Marilyn Mae Mora — devoted mother, grandmother, great-grandmother and friend — passed away on April 30, 2022 in Fortuna. Marilyn was born on February 25, 1934 in Eureka to the late William S. Petersen and Gladys L. Bates (Williams) of Fortuna.
Marilyn was a lifelong resident of Fortuna and was raised on the Nowlin Ranch at Newburg by her grandmother Clara Williams. Elijah Nowlin became her surrogate father, and following Marilyn’s graduation from Fortuna High School, Elijah walked Marilyn down the aisle when she married Rudy Mora Jr., of Arcata in 1951.
Marilyn and her young family, which initially included two sons — Leland (Eileen) and Michael (Roberta) — moved back to the Nowlin Ranch from Shively following the 1955 flood. Her third son, Randy (Joan) was born in 1959 while the family was living on the ranch on Newburg Road. Marilyn and the family ran cattle and sheep on the Nowlin Ranch and she also worked in Fortuna for the medical offices of Doctors Olson & Goble and later at the offices of Doctors Schwarz and Auerhan. Marilyn loved the detail work of keeping books and records and she later worked for the County of Humboldt and Fortuna High School until retirement in 1994.
Marilyn was a devoted mother to her three boys and was a great supporter of their activities in 4-H and youth sports. Fingers were crossed and prayers were said when watching Mike in his bull-riding and rodeo activities. Our mom was our biggest fan and helped instill a strong work ethic and sense of independence in her three boys. Marilyn and Randy moved to Tenth Street in Fortuna in 1971, where her home was the gathering point for holidays and family gatherings for the past 50 years.
Marilyn experienced great joy when her three sons started their families, and she was blessed with six grandchildren — Sarah, Louis, Joseph, Justin, Cody, Tyler, Jason and Kayla. As a veteran parent and Gram of many County Fairs, Marilyn was always there to assist with the uniform whites and also was a veteran clerk of the Junior Livestock Auction. Marilyn was a devoted Gram to all the grandkids and she was later blessed with 14 great-grandchildren.
Marilyn had a brief bout with melanoma in 1982 and she later was a team captain for the American Cancer Society, where she helped with fundraising activities with the Society’s goal of finding a cure in our lifetime. Marilyn was a dedicated gardener from her younger days on the Nowlin Ranch, where she developed a green thumb for her roses. Marilyn loved to sew and quilt and experienced great joy when hosting her quilting group in her home for several years. Marilyn was preceded death by her parents and her son Michael in 2021.
Marilyn received wonderful care from Hospice of Humboldt, her daughter-in-laws, and her quilting partner Laurie Newman. Donations are welcome to Hospice of Humboldt or 4-H in Marilyn’s honor.
Family and friends will attend a Graveside Service at the Sunset Cemetery on Newburg Road at 1 p.m. on Saturday, May 7. Friends and Family are invited to celebrate Marilyn at the family home at 524 10th Street in Fortuna following the graveside service.
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The obituary above was submitted by Marilyn Mora’s loved ones. The Lost Coast Outpost runs obituaries of Humboldt County residents at no charge. See guidelines here. Email news@lostcoastoutpost.com.
Danny
Floyd Waters was born in a military hospital on November 16, 1952 in
Fukuoka, Japan to Floyd Waters and Fusae Yoshimura. His father was
serving in the U.S. Air Force during the Korean War when he met his
mother, Fusae, a native of Fukuoka. When Danny was about six months
old the family moved to the U.S. and eventually settled in Eureka due
to the favorable job prospects and economic conditions.
Danny
grew up in Eureka and graduated from Eureka High School in 1970. He
attended the College of the Redwoods but never earned a degree, and
eventually began working for Louisiana-Pacific (LP). He worked for LP
for over two decades before switching to construction jobs after LP
ceased most of its Humboldt County operations. Despite never
graduating from college, he had a strong intellectual curiosity and
was an avid reader of history. This was reflected in his rather
impressive knowledge of the history of the Roman Empire. Danny also
enjoyed playing tennis in his younger years, was a lifelong Golden
State Warriors fan, and a passionate deer hunter – despite the
notable feat of never successfully shooting a single deer in more
than a dozen consecutive years of hunting.
His
Japanese genes should have inclined him to a life of admirable
longevity; however, Danny was only 69 years old when he died in
Eureka on April 28, 2022. It could be said that it was not the years
that finally did him in, but rather the proverbial “mileage” on
both his body and soul that brought him to his terminal breath.
Danny
is preceded in death by his father Floyd and brother Eugene and
survived by his mother Fusae, his lifelong friend since childhood
John Salizzoni, and his son, U.S. diplomat Jiro R. Waters.
There
will be no funeral nor memorial service, however for those of you who
have fond memories of Danny please raise a glass of your favorite
beverage and have a toast to him. Sic itur ad astra.
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The obituary above was submitted by Danny Waters’ loved ones. The Lost Coast Outpost runs obituaries of Humboldt County residents at no charge. See guidelines here. Email news@lostcoastoutpost.com.
An illegal immigrant from Mexico will be sentenced to almost 50 years in state prison for attempting to murder a Humboldt County sheriff’s deputy who he shot with a shotgun.
Hugo Parral-Aguirre, who has been in custody since the shooting on Dec. 16, 2017, is scheduled for sentencing on May 17.
Deputy District Attorney Roger Rees confirmed today that the case resolved with an agreed-upon sentence of 48 years. Parral-Aguirre, 34, also waived custody credits of one year and eight months for a total sentence of 49 years and eight months.
At the time of the shooting Parral-Aguirre was staying with relatives who were working at a dairy farm on Coppini Lane in Ferndale. He had been deported to Mexico the year before but was back in the United States illegally.
According to witnesses at his preliminary hearing, Parral-Aguirre fired a shot at one man living on the farm. After that man jumped out a window and fled, Parral-Aguirre held the man’s girlfriend at gunpoint for hours.
Deputy Roselie Freixas, one of the officers who responded to the report of a disturbance at the dairy, was shot in the shoulder just inches above her bullet-proof vest.
Parral-Aguirre was shot several times when officers returned fire.
Witnesses said Parral-Aguirre had been acting strangely, talking with invisible people and imagining his entire family was dead. He initially was ruled mentally incompetent to stand trial, but after spending some time in a mental hospital he was declared competent.
In other court news, today Judge Gregory Elvine-Kreis denied the prosecution’s motion for a continuance in the animal-cruelty trial of Arcata rancher Ray Christie.
Deputy District Attorney Steven Steward had requested more time to review a motion, filed by defense attorney Rick Richmond, that consists of about 300 pages. It asks the judge to bar evidence gathered during a March 2018 raid on properties Christie owned or leased for cattle-grazing.
The defense wants the judge “to exclude and keep out all of our evidence,” Steward said. Also, Steward said, the motion brings up issues that have already been ruled on by Judge Christopher Wilson.
At this point no trial date has been set because Christie has cancer and is seeking treatment out of the area. Richmond, appearing today via Zoom, said Christie was consulting today with doctors in Los Angeles.
One of the issues Steward brought up today was Richmond’s plan to call several witnesses who did not testify at Christie’s first trial. Steward said this will require he and co-prosecutor David Moutrie to conduct more investigation and possibly interviews.
Elvine-Kreis pointed out that motions asking to keep evidence out during a trial are generally filed the week before trial. At this point there is not even a date for trial.
But the judge also said that after reading the defense motion, “it does appear to me that none of this is a surprise.”
The next hearing is set for May 10, when a trial date may be set.
Christie’s first trial ended with the jury deadlocked 11-1 for guilt on the animal cruelty charges. During a multi-agency raid on several of Christie properties, investigators found a number of cows either dead or dying from apparent starvation. They said the animals had no access to food or water.
The same jury convicted Christie of numerous misdemeanor counts of dumping animal carcasses too close to state waters.
A proposed letter to San Francisco’s District Attorney sparked a lengthy conversation among the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday — one that, on the surface, was about how best to address the influx of fentanyl and the ensuing spike in overdose deaths in Humboldt County.
Thanks to some pushback from a couple of supervisors — particularly Third District Supervisor Mike Wilson — the discussion wound up expanding to address a few broader criminal justice issues, such as the logic, tactics and unintended consequences of America’s ongoing War on Drugs.
First District Rex Bohn brought forward a draft letter to Chesa Boudin, San Francisco’s controversial, reform-minded DA whose efforts to reduce mass incarceration (among other matters) have drawn the ire of law enforcement groups, prosecutors and others who say he’s soft on crime and turning a blind eye to “open air dealing” in the city’s Tenderloin District. (Boudin is now facing a recall election.)
The draft letter urges Boudin to address the fentanyl crisis by “prosecuting all cases that are brought to your office,” and it threatens legal action against the City and County of San Francisco if Boudin and Humboldt County supes can’t find a “mutually acceptable solution shortly.”
Bohn characterized the letter as “a shot across the bow,” a warning to Boudin that he needs to step up and do his job. Humboldt County Sheriff Billy Honsal agreed, saying the letter would send the message that drug dealing is not a victimless crime, and that Humboldt County will not tolerate the continued influx of fentanyl from San Francisco.
Honsal said there have been nine confirmed deaths from fentanyl overdoses so far this year and nine others that his office believes were due to fentanyl. His department’s fentanyl arrest numbers have skyrocketed from two in 2019 to 40 so far this year, plus 22 from the county’s Drug Task Force.
Sgt. Matt Tomlin with the Drug Task Force addressed the supervisors, saying arrestees have given officers information that led them down to the city.
“What we’ve learned is how easy it is for Humboldt County people to go to the Tenderloin District and purchase fentanyl,” Tomlin said. “They’re buying ounces of fentanyl for $350 in the Tenderloin District and making back $100 a gram, so approximately $2,800, in Humboldt County.”
People have told officers that when they drive into the Tenderloin, “five or six people rush their car to try to be the first one to sell them the drugs,” he said. “It’s kept our team up 24 hours a day. We have to work when the drug dealers are working, and so we’re putting all of our time into this.”
Tomlin also talked about the burden of talking to parents in Hoopa and elsewhere who’ve lost young daughters to a fentanyl overdose.
“And until you have to look these people in the eye and talk to them about what you’re doing to try to solve that problem after they lost their children, you really [don’t] understand what the problem is,” he said. “And we need help with this problem.”
Honsal said he hopes other counties will follow Humboldt’s lead, “because a message has to be sent: Fentanyl is killing our people. And we would not allow anyone else to do this, so why are we allowing them to do it?”
When Wilson had a chance to weigh in, he started by acknowledging the seriousness of the issue and thanking the Drug Task Force for its work. But he voice concern about discussing a threat of litigation in open session, saying typically such matters are first addressed behind closed doors.
He also questioned how effective the letter would be in curtailing the county’s supply of fentanyl given the “whack-a-mole” dynamic of busting dealers. Hasn’t fentanyl also come to Humboldt County from Redding? he asked. “Why the focus on this versus everybody else?”
Honsal replied, “The fact is that virtually every one of our arrests is coming from the Tenderloin District in San Francisco.”
The sheriff acknowledged the whack-a-mole problem and offered a metaphor of his own, saying the supply of fentanyl is “just like a river. It goes through the path of least resistance, and right now that path goes through San Francisco. And when we shut down San Francisco, we will go to the next one.”
The fundamental inability of law enforcement alone to solve the problem “doesn’t deter us from having a drug task force,” Honsal said. “It doesn’t deter us from actually getting out there every day even though we know that we may just stop a little bit as opposed to the flood that’s coming in here.”
Busting the people they manage to bust “can matter to certain lives,” he continued. He commended Humboldt County District Attorney Maggie Fleming for holding drug dealers accountable, saying “they know they’re going to face consequences here.” Local law enforcement wants to send drug dealers a message: “We want them to try and go somewhere else,” Honsal said.
Wilson argued that the problem goes beyond San Francisco’s DA, noting that the police department there is short-staffed. He suggested sending the letter to other San Francisco officials, too, such as the sheriff, the mayor and the board of supervisors. And he suggested that it should offer coordination and assistance in addressing the issue.
Honsal held firm, saying the main problem is San Francisco’s open air drug market in the Tenderloin and the DA’s refusal to do anything about it.
Second District Supervisor Michelle Bushnell voiced support for the letter, saying to her the message is simple: “We have a problem in Humboldt County that we’re trying to deal with.” Noting the added danger of fentanyl getting laced into other substances, Bushnell said, “This is a serious letter because it’s a serious issue.”
Wilson again sought to go a little deeper. He remarked on the irony of officials in Humboldt County, of all places — long known as the epicenter of the world’s best marijuana — chastising other jurisdictions for exporting drugs, “legal or otherwise.” (Of course, it’s probably impossible to die from a cannabis overdose.)
Wilson also noted that enforcement can have unintended consequences: Pushing drugs further underground can make them more valuable, which, in turn, can lead to more violence. “We’ve seen that with cannabis in the past,” he said.
He also brought up social justice issues, noting the disproportionate impacts of the drug war on poor people and minorities. He brought up the use of the word “predator” in the draft letter, saying such terms can be “dog whistles for all kinds of racial injustice issues.”
Fifth District Supervisor Steve Madrone echoed those sentiments.
“I think we all recognize that these kinds of issues go far deeper than just the surface problem of the dealers in the Tenderloin,” he said. “It comes down to housing, it comes down to jobs, it comes down to more mental health services and so many other things that, you know, are lacking in many ways.”
Madrone said work needs to be done on long-term and short-term solutions.
Addressing Wilson’s “threat of litigation” concerns, Interim County Counsel Scott Miles suggested a minor tweak in the letter’s wording — changing a sentence toward the end to say the county may have to “consider” its legal options rather than “seek” one.
Bohn scoffed, saying he’d have to look those terms up in the dictionary to see what the difference is, but the changed proved to be enough to earn the letter support from the full board. With that minor alteration, they agreed unanimously to send the letter.
And just like that there were condors above Yurok Country again. More from the Yurok Tribe below:
PREY-GO-NEESH KEECH KE-ME’-YEHL – CONDORS HAVE COME HOME.
At around 10:30am this morning two condors were successfully released in Yurok Country, where the culturally and ecologically important birds have been absent for more than a century. The birds left the Northern California Condor Restoration Program’s flight pen and immediately started flying over the redwoods. Here is the raw footage of both birds taking flight.
After his attorney raised the question of whether murder suspect Austin Michael Medeiros is competent to stand trial, Judge Timothy Canning suspended criminal proceedings this morning and ordered a psychiatric evaluation.
Deputy Conflict Counsel Owen Tipps, representing the 27-year-old Rhode Island man, declared a doubt today about Medeiros’s mental competence. Canning appointed a psychiatrist to examine Medeiros and submit an opinion. The doctor’s report is due on May 31.
Medeiros is accused of murdering Emily Rose May Lobba, a 28-year-old disabled woman whose body was found April 3 in her Kneeland-area home. Medeiros is also charged with assault and battery on Lobba’s caretaker.
While most murder complaints allege that a gun or other weapon was used to kill a victim, the charges against Medeiros include no mention of a weapon.
While in jail, Medeiros allegedly fashioned a weapon and used it to attack a deputy in Humboldt County Correctional Facility. The officer suffered minor injuries.
Deputy District Attorney Candace Myers has filed a motion to file new charges of assault on a correctional officer, battery on a correctional officer and manufacturing a weapon in a correctional facility.
Today Medeiros, whose bail is set at $1 million, wore a red jumpsuit that signifies he is segregated from the jail’s general population.
After Lobba’s body was found and her death reported, Medeiros managed to escape during a police chase that ended when he fled into the Arcata Community Forest. He was arrested about a week later while reportedly trying to steal a boat in Santa Cruz.
UPDATE, 10:30 a.m.: Below: Photos and video galore from the grand disembarking, as visitors are greeted with complementary donuts. Eureka City Coucilmembers Kim Bergel, Leslie Castellano and Natalie Arroyo are present, as are City Manager Miles Slattery, assistant City Manager Pam Powell and Humboldt Bay District General Manager Larry Oetker.
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UPDATE, 9:40 a.m.: Apparently there’s been some mixup with the tour company that was going to ferry visitors around the county. Swan Asbury, the city of Eureka’s economic development manager, tells the Outpost that 220 passengers will be getting off, and there are planned trips to Old Town and Prairie Creek. While no passengers will be going to the Redwood Skywalk today, city officials are going to take some of the tour coordinators there in the hopes that they will schedule a visit when another cruise ship arrives in September.
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Well-wishers gathered on the North Jetty this morning to wave at the Seven Seas Mariner, possibly the largest cruise ship ever to dock here, as it rolled into the bay this morning.
In a few minutes, the ship will park at Eureka’s Schneider Dock, down by the Wharfinger Building, and disgorge its passengers for a day of revelry around the county. Some will go up to Redwood State and National Parks; others to Ferndale; still others to the Eureka Zoo. Presumably some cruisers who are not heading off on some prepackaged tour will be left to roam around Old Town for a spell.
The Outpost’s Andrew Goff was at the Jetty this morning, and he sends in the video above and the pictures below.
