Robert (Bob) Steeves
May 4, 1944 – April 6, 2025

Robert (Bob) Michael Steeves passed away on April 6, 2025. Bob was born on May 4, 1944. He was a lifelong resident of McKinleyville and a proud native of Humboldt County. Bob was a descendant of the Steeves and Bartow families, who were among the early settlers of McKinleyville.

Bob was a member of the Karuk Tribe. He was the great-grandson of Gertrude (Fry) Thornton (Tu-Tu-Kan-Ish), a full-blood Karuk Indian. He was the son of Elmer and Mildred (Bartow) Steeves, and the brother of Betty Shamberger (Jim), Barbara Jones (Steve), Elmer Steeves Jr. (Sharon), and Ron Boone (Cassandra). Ron was Bob’s cousin but was raised by the Steeves family and was like a brother to him.

Bob was a member of the first graduating class of McKinleyville High School in 1963. After high school, he went to work for Simpson Timber Company until he was drafted into the Army and served in Vietnam. When he returned from the military, he resumed working at Simpson’s, where he remained until his retirement. Bob was deeply respected and admired by his coworkers because of the work he did.

Bob enjoyed hunting, fishing, and camping. He especially cherished surf fishing, duck hunting, clam digging, deer hunting, and camping in places like Salmon River, Bullseye Lake, the Trinity Alps, and Modoc. Many of these adventures were shared with family and close friends Ike Ganfield, Ron Morton, Jim Shamberger and Steve Jones.

Bob married Darlene (Holt) Steeves in 1966, and they shared over fifty years of life together. Bob was a caring and devoted husband.

He is survived by his wife, Darlene; his beloved sisters Betty and Barbara (Steve); and his brother Elmer (Sharon). He also leaves behind his double cousins Patty, Carol, Nancy, and many other loving family members.

Bob was preceded in death by his parents, Elmer and Mildred; his brother-in-law, Jim Shamberger; his cousin-brother, Ron Boone; Cassandra Boone; nephews John Shamberger and Doug Jones; and his best friends Ike Ganfield and Ron Morton.

The family would like to thank caregiver Kathy Belair for her kind and compassionate care.

Bob will be laid to rest at Greenwood Cemetery in Arcata. A graveside service will be held on Friday, April 18, at 11 a.m.

In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to your favorite charity.

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

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Three months after cutting bait on plans to build a $500 million fish factory in Belfast, Maine, Nordic Aquafarms is courting new investors and facing a longer, more complicated timeline for a similar project along Humboldt Bay.

In a recent interview, Nordic executives outlined some new permitting and environmental mitigation hurdles and said it will likely be “a few years” before the company can demolish the old pulp mill infrastructure on the Samoa Peninsula and break ground on its proposed recirculating aquaculture system (RAS) facility.

Announced more than six years ago, the land-based fish farm, as originally conceived, is expected to cost $650 million and employ up to 150 full-time workers while producing up to 27,000 metric tons of Yellowtail kingfish per year — enough to supply West Coast markets from Seattle to Los Angeles and beyond.

However, given the recent geopolitical upheaval and its impact on world financial markets, the future of any project with such a long timeline is uncertain, as the company saw in Maine. Nordic’s East Coast project, announced in 2018, received all required local, state and federal permits but faced fierce opposition from environmental groups, whose legal challenges ultimately proved too costly.

“The company exits after tens of millions of investment dollars and many years of planning and permitting in the State of Maine,” CEO Brenda Chandler said in a January press release.

Last week, Chandler and local Project Manager Scott Thompson sat down for an interview at Outpost headquarters in Old Town Eureka. They said that while the project is progressing, certain steps may take longer than anticipated. 

Environmental mitigation, for example. Nordic recently committed to an extensive Marine Monitoring Survey Plan that requires up to five years of water quality sampling and marine ecosystem analysis near the business end of an outfall pipe, which will discharge treated effluent from the RAS facility into the ocean, roughly a mile and a half offshore. That monitoring plan recently received approved from the North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board.

Meanwhile, after years of analysis and deliberations, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) Nordic switched up one of the environmental remediation measures required of the project to comply with requirements from the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW).

This aspect of the project involves the Humboldt Bay Harbor, Recreation and Conservation District, which previously agreed to remove nearly 1,000 derelict, creosote-treated piles and crossbeams from an old dock in Fields Landing to mitigate the impacts of baywater intake infrastructure.

The district’s underwater sea chests, which were installed decades ago for use by the pulp mill, are expected to impact Humboldt Bay’s marine life by sucking in tiny fish eggs, larvae and other planktonic organisms. They’re also expected to harm longfin smelt, a species of fish designated as threatened under the California Endangered Species Act. In December, the Army Corps of Engineers approved Section 404 Water Quality Certification permit for the seawater intake infrastructure.

However, CDFW determined that the plan to remove old pilings from the bay was insufficient to mitigate the impacts to longfin smelt. So instead, as a condition of the agency’s recently issued incidental take permit, the Harbor District must construct nearly an acre of wetland habitat, and the district must maintain and manage that habitat throughout Phase 1 of the project.

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“Now we need to design and permit the mitigation project itself,” Thompson said. “So that will need its own permitting. We need to do CEQA [California Environmental Quality Act] again; we need a Coastal Commission permit; we need Army Corps permits. So that is a whole ‘nother project. The pile-pulling probably wouldn’t have needed quite so much.”

Nordic has identified one potential property for this wetland-building endeavor, along Freshwater Slough, though Thompson said, “Eventually, we’ll likely be building wetlands in several locations.”

The sites will be constructed in areas with freshwater influence to allow for more spawning and rearing habitat for the longfin smelt, he explained.

Chandler said this project will also help to satisfy requirements from the California Coastal Commission, though that agency has asked for additional underwater mitigation work to be done between the Harbor District’s two intake locations — one at Redwood Marine Terminal II and the other at the “Red Tank” dock in Samoa.

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“There are several conditions to meet for that [part of the project] as well … ,” Chandler said. “So we expect to be doing that work in conjunction with the Harbor District over the next couple of years.”

As recently as last fall, Chandler was expecting that the pulp mill’s smokestack and boiler building could be demolished and removed before the end of 2025, but that’s no longer the case.

Thompson said that, as far as he knows, this is the first incidental take permit ever granted for longfin smelt in Humboldt Bay, so CDFW took extra time working with Nordic to develop a mitigation formula informed by a yearlong sampling event — or “entrainment study” — in Humboldt Bay.

Even with these new mitigation measures, local environmental groups remain wary. Jennifer Kalt, executive director of Humboldt Waterkeeper, said her organization is still concerned that the nutrient discharge from the ocean outfall pipe could increase the risk of toxic algae blooms, especially during marine heat waves like the one from 2014-16, nicknamed “The Blob.”

Kalt said she’s grateful for the Marine Monitoring Survey Plan.

“All we have to go on now is modeling, so the monitoring is really important to understand what is really happening in the ocean once the project is up and running,” she said.

As for the financial aspects of the endeavor, Chandler said pulling the plug in Maine didn’t necessarily impact the finances for the local project, which is being managed separately. But if the Trump administration implements widespread tariffs, or if the U.S. economy falters in the next couple of years, Nordic will likely have to review its list of vendors.

“Invariably there’s going to be an impact somewhere along the supply chain, both for our capital expenditures and our … operating expenses,” Chandler said.

The company’s existing investor group is largely based in Scandinavia, but Chandler said that sometime in the next few weeks, Nordic will “open the door” to U.S. investors.

Thompson argued that the recent political and economic turmoil serves to highlight the importance and value of domestic food production. And while the finish line keeps moving farther away, Chandler noted that, after six years of work, Nordic has a huge head start on any other company that might want to pursue such a project. She remains optimistic.

“What we have here is an amazing opportunity,” she said. Unlike in Maine, where the fish factory was slated to be built on forested land near a drinking water reservoir and a river that supports one of the last wild Atlantic salmon runs in the U.S. — and where a new discharge pipe would empty into an estuary with eelgrass — the local project site is a partially cleaned up brownfield property with built-in infrastructure and access to copious fresh water.

“When I talk to people, I call it a unicorn,” Chandler said, referring to the site’s project-specific amenities. “It’s just very unique.”

While the start of construction is likely years away, Thompson and Chandler said that they hope that the initial 0.93-acre wetland construction project will be sufficient to permit 2.66 million gallons per day of seawater intake from Humboldt Bay, which would be sufficient to produce up to 3,000 metric tons of fish per year in Phase 1. 

The footprint of Building One, a grow-out module originally planned at over 265,000 square feet, has been reduced by 75,000 feet. The company’s existing permits allow for up to 15,000 metric tons, but Chandler said she won’t even hazard a guess on when that much production will be possible.

“I’m not going to be 100 percent confident until we’re literally breaking ground,” she said. And she expressed gratitude for the community in helping to get the project this far.

Attempts to reach the relevant personnel with both the Harbor District and CDFW before this story was published were unsuccessful.

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PREVIOUSLY

• Coastal Commission Approves Humboldt Bay Seawater Intake System Upgrades Needed for Nordic Aquafarms Project
• Nordic Aquafarms Celebrates Coastal Commission Denial of Five Appeals to Samoa Fish Farm
• Coastal Commission OKs Wastewater Discharge Permit for Nordic Aquafarms’ Onshore Fish Farm
• Water Quality Board Awards Wastewater Discharge Permit for Nordic Aquafarms’ Planned Peninsula Facility
• Salmon OUT, Yellowtail IN: Nordic Aquafarms Announces Species Switch-Up at its Planned Humboldt Facility

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Press release from the Humboldt County Drug Task Force:

On April 12th, 2025, Humboldt County Drug Task Force (HCDTF) Agents served a search warrant on Miguel Angel Rodriguez Alicea (36 years old from Fortuna). During the months of March and April, the HCDTF received information that Alicea was traveling to Modesto and purchasing large quantities of methamphetamine for the purpose of sales in Humboldt County.

HCDTF Agents observed Alicea travel from Humboldt County to Modesto, California. Upon Alicea’s return, Agents conducted a traffic stop on his vehicle as he entered Humboldt County.

Alicea was detained without incident and his vehicle was searched. Agents located 4 pounds of methamphetamine in the vehicle and 600 marijuana clones stored in the trunk of the vehicle. 

Alicea was transported to the Humboldt County Correctional Facility where he was booked on the following charges:
 
- 11379(b) HS — Transportation of a controlled substance (noncontiguous counties)
- 11378 HS — Possession of a controlled substance for the purpose of sales
- 11370.4(b)(1) HS — Possession of a kilogram or more of a controlled substance

Anyone with information related to this investigation or other narcotics related crimes is encouraged to call the Humboldt County Drug Task Force at 707-267-9976.

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Press release from Cal Poly Humboldt’s University Police Department:

On April 8, the University Police Department (UPD) received a report concerning a vehicle with a shattered window located in the Jolly Giant Commons parking lot. Upon arrival, officers observed two additional vehicles that had sustained significant damage. The preliminary investigation suggested that these incidents were not isolated; they represented a coordinated effort to steal vehicles, with a particular focus on Hyundai and Kia models, which thieves have increasingly targeted across the county.

In response to these events, on April 9, UPD officers arrested Vijay Sen, who is unaffiliated with Cal Poly Humboldt. Sen was charged with three counts of attempted vehicle theft, vehicle tampering, three counts of vandalism, and conspiracy.

This investigation is ongoing. If you have any additional details related to these incidents, contact UPD at (707) 826-5555. Your input can make a significant difference in enhancing the security of our campus. UPD would like to thank the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office with their assistance in this matter.

UPD is providing the following prevention and awareness tips to all members of our community.

Campus Safety Crime Tips

• Park in Well-Lit Areas: Whenever possible, choose parking spaces that are well illuminated to deter potential thieves.
• Secure Your Vehicle and Valuables: Lock your vehicle and avoid leaving items of value inside your vehicle, especially in plain sight, as this can tempt opportunistic thieves.
• Keep Your Keys Secure: Never leave your keys in the ignition or hidden within your vehicle, as this makes it easier for thieves to steal your car.

As Humboldt County’s Clerk, Recorder, & Registrar of Voters, I’m inspired by the civic spirit of our residents and local organizations. Every election season reminds me of the three pillars that guide our work: transparency, accessibility and efficiency — each essential to a trustworthy democratic process.

Yet the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act threatens to undo much of what we’ve worked so hard to build. This bill would require every voter registering or updating registration to provide documentary proof of citizenship in person. While that might sound reasonable, we already have effective mechanisms in place that ensure only citizens vote — and the evidence shows they work. A 2024 Georgia audit, for example, found that of 8.2 million registered voters, only 20 were noncitizens (just 0.00024% of the roll); all were investigated, and only nine had ever cast a ballot.

A Far-Reaching Toll on Our Neighbors

If passed, the SAVE Act would create needless barriers for many legitimate voters:

• Rural residents could face long drives to the elections office, possibly multiple times if documents are incomplete.
• Older adults may lack valid passports or birth certificates.
• Military and overseas voters cannot simply “pop in” from abroad; their vote-by-mail or online options would be severely limited.
• People who change their name (such as married women) would need extra documentation just to prove they are who they say they are.

Each of these groups represents fully eligible, law-abiding neighbors who risk losing their voice over a requirement aimed at a nearly nonexistent problem.

Straining Local Resources

With the 2024 election cycle alone, Humboldt County processed over 20,000 voter-initiated registration transactions. Making each one an in-person visit would demand extra staff, extra office space, and higher administrative costs—all unfunded by the federal government. Instead of supporting roads, social work, or law enforcement, the county’s limited resources would go toward policing a statistically negligible issue.

This also highlights a longstanding challenge: counties like Humboldt foot nearly every expense for elections, even when the ballot includes state and federal candidates. The SAVE Act adds yet another unfunded mandate, further stretching our local budget.

Our Current Safeguards Work

We already confirm voter eligibility through federal and state database checks, and there are steep penalties for any noncitizen who registers—whether intentional or accidental. A Brennan Center for Justice analysis of 23.5 million votes cast in the 2016 election revealed just 30 suspected incidents of noncitizen voting — around 0.0001%. These facts show that noncitizen voting is nearly nonexistent, while our elections remain transparent, accessible, and efficient.

A Call for Collaboration and Funding

I stepped into this role because I believe every eligible citizen deserves an equal opportunity to vote. The SAVE Act runs counter to that principle. Rather than piling another requirement on local offices, Congress should collaborate with election officials—and fund any new obligations so they don’t undercut voter access. If the federal government truly wants more secure elections, it should help us invest in technology, staff, and facilities—rather than forcing counties to shoulder all the costs alone.

Preserving Access for Humboldt

I urge our community to stand against the SAVE Act. Safeguarding elections is crucial, but not at the expense of a transparent, accessible, and efficient system that already works. By honoring these values, we uphold the spirit of democracy that unites our county. Let’s keep Humboldt’s elections a reflection of our dedication to participation and good governance — one that welcomes every eligible voter’s voice.

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Juan Pablo Cervantes is Humboldt County’s Clerk-Recorder/Registrar of Voters.

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The California DMV routinely allows dangerous drivers with horrifying histories to continue to operate on our roadways. Too often they go on to kill. Many keep driving even after they kill. Some go on to kill again.

This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters.

Court research by Robert Lewis, Lauren Hepler, Anat Rubin, Sergio Olmos, Cayla Mihalovich, Ese Olumhense, Ko Bragg, Andrew Donohue and Jenna Peterson

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Ivan Dimov was convicted of reckless driving in 2013, after fleeing police in Washington state while his passenger allegedly dumped heroin out the window. Before that, he got six DUIs in California over a six-year period. None of that would keep him off the road.

The California Department of Motor Vehicles reissued him a driver’s license in 2017. The next year, on Christmas Eve, he drove drunk again, running stop signs and a traffic light in midtown Sacramento, going more than 80 mph, court records show. He T-boned another car, killing a 28-year-old man who was going home to feed the cat before heading to his mom’s for the holiday.

Kostas Linardos had 17 tickets — including for speeding, reckless driving and street racing — and had been in four collisions. Then, in November 2022, he gunned his Ram 2500 truck as he entered a Placer County highway and slammed into the back of a disabled sedan, killing a toddler, court records show. He’s now facing felony manslaughter charges.

In December of last year, while that case was open, the DMV renewed his driver’s license.

Ervin Wyatt’s history behind the wheel spreads across two pages of a recent court filing: Fleeing police. Fleeing police again. Running a red light. Causing a traffic collision. Driving without a license, four times. A dozen speeding tickets.

Yet the DMV issued him a license in 2019. Wyatt promptly got three more speeding tickets, court records show. Prosecutors say he was speeding again in 2023 when he lost control and crashed into oncoming traffic, killing three women. He’s now facing murder charges in Stanislaus County.

The California Department of Motor Vehicles routinely allows drivers like these — with horrifying histories of dangerous driving, including DUIs, crashes and numerous tickets — to continue to operate on our roadways, a CalMatters investigation has found. Too often they go on to kill. Many keep driving even after they kill. Some go on to kill again.

With state lawmakers grappling with how to address the death toll on our roads, CalMatters wanted to understand how California handles dangerous drivers. We first asked the district attorneys for all 58 counties to provide us with a list of their vehicular manslaughter cases from 2019 through early last year. Every county but Santa Cruz provided the information.

Because California has no centralized court system and records aren’t online, we then traveled to courthouses up and down the state to read through tens of thousands of pages of files. Once we had defendants’ names and other information, we were able to get DMV driver reports for more than 2,600 of the defendants, providing details on their recent collisions, citations and license status.

The court records and driving histories reveal a state so concerned with people having access to motor vehicles for work and life that it allows deadly drivers to share our roads despite the cost. Officials may call driving a privilege, but they treat it as a right — often failing to take drivers’ licenses even after they kill someone on the road.

We found nearly 40% of the drivers charged with vehicular manslaughter since 2019 have a valid license.

That includes a driver with two separate convictions for vehicular manslaughter, for crashes that killed a 16-year-old girl in 2009 and a 25-year-old woman in 2020. In July of last year, the DMV issued him a driver’s license.

The agency gave licenses to nearly 150 people less than a year after they allegedly killed someone on the road, we found. And while the agency has since suspended some of those, often after a conviction, the majority remain valid. In Santa Clara County, a man prosecutors charged with manslaughter got his current license just a month and a half after the collision that killed a mother of three young children.

And many drivers accused of causing roadway deaths don’t appear to have stopped driving recklessly. Records show that nearly 400 got a ticket or were in another crash — or both — after their deadly collisions.

A commercial driver drove his semi truck on the wrong side of the road into oncoming traffic, killing a motorcyclist in Kern County in 2021. Less than a year later, he still had a valid license when he barreled his semi into slow-moving traffic, hitting four vehicles and killing a woman in Fresno County, records show. Another man, sentenced to nine years in prison for killing two women while driving drunk, got his privileges restored by the DMV after being paroled, only to drive high on meth in Riverside and weave head-on into another car, killing a woman.

“It is somewhat shocking to see how much you can get away with and still be a licensed driver in the state of California,” Placer County District Attorney Morgan Gire said. “I don’t think anyone fully understands what you need to do behind the wheel to lose your driving privilege.”

Almost as interesting as the information in the drivers’ DMV records is what’s not there.

Hundreds of drivers’ DMV records simply don’t list convictions for manslaughter or another crime related to a fatal crash, we found. The apparent error means some drivers who should have their driving privileges suspended instead show up in DMV records as having a valid license.

The cases we reviewed cut across demographics and geography. Defendants include farmworkers and a farm owner. They include off-duty police officers and people with lengthy rap sheets, drivers who killed in a fit of rage and others whose recklessness took the lives of those they loved most — high school sweethearts, siblings, children. The tragedies span this vast state. From twisty two-lane mountain roads near the Oregon border to the dusty scrubland touching Mexico. From the crowded streets of San Francisco to the highways of the Inland Empire. From Gold Country, to timber country, to Silicon Valley, to the almond capital of the world. So much death. More people than are killed by guns.

Dangerous drivers are able to stay on the roads for many reasons. The state system that targets motorists who rack up tickets is designed to catch clusters of reckless behavior, not long-term patterns. And while there are laws requiring the DMV to suspend a driver’s license for certain crimes, like DUIs, there is no such requirement for many vehicular manslaughter convictions.

It’s often up to the DMV whether to act. Routinely it doesn’t.

The DMV declined to make its director, Steve Gordon — who has been in charge since Gov. Gavin Newsom appointed him in 2019 — available for an interview to discuss our findings.

Chris Orrock, a DMV spokesperson, said the agency follows the law when issuing licenses. “We use our authority as mandated and as necessary,” he said.

Even when the DMV does take away motorists’ driving privileges, state officials, law enforcement and the courts are often unable or unwilling to keep them off the road. We found cases where drivers racked up numerous tickets while driving on a suspended license and faced little more than fines before eventually causing a fatal crash, even though authorities could have sent them to jail.

Taking away someone’s driving privilege is no small decision. It can consign a family to poverty, affecting job prospects, child care and medical decisions.

Still, the stakes couldn’t be higher. More than 20,000 people died on the roads of California from 2019 to early 2024.

Kowana Strong thinks part of the problem is that lawmakers and regulators are too quick to treat fatal crashes as an unfortunate fact of life, as opposed to something they can address.

Her son Melvin Strong III — who went by his middle name, Kwaun — was finishing college and planning to start a master’s program in kinesiology when he was killed by Dimov, the driver with six prior DUI convictions. Kwaun was a bright and innocent young man, she said, just starting his life.

“It’s just another accident as far as they’re concerned,” Kowana Strong said.

Holes in the DMV’s point system

Young people think they’re invincible. It’s the old who know how unfair life is, Jerrod Tejeda said.

His daughter Cassi Tejeda was just 22. She was months from graduating from Chico State with a bachelor’s degree in history and a plan to be a teacher. Outgoing and athletic, she wanted to travel, see the world and make her own life.

She had a girlfriend who was visiting. Courtney Kendall was 24 and a student at Louisiana State University.

On a Sunday afternoon in January 2022, a Volvo SUV topping speeds of 75 mph ran a red light and smashed into their Jeep, court records show. The collision killed them both.

“The most difficult part besides the incident is every day that goes by you’re always wondering what if. What would they be doing today?” Jerrod Tejeda said. “Would they be married? Would they have developed into the career that they chose? Where would she be living?”

Tanya Kendall lamented not being there to protect her daughter, hold her hand or say goodbye.

“Instead, I was left with the unbearable task of choosing what outfit she would be buried in. Buried, Your Honor. Not the gown she would wear to her graduation from LSU — the one she will never attend,” the mother wrote in a letter to a Butte County judge, adding that she and her husband stood in their daughter’s place, accepting her diploma.

Such pain was preventable.

A scrapbook of photographs of Cassi Tejeda on the table of Jerrod Tejeda’s home in Visalia on March 6, 2025. Cassi was killed by a drunk driver with two prior DUIs in January of 2022. Photos by Larry Valenzuela, CalMatters/CatchLight Local

The driver of the Volvo, Matthew Moen, had a blood alcohol level more than three times the legal limit, according to court filings. And it wasn’t his first time drinking and driving. Moen was caught driving drunk in Oregon in 2016. He never completed the requirements of a diversion program and had an outstanding warrant at the time of the fatal crash, the Butte County district attorney’s office said. In January 2020, he was convicted of DUI in Nevada County for driving with a blood alcohol level more than twice the legal limit, given a couple weeks in jail and put on probation for three years.

His license was valid at the time of the fatal 2022 crash, records show.

Across the country, states grapple with how to effectively spot and punish drivers who could be a danger on the road. Often they rely on a basic point system, with drivers accruing points for various types of traffic violations and thresholds for when the state will take away a motorist’s driving privileges. But like many, California has such high limits that drivers with a pattern of reckless behavior can avoid punishment.

The state suspends a driver’s license for accumulating four points in a year, six points in two years or eight points in three years. What does it take to get that many points? Using a cellphone while driving is zero points. A speeding ticket is a point. Vehicular manslaughter is two points.

Between March 2017 and March 2022, Trevor Cook received two citations for running red lights, got two speeding tickets and was deemed responsible for two collisions, including one in which someone was injured, court records show. (A third red-light ticket was dismissed.) At-fault collisions add a point to a driver’s license, according to the DMV. But the incidents were spaced out enough that none resulted in a suspension.

Cassi Tejeda and Courtney Kendall. Photo via Butte County District Attorney

So Cook had a valid license on April 14, 2022, just a month after his last speeding ticket, when he blew through a Yolo County stop sign at more than 100 mph.

At that exact moment, Prajal Bista passed through the intersection, on his way to work after dinner and a movie with his wife, according to details of the crash that prosecutors included in court filings. Bista was driving the speed limit and on track to make it to work 30 minutes early.

The force of the collision nearly split Bista’s Honda Civic in half. Investigators determined Bista had been wearing his seat belt, but the crash tore it apart. They found his body 75 feet from the intersection.

On March 28, 2024, Cook pleaded no contest to felony vehicular manslaughter.

Just a month later, on April 30, the DMV issued Cook his current driver’s license, agency records show. Less than two weeks after that, he got a ticket for disobeying a traffic signal.

Melinda Aiello, chief deputy district attorney in Yolo County, said her office didn’t know anything about the new license or the red-light ticket until contacted by CalMatters. What’s more, the manslaughter conviction — like hundreds of others we found — isn’t listed on Cook’s driving record.

Cook’s license was still listed as valid in California DMV records as of early 2025. But for now, he’s off the roadways: Last summer, Cook started serving time in state prison.

“It’s stunning to me that eight months later his license is still showing as valid and the conviction for killing someone while driving is not reflected in his driving record,” Aiello said. “You killed somebody. I’d think there might be some license implications.”

Orrock, the DMV spokesperson, said he couldn’t speak directly to why so many convictions are missing. But, he said, “we acknowledge that the process and coordination between the judicial system and the DMV must continually evolve to address any gaps that have been identified. And we’re looking into that.”

Kill someone, get your license back

There are laws requiring the DMV to suspend a driver’s license for various convictions. A first DUI conviction, for example, is a 6-to-10-month suspension. Felony vehicular manslaughter is a three-year loss of driving privileges. The agency isn’t necessarily required to give a license back if its driver safety branch deems a motorist too dangerous to drive, agency officials said.

But CalMatters found the agency regularly gives drivers their licenses back as soon as the legally required period ends. And once crashes, tickets and suspensions fall off a driver’s record after a few years, it’s often as if the motorist’s record is wiped clean. So even if the driver gets in trouble again, the agency often treats any future crashes and traffic violations as isolated incidents, not as part of a longer pattern of reckless driving.

Perhaps that’s why Joshua Daugherty is licensed to drive in California.

In July 2020, Daugherty drifted onto the highway shoulder while driving near Mammoth Lakes, overcorrected to the left and lost control, court filings show. His Toyota Tacoma cut across the lane into oncoming traffic, where an SUV broadsided it. Daugherty’s girlfriend, 25-year-old Krystal Kazmark, died. Police noted that Daugherty’s eyes were red and watery and his speech was slurred when they arrived. He told officers that he’d smoked “a couple of bowls” of marijuana earlier in the day, according to records filed in court.

Kazmark’s mother was devastated. Like other victim relatives we spoke to for this story, Mary Kazmark tried as best she could to summarize a life into a few words — an impossible task. Her daughter liked to sing, travel, cook, draw, snow-ski, water-ski, wakeboard, hike, read, entertain friends and plan parties. She was a responsible kid, her mother said, always the designated driver with her friends. She oversaw guest reservations at one of the Mammoth Lakes lodges.

Mary Kazmark said she tracked down Daugherty on the phone a few days after the crash.

“He just said, ‘I can’t believe this happened again.’ And I was like, ‘What do you mean?’”

She eventually learned it wasn’t the first time Daugherty’s driving had killed.

In August 2009, in a strikingly similar incident, Daugherty was speeding along a Riverside County highway when his Ford Expedition drifted onto the shoulder. Witnesses told police he veered back to the left, lost control, hit a dirt embankment and went airborne, the SUV flipping onto its roof. A 16-year-old girl riding in the back died. Daugherty was convicted of misdemeanor vehicular manslaughter. He was sentenced to 180 days in custody and three years’ probation, according to a summary of the case filed in court.

Because of the earlier manslaughter conviction, police recommended he be charged with murder for the death of Krystal Kazmark. But the Mono County district attorney’s office charged him with a mere misdemeanor.

Josh Daugherty and Krystal Kazmark. Photo courtesy of Mary Kazmark

Felony charges typically require a prosecutor to prove “gross negligence.” A prosecutor in another county described the difference between a felony and a misdemeanor this way: A felony is one in which you tell the average person the facts and they say, “Wow, that’s really dangerous.” A misdemeanor is one which they say, “That’s dumb but I’ve probably done it.”

The Mono County district attorney’s office refused to comment on the case, because the prosecutor and the elected DA at the time have both since retired. The office did provide a prepared statement explaining the charging decision. “It was determined that there was not a substantial likelihood of conviction at trial,” it said.

Daugherty pleaded guilty and was convicted in January 2023. He was sentenced to a year in jail. The DMV suspended his driving privileges after the fatal 2020 crash, a DMV report shows. But losing his license wasn’t enough to keep Daugherty off the road, records show.

Two months after his conviction for killing Kazmark, before he reported to jail, police caught him driving on a suspended license.

Still, the DMV reissued Daugherty a license in July 2024.

To recap: That’s two convictions for two dead young women, plus a conviction for driving on a suspended license, and the California DMV says Daugherty can still share the road with you.

“It’s so sad. You make a mistake and then you don’t learn from it and then you cause another person to lose their life,” Mary Kazmark said. “It’s unbelievable that he can continue to drive.”

Orrock said the DMV couldn’t comment on individual drivers.

When law enforcement reports a fatal crash, the agency’s driver safety branch flags all drivers who might be at fault. It then looks into the collision and decides whether the agency should suspend those motorists’ driving privileges. If the driver contests the action, there’s a hearing that could include witness testimony. Suspensions are open-ended. Drivers need to ask for their license back, and agency personnel decide whether the suspension should end or continue. These discretionary suspensions typically last for about a year.

And while officials said the DMV can continue a suspension if they think a driver poses a danger, Orrock said they need to give drivers an opportunity to get their license back. He said there’s no process in the state “to permanently revoke a license.”

Get your license back, get in trouble again

Roughly 400 drivers accused of causing a fatal crash since 2019 received a ticket, got in another collision or did both after the date they allegedly killed someone on the road. (The reports don’t show whether the drivers were found at fault, only that they were involved in an accident.) That’s about 15% of the drivers for whom we could get DMV reports.

Drivers like William Beasley.

From 2011 to 2016, Beasley collected five speeding tickets and a citation for running a red light in Sacramento County, court records show. Then around 9 a.m. on a sunny Tuesday in October 2019, he killed a man.

William and Deborah Hester were crossing the street to go to a dentist appointment at a veterans facility when Beasley’s silver pickup sped toward them. They thought they would make it across. But the truck didn’t stop. At the last minute, William Hester shoved his wife out of the way. She heard the truck smash into her husband’s body and screamed, according to court records.

Beasley still didn’t stop. He fled the area and tried to hide his truck. Investigators used nearby cameras and license plate readers to track him down days later. Beasley admitted to being in a collision.

He later pleaded no contest in Sacramento to hit-and-run and misdemeanor vehicular manslaughter. A probation report in the case revealed Beasley was nearly blind in his left eye.

From left, William Hester and Loriann Hester Page. Photo courtesy of Loriann Hester Page

“Mr. Hester is with me every moment of my life,” Beasley said in an interview. “I took away a father, a grandfather, a husband, and they consider me a murderer. That’s not who I am.”

“My accident with Mr. Hester was just that, an accident. Nothing more,” he said, adding that he worked as a courier for years and sometimes got speeding tickets because he was rushing.

In May 2020, the DMV took away his driving privileges.

In November 2022, Beasley got his license back — “because I could and I needed to,” he said, adding that people deserve second chances, particularly for accidents.

Almost immediately — less than three weeks after getting his license — he was in another collision, his DMV report shows. In early 2024, he got in yet another. His license was suspended when his car insurance was canceled, records show.

“It makes no sense to me that they would give him a license and give him the opportunity to hurt someone else,” said Loriann Hester Page, William Hester’s daughter.

Her father’s death broke the family, she said. He drove a tank in the Army, played guitar in a band, liked to ride horses.

“My dad was such a wonderful, kind man,” she said. “He would always walk in a room and wanted to make everyone smile.”

Beasley said he doesn’t plan to drive again.

“I am 75 years old,” he said. “I am blind in one eye. I have had a situation where a man was killed, he lost his life. I am not going to repeat that situation at all.”

Still on the road, license never suspended

The DMV does have the ability to act quickly. In some cases, it suspended a driver’s license shortly after a fatal crash. However, we found numerous cases in which the DMV did nothing for months or years, often not until a criminal conviction.

In July 2021, truck driver Baljit Singh drove his semi on the wrong side of the road into oncoming traffic, killing a motorcyclist in Kern County, court records show. There are no suspensions listed on his DMV record during that time, even though the agency has the discretion to suspend someone’s license without a conviction.

Less than a year later, as his case wound its way through the slow-moving court system, Singh plowed his semi into the back of a car in Fresno County, killing a woman, records show. He ultimately pleaded no contest to felony vehicular manslaughter in Kern County. He pleaded no contest to misdemeanor vehicular manslaughter in Fresno for the second fatal crash. The DMV finally took away his driving privileges in February of last year.

Prosecutors say Jadon Mendez was speeding in December 2021 in Santa Clara County when he lost control and caused a crash that killed a mother of three young children. A few weeks later he got a speeding ticket. And yet, the DMV issued him his current driver’s license on Jan. 27, 2022 — 49 days after the fatal crash.

There were no suspensions listed on his DMV record as of early this year, even though Mendez was charged with manslaughter in May 2022. The judge in his case ordered him not to drive, as a condition of his release. But such court orders don’t necessarily show up on a driver’s DMV record.

That might be why he didn’t get in more trouble in December 2022 when he got a speeding ticket in Alameda County. Prosecutors didn’t know about that ticket until CalMatters asked about it, said Angela Bernhard, assistant DA in the Santa Clara County district attorney’s office.

Mendez’s manslaughter case is still open, and his license is still listed as valid.

When asked about the Mendez case and others, Orrock acknowledged that while there’s a DMV process for deciding when to revoke or suspend a license, “sometimes the process takes a while to happen.”

When the DMV doesn’t act at all

In many cases, the DMV doesn’t take action even after a conviction.

In May 2022, a semi driver named Ramon Pacheco made a U-turn in front of an oncoming motorcycle, killing 29-year-old Dominic Lopez-Toney, who was finishing his rotations to be a doctor.

Court records show Pacheco had gotten in trouble behind the wheel before. He had been arrested for DUI in 2009, caused a collision in 2013 and got a ticket in 2016 for making an unsafe turn. It wasn’t enough to keep him off the road.

Neither was killing a man.

Months after San Joaquin prosecutors charged Pacheco with vehicular manslaughter, he got into another collision for which he was also deemed most at fault.

As the case dragged on, Lopez-Toney’s large but tight-knit family wrote dozens of letters to the court, pleading for justice. Dorothy Toney wrote that, more than a year since her grandson’s death, she was still haunted by images of his “mangled and broken body” and the gruesome details in the police report. “Somedays,” she wrote, “I wish I had been there to gently hold his hands” and “tell him how much I loved him.”

The letters are full of shock and outrage that the driver had faced so few consequences. “Allowing this truck driver to continue driving and engaging in civilian activities with only a mere consequence of probation is appalling,” wrote Lynelle Sigona, the victim’s aunt.

Pacheco ultimately pleaded no contest to misdemeanor manslaughter and received probation. His DMV record as of Feb. 11 indicates his driving privileges were never suspended; his commercial driver’s license is valid.

Pacheco’s defense attorney, Gil Somera, said his client isn’t a reckless driver. His prior incidents are relatively minimal, he said, given the fact that “truck drivers drive thousands and thousands of miles a year.” Pacheco needed to turn around and didn’t think there was another place he could do so, since he was approaching a residential area, Somera added.

Pacheco wasn’t being “inattentive or reckless,” Somera said. “And it’s unfortunate and sad and tragic this young man died because of this decision he made to make a U-turn.”

In the wake of the tragedy, Lopez-Toney’s mother has become an advocate for truck safety.

“Road safety and truck safety is not a priority right now with our legislators, with our government,” Nora Lopez said. “Changing our mindset, our attitudes, our culture on the roads is not impossible.”

First: Nora Lopez has buried Dominic’s urn in her garden and planted a sage bush beside it. Last: Framed photos of Dominic at Nora Lopez’s home in Castro Valley on March 12, 2025. Photos by Christie Hemm Klok for CalMatters

In an interview at her Castro Valley home, she talked about her only child. He was smart and caring, liked snowboarding and animals, loved food. On vacations they would take cooking classes together, Lopez said. He studied molecular and cell biology at UC Berkeley and was almost done with medical school.

She still has the dry-erase whiteboards in his old room. One is filled with his small and neat study notes; another has what appears to be a to-do list. There’s a note that says “Surgery: 600.” Lopez said that’s when he was due to start his surgical rotation in a San Joaquin hospital, just a couple of days after he died.

She said he just wanted to help people and serve the Native American community as a doctor, a future that a driver snatched away.

“It’s because of a man’s recklessness and carelessness — no regard for humanity,” she said.

While felony manslaughter is an automatic three-year loss of driving privileges, a misdemeanor typically carries no such penalty. It’s discretionary — it’s up to the DMV to decide whether to do anything. And the man who killed Lopez-Toney is far from alone in facing no apparent punishment from the DMV.

We found nearly 200 drivers with a valid license whose DMV record shows a conviction for misdemeanor vehicular manslaughter but for whom there is no suspension listed.

When shown a copy of Pacheco’s current driving report, Lopez sat in silence for several seconds.

“Does this make sense to you? It makes no sense to me,” she said. “With his record, how does he still have a license?”

‘Are we going to put that loaded gun back in their hands?’

Research on dangerous drivers appears to be thin and largely outdated.

Liza Lutzker, a researcher at UC Berkeley’s Safe Transportation Research and Education Center, said much of the focus in the traffic safety world is on creating better design and infrastructure, so people who make honest mistakes don’t end up killing someone.

“I think that the issues of these reckless drivers are a separate and complex problem,” Lutzker said. “The system we have clearly is not working. And people are paying with their lives for it.”

Jeffrey Michael, who researches roadway safety issues at Johns Hopkins University and spent three decades working at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, said he understands officials might be hesitant to impose harsher penalties more broadly, “for fear of the unintended consequences.”

“We live in a society where driving is really essential,” he said. But he said the findings show the agency needs more scrutiny and analysis of who is on the roads.

“These are not unresolvable problems,” he said.

Leah Shahum, executive director of the Vision Zero Network, a nonprofit promoting safe streets, said sometimes officials prioritize preserving people’s ability to drive rather than ensuring safety.

“We don’t all have the right to drive,” Shahum said. “We have the responsibility to drive safely and ensure we don’t hurt others.” She added that many people need to drive in this car-centric state. “That does not mean there can be a license to kill.”

“If we know somebody has a history of dangerous behavior,” she said, “are we going to put that loaded gun back in their hands?”

The gun metaphor was common in the thousands of vehicular manslaughter cases we looked at across California. One prosecutor described dangerous behavior behind the wheel as akin to firing a gun into a crowd.

In letters to the court, surviving relatives and friends described the hole left behind, writing about an empty seat at a high school graduation, a photo cutout taken without fail to home baseball games.

It’s a void one young man tried to explain to authorities — the sudden, violent, blink-of-an-eye moment where life forever changes. For him, it was at 6:45 p.m. on Feb. 27, 2020, on Lone Tree Way in the Bay Area city of Antioch.

Two brothers, ages 11 and 15, were going to meet their dad at a Burger King. They crossed to the median and then waited for a break in the traffic before continuing to the other side. The older one made it across, according to court documents. His younger brother stepped into the street just as a driver gunned his car to 75 miles an hour — 30 over the speed limit.

The older boy watched as his younger brother “just disappeared.”

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This is the first piece in a series about how California lets dangerous drivers stay on the road. Sign up for CalMatters’ License to Kill newsletter to be notified when the next story comes out, and to get more behind-the-scenes information from our reporting.

Each day in the market right now feels like a set of whitewall tires, as if from another century, compared to the day before. We live in a world where sudden market movement can happen from a social media post. Time feels like it’s speeding up.

As you probably know, the President made an adjustment to some tariffs this last Wednesday after he felt like people were getting a bit yippy. Here is the quote: “They were getting a little bit yippy, a little bit afraid.”¹

Indeed.

That’s what happens when you renegotiate the world.

Stocks went up ferociously in response, doing in one day what it can do in a whole year—around 10% depending on the index. Thursday it headed back downward. 

Not only has the stock market been volatile, the bond market has too with some significant interest rate spikes, which some believe played a pivotal role in POTUS’s decision to pause tariffs.

Back in the 1990s, Democratic strategist James Carville said it illustratively: 

I used to think that if there was reincarnation, I wanted to come back as the president or the pope or as a .400 baseball hitter. But now I would like to come back as the bond market. You can intimidate everybody.²

Touché.

The eyes of the leaders of our country and investment firms will likely continue to be bound to bonds. Attempting to adjust to all this information coming so fast is extremely challenging for us as individuals and as investors.

Philosopher Byung-Chul Han discusses the problem with an information society that I think has a bearing on investing and this cultural moment. He states,

Our obsession is no longer for objects, for information and data. Today we produce and consume more information than objects. We actually get high on communication…

Information puts the cognitive system itself into a state of anxiety…

And information, due to its ephemerality, makes time-consuming cognitive practices such as experience, memory or perception disappear.³

If you make investment decisions on the glut of shifting information guided by your own personal algorithm curated just for your tastes without taking a step back and engaging memory, it could be a significant mistake. 

You must remember why you started investing in the first place. Getting back to the basics is beautiful, and so easily forgotten.

• What are your financial goals?
• What is your risk tolerance?
• What kind of diversification do you need?
• How will you deal with the impact of inflation?
• Should you consult with a financial professional?
• What is your time horizon for the funds invested?

In moments like this, we don’t need to get clever or act like we know more than we do. Even acclaimed investors like Howard Marks write memos with titles like the following which he released last week: “Nobody Knows (Yet Again)”.

Watching the news—whether it’s FOX or MSNBC or CNBC or your favorite YouTuber—is not an investment strategy.

We must also engage our memory of history. Here is the difference between a short-term and long-term stock market memory.

You will feel “yippy”—if that’s what we are calling fear and anxiety now—throughout your investing journey because life hits you in the face sometimes with hard markets or heartbreaking personal events.

These kinds of negative events and their effects can last a long time. Or turn around faster than you think. 

Here is another thing to remember. Stocks can bottom way before the economic pain of something like recession is felt on Main Street and lower earnings are realized on Wall Street. Plaster this classic chart, from Data Researcher Matt Cerminaro, across your investing heart:

Therefore, do not get so caught up in the now that you lose your financial memory and your financial plan in the process.

Oddly enough, I was encouraged this week by a barista’s handwritten note on a Starbucks cup: “What if it all turns out all right?”

Yippy Ki-Yay.

–

Sources:

1. “Trump Pauses “Reciprocal’ Tariffs, but Hits China Harder” (Wall Street Journal, April 9, 2025). 
2. Quoted in “The Daily Prophet: Carville Was Right About the Bond Market” (Bloomberg, January 29, 2018). 
3. Byung-Chul Han, “I Practice Philosophy As Art” (December 2, 2021).

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Brandon Stockman has been a Wealth Advisor licensed with the Series 7 and 66 since the Great Financial Crisis of 2008. He has the privilege of helping manage accounts throughout the United States and works in the Fortuna office of Johnson Wealth Management. You can sign up for his weekly newsletter on investing and financial education or subscribe to his YouTube channel. Securities and advisory services offered through Prospera Financial Services, Inc. | Member FINRA, SIPC. This should not be considered tax, legal, or investment advice. Past performance is no guarantee of future results.