OBITUARY: John Charles Macinata, 1956-2025
LoCO Staff / Thursday, Sept. 18, 2025 @ 6:56 a.m. / Obits
John Charles Macinata, born June 26, 1956, passed peacefully on September 2, 2025 at St. Joseph Memorial Hospital, in Eureka, at the age of 69. Born in Arcata to Charles and Marie Macinata, John spent most of his life in Humboldt County, attending kindergarten through 12th grade in Arcata. At the time of his passing, John was a resident of McKinleyville, where he lived for nearly fifty years.
John’s career was in the automotive industry and began with training in Arizona, post high school graduation. Upon his return to Arcata, he worked for over thirty years servicing the Humboldt community as a valued employee/manager at Sequoia Auto, Arcata Auto and Napa Auto Parts in Eureka. John earned his reputation as a great parts man. It was not uncommon for John to receive calls from folks across the country seeking his help to locate a particular car part; a challenge he greatly loved and welcomed.
To say that John cherished time with his friends is an understatement. He loved music and enjoyed attending concerts; he knew every person in every band, including the lead singer. To settle a bet, friends would call John in the middle of the night, knowing that he could identify the singer in a specific song. In addition, John had a passion for racing; he frequented Redwood Acres, driving that #10 Pinto car, riding in the bomber car with Marc (even when it flipped), and flying to Nascar races with Jim and all the guys. He recently bought a red 1966 Honda Dream and soon upgraded to a Yamaha trike.His dear friend Randy, helped John get and keep them in top shape. John was thrilled to ride, he also enjoyed cruising in his Chrysler Crossfire.Fun times spent with treasured friends filled his life and gave him joy: jamming with Denise,Steve and friends.Salmon fishing with his buddies, going to baseball games and sprint car races, barbecuing and sitting around the fire with Louie and the gang.Many good times and friends were made at the Moose Lodge in McKinleyville, including returning home one evening with a shaved head! John loved them all.
John leaves behind his wife, Debbie, of forty years, friend and brother, Mike, who stayed by his side from the beginning of his disability to the very end of his life, sister Marianne (Amy), nieces Sarah and Cassie, Aunt Bernadine, and his cherished, close friends: Randy, Leonard, Ron, Dennis, and John and all who knew him well. He loved each one of you dearly.
Deep gratitude is extended to a group of wonderful medical professionals who provided years of support and outstanding care for John. These include Doctor Ha, Doctor Shaundra, and Doctor Fischbein at Stanford Medical Center. Thank you to Doctor Matthew, an incredible nephrologist, for being a great friend to John and keeping him going all these years. Lastly, special thanks to all the dialysis nurses at Fesenius Kidney Care in McKinleyville for providing John with years of exceptional care, especially Dusty, Danielle, Pam and Ann.
A celebration of John’s life will be determined.
###
The obituary above was submitted on behalf of John Macinata’s loved ones. The Lost Coast Outpost runs obituaries of Humboldt County residents at no charge. See guidelines here.
BOOKED
Today: 6 felonies, 4 misdemeanors, 0 infractions
JUDGED
Humboldt County Superior Court Calendar: Today
CHP REPORTS
0 Sr3 (RD office): Trfc Collision-1141 Enrt
0 Sr299 (RD office): Assist CT with Maintenance
7985 Mm101 S Hum 79.90 (HM office): Assist with Construction
ELSEWHERE
RHBB: Chainsaw Injury Near Piercy Sends Patient South
Governor’s Office: California celebrates five years helping students and families plan for school and career through Cradle-to-Career
KINS’s Talk Shop: Talkshop July 27th, 2026 – Rob Arkley
Governor’s Office: From the 2026 FIFA World Cup to LA28: California is ready
OBITUARY: Ella Craig, 1929-2025
LoCO Staff / Thursday, Sept. 18, 2025 @ 6:56 a.m. / Obits
Ella May Sanders McNeill Craig, age 96, passed away on Tuesday, September 2, 2025 in Eureka. Born on January 6, 1929, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, she was the only child of Dr. Samuel Thomas Sanders and Wilma Bacon Sanders.
Ella attended high school in Lafayette, Louisiana and Vermont College for Women in Montpelier, Vermont. She met her first husband, John Duncan McNeill, while they were both students at Columbia Bible College in Columbia, SC. She was a lifelong learner and along the way, she collected masters degrees in education, history, and later, social work.
John and Ella had four children, Sarah, Tim, Jim, and Sam. Ella instilled her love of music in each of them. We all enjoyed singing and harmonizing together as a family, both at home and on camping trips. Sarah and Sam had careers in music.
The family lived for a number of years in Greensboro, N.C. After Ella and John separated, she moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico, to be near her aunt and uncle. There she met and married Douglas Craig in 1967. Together, they moved to California where they spent the rest of their lives. Doug passed away in 2017.
She taught elementary school for a number years before changing careers to become a social worker. Her greatest love after the Lord and her children was her music. She was a prolific composer of choral music and was a certified Sweet Adelines arranger. She also enjoyed singing in various church choirs and community choral ensembles.
In her retirement, she focused on music writing, volunteer work at the local food bank, supporting environmental and public interest causes, and socializing with her kitties. Ella and her son Sam McNeill performed many concerts at various assisted living facilities and nursing homes, always bringing joy to residents there.
A recent highlight for Mom was attending the 70th reunion of her graduating class of Columbia Bible College of Columbia, S.C. in 2019. The college choir performed one of Ella’s compositions at the Alumni Convocation. From her class of 1949, five members were in attendance..
Ella is survived by her four children, Sarah McNeill Spradley (Bruce) of Savannah Georgia; Tim McNeill (Sandra) of Lewisville, North Carolina; Jim McNeill of Cape Charles, Virginia; and Sam McNeill (Suerie), of Arcata, California. Also, her grandchildren: Alex Stratton (Johnny), Emily Spradley Graham (Mat), Mark Spradley (Kristi), Kristen McNeill Perry (Michael), Angela McNeill, Jennifer McNeill, Carmen McNeill, Ian McNeill, and Kale McNeill. Ella also had three great grandchildren.
Ella’s children are grateful to their brother Sam and his wife, Suerie, for always being there for our mom.
A memorial service and celebration of life will be held for Ella at 1 p.m. on Saturday, September 20, 2025 at First Presbyterian Church of Arcata. 670 11th Street, Arcata.
###
The obituary above was submitted on behalf of Ella Craig’s loved ones. The Lost Coast Outpost runs obituaries of Humboldt County residents at no charge. See guidelines here.
LAST NIGHT IN COUNCIL: Eureka OKs New Hourly Fees for City-Owned Parking Lots in Downtown/Old Town
Isabella Vanderheiden / Wednesday, Sept. 17, 2025 @ 3:50 p.m. / Infrastructure
One of the parking meters at the city-owned parking lot at Third and G streets in Old Town Eureka. | Photo: Isabella Vanderheiden
###
Say goodbye to 15-cent hourly parking in Old Town, everybody! The City of Eureka is looking to bring its metered system into the 21st Century by shifting to an app-based pay-to-park platform with expanded monitoring and a new rate of $1.10 per hour, which includes a 75-cent hourly fee and a 35-cent transaction fee. The program is expected to roll out in the coming months.
At last night’s Eureka City Council meeting, Public Works Project Manager Jay Wortelboer presented staff’s plans to contract with Passport Parking, a North Carolina-based digital parking compliance platform, to “improve efficiency and utilization” of city-owned parking lots in Old Town and downtown Eureka.
“Public parking in Old Town and downtown Eureka has seen little change over the last several decades,” Wortelboer explained. “This lack of progress has led to ongoing issues with lot maintenance, inconsistent enforcement, and outdated regulations. The city has received feedback from business owners expressing concerns about long-term parking limits negatively impacting local businesses, as well as a lack of enforcement throughout both Old Town and our downtown parking districts.”
The new system will implement an hourly fee in metered parking zones, depicted in orange in the map below, between 9 a.m. and 6 p.m. Monday through Saturday, excluding national holidays. While the current fee is set at $1.10, the city’s fee schedule would allow staff to increase the hourly rate to $3. The increased rates would not apply to Old Town/downtown residents and employees who’ve purchased a parking permit from the city.
Free parking lots are depicted in blue. Monitored lots are depicted in orange. | Screenshot
If you’ve visited any major city in recent years, you’ve surely come across one of these “smart” mobile parking systems that prompt users to either scan a QR code or download an app to pay for parking. In this case, users have to create an account on the Passport Parking app — conveniently linked here if you’re feeling proactive — locate the designated parking zone, enter their payment information, license plate number and anticipated length of stay.
“You can receive alerts before your meter expires, extend time and view all your parking history [on the mobile app],” Wortelboer said. “Passport allows multiple payment methods, [including] Visa, MasterCard, Discover and American Express. Additionally, we are in the process of setting up a cash pay option here at City Hall for prepay or anybody who likes to pay [with] cash.”
City staff will monitor payment and parking permit status in “digitally chalked zones” by scanning license plates. Citations can be paid or disputed through the app or to the city directly.
Cal Poly Humboldt is one of more than 800 cities and institutions that use Passport Parking for mobile meter enforcement, Wortelboer said, adding that the university charges $1.50 per hour for on-campus parking.
Following staff’s presentation, Councilmember Scott Bauer asked how much revenue the new metering system is expected to generate and how the funds will be spent.
City Engineer Jesse Willor said most of the funds will go toward parking lot upkeep and deferred maintenance. “As you can tell, going from $0.15 an hour for years and years and years … that program wasn’t making money,” he continued. “I mean, you can see [the parking lots and signs] haven’t changed a lot in a long time.”
The funds would also cover the cost of a full-time parking enforcement employee, Eureka City Manager Miles Slattery added.
The new parking system is expected to roll out “in a few months,” Willor said. Once the program is implemented, staff will shift focus to on-street parking.
“We’re a little hesitant to jump right into the on-street stuff, given that we need to take care of our [parking] lots … to make sure that [the] next phase is rolled out in an efficient way that [is] beneficial to the community,” he said. “I do think that we want to be very quick on that turnover, because all of a sudden you’re going to see … these increases in the cost of parking in the parking lots and … free on-street parking. It’s going to shift parking around the city.”
The council agreed to receive the report but did not take any formal action on the item.
From Zoom Auditions to Scenes With Leo: Meet the Humboldt County Actors in One Battle After Another
Ryan Burns / Wednesday, Sept. 17, 2025 @ 3 p.m. / MOVIED!
Local actors Colton Gantt (background left) and Carlos McFarland (under the arm of Leonardo DiCaprio) in a scene from Paul Thomas Anderson’s upcoming film One Battle After Another. | Screenshot via YouTube.
###
Growing up in Los Angeles, Tisha Sloan always dreamed of acting in film. She got involved in theater at age 12 and went on to earn her Associate of Arts degree from the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in Pasadena, a Method-focused school where instructors encourage students to pull from their own life experiences.
Sloan realized that she was a bit short on those and, yearning to get out of L.A., she decided to move to Humboldt County, where she earned two more degrees in theater from Humboldt State University. She and the family she’d begun settled in to the slower rural lifestyle.
“I wanted to raise my kids here with rivers and trees and cows instead of concrete, how I grew up,” Sloan told the Outpost in a recent interview.
But she stayed involved in acting, working as a company member and production manager for Dell’Arte for in the early 2000s and landing roles in the occasional community theater production or local TV commercial. (You might recognize her as the long-suffering housewife in a series of spots for Barry Smith Construction.)
So it wasn’t too surprising when, a couple of years ago, Sloan was contacted by Cassandra Hesseltine, the film commissioner for Humboldt and Del Norte counties, saying a film would soon be shooting in our region and the crew was looking to cast some locals. Hesseltine told the Outpost that she was directing a play at the time, and the production’s casting director reached out to ask whether she knew anyone who’d be right for a specific role. Sloan was Hesseltine’s understudy in the play.
“She was the only one I thought of, and then she nailed it, you know?” Hesseltine said. “I was like, ‘No way. That’s amazing.’”
Sloan still didn’t know what she was in for. “[Hesseltine] had me send my headshot and resume to the casting director, who then got back to me and sent me a couple pages of script,” Sloan said. “And we did a Zoom reading, and she really liked it.”
That casting director, Hollywood veteran Cassandra Kulukundis, then forwarded Sloan’s recorded audition to “the director,” who turned out to be renowned auteur and 11-time Oscar nominee Paul Thomas Anderson, though Sloan wasn’t aware of that fact at the time.
As film commissioner, Hesseltine did know who was behind the production, of course, and when the two women bumped into each other at an event and Sloan mentioned that she’d soon be “doing a read” with the film’s lead actor, Hesseltine couldn’t hide her excitement.
“She started freaking out,” Sloan said. “So that was my first clue that this was actually something pretty big.”
Tisha Sloan at a recent cast and crew screening of One Battle After Another on the Warner Bros. lot in Hollywood. | Submitted.
###
The film, of course, would wind up being One Battle After Another, Anderson’s star-studded, ~$150 million action comedy, scheduled for nationwide release a week from Friday. Loosely based on Thomas Pynchon’s 1990 novel Vineland, the movie stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Sean Penn, Benicio Del Toro, Teyana Taylor and Regina Hall. Rave reviews are rolling in, with several critics hailing it as a masterpiece.
Hesseltine said her first meeting for the film was way back in April of 2019. Anderson, director of such films as Boogie Nights, Magnolia, Punch Drunk Love and There Will Be Blood, had already made several trips to Humboldt County, searching for locations and using what he saw to help him write the script, she said.
The production, like so many others, was delayed by the pandemic. But in early 2024, the crew spent 11 days here in Humboldt County, filming at a variety of locations, including the Cutten Murphy’s Market, the streets of Trinidad and Arcata and the campus of Eureka High School, before going on to shoot scenes in Sacramento, El Paso, Texas, and Pinewood Studios in the United Kingtom.
Eureka resident Carlos McFarland was a Eureka High senior in 2023 when he heard through the school’s theater club that there was an online casting call for bit parts and background actors.
“I had to reach out to the casting agent and ask if I could have an audition,” McFarland said in a recent phone interview. “I got emailed a little script and a few months later I got to audition.”
Like Sloan, he auditioned via Zoom, reading lines with the casting director. Also like Sloan, he initially had no idea how big this project would be or who was behind it. He wasn’t even sure he’d been cast until it was nearly go time.
“I heard back the week that they were in town, in Eureka,” he said. “I got a text from the casting agent to be at base camp by six in the morning.”
Fellow Eureka resident Colton Gantt, now 24, saw the casting call for this mysterious 2024 production posted on Facebook. He had previously worked as a background actor for the 2022 coming-of-age movie The Sky Is Everywhere, which also filmed in Humboldt County, and figured he’d try to do it again.
“I had applied for just a background [role], and then later on they asked for a picture of me,” Gantt said. After sending one in he was told that he might be good for a small speaking part, and after auditioning via Zoom with the casting director, he landed the role.
As with McFarland, he was kept in the dark until the production crew arrived here in Humboldt.
“They basically told me that it was a Warner Bros. production,” Gantt said. “They didn’t really tell me much at first, but once I got onto set they were like, ‘Oh, we’re going to introduce you to somebody.’ And that ended up being Leo.”
When we spoke, neither Gantt nor McFarland were sure how much they were allowed to say about their roles or the plot. But we know that DiCaprio plays a paranoid and washed-up revolutionary named Bob; newcomer Chase Infiniti plays Bob’s daughter; and McFarland and Gantt play the daughter’s close friends. You can see them both in this TV spot for One Battle After Another:
That’s Gantt behind the wheel (and front door) of his grandma’s red Toyota Yaris at the start of the clip, and McFarland being manhandled by DiCaprio.
McFarland recalled eating a catered breakfast at the production basecamp on his first day and then being driven out to location near Freshwater. That’s when he found out who he’d be acting with.
“I realized when we pulled up to the set ‘cause I saw Leo there, which was really cool,” he said. “I did not know it was going to be with him.”
McFarland admitted to being only a “mild” Leo fan and said he wasn’t nervous about performing alongside DiCaprio.
“He was super nice. At one point he said I was doing a good job,” McFarland recalled. “I honestly just wanted to do my best and remember my lines.”
Gantt, on the other hand, was a fan.
“It was really incredible to work with [DiCaprio],” he said. “He’s somebody that I’ve admired for a long time, and to share a set with him was surreal.”
Sloan, meanwhile, deduced the identity of her screen partner from the very excited Hesseltine, who couldn’t resist offering hints once she learned that Sloan would be reading scenes with him.
“She said, ‘You’re going to be acting with someone of Titanic proportion,” Sloan recalled. She’d been following industry buzz and quickly figured out that this was a Paul Thomas Anderson production, “which I was really excited about,” she said. “He’s one of my favorites. … I really couldn’t believe it was happening.”
Sloan spent the two weeks ahead of her Leo read-through watching as many of his films as she could find — “just to, like, get used to his face,” she said. “And it kind of worked!”
When she found herself performing opposite one of the world’s biggest movie stars, Sloan felt dissociated from herself. “It was all so unreal,” she said. But she found the crew to be exceedingly generous. “They were really kind and calm and very accommodating. I think they were well aware of how overwhelming this whole thing could be to someone new to it.”
About a week after the reading, Sloan got a call from Kulukundis, the casting director, who started talking to her about costume fittings.
“And I said, ‘Whoa, wait. Does that mean I got it?’” Sloan recalled. “And she said, ‘Oh, they didn’t tell you?’”
Like her young local costars, Sloan had nothing but praise for her time with DiCaprio.
“He was so very kind and welcoming at the audition in person that I felt pretty okay going in [to the film set], honestly,” she said. “And I have been acting since I was 12, so I understood the concept of getting into character and being in character and being professional in the scene.”
DiCaprio was also “a bit in character” when she arrived onset for her day of shooting at a Eureka High location. Sloan didn’t offer too many details about that day or the scene they filmed, but she said her character interacts with DiCaprio’s. Filming the scene took a long time, she said, with Anderson trying multiple camera angles and lenses across multiple takes.
“After we’d been doing it for a while — a couple hours at that point — I think I felt comfortable enough to actually take a look around the room, because I was being so focused on who I was and where I was and what was supposed to be happening,” Sloan said.
So she looked around, taking in the set and finally noticing all of the surrounding people with their lights and camera equipment.
“And when I came back to facing Leo, he was looking right at me,” Sloan said. “And he said, ‘Stay in it,’ like a warning almost. Like, you know, ‘Stay ready.’ And the best part, though, is I, so, okay.” Sloan paused, excited as she remembered this moment. “I looked down, I got myself back into character, and I looked back up at him, and he kind of nodded, like, he could see it — that I got back into character. And that meant more than anything.”
A functioning movie theater on the Warner Bros. lot in Hollywood was converted to VistaVision for a cast and crew screening earlier this month. | Photo courtesy Colton Gantt.
###
Both Sloan and Gantt were invited to attend a cast and crew screening last weekend on the Warner Bros. studio lot in Hollywood.
“I jumped on the opportunity to go do that,” Sloan said. “And that’s the best part, honestly.” Her childhood dreams of being a movie actor had finally come true. “Getting onto the Warner Bros. studio lot, getting through that guard station with my ID, and [hearing], “Yes, your name’s on a list. Come on in.’ That was huge.”
Gantt said it was great seeing members of the cast and crew that he’d last seen up here in Humboldt, including Anderson. After seeing himself on the (very) big VistaVision screen, he said he’s still wrapping his head around the whole experience.
“It was really surreal being a part of it, being surrounded by so many big names in the industry,” he said. “[There were] just a lot of people that I grew up watching, and to share a set with them was actually really cool.”
One Battle After Another opens Friday, Sept. 26, nationwide, including at Eureka’s Broadway Cinema, and it’s coming soon to The Minor Theatre in Arcata.
###
PREVIOUSLY
- Film Set to Shoot in Eureka is From Renowned Director Paul Thomas Anderson, With Leonardo DiCaprio, Sean Penn and Regina Hall, According to Industry Reports
- (PHOTOS) Hollywood Magic Transforms Cutten Plaza Into a Mexican Mini-Mall for DiCaprio Movie Production
- Northtown Arcata Will Be Swarming With Movie Folk Tomorrow, As Bigtime Production ‘BC Project’ Films in the Neighborhood
- (WATCH) First Look at Leonardo DiCaprio In Character for New Paul Thomas Anderson Film Currently Filming in Humboldt
- MOVIE DAY! My Diary of Hanging Around Waiting For The Stars to Show Up In Northtown, and the Things I Saw There
- Buh-Bye, Leo! Local Production on Paul Thomas Anderson’s New DiCaprio Movie Has Wrapped
- Alas, We Have to Wait Until Summer 2025 to See Leo Dicaprio’s Locally Filmed Paul Thomas Anderson Movie
- (VIDEO) Teaser Trailer Just Dropped for the New DiCaprio Movie Partly Filmed in Humboldt and Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson
- (VIDEO) There’s More Humboldt in This Full-Length Trailer for DiCaprio’s ‘One Battle After Another’
Claiming Infringements on Free Speech Rights, Northcoast Environmental Center Staff Members Strike
Dezmond Remington / Wednesday, Sept. 17, 2025 @ 1:32 p.m. / Activism
NEC staff member Moxie Alvarnaz addresses the Arcata City Council at the contentious meeting on August 6. By Dezmond Remington.
Five staff members of the Northcoast Environmental Center (NEC) announced Monday in a letter to the executive board of the NEC that they had unionized and were striking until their demands were met, claiming that their “private Free Speech rights” were “infringed upon” by the board, and also that they were generally being treated unfairly.
The signees included all of the members of the NEC’s staff except for Public Lands Director Larry Glass, who is also a secretary on the NEC’s board.
Three of the staff (Moxie Alvarnaz, Carlrey Arroyo, and an unidentified third member) were at meetings of the Arcata City Council last month where public commenters, attempting to persuade the city to change its approach to cleaning up and moving homeless people from a private property in Arcata, shut down proceedings by shouting over meeting participants, frequently berating and personally insulting them.
City employees, including a former NEC employee and Mayor Alex Stillman, reached out to the NEC board to complain about how the staff members acted at the meetings; the board decided to reach out to meet with two of the staff to work something out, but the staff decided to unionize and strike instead.
As of publication, none of the staff members have returned a request for comment.
Alvarnaz speaks at the Aug. 6 Arcata City Council meeting
Glass said in a phone interview with the Outpost yesterday that the staff members’ actions at the city council meetings damaged the NEC’s reputation immensely. More than 20 people have unsubscribed from NEC’s EcoNews publication, and former employees and members have said they don’t want to be associated with the NEC. Member groups like the Audubon Society, the Native Plant Society, and the Sierra Club called the NEC to ask them to explain what was happening, Glass said; a board member that represents the Sierra Club almost quit.
This month’s EcoNews will not be published. Their offices are closed, and the NEC won’t be able to conduct any business. The board will meet soon to discuss how to handle the situation.
“It showed the organization in a very unprofessional light,” Glass said. “…It’s very serious. This whole thing has been a complete disaster for us.”
In the letter, the strikers bristle at what they see as a suppression of their right to free speech, citing the First Amendment in their letter as a guarantor that they can “[voice] outrage at anti-homeless sweeps, police violence, and continued gentrification in their City of residence.” (The First Amendment only protects citizens against government suppression of free speech. Third parties, like social media companies or employers, aren’t covered.)
Because they didn’t identify themselves as employees of the NEC at the city council meetings, the staff believe they should not be disciplined. The NEC disagrees, as does their lawyer, because plenty of people at the meetings knew who they were and their employers.
Glass denied that they were “targeting” anyone — all they wanted to do, according to him, was discipline two of their employees for representing them unprofessionally, and couldn’t manage even that.
“I feel betrayed personally,” Glass said. “These people were employees, and, I thought, friends. I was hoping we could resolve the issue, and we wouldn’t have any further events like that in the future. That’s what I was hoping for: a resolution. I certainly didn’t expect it to escalate the way it has.”
The strikers also complain that their workplace has become “hostile” after board members attempted to meet with them to evaluate their work performances.
Board members also wanted to judge how well they had done at managing the NEC. Instead of having an executive director, the staff split the director’s responsibilities for a six month trial period, which started in November of 2024. The trial ended long ago, and NEC leaders still haven’t been able to set up a meeting with the staff to break down how they did.
Board member Margaret Gainer criticized the letter announcing the strike, and said she was disappointed that they had been so hard to contact and work with.
“Their announcement was, A: difficult to understand, and B: riddled with things that aren’t factual,” she said in an interview with the Outpost. “What was not explained was the typical process for employees, how to help them be their best, and all of the things that are nonprofit best management practices. None of that is explained in the announcement.”
There’s a line in public protest, she said, between what’s acceptable and what’s not. A heads-up to the NEC’s upper management that they were planning on protesting would have made a big difference.
“I’m just so disappointed that there’s been this long history of really effective, strategic, thoughtful, well informed, well researched impact on environmental issues in our region, and strong protests that made a difference, and that they have chosen to go this route,” Gainer said. “It’s too bad. That history of strong, effective, strategic, clear, purposeful protest is a part of what we’re proud of the NEC. And this is certainly a different way.”
Loleta Woman Taken Into Custody After Blue Lake Traffic Stop, and Later Booked on Suspicion of Attempting to Smuggle Drugs Into Jail, Sheriff’s Office Says
LoCO Staff / Wednesday, Sept. 17, 2025 @ 1:24 p.m. / Crime
Press release from the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office:
On Sept. 17, 2025, at approximately 2:39 a.m. a Humboldt County Sheriff’s deputy conducted a traffic enforcement stop on a vehicle in the 1400 Block of Glendale Drive in Blue Lake. The driver of the vehicle was identified as 59-year-old Brandi Lynn Manjarrez of Loleta who was on active probation for three counts of felony narcotic related offenses.
Per the terms and conditions of her probation, Manjarrez was subject to search at any time and was not to use, possess, traffic drugs or associate with drug users or traffickers. During this investigation deputies determined she was in violation of her probation, and she was arrested and transported the Humboldt County Correctional Facility for processing and booking. During this process a body scan revealed she had an object concealed in a body cavity. She was then transported to a local hospital for medical clearance.
While at the hospital Manjarrez was found to be in possession of narcotics. After medical clearance she was transported to the HCCF and booked on the following charges:
- H.S. 11351 - Possess / Purchase for sale narcotics / controlled substance
- P.C. 4573 (a) – Smuggle controlled substance into jail
- H.S. 11364(a) – Possession of drug paraphernalia
- P.C. 148(a)(1) – Resist/Obstruct/Delay Peace Officer
- P.C. 1203.2(a) – Violation of Probation
- H.S. 11350(a)- Possession of narcotics/ controlled substance
This case is still under investigation.
Anyone with information about this case or related criminal activity is encouraged to call the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office at (707) 445-7251 or the Sheriff’s Office Crime Tip line at (707) 268-2539.
Redwood National Park Would Like a Word With the People Who Have Been Stealing Its Beautiful Metal Things All Year Long
LoCO Staff / Wednesday, Sept. 17, 2025 @ 11:12 a.m. / Crime
Press release from Redwood National and State Parks:
Since January of 2025, Redwood National and State Parks has had several metal objects stolen from the parks, including war veteran memorial plaques, donor recognition plaques, metal art sculpture objects, and commonplace items such as shower drains. These items celebrate and recognize individuals and groups who have contributed to the redwood forests and include items that bring culture and inspiration into the parks, benefitting visitors and local communities.
Redwood National and State Parks welcomes public assistance with this issue by being on the lookout for these items at metal recycling locations or other potential resale locations. If anyone is aware of these items being resold or has information about the burglary you are encouraged to call Ranger Greg McKisson at (707) 498-4362 or leave a tip anonymously at 707-465-7353.
>Pictured above are examples of the types of the metal items that were recently stolen from Jedidiah Smith Redwoods State Park, including a 20-inch bronze canoe tactile model and a 12-inch bronze Coho salmon tactile model.

