SECOND UPDATE:

• THE PIPPEN FILES: Uh, So, Was That Scottie Pippen At Shamus T. Bones Last Night or Was It Not?

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UPDATE, JUNE 15: Upon further reflection this morning, we regret to say that we now entertain very serious doubts that this is Scottie Pippen, though he does look quite like, and we must admit that there is a strong chance that we were successfully pranked.

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Photo courtesy Cayden Woods, who is one of the ballers pictured.

A gaggle of absolute ballers from Eureka decided to go hit up Shamus T. Bones for dinner tonight. 

Lo and behold, what did they find?

Not only their dinner, which would not have been particularly surprising, and not worth a post on the Lost Coast Outpost. Though the dinner is good.

What was surprising was what they found as they entered. That was: Six-time NBA champion and Basketball Hall Of Famer Scottie Pippen, who seems to have been passing through Eureka tonight.

We will let baller Cayden Woods — that’s @simply_caden_ on Instagram, where you should follow him immediately — tell the story:

me n my homies went to shamus for dinner, n while we were walking in he was kinda rushing out w his fam, so he j stppped for a quick flic n left, he shook our hands tho n was super chill when we asked him

What in the world could Scottie Pippen be doing in Eureka right now? We don’t have his cell phone number, so we could not ask. Also, there is no immediate evidence on Pippen’s socials of a Pippen sojourn to Redwood Country, nor any indication of why he might be in town.

But in any case: Welcome, Champ! The redwoods are nice and you should certainly take your family to visit them. I also recommend the pickup scene at Hammond Park, at 14th and F, where you will be recognized and celebrated as the god you are. Shame the kids are still in school, though.

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The Humboldt County Board of Supervisors on Monday deliberated over some tough spending decisions as they considered the budget for the upcoming fiscal year and a dwindling pot of discretionary money to disperse from Measure Z, the county’s half-percent sales tax intended to maintain and enhance public safety and essential services.

Facing a $17.7 million deficit for the 2023-24 fiscal year, the board was presented with a number of potential cost-saving measures.

One option, previously used in 2011 during another budgetary shortfall, would be to launch an incentive program offering severance payments to employees who voluntarily resign. This Voluntary Separation Incentive Program (VSIP) would offer a $20,000 payment to eligible employees who have been with the county for 10 years or longer and who retire within the first month of the program. All other employees would receive $15,000 if they resign in that first month, with declining amounts offered over the following six months — first come, first served. 

When this approach was employed a dozen years ago, 24 employees took advantage of the program. The county paid $233,000 in incentives but wound up saving roughly $5 million in salary costs and $3 million in General Fund expenditures over the next three years, according to a staff report. 

Another option would be for the county to eliminate positions that have been vacant and/or unfunded for at least two years.

A third option, which is being researched by staff but not yet recommended or presented for implementation, would involve mandatory employee furloughs of various lengths — one or two days per month or a full week off between the Christmas and New Year’s holidays. Cost savings from this approach would range from $900,000 (for the unpaid holiday week) up to $5.4 million if employees were made to take two furlough days per month. 

Back on May 22, seeing the dark fiscal clouds on the horizon, the board implemented an immediate hiring freeze through the end of the 2023-24 fiscal year.

The total spending plan for the upcoming fiscal year is $578.55 million, which represents an increase of $7.2 million from the current fiscal year’s budget. The board is scheduled to adopt the new budget at a hearing on June 27, and the current draft would require the county to dip its General Fund balance to cover the $17.7 million shortfall.

The county also spent time considering how to allocate $397,000 in as-yet-un-obligated funds from the federal American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) and $880,000 in anticipated Transient Occupancy Tax revenues from Measure J, a hotel tax approved last year.

Early in the hearing, Second District Supervisor Michelle Bushnell lamented the lack of sacrifice from county departments and funding recipients during this difficult time.

“[W]e have to make tough decisions and everybody wants a piece of the [pie] and nobody seems to be willing to give,” she said. “And I don’t know where we’re gonna get the money — and especially when everybody says, ‘No, not me. Pass the buck.’ The buck’s gonna really fall short.”

With much of Measure Z revenues already spoken for via ongoing grants and employee costs, the board had only $1.12 million in discretionary funding available to allocate for the 2023-24 fiscal year. That figure jumped up to $1.2 million after the board voted to defund a vacant IT position in the District Attorney’s Office.

After much deliberation — including some grilling of applicants by supervisors who wanted to know how little they could receive and still meet their goals — the board voted unanimously to award $320,000 to K’ima:w Medical Center’s ambulance program, $120,000 to Southern Trinity Area Rescue (STAR) ambulance services (whose territory extends into Humboldt County) and $195,438 to the Humboldt County Drug Task Force, with a small the remainder — roughly $562,000 — going to the Humboldt County Fire Chiefs’ Association.

But the board also noted the need to rethink how Measure Z funds are allocated in the future. 

Glenn Ziemer, member and former chair of the Humboldt County Citizens’ Advisory Committee on Measure Z Expenditures, emphasized the need for this. [Note: A previous version of this story incorrectly identified Ziemer as the current chair. The current chair is Ginger Campbell. The Outpost regrets the error.]

“I truly believe with all my heart that unless you take some decisive, definitive action this year, you will lose any ability to normalize Measure Z and bring it back to the community service that it has been over the last nine years … ,” he said. “The simple fact of the matter is the normal inflationary costs of your payroll schedule … will totally overrun the fund and it will cease being the community-based benefit process it has been historically and simply turn into another line in the county’s personnel ledger.”

Humboldt County Sheriff William Honsal defended his department’s large, ongoing claims on Measure Z revenues, saying that if those funds went away, his department would have to eliminate 35 deputy positions and pull back on specialized services, focusing only on “that basic level of service throughout the county of a 911 response.”

Honsal and Third District Supervisor Mike Wilson had a long discussion about whether and how the Sheriff’s Office might make do with less, if necessary. County staff and the board’s Measure Z ad hoc committee — comprised of Bushnell and Wilson — will continue deliberations on Measure Z spending in the coming weeks.

As for the budget, the board directed staff to use the $397,000 in ARPA funds to offset the “urgent additional funding request burden” on the General Fund next year. They also approved the staff’s recommended parameters for a voluntary separation program and directed staff to continue researching a mandatory furlough option.

Again, the budget is scheduled to be adopted at a hearing on June 27.

PREVIOUSLY:

• BEAR CUBS: The Zoo Now Has Two New, ‘Non-Releasable’ Bear Cubs Gracing the New Bear Habitat

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Press release from the Sequoia Park Zoo Foundation:

Bear River Band of the Rohnerville Rancheria has been in partnership with the Sequoia Park Zoo Foundation and the City of Eureka and is the primary funder of the new bear and coyote habitat at Sequoia Park Zoo. The Tribe has given this place of learning to the Zoo and community to help tell the story of humans and bears in our region.

In spring, Bear River was notified of the arrival of two long-awaited bear cubs known as “Tule” and “Oak” from Lake Tahoe Wildlife Care. These “yearling” bears were determined non-releasable by California Department of Fish and Wildlife and were chosen for placement at Sequoia Park Zoo. As the principal supporter of the habitat, Bear River Band of the Rohnerville Rancheria is able to provide naming suggestions for the new bears.

As a way to respect, remember, and honor the tribal land on which he was found, Bear River would like for the male bear to retain the name “Tule.” Tule (pronounced Too-Lee) was only weeks old when he was found in April 2022 on the Tule River Nation Reservation. The local community spent several days searching for his mother but were unable to locate her, and the Tule River Tribal Police Department transported him to Lake Tahoe Wildlife Care for rehabilitation.

Bear River has chosen for the female bear to have her name changed from “Oak” to “Noni.” Noni translates to “black bear” in the Bear River dialect of Athapascan. The Athapascan language family is one of the largest in North America, extending from Alaska through the American Southwest, and includes the Humboldt County coast.

Bear River Band of the Rohnerville Rancheria wants to welcome Tule and Noni to our family, and we look forward to seeing both bears grow over the years.

Jessica McGuinty, a former Humboldt County resident best known as the founder of the Arcata-based Jessicurl company, has died at age 47, according to a Facebook post published by her husband, Chris Spohn, this morning.

Throughout her life McGuinty had lived with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, and the chronic illness finally claimed her life on Saturday, Spohn wrote.

A lifelong roamer and traveler, forever moving from this place to that, McGuinty founded Jessicurl in 2002, after failing to find commercial shampoos and conditioners that suited her hair. Research on early Internet message boards for women with curly hair led her to develop her own, natural recipes, and she soon began bottling her formulas and selling them to others.

Jessicurl grew through her canny marketing — she never tired of telling stories about the merciless cruelties of the straight-haired children at her primary schools in Ontario, Canada — and soon her fledgling company moved into a factory space on West End Road. McGuinty would travel to trade shows to bond with her fellow “curlies,” and eventually became a go-to source when big media wanted to present anything about the plight of the curly-haired.

In 2010 she sold part of the company to a local investment group, partly so that she wouldn’t have to manage its day-to-day operations. She was much happier to be out meeting people and marketing her products.

In 2015, hoping that a warmer climate would improve her health, she moved to Medford and later to southern California, where she met and married her husband. Throughout, she kept her stake in the company she founded, and continued as its public face.

McGuinty was an early colleague for many of us at the Lost Coast Outpost. For years she hosted the weekly “Global Grooves” program on KHUM radio, our sister station, in which she would play music from a different place in the world each week. She was the world number one fan of the Bellingham, Washington-based Yogoman Burning Band, which seemed to play Humboldt three or four times a year for a while there, probably because she made them do so.

“Global Grooves” radio promo

She was well and widely loved. 

In 2013, McGuinty spoke at a TEDx event about the random, unforeseeable effects that your actions can have on strangers. The recording of that talk can be found below.

This spring, as debates were raging on college campuses about the proper role of generative AI in higher education, Diablo Valley College adjunct professor Frako Loden created an assignment to see how students in her American Cinema class interacted with ChatGPT.

For their final opinion piece of the semester, they were to pick a discussion question about the 1950’s movie “A Place in the Sun,” insert it into ChatGPT as a prompt, and then grade the response themselves. The AI got key details of the plot wrong in some cases, Loden said.

In the film, for example, protagonist George takes his girlfriend to a lake and she falls in and accidentally drowns, but ChatGPT says that he purposely killed her there. “That may be a subtle point, but it really does figure at the end when you evaluate his character,” said Loden, “ChatGPT kind of runs rough over that and suggests that he was planning it from the start and that he’s an evil dude.”

Loden’s assignment illustrates not only the limitations of ChatGPT — Loden said she found in her own research that many details of movie plots it gives are not only false, but “ideologically loaded” and “maybe even racist” — but how professors are increasingly experimenting with its use in the classroom. California’s public higher education systems have not yet created a formal policy regarding the use of generative AI, which can create images and text that are nearly indistinguishable from those made by humans. That leaves professors in the role of watchdog, preventing breaches of academic integrity. While some focus on cracking down on cheaters, a growing number have decided that the technology is here to stay, and are assigning work that seeks to convey to students the benefits of AI as a research tool while acknowledging its limitations and propensity for error.

“Faculty have to come to a decision, whether it’s in California or nationwide. And the decision is, do you want to adopt?” said Tony Kashani, a professor of education at Antioch University who is writing a book about the use of AI in the classroom. “On campus there’s a lot of contention about this.”

When it comes to AI, technology has moved more quickly than ethics and policy, said Kashani. He said bots like ChatGPT show great promise as a “writing consultant” for students. “It’s not often that students have a chance to sit down with a professor and have long discussions about how to go about this paper, that paper, how to approach research on this topic and that topic. But ChatGPT can do that for them, provided…they know how to use the right ethics, to use it as a tool and not a replacement for their work.”

That’s the approach taken by Stanford sociology professor David Grusky, whose syllabus for a recent public policy class allowed the use of AI-generated text in assignments under the stipulation they be cited in the same way a conversation with a human would be.

“It’s a conversation that can be evoked at will. But it’s not different in the content,” said Grusky. “You still have to evaluate what someone says and whether or not it’s sensible.”

He believes that AI can help teach students to evaluate the quality of sources, serving academia well in the long term. “I believe our job typically in kind of the world of undergraduate instruction is to try to help people become more thoughtful, more rigorous, more analytic.”

Stanford, after a push from professors, created a baseline policy forbidding the use of AI to aid in the completion of assignments unless otherwise allowed in a class syllabus. And some California college professors remain skeptical.

“I see it more of a problem than a benefit,” said Santa Rosa Junior College history and political science instructor Johannes Van Gorp.

The advent of generative AI has increased the workload of instructors who seek to stop cheating, he said, especially since software that checks for AI-generated content is imperfect.

“Faculty have to come to a decision, whether it’s in California or nationwide. And the decision is, do you want to adopt?”
— Tony Kashani, professor of education, Antioch University

Van Gorp has adopted a policy forbidding the use of artificial intelligence in his classes, running nearly every assignment that gets turned in through three different AI checkers to build confidence in the results he gets.

“At first I was reporting (AI use) through the system, but it was so ubiquitous that I just started, as bad as it sounds, giving zeros on the assignments with a note: ‘This is AI generated.’”

Still, Van Gorp said he has to acknowledge that “the world is shifting.”

“Things like (the grammar-checking tool) Grammarly or whatnot, those are AI programs as well. And so where do you draw the line? And I’m not quite sure I’ve figured that one out. And certainly the institutions haven’t.”

California State University’s Academic Senate, which represents faculty, passed a resolution in March calling for a working group on artificial intelligence in higher education, to be formed by the end of August. The working group would examine AI’s limitations, opportunities for professional development of faculty, and how to ensure academic integrity, coordinating the university’s response across campuses.

To make their point, faculty used ChatGPT to draft part of the resolution itself. “What level of academic dishonesty would this constitute on a CSU campus?” the writers asked, adding, “This resolution calls upon the CSU to consider how best to leverage this technology, understanding that AI will inevitably change the nature of education independent of any action the system takes.”

Generative AI is out there and will be here in the future, said Academic Senate Chair Beth Steffel in an interview. “If we ignore it or try to ban it, it is probably to everyone’s detriment.”

Faculty at the California Community Colleges have also pledged to develop a framework that colleges can use to create policies on AI by spring 2024. The University of California has had an AI working group since 2020, which has in the past recommended the technology’s use in counseling, student retention, admissions and even test proctoring, as well as calling for individual UC campuses to set up councils to oversee their use of AI.

A March survey by the college-ranking website BestColleges found that 43% of college students say they have experience using AI, such as Chat GPT, with 22% saying they’ve used it to complete exams or assignments.

“I imagine that number is going to grow,” said Camille Crittenden, executive director at UC Berkeley’s Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society and a member of the UC workgroup. “So the teachers might as well be involved in helping them to use it responsibly, figuring out how to actually double check citations and make sure that they’re real.”

As universities grapple with setting policy, professors are flocking to social media to vent and ask questions. Many of the conversations show a split between professors who want to integrate the use of AI and those who fear allowing it into the classroom.

“I just caught a student using ChatGPT to answer questions on online quizzes,” one professor posted to Pandemic Pedagogy, a Facebook group made to assist faculty in navigating online teaching. “On my syllabus, I say that students’ work must be their own and plagiarism will result in a failing grade, but I don’t mention using these kinds of platforms…What should I do?”

(The Facebook group is invitation-only, but some posters gave CalMatters permission to cite their comments.)

Some wrote about the seeming futility of trying to catch cheaters, given the unreliability of software designed to flag AI-generated content.

“We should avoid assignments that try to ‘harness’ ChatGPT or other AI’s,” another commenter argued, adding that the services might not remain free of charge and could start returning answers that are shaped to benefit advertisers.

Elizabeth Blakey, an associate professor of journalism at Cal State Northridge, allowed master’s students in her mass communications class to use ChatGPT to help draft research proposals. “It’ll give you information, it’ll give you names, maybe some ideas or vocabulary words that you didn’t think of,” she said in an interview. “And then you can take it from there and use your own creativity and your own further research to build on that.”

She believes it helped reduce her students’ anxiety about the tool and taught them a new skill they can take into the workforce.

Beatrice Barros, one of Blakey’s students, said ChatGPT came in handy when she changed her project topic halfway through the semester but was nervous about not having enough time to complete it. Using the AI, she said, “helped me with the head start, like a motivation.”

But she learned how to navigate what the AI gave her with skepticism. “Sometimes it was very, very wrong,” she said. “It made me more aware that ChatGPT can sometimes trick you, maybe get you in trouble if you don’t read content.”

Her overall takeaway? “Sometimes it’s better to do your homework.”

“ChatGPT can sometimes trick you, maybe get you in trouble if you don’t read content. ”
— Beatrice Barros, Cal State Northridge student

Blakey’s colleague David Blumenkrantz gave students in his visual communications class a choice about whether to use AI to design a magazine. They could write their magazine’s proposal and premise, or have ChatGPT write it for them. AI-generated images could grace the magazine’s cover, with students adding in the typeface and titles over it. The only stipulation: that students explain which parts were AI-generated and why.

About a third of the class chose to use AI for the assignment, he said.

Blumenkrantz said he is currently partnering with a Nairobi University in Kenya to build up their photojournalism program and that his 63-page curriculum was mostly compiled from AI-generated content. He gave ChatGPT prompts, changed the responses to go more in depth into each topic, and fact checked them, he said. He spent weeks making the curriculum, he said, when it would have taken months without the AI-generated research, a result he called “astonishing.”

Jenae Cohn, the executive director of the UC Berkeley Center for Teaching & Learning, which helps professors design effective instruction, said she and her staff often hear from faculty like Blumenkrantz, who “want to understand better how to use AI in creative ways in their teaching.”

“On the other end of the spectrum, we have a lot of questions about how students are using AI to cheat. There’s a lot of concerns about academic integrity.”

As for her own take, she said, “I don’t think that AI is going to necessarily destroy education. I don’t think it’s going to revolutionize education, either. I think it’s just going to sort of expand the toolbox of what’s possible in our classrooms.”

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Walker is a fellow with the CalMatters College Journalism Network, a collaboration between CalMatters and student journalists from across California. This story and other higher education coverage are supported by the College Futures Foundation.

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

When Tammy Rodriguez landed a job with the California Department of Motor Vehicles 27 years ago, she felt like she had “struck gold.” It was her first job, she said, and she felt secure knowing she was earning not just a salary, but a pension for later in life.

Over the years she thought about looking for work at private companies to make more money, especially after she had a child. But she liked the other benefits of state work: the health care coverage, the flexibility of transferring departments when her family moved and the job security when she went on maternity leave.

Now, at 52, she’s feeling less financially stable. The $2,100 monthly rent she pays for the home she and her teenage daughter share eats up half her earnings at the DMV in San Luis Obispo. Halfway through each month, she takes stock of their expenses and budgets to ensure she can afford gas for her 30-mile daily commute.

“I want the stability I had before, where I don’t have to worry about (living) paycheck to paycheck,” said Rodriguez.

That sentiment undergirds the contract talks this year for the Service Employees International Union Local 1000, the largest union representing California state government workers. The union has called for a 30% raise over the next three years and the full cost of health premiums covered.

Rodriguez is active in Local 1000, which represents nearly 100,000 state government employees, from administrative staff to janitors to health care workers. Their current contracts expire at the end of June.

Can California pay?

Theirs are not the only labor demands the state has to contend with as Gov. Gavin Newsom and lawmakers seek to close a $31.5 billion hole in the budget.

Local 1000 covers nine of the state’s 21 worker bargaining units. Five other units also have contracts that are up this summer and some are also seeking raises.

In total, expiring labor agreements cover more than half the state’s workers.

“I want the stability I had before, where I don’t have to worry about (living) paycheck to paycheck.”
— Tammy Rodriguez, Department of Motor Vehicles worker in San Luis Obispo

For every $1 in potential raises there is an additional 32 cent increase in pension costs, making the 30% raise proposal total more than $3.8 billion over the next three years, the union said.

Irene Green, Local 1000’s vice president for bargaining, said there has been little response from the state on their proposals for the raise and full health coverage. California Department of Human Resources spokesperson Camille Travis declined to answer CalMatters’ questions about contract negotiations.

The union’s efforts come after teachers and staff at two large school districts held strikes this year — in Oakland and Los Angeles — netting double-digit raises.

Marchers hold signs as Ty Kovacs, a teacher for California School of the Deaf, signs to the crowd in front of the Governor’s Mansion on Sacramento on June 8, 2023. Photo by Julie A. Hotz for CalMatters.

Would state workers strike? In 2016, Local 1000 voted to strike but workers did not walk out.

“Are we considering all our options? Absolutely,” Green said. “We’re not leaving anything unconsidered at this time.”

So far Newsom’s budget proposals this year have included funding for previously negotiated raises for other state worker unions, and he has spared workers from furloughs. But his administration has said there’s little room for new spending.

“We value our workforce; we value their sacrifice, particularly over the last number of years,” Newsom told reporters in May. “And we are mindful of the inflationary environment. We’re also hopeful that they’re mindful of our current budgetary environment.”

Lagging California paychecks

Public sector employees are among a broad swath of workers demanding higher pay amid record inflation, months after many were deemed “essential” during the pandemic.

Advocates this year often point to a growing gap between wages and California’s cost of living. The United Ways of California this year sponsored a bill that would have forced the state to calculate what wages it takes to afford the basics in each county. The bill died in the Senate Appropriations Committee in May.

As the union prepared to bargain this year, it commissioned a report by UC Berkeley’s Labor Center that found more than two-thirds of workers represented by Local 1000 don’t earn enough to support themselves and one child, and 35% don’t make enough to support a family of four, even with a partner earning the same wages.

Nationally, wage growth among state and local government workers was close to or exceeded private sector wage growth from 2001 to 2010, federal data show. But after the Great Recession, in 2010, government wage growth began lagging behind private sector wages and has not caught up, said Sara Hinkley, policy research specialist at the UC Berkeley Labor Center. Tax revenue uncertainties may be why, she added.

Path to middle class

State workers in California often accept lower salaries than they would get at private businesses in exchange for a state pension, better benefits and job security. But rising costs coming out of the pandemic and wage hikes as the private sector responds to labor shortages are giving state workers pause. Is the tradeoff still a good deal?

“Whether (state employment) is a pathway towards what we traditionally think of as the middle class is, I think, more questionable now,” said David Lewin, a professor emeritus at the UCLA Anderson School of Management who studies public sector unions.

Even so, he said, public sector work is still a better deal in the Golden State than almost anywhere else. California has not made substantial cuts in state jobs or in state workers’ bargaining rights the way states like Wisconsin have.

The union says there have been other de facto cuts to state workers’ pay in California.

“Whether (state employment) is a pathway towards what we traditionally think of as the middle class is more questionable now.”
— David Lewin, professor emeritus at the UCLA Anderson School of Management

Over the last two decades, state workers have contributed more of their paychecks to health care premiums and retirement health plans. Former Gov. Jerry Brown signed a law that, among other things, made workers hired in 2013 or later pay more toward their pensions.

Contributions to health care and pensions took up 5% of a typical Local 1000 member’s paycheck two decades ago and now consume 15%, the union says. The figures are based on pay and benefits for an associate program analyst, the job category the union says is closest to its members’ median salary.

During the pandemic, the state trimmed worker pay by 9% for one year, anticipating a deep recession that did not materialize. Workers got two days off each month in exchange. In 2021 the pay and work days were restored — as were raises from the current contract that totaled 7% over three years — when the state brought in record revenues.

Stuck with side jobs

On June 8 the state workers union held a rally outside the Governor’s mansion to demand better raises. Rita Krone, a 55-year-old program analyst who helps refugees, was there.

When she got her job at the state Department of Social Services about a year ago, she thought she could finally put aside her side jobs.

But her rent is $2,200 a month and Krone, a Rocklin resident, is the wage earner and caregiver for her husband, who has a disability. She works Mondays through Fridays, then delivers groceries for DoorDash on Friday evenings and weekends.

“We’re down to our last dimes,” Krone said. “So I work seven days a week.”

Pay for analyst positions like Krone’s was 17% less than equivalent jobs in the private sector in 2021, says the California Department of Human Resources. That’s with state benefits and pension factored in.

Looking at wages alone, analysts like Krone made 30% less than market pay.

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

Robert Lowell Steeves, 76, passed away suddenly in the early morning hours of June 6, 2023.

Born to Charley and Martha Steeves February 7, 1947 he was a graduate of Eureka High School in 1954. He worked many years as a baker before joining Eureka City Schools as a custodian. While he was on staff at a few schools over the years, the majority of his 35 years was spent as Lead Custodian at Lafayette Elementary School. He was a truly beloved member of the Lions staff and so proud to be part of the Lafayette family.

Robert is survived by his wife Gina, married 33 years, and daughters, Shannon Steeves, Gwen Price (Vincent), Courtney Calkins (Christian) and twin sons, Kevin and Tony Steeves as well as Dane Crawford, whom Robert thought of as a son. He also leaves grandchildren Emily, Alex, West, Lucas and Samantha, as well as his brother Carl (Caryl), nieces Trish Palmer and Nancy Curtis (Tom), nephews, Bryan Steeves, and Wayne Steeves (London), and great-nieces, Karyn, Becca, Cara, Cyd-nee and Erin. Pets Mia and Milo are missing him greatly.

He was preceded in his passing by his parents, Charley and Martha Steeves, many aunts and uncles, mother-in-law Jennie Williamson, and father-in-law Larry Williamson who considered Robert a son from their first meeting.

Robert is sure to have been greeted on the next plane by close friends Bill, Gordon, Manny and best friend, Jerry Ross. These wonderful companions were a strong presence in his life and have all been missed beyond belief, just as our Rob Rob Rob, our dad, our papa will be missed.

The Saturday after Robert was gone was to be the usual Once a Month Breakfast get together, often referred to as “The Breakfast Club.” Although he was a very shy person, not much of a social animal, Robert was in charge of the reminder calls to the usual suspects including former and current coworkers Al, Hank, Rodger, Rory, Manny, Gordon and other ECS employees. Wives were even invited sometimes. They would meet, usually at Kristina’s, to share stories of their work week, possible retirement and general town gossip like old friends do. While The Breakfast Club lost a few members over the years, the memories were full and long-lasting for all who were fortunate enough to attend.

Robert’s family would like to express our tremendous gratitude to teachers, students and staff, his “work wife” of 20 years, Rosemary Kunkler, and friends Debbie and Aaron Pierce for helping Robert come out of his shell. The Lafayette Lions made his work a second home, a place full of comfort, love, and laughter.

There will be no formal service as Robert chose to be a donor to the Willed Body Program at University of San Francisco. Instead, a picnic to celebrate Robert’s life is being planned for late summer just before school starts.

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