerce fought a new proposed Prop. 65 warning on acrylamide, a chemical created by cooking food, and one which the state couldn’t say definitively caused cancer. The Chamber won, and the Chamber’s attorneys said the court action halted “hundreds of pending – but not yet filed – private enforcement actions” about that one chemical alone.

But the new abortion and gun moves in Texas and California take the resurgence of bounty laws to a new level.

Texas State Sen. Bryan Hughes, the author of its new abortion law, wrote last September in a Wall Street Journal op-ed that though the law is unconventional, legislators were out of options.

“The law departs from conventional enforcement channels, obviously,” Hughes wrote. ​​“In almost every case, the person wronged, and therefore the person who brings the claim, is the plaintiff.

“In the case of abortion, the wronged party has been extinguished.”

For his part, Newsom didn’t discourage accusations that California’s gun law is aimed at merely trolling conservative states, when he took out ads in Florida urging residents to move to California and tweeted at Texas Gov. Greg Abbott on July 22.

“Texans will wake up this morning to this simple message,” Newsom wrote on Twitter. “If Texas can ban abortion and endanger lives, California can ban deadly weapons of war and save lives. If (Abbott) truly wants to protect the right to life, he should follow California’s lead.”

“Replicating the reprehensible Texas model only serves to legitimize and promote it.”
— American Civil Liberties Union letter

The American Civil Liberties Union isn’t having it from either side. In opposing California’s law allowing citizens to sue over ghost guns and assault weapons, the ACLU called the law “an attack on the Constitution.” It said that despite California’s aim to force the Supreme Court to choose between states’ rights and gun rights, California was following a dangerous precedent.

“Replicating the reprehensible Texas model only serves to legitimize and promote it,” the group wrote in May.

Beck, the Georgia law professor, notes in a forthcoming paper that red-state Idaho has already adopted a scaled-down version of the Texas abortion law, and blue-state Illinois is already considering legislation mirroring California’s gun law.

Idaho Gov. Brad Little has expressed doubts about the law’s civil enforcement: “While I support the pro-life policy in this legislation, I fear the novel civil enforcement mechanism will, in short order, be proven both unconstitutional and unwise.”

“It becomes kind of part of this culture war, one state retaliating against another state,” Beck said. “These things are not good in practice, and in my view, I think they have lots of problems. I’d like to kind of keep them in the corners for very, very infrequent use.”

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CalMatters.org is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media venture explaining California policies and politics.

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If you get laid off, there’s a system that’s supposed to help you get by: unemployment benefits. Whenever California stares down a pandemic or a possible recession, the partial wage-replacement program is one of the most important economic safeguards for workers.

But the benefits have become more difficult for workers to access, due to the program’s design and decisions made by California’s embattled Employment Development Department. That’s according to an in-depth report released yesterday from the Legislative Analyst’s Office, a non-partisan agency that provides advice to the Legislature.

The report found that the benefits program’s orientation toward businesses — which fund the benefits and have an incentive to keep costs down — led the department to emphasize holding down costs. Pressure from the federal government to avoid errors led the department to try, however successfully, to minimize fraud.

The result: the department pursued lowering costs and hindering fraud over making it easy for workers to access benefits.

“Looked at individually, one of these policies might seem totally reasonable, either to limit fraud or or minimize business costs,” said Chas Alamo, the report’s author and principle fiscal and policy analyst with the Legislative Analyst’s office. “But when you look at them, and kind of step back and look at the suite of policies that have been made over several decades, it becomes clear that there’s a sort of imbalance in the system,” said Alamo.

Early in the COVID pandemic as joblessness rates soared, the department struggled to keep up with a surge of benefits claims — leaving some Californians repeatedly calling the department in frustration and waiting weeks or months for the money to arrive.

Then came sensational reports that the department had paid out as much as $20 billion in fraudulent benefits.

Last December, the department froze 345,000 disability insurance claims due to suspected fraud. As it tried to root out disability benefits fraud, calls to the department with questions surged, and many went unanswered.

Despite an increase in fraud during the pandemic, fraud has historically been uncommon in California’s unemployment benefits, likely “representing less than 1 percent of claims,” the report found. The vast majority of fraud that occurred during the pandemic was concentrated in a temporary federal program that has now ended.

The report lays out evidence that unemployment benefits have become too difficult for workers to access.

When workers are denied benefits, for example, they’re allowed to file appeals. The report found that more than half of denials are overturned on appeal, meaning those workers should have gotten the benefits in the first place. By contrast, “less than one-quarter are overturned in the rest of the country,” the report found.

Also slowing the process: extensive, and sometimes confusing, steps to prove eligibility for California unemployment benefits.

The department’s actions during the pandemic suggest that getting payments to workers is not its highest priority, the report said. For example, the department disqualified about 1 in 4 unemployment benefits claims during the pandemic for failing to respond to the department’s requests for additional information — or because the department was not able to process the additional information provided in the allotted time frame.

Meanwhile, a September 2020 report written by a team assembled by Gov. Gavin Newsom, found that during the same period, each department field office “had an estimated 450 pounds of unopened mail and had no system for processing unopened mail. Further, at the state’s call centers, less than 1 percent of callers reached an EDD staff member.”

The Legislative Analyst Office’s report makes over a dozen suggestions to remedy the issues it identifies, including recommendations for how to to limit improper claim denials, minimize delays and simplify benefits applications.

The report “misunderstands EDD’s recent activities to improve the process, and the deeper problems with (unemployment insurance) that go beyond the issues referenced in the report,” said former department director Michael Bernick, who is now special counsel with Duane Morris, a law firm. Bernick, who has also worked as a volunteer helping people who are trying to get benefits over the past two years, agrees that the process is too complex.

Yet many of the anti-fraud measures that the report blames for slowing down payments are required by federal protocols, Bernick wrote in an email.

“The truth is that EDD must balance rapid payout and anti-fraud — a process that has become increasingly difficult with the heightened sophistication of identity theft rings, and the amount of money going through the system,” Bernick said. He added that newer measures to combat identity theft, including the addition of online verification tool ID.me, are on the right path.

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CalMatters.org is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media venture explaining California policies and politics.

Vaden Earl Jantz, Jr. left his body in the morning of June 19, 2022. He would have celebrated his 72nd birthday on August 11. He joins his parents, Marie and Vaden, and his brothers, Wayne and Dennis in heaven. He grew up in a loving and stable household and neighborhood. He attended Bloomfield School, Stewart Elementary School, and graduated from Arcata High School in 1968. He continued his education at College of the Redwoods.

Growing up you would find him playing with neighborhood friends, spending family time at Mad River Beach, participating in the Boy Scouts, and working at the Arcata Creamline Dairy milking cows, getting green feed, and scraping the corral. In high school he belonged to FFA and enjoyed showing cows (actually, he like spending the nights at the fairgrounds and goofing off). His senior year he worked as a bus boy at the Big 4 Restaurant. Vaden started working for the City of Arcata in 1970 operating the street sweeper, and he started volunteering at the Arcata Fire Department. In April 1986, he was promoted to Crew Leader and to Equipment Operator. He left to become a full-time Fire Fighter in March 1987. After retiring from the Fire Department, he returned to seasonal work for the City of Arcata from 2005 to 2021. Somewhere in his working years he had a second job working for Hooven and Turner.

Vaden and Yvonne Walters were married on February 14, 1976, and built their novel dome home on Fickle Hill. They had 17 years of sharing their lives together, playing softball, camping, participating in the Fireman’s Muster, and hanging out with family and friends.

He was introduced to Linda Lee, and their relationship started with a Save the Dunes dance. Thereafter he found himself volunteering with the Friends of the Dunes, a new adventure for Vaden. He and Linda enjoyed working and hanging out together. They were married at the Dunes on September 24, 1994. They lived in Manila on the ocean side, and they were always working on creative and artistic home projects. Recently they moved to Arcata. Linda encouraged Vaden to explore and leave his comfort zone. They traveled to Mexico, Cuba, Tahiti and Virgin Islands, Island of Dominica, Spain, Portugal, and Canada. They spent time kayaking on the bay and building a get-away place on the Van Duzen River.

On one of their early excursions to Mexico, Vaden had encephalitis and was hospitalized. It took awhile, but he recovered. In the last two years, he had a brain bleed and spent a couple of weeks at UCSF. Again, he regained his balance and coherence. Up until fall of 2021, he would eagerly return to his seasonal job with the City.

Vaden’s true love was his work and helping people. He cherished his kinship with his co-workers and friends, and of course, his family. He was always eager to help family, friends, and friends of friends. He always had a “story” to tell, whether factual or exaggerated; from the boiler monster grabbing him in high school making him late for class, or true adventures in his life.

He is survived by his wife, Linda, and her children, Hallie and Rye; brother Dale and wife Ronnie, sister Kathy and husband Tom; nieces and nephews: Beth, Debra, Christie, Sarah, Sharon, Dale, Jantz, Vaden, Jana; sister-in-laws, Sandra, Jane, Joey, Kathy, Karen; cousins Mary and Bill; and many friends.

There will be a Celebration of Life on Saturday, August 27, from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. at the Blue Lake Fire Department House. You are welcome to come and bring a “story to tell” or enjoy listening and remembering. If only we could have his onion rings!

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The obituary above was submitted by Vaden Jantz’s loved ones. The Lost Coast Outpost runs obituaries of Humboldt County residents at no charge. See guidelines here. Email news@lostcoastoutpost.com.

Irvin G. Sutro
September 14, 1925 – May 23, 2022

Irvin Gerald Sutro took his last breath at 2 am at his home on the morning of May 23 in Bayside, California, age 96.

Irvin grew up in Scotia and Rio Dell, dropped out of grammar school during the depression and drove the backroads between Rio Dell and Fortuna to deliver fresh milk. He enlisted in the Army as a Private First Class in November, 1946 and served in the Panama Canal Department. He later drove logging trucks while living in Rio Dell, Arcata and Bayside.

He married Betty Etta (Schwartz) Sutro on December 23, 1966 in Reno. She preceded him in death in November 2007.

Irvin enjoyed restoring cast-off vintage autos and motorcycles to pristine condition. He was in remarkable health until his last few years. He enjoyed riding motorcycles with his friends until he was in his 90s.

He was preceded in death by his parents, Linnie (Olina) and Tony (Antone) Sutro. He is the last surviving sibling of Wallace Roy and Harold Keith Sutro. He also had a step-sister, Florence Agnes (Sutro) Helgestad, who preceded her siblings in death.

Irvin is survived by his cousin, Donald Wall; his nephews, Leroy Sutro (Otis), and Douglas Sutro; his nieces, Patricia (Sutro) Burke, Sandra (Sutro) Mayer (Robert), and Donna (Sutro) Brazil (Joel). He is survived by numerous great-nieces and -nephews.

Irvin was cremated with his ashes placed next to his wife, Betty, at Sunset Memorial Park cemetery, 3975 Broadway St., Eureka. The family will join together to pay their respects on April 19, 2023 at 2 p.m. outside the Columbarium.

John M. Brooks
Feb. 25, 1937 - July 21, 2022

John was the true meaning of the word MAN. He worked hard, provided for his family, hunted, fished and was still cutting his own firewood, tending to his garden and taking care of himself into his 80s.

He moved his family to Trinity County in 1965 and loved every day living in the mountains. John could always be found fixing something or modifying something to make it work better. He worked as a millwright for 30+ years starting at Twin Harbors Lumber Company and ending at The Pacific Lumber Company retiring in 2004. Everyone knew that if John was on the job, it would get done and be done right. He was well known for getting the heaviest load of firewood he could. If he broke down and had to call the local tow truck driver, he was told he had to unload the wood first.

John was known as the deer whisperer. He could be seen in his yard surrounded by deer as each one got an oatmeal cookie and a pat on the head.

The last few years he kept himself busy collecting eagle quarters. All the clerks at the stores knew if he was getting change to look for an eagle quarter. It seems he must have had every eagle quarter ever minted.

John is survived by his children Susan Pryor (Dave) and John A. Brooks (Erica); grandchildren Justin Pryor (Jenna), John Brooks (Natasha), Makhila Downs (Shayne), Dakota Brooks (Hailee) and Miranda Lemke (Daniel), as well as 12 great-grandchildren whom he cherished dearly: Aiden and Colton Pryor; Kellan, Kinzley, Korbyn and Kamdyn Brooks; Addilyn and Madisyn Downs; Kaden and Bristol Brooks; Elizabeth and Vito Lemke. He is also survived by his sisters Linda Hubocan and Marie Morrow, his brother Joe Etcheberry and sister-in-law Betty Brooks.

He was predeceased by the love of his life for 62 years, Pearl, daughter Margaret Ann Brooks, son Don Brooks and brother Warren Brooks. John missed his wife so deeply that we all know he is so happy to be with her again.

There will be a gathering at Sunrise Cemetery in Fortuna on Saturday, August 20, 2022 at 10 a.m.

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The obituary above was submitted by John Brooks’ loved ones. The Lost Coast Outpost runs obituaries of Humboldt County residents at no charge. See guidelines here. Email news@lostcoastoutpost.com.