I’m writing this with a broken heart and tear-filled eyes. Our beloved Jason William McCullough, born on June 26, 1978 to Melany Hernandez and Henry Boyd McCullough, was taken way too soon on October 31, 2025.

At a young age, Jason went to Washington, where he was raised first by his great-grandmother Bessie Keyes, and later by his grandparents Sharon and Charlie Boston. They lived in Big Lake, Washington, before moving to Sedro-Woolley, where Jason grew up alongside his cousin/sister Leslee Sutton. He loved teasing her — he always was reminding her to respect him because he was her elder, even though they were only six months apart. Jason and Leslee shared a special bond and graduated high school together in 1997. Jason was the oldest grandson on his Mother’s side, and Leslee was the oldest granddaughter. He was the third out of 10 on his father’s side. 

Shortly after graduation, Jason moved to Hoopa, where he spent several years living with his Aunt Tina and then graced himself with other family and friends, and finally Cliff Houston took him in. 

Jason was an enrolled Hupa Tribal Member, and during Brush Dance season he and his cousin Andrew Salinas could be found hitchhiking to out-of-town Brush Dances with their sleeping bags in hand, headed wherever the songs were being sung. They said those were some of the best times, laying under the stars, dancing and praying for their people.

Jason also spent time getting to know his father’s side of the family, visiting his Aunties Darla, Carol, and Sherlette, and keeping in touch with his growing number of siblings, his father Henry, and Henry’s wife Doreen.

Coming from a big family on both sides, Jason had a hard time finding a partner. During a Sovereign’s Day dance in August of 2003, he met Aerin Elizabeth, and it was clear she had his heart. On April 3, 2004, they were married at the Fox Hole in Hoopa. Later that year, on October 15, 2004, they welcomed their son Jason William Jr., named after both Jason himself and his great-grandfather William. Proud isn’t a big enough word to describe how Jason felt. The three of them were inseparable.

Jason was a hard worker and did everything he could to provide for his family. In 2007, he and his brother James joined the union, Jason working as Assistant Welder on natural gas pipelines. Their work took them across the country — Nebraska, Wyoming, South Dakota, and even Arizona — with their families in tow. Jason, being Jason, made friends everywhere he went, so moving around was comfortable for him. He and James always said Arizona was the hottest place they’d ever been and that they’d gladly never go back!

James returned home to Hoopa first, and Jason followed in 2009. Though he had plans to return to pipeline work, life had other plans and Hoopa became home again. He spent his days helping family and friends cut wood, hunting and gathering traditional foods, and doing what he loved most, net fishing with his Mother Mel and pole snagging with the best at his Grandpa Chet McCovey’s fishing hole down at Red Rock, or eeling at the mouth of the Klamath River. If you offered him a ride to go eel, he was going or he’d talk his cousin Lance “Gator” McCovey into taking him or letting him tag along. 

Jason’s best friends — Aerin, Tyron Crayton, Craig Houston and cousin/brother Joshua Salinas — shared countless memories with him. No matter how much time passed, when they saw each other again, it felt like no time had gone by at all. In 2013, Jason was saddened by the passing of his best friend, Craig, and he would never let himself forget the memories they had made. 

That same year, Jason went to rehab in Crescent City and graduated. Though he couldn’t shake that monkey on his back, he never stopped trying. Addiction was part of his journey, but it was not who he was.

On January 19, 2014, Jason and Aerin welcomed their daughter Bessie Rose Delia, whom he lovingly named after his great-grandmother. With Bessie, his family felt complete. Rarely would you see Jason without Aerin, Jason Jr. or Bessie by his side.

In 2015, Jason and Aerin moved to Arcata with their children, building a new chapter together. As the years went on, their marriage faced challenges, and in 2019, they made the difficult decision to separate. After their separation, Jason returned home to Hoopa, where he spent time with family and friends before eventually meeting Samantha Martin in 2021. They walked through life’s challenges together, doing their best to find stability and strength in a life of addiction. 

Jason’s life was not easy, but it was real. He loved deeply, gave freely and carried his family and friends in his heart no matter where he was. He found peace in the mountains, healing by the river and comfort in the laughter of those he loved most.

Jason leaves behind to pass on his memories: his children, Jason Jr. (Sonja Johnson) and Bessie McCullough; his mother, Melany Hernandez; his girlfriend, Samantha Martin; his brothers Justin Hernandez, James Hernandez, Shane McCullough(Jacquline) Leonard McCullough, and Robert McCullough; his sisters Tasha McCullough, Mandee McCullough (Micheal Beck), Nicole McCullough, Summer McCullough (Anthony Henry), Chantelle McCullough (Damon Pasalich), and Shayna McElroy (Garrett); He is also lovingly remembered by his aunties Kathy Callan (Pat), Tina Salinas, and Sherlette Colegrove; his uncle Leonard Boston; his grandfather Charlie Boston; and cousins Leslee Sutton, Jimmy Larsen, Sarah Smith, Joshua and Andrew Salinas, Rebecca Salinas Ammon (Lee), Jordan Pullen (Hayley Swain), Jacob Remington and Lea Boston. 

Waiting to guide him home: his father Henry Boyd McCullough; grandmothers Sharon Boston, Darlene Cyd Colegrove; grandfathers George Chet McCovey and Henry Lee McCullough; his aunties Gail Remington, Leesa Boston, Darla McCullough and Carol McCullough; his cousin Ayden Sutton; and best friend Craig Houston.

Though his journey on this earth has ended, his story will continue through the people who loved him, the river he called home, and the stars he once lay beneath while praying for his people. 

We love you, Jason. May your spirit find peace among the mountains and rivers you loved so much, and may the stars above always guide you home.

There was a viewing held in Eureka before his cremation at Ayers Crematory. A celebration of life will take place in Hoopa at the Hoopa Trading Post, 11716 Highway 96, on Saturday, Nov. 15 at 1 p.m. His ashes will be spread down Red Rock in Hoopa at a yet-to-be-determined date. 

###

Yesterday I received an email from a person in Canada. This person said that his good friend — a 76-year-old former Humboldt County person who had gone to Arcata High School — had come across a reference to a story I had written in 2005, when I worked at the North Coast Journal. This person and his friend wondered if I might be able to send them a copy of this story.

The story, I was told, was titled “Out Of The Past: Arcata High’s Kampus Klan photo remains an open wound,” and it was about a reckoning at Arcata High having to do with white supremacist imagery published in the school’s 1967 yearbook.

I had no recollection of writing this story, which I didn’t find all that surprising. It was 20 years ago, and I’ve written thousands of things in the meanwhile, and being decidedly older than I once was things often slip my memory.

What was far more surprising is that I could find no trace of this story. The North Coast Journal’s online archives are pretty janky and hard to search, but they’re there, and they go back very far. This story was not in them.

I wrote my correspondent back to tell him that I was a bit puzzled. I couldn’t find the story anywhere, and I couldn’t recall the details. Where did his friend, the 76-year-old former Humboldter, see this reference to this story I had supposedly written?

The friend himself wrote me back, and he sent the text that had put him on my trail. Here is part of it:

Publication: North Coast Journal
Title: “Out of the Past: Arcata High’s ‘Kampus Klan’ photo remains an open wound”
Author: Hank Sims
Date: February 24, 2005

This article is a deep dive into the incident, exploring its lasting impact on the community and including interviews and accounts from people who were there.

The Incident: The photo, published a decade earlier, depicted four white male students, one wearing a makeshift Ku Klux Klan-style hood, posing on the school’s “Kampus Klan” bleachers. The yearbook’s faculty advisor claimed she was unaware of the photo’s inclusion, blaming a printing error. For years, the image went largely unnoticed.

The Reckoning: In 2004, a current student discovered the photo and brought it to the attention of the school and community, igniting a firestorm. The article details the intense and painful public meetings where Arcata’s self-image as a progressive, tolerant community was severely challenged. Alumni, current students, and community members — particularly people of color — spoke out about the long history of racism and exclusion they had experienced, which the photo symbolized.

This synopsis went on to name all the students involved in the photo. It named 11 names, at least some of which belong to people who are still living here in Humboldt County today — people whose names you might know, or who you might know personally. Your neighbors.

I’m not going to share those names with you. Why not? Because as you’ve probably guessed, the story so confidently summarized here never existed, and the incident it describes is pure bullshit. It was invented by a chatbot that the gentleman was chatting with.

That’s all to say: This kind of stuff is coming for you, here in Humboldt. Most of us have become used to the fact that Facebook and YouTube are chock-full of AI slop designed to make us engage, for just a split-second, with wonder or fury. But now we see people posting screenshots of some Google AI answer to a question as if the Word of God has descended to settle the argument. A local news organization uses a large language model to write a good number of its stories, and it doesn’t correct the obvious inaccuracies nor inform its readers of what it is doing.

You might think the Outpost a flawed messenger, here. We’ve used automation since the very first days of this site, and we’ve used ChatGPT and other LLMs since they first came available a couple of years ago — to transcribe interviews, to translate our stories into Spanish, to summarize public meeting documents and attempt to reword cop-speak into plain English in our CHP logs.

But I would hold that the difference between us and the very bad uses of AI mentioned above are two-fold: We disclose and disclaim what is written by a bot, and — just as importantly — we don’t ask the bot to do things it can’t actually do.

Here’s what large language models, as currently constituted, are very good at, in our experience: Taking a chunk of text and doing some predefined task with that text. Take this government document and summarize it for a person with a 10th-grade reading level. Now render it in French. Now generate a voice to read it to me aloud. Large language models can do this sort of thing with a very, very high degree of accuracy.

What they can’t do with a high degree of accuracy is answer open-ended questions. If you ask one of them about life, the universe and everything — or whether there was racism at Arcata High in the 1960s — it will give you a very authoritative­ answer, but one that may or may not be stuffed full of nonsense and lies.

I wonder how my correspondent in Canada is doing, investigating his former high school classmates. Last I heard, he fed my denial of having authored this story back into the chatbot, which sought to please him by conceding the point and dissecting possible ways in which this “hoax” came into being.

One of those ways was through someone – some human’s — “possible conflation of events.” Apparently he asked the bot to follow up on that lead — what events could have been conflated? — because later he sent me this:

The Immediate Catalyst: The “Kampus Klan” Leaflets

The controversy erupted in April 1967.

The Publication: A group of four white students at Arcata High School created and distributed anonymously typed leaflets around the school. These leaflets announced the formation of a “Kampus Klan” and were filled with virulently racist language and threats.

The Content: The leaflets explicitly targeted the small number of Black students at the school. They used racial slurs, advocated for segregation, and included threats of violence. The name “Kampus Klan” was a deliberate and unmistakable reference to the Ku Klux Klan, invoking its history of terror and racism.

The leaflets announced the formation of a “Kampus Klan” and included statements like:

• “The Kampus Klan is now in effect.”
• It used racial slurs, particularly the “N-word,” to refer to Black students.
• It contained explicit threats, such as “Stay off the campus or else” and “We will get you.”
• It advocated for segregation, demanding that Black students leave the school and stay out of white neighborhoods.
• Some accounts recall phrases like “Go back to Africa” or other white supremacist rhetoric common to the era.

I wrote my guy back to tell him: No, no, that’s not true either! But I haven’t heard from him since.

For years now, your Lost Coast Outpost has considered it a core part of our mission to bring you any and every local red panda development, regardless how trivial. Thus, today we will note that, judging by the chaotic look on Saffron’s face in the picture posted by the Sequoia Park Zoo earlier today, our newest fuzzy red obsession is loving life outside in their posh new enclosure. 

It’s been exactly a year to the day since the Sequoia Park Zoo announced the addition of Saffron to their furry family. Around the same time, the zoo embarked on a Red Panda Improvement Project, which included major renovations to its red panda enclosure. 

Well, things have progressed nicely and Saffron has spent the last week or so checking out his new world. From the Sequoia Park Zoo:

We are excited to announce that Saffron has started the transition to the newly-renovated Red Panda Habitat at the Zoo! ❤️🐼

His animal care team reports that he is settling in nicely, and lucky guests might catch a glimpse of him as he explores the new space. 🌱

Thank you to the Christine & Jalmer Berg Foundation, Tyger Tea, Coast Central Credit Union, and the other generous donors and sponsors that contributed to the Red Panda Improvement Project.

Sweet pad secured. Now how about a special friend for Saffron? Well, the zoo notes on their Facebook page that they are currently awaiting a recommendation from the Red Panda Species Survival Plan concerning female red panda companionship.

Hang in there, Saffron. Love is on the way.

PREVIOUSLY:

• BABY RED PANDA HAS LANDED: Sequoia Park Zoo Rejects Community Plea For Moo Deng Clone, Goes With Strengths Instead

###

Press release from the Yurok Tribe:

In an historic milestone, two sovereign Indian tribes have joined together to reverse decades of fisheries decline on the Eel River, the second longest river in California. On October 28, 2025, the Round Valley Indian Tribes and the Yurok Tribe met at the Wildlands Conservancy’s Eel River Canyon Preserve and signed a Treaty of Friendship that pledges their joint efforts to restore the Eel River.

“The Eel River is our lifeblood and when it suffers, our people suffer,” said Round Valley Indian Tribes President Joe Parker after signing the agreement within the ancestral territory of the Tribes on the Eel River. “We are pleased to join with the Yurok Tribe, which is the leader in restoring the Klamath River through dam removal, revegetation, and habitat restoration,” he added. “With this partnership, we hope all Native tribes around the world will be motivated to stand up and fight for their culture and rights,” he noted.

“We are honored to contribute the extensive knowledge and experience we have gained through Klamath River dam removal with our relatives from the Round Valley Indian Tribes,” added Joseph L. James, the Chairman of the Yurok Tribe. “Together, we are uplifting our communities and forging a new path that aligns with our shared cultural values.”

The Treaty of Friendship will facilitate sharing of knowledge and expertise between the two tribes, and it will foster collaboration on restoration projects on the Eel River. The Potter Valley Hydroelectric Project, whose dams block several hundred miles of critical fishery habitat, is being decommissioned by PG&E. These ecological impairments have contributed to the decline of imperiled salmon, steelhead, and Pacific lamprey populations. The removal of these dams creates opportunities to restore the Eel River to the healthy, free-flowing river it once was. The experience of the Yurok Tribe in restoring salmon runs on the Klamath River will inform tribal efforts on the Eel River to achieve the same result. “Based on the Klamath River and hundreds of other dam removals across the United States, we expect the Eel River to heal quickly once the river runs free,” said Chairman James.

The Round Valley Indian Tribes have lived along the Eel River since time immemorial. Like the Yurok Tribe, the Round Valley Indian Tribes have suffered incalculable cultural, subsistence, economic, and community injuries from the collapse of the fishery. With dam removal and comprehensive restoration efforts planned for the watershed, the tribes and fisheries experts expect native fish runs to gradually recover. The Treaty of Friendship brings the Yurok Tribe into this process as a partner with the Round Valley Indian Tribes. For both Tribes, the Treaty is a tangible expression of their traditional and cultural ties to rivers that have sustained them from the beginning of their existence.

Have you been dying for the opportunity to perfect your triple salchow, Humboldt? We bring you good news today.

The Outpost received a message from the folks at the Humboldt County Fairgrounds letting us know that they’ll have an indoor ice skating rink open to the public every day between Nov. 15 through Jan. 11 from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. (We give this announcement a ‘10.’)

The fairgrounds will also play host to some other holiday festivities as part of something they’re calling the “Winter Fair,” which we’ll let them tell you about in the press release below:

The Humboldt County Fairgrounds is thrilled to announce  the return of the ice rink and the debut of WINTER FAIR.  Combining the success of the 2024 Sparkling Light Spectacular and Holiday of Trees & Bazaar, this expanded  event promises to bring joy, warmth, and holiday spirit to the  North Coast for all ages. 

The fun begins this weekend, November 15th, with the grand opening of the Ice Rink. Families  and friends can lace up their skates and experience the magic of gliding on real ice at the  Fairgrounds. The rink was last opened in 2019 and has been a much-anticipated attraction.  Bringing the start of a season filled with festivities, twinkling lights, and community cheer. 

Enjoy an entire day of Black Friday weekend Holiday fun across the bridge! Explore Ferndale’s  charming Main Street shopping and dining then head to the Fairgrounds for skating, shopping  under the lights. The Holiday of Trees & Bazaar November 28th, 29th, and 30th from 5:00 to  9:00 p.m. feature local artisans and vendors offering handcrafted goods and one-of-a-kind  holiday gifts perfect for filling stockings or placing under the tree. There will also be a full  display of Holiday Trees beautifully decorated and themed. Available for purchase with silent  auction. Each tree a unique work of art that can be delivered to your home or gifted to someone  special. Perfect for anyone that does not want to drag out the decorations or might be too busy  with their Holiday schedule!

All under the glow of the Sparkling Light Spectacular. Doubling the size of the display after  2024’s success and community attendance, it is special for many reasons. The illumination  brings a childhood joy to all attend but most importantly it was created by so many that wanted  to help with making Holiday memories for others. So many helped including The Rotary, Lions  Club, Volunteer Fire Dept. and local business owners such as Redfront, Buttercup Coffee and  many more, all donated hours to making the fairgrounds magical. The displays is twice the  length of last year’s attraction. Visitors can enjoy both driving and walking tours through this  dazzling showcase of lights. 

All proceeds from Winter Fair events benefit the preservation and improvement of the Humboldt  County Fairgrounds, helping ensure this historic community space continues to thrive for  generations to come. 

Join us in celebrating this new holiday tradition, WINTER FAIR at the Humboldt County  Fairgrounds, where the season’s sparkle truly comes to life with the help of the community! 

THE LAST TIME LoCO WENT ICE SKATING:

• (PHOTOS) Let’s Go Ice Skating in Fortuna, Shall We?

###

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

###

At 3:30 on a July morning, Emily Meyers’ water broke. Her son was coming five weeks early. Meyers and her husband jumped in the car and raced from their home in Greenville, population 387, to Reno, Nev. where they had planned to deliver. It was a two-hour drive along mostly narrow, two-lane highways shared with logging trucks.

They didn’t make it in An ambulance truck outside the Plumas Hospital District. Photo courtesy of Plumas Hospital District time. Their son, Grant, was born in the car 13 minutes from the hospital to two stunned parents.

Along the way they had passed two other hospitals — Plumas District Hospital in Quincy and Eastern Plumas Health Care in Portola — neither of which have maternity wards. Meyers’ husband had asked if she wanted to stop at either one, but she told him to keep driving.

“At that point I didn’t know how intense things were going to be,” Meyers said. “I didn’t feel like I could stop in the little towns if something was wrong.”

Meyers’ frantic experience exemplifies the challenges that have become commonplace for pregnant patients in rural California: Dozens of hospitals have stopped delivering babies across the state, leaving many families with no option other than to drive for hours and hope for the best.

But in the remote Sierra Nevada community where Meyers lives, hospital executives have a plan to change things.

Plumas District Hospital, one of the hospitals Meyers sped past during labor, closed its maternity ward in 2022 after costs grew and birth rates declined. This year, it helped pass two state laws that give rural hospitals the ability to reimagine birth services.

One of the laws, authored by Senate President Pro Tem Mike McGuire, creates a 10-year pilot program allowing hospitals such as Plumas District Hospital to create “standby” maternity units that operate only when needed, rather than offering standard 24/7 service.

The unit must have the ability to do surgical deliveries, blood transfusions, resuscitation and life-support measures. The California Department of Public Health will monitor and evaluate safety outcomes with the new model.

A related law relaxes some of the licensing requirements for birth centers, which are typically run by midwives and accept low-risk pregnancies.

“Expecting moms and their families in rural California deserve better,” said McGuire, a Democrat from Santa Rosa whose district stretches north to the Oregon border, in a statement to CalMatters.

Dr. Robert Moore, chief medical officer for Partnership HealthPlan, a health insurer that covers the state’s northernmost counties, said it’s not realistic for some rural hospitals to offer maternity care 24 hours a day. The numerous closures prove that. Emergency maternity services are better than none at all, he added.

“It’s not acceptable for someone to travel two hours to the nearest hospital. The outcomes are not worth it,” Moore said. “We owe it to the rural areas of the state to fix it.”

A new birth center for Plumas County

Next year, as a result of the legislation, Plumas District Hospital plans to open a birth center and standby maternity ward. Women who qualify and do not want an epidural will be able to give birth locally. The hospital’s on-call obstetrics team will be available to take transfers from the birth center should any complications arise that require a doctor.

Darren Beatty, chief operating and government affairs officer for the hospital, said maternity care is part of what makes a rural community vibrant, and it’s why facility leadership pushed hard to change state law over the past few years.

“We’re experiencing multiple threats in and outside of health care to maintain(ing) a rural lifestyle,” Beatty said. “We need to do our part so that Quincy can be an outlier and not continue to shrink and go away like many rural communities have.”

Nearly 60 hospitals have stopped labor and delivery services since 2012 in rural and urban areas alike, according to a CalMatters database. But in rural areas, when a hospital stops delivering babies, it is often the last option left to a community. The closest hospitals to Plumas with maternity wards are a 70-mile drive north to Susanville or south to Truckee through winding mountain roads. Many families, like the Meyers family, choose to go east to Nevada where the hospitals are farther but larger.

The Plumas District Hospital chose to open a birth center because families in the county want something different: Home births have trended upward since 2020.

A community midwife delivered more babies at people’s homes in 2022 than the hospital did in its labor and delivery ward, said Tiffany Leonhardt, director of business development.

“That was just really a huge eye opener to us,” Leonhardt said. “There’s so many women in our community who, number one, they want it, and number two, they actually qualify for it — it’s safe for them.”

Emily Meyers said if those resources had been in place three months ago, she would have elected to give birth locally at the birth center. She and her husband likely also would have stopped at the Plumas District Hospital emergency room in Quincy.

“A birthing center that’s 30 minutes from my house — that would be a huge relief,” Meyers said. “It was very miserable to be in labor in the car for an hour and a half. It would be nice if there were a few more options for people, and it would give me more peace of mind knowing there was more care available.”

Rural hospitals struggle to maintain labor and delivery

In 2022, the last year that Plumas District Hospital operated a maternity ward, it delivered 64 babies, barely more than one per week. When the number of births drops below 200, that’s usually a sign of trouble, Moore, with Partnership Health Plan, said.

Low volume is a common problem in rural California and one that comes with a hefty price tag. Maternity wards are often the second most expensive hospital units to run after the emergency room because they require around-the-clock staffing, and without enough births there’s no revenue to cover the service.

Plumas’ hospital also struggled with staffing issues. As a rural hospital, it needed nurses who could work in multiple areas of the hospital when women weren’t in labor; modern training has encouraged most medical professionals to specialize in a single area.

Open nursing positions with sign-on and housing bonuses would go months without applicants, hospital leaders said. Temporary traveling nurses hired to fill on the maternity ward were unwilling to work in other areas of the hospital.

“We couldn’t throw enough money at it,” Beatty said. “We were willing to spend whatever it took to get the staffing we needed, but that wasn’t the problem.”

Still, hospital leaders vowed to bring some birth services back to the area after closing the maternity ward.

Plumas District Hospital kept its 24-hour operating room open and retained anesthesiologists, obstetricians and respiratory therapists on staff. Typically, when a rural hospital ends labor and delivery, it stops related services; but doctors and midwives have continued prenatal care and follow-up with moms who deliver in other cities.

“Obstetrics really forces an organization to be very, very excellent across the board,” Beatty said.

Birth centers gain popularity

Emily Meyers’ sister-in-law, Mary Ann Meyers, remembers when Plumas District Hospital closed its maternity ward. She had been planning on delivering her first child there in 2021 when the Dixie Fire swept through the region, burning nearly 1 million acres. The hospital was spared, but she transferred her care to a hospital in Nevada instead because of the smoke. Months later, Plumas District Hospital shut the doors to its maternity ward.

That loss complicated the birth of her second child. Mary Ann drove five hours round trip between Greenville and Reno for those prenatal appointments.

Then, the same July day that Emily gave birth, Mary Ann found herself in labor with her third child, speeding to the same hospital. Her water broke at 2:30 a.m. She and her husband drove to Reno and had just checked into a hotel when they got a call saying Emily had delivered in the car and was also in Reno – in the Sierra Medical Center emergency room.

Mary Ann started feeling stronger contractions herself, so she and her husband rushed over to Sierra Medical too. By the time she made it up four flights of stairs to the maternity ward, Mary Ann was 9 centimeters dilated and nearly ready to push.

“We made it but I am definitely worried about next time,” Myers said. “It went from zero to 100 in 40 minutes.”

Moms in the area will be excited about the new birth center, Mary Ann said. Many of her friends want natural births. Though she delivered in a hospital, she did it without an epidural.

Planned out-of-hospital births in California increased by 30% over the past decade even as birth rates overall declined, according to data from the Medical Board of California.

“If there is an emergency it’s still a little risky, but it’s good to know that there are people who are capable and knowledgeable if you need help,” Mary Ann Myers said.

Lori Link, a certified nurse midwife with Plumas District Hospital, said the plan is for obstetrics staff to routinely spend time at larger institutions, to keep up their skills.

Link, too, is optimistic about the future of maternity care in Plumas. Many of her current patients ask about the birth center and when it will open. The plan wouldn’t be sustainable if the community didn’t want it, she said.

“I think this is a testimony to the power of listening to women,” Link said.

###

Supported by the California Health Care Foundation (CHCF), which works to ensure that people have access to the care they need, when they need it, at a price they can afford. Visit www.chcf.org to learn more.

Maria Cecilia Mendonca passed away on November 5, 2025 at the age of 92.  She was born on March 8, 1933 in Lajes, Flores, Azores, Portugal to Jose Antonio and Maria Vieira Goncalves. On November 20, 1954 she married Ernesto Mendonca. Cecilia immigrated to the United States, arriving in Arcata on October 31, 1957. In 1962 they welcomed their daughter, Maria Gorette. 

Cecilia worked at Lazio’s as a fish processor.  After her husband passed away in 1968 she started working at Feuerwerkers Furniture Store, which is now Hensels Ace Hardware.  She then went to work for Coast Oyster Company as a oyster shucker, a job she did for 15 years. After retiring from Coast Oyster she worked for herself as a house cleaner.

Cecilia’s favorite pastime was taking care of her vegetable and flower gardens and taking care of her grandchildren.  She loved picking them up at school, taking them to sporting events, and spoiling them with chocolate donuts every Saturday morning.

Cecilia enjoyed being a part of the Arcata Portuguese and Catholic communities, often helping in the kitchen at Portuguese Hall Events and various church fundraisers. One of her favorite things to do was make filhos (Portuguese donuts), especially for Halloween night for all to enjoy.

Those who knew Cecilia will remember her kind heart and caring personality.  She was always there to help family or a friend in need, whether is was taking them to the grocery store, a doctors’s appointment or simply keeping them company with conversation. Cecilia had a great sense of humor.  Her knack for a well timed joke and ability to make someone laugh with a silly gesture, brought joy to those around her.

She leaves behind her daughter, Maria Gorette Coelho (husband Lucio), grandson Casey Coelho (Lacey), granddaughter Brooke Coelho (Hayden), great grandsons Bennett and Calvin Coelho, and numerous nieces and nephews.

Cecilia was preceded in death by her husband, Ernesto Mendonca, her parents, brothers Luis, Antonio, Jose and Mauricio Goncalves, and numerous sisters-in-laws and brothers-in-law.

Her family would like to thank Granada Rehabilitiion for their exceptional care in the last six years. Rosary and mass will be on Thursday, November 13 at 11 a.m. at St Mary’s Church in Arcata.