Christina “Kris” Mobley, a resigned Fortuna councilmember, was sentenced to 20 months in federal prison yesterday for an embezzlement scheme where she stole over $500,000 from her former employer.
Mobley, 59, pleaded guilty to four counts of felony fraud in December 2025 for theft that included her issuing company checks to herself, arranging electronic payments to cover her personal credit card debts and falsifying her vacation time and payroll checks.
Lasting about two years, the fraud totaled $586,000 and almost sent Beacom Construction Company into bankruptcy.
Mobley, who abruptly resigned from city council amid an FBI investigation into the embezzlement, was also sentenced by United States District Judge Charles R. Breyer to a three-year period of supervised release and was ordered to pay restitution in the amount of $586,000.
In a pre-sentencing memo, Mobley’s attorney said an extensive history of trauma pushed her to a gambling addiction.
“Ms. Mobley shows sincere and complete remorse and is dedicated to not
only making the victims whole, but to dealing with the untreated trauma that led
her to the actions underlying her offense,” according to the memo.
Her attorney pointed to her lack of criminal history and medical issues, asking the judge to impose a sentence of probation, restitution and
community service. A number of character letters urged leniency.
But attorneys for the Department of Justice said her actions almost caused the company to go bankrupt. The DOJ memo said Beacom’s owners did not know Mobley was responsible for the financial pressure on the company until the FBI showed up, and still “refused to believe it.”
“Even more devastating than the financial pain, though, was the sense of betrayal,” the DOJ memo said.
“Beacom’s owners treated Defendant Christina Mobley like their daughter. They trusted her with everything in the company, from office management to bookkeeping. Like family, they even trusted her with personal matters, like being the executor of one owner’s will. The Defendant betrayed that trust by stealing everything she could, in whatever way she could. The pain of that betrayal will persist long after the financial damage is addressed.”
The DOJ said she continued to steal, even after being initially confronted.
Mobley was ordered to self-surrender to the Bureau of Prisons in 90 days.
On July 21, 2026, at approximately 8:00 p.m., officers with the Eureka Police Department responded to the
200 block of Grant Street for a report of a male attempting to gain access to a vehicle using a coat hanger.
Upon arrival, officers were unable to locate the subject.
At approximately 11:50 p.m. the same evening, the owner of the vehicle contacted the Eureka Police
Department to report that the vehicle had been stolen. Officers searched the surrounding area but were
unable to locate the vehicle. Surveillance footage of the suspect was subsequently shared online by
community members.
An officer from an allied law enforcement agency recognized the suspect from the surveillance footage as
Casey Nagy, 39, of Eureka.
On July 22, 2026, at approximately 12:30 p.m., a citizen observed a vehicle matching the one shown in the
social media posts parked in front of a business in the 2800 block of Broadway. The caller provided dispatchers
with a description of the vehicle, confirming it matched the stolen vehicle.
Officers responded to the location and located Nagy near the vehicle and in possession of its keys. Officers
detained Nagy while they confirmed the vehicle was the one reported stolen. After confirmation, Nagy was
taken into custody without incident for possession of a stolen vehicle and a probation violation. The stolen
vehicle was recovered and returned to its owner.
The Eureka Police Department would like to thank the community member who reported the vehicle’s
location, as well as the allied agency officer whose identification of the suspect helped bring this investigation
to a swift resolution.
Anyone with additional information regarding this incident is encouraged to contact the Eureka Police
Department at (707) 441-4043.
On Tuesday the Yurok Tribe broke ground on a state of the art, $37 million Yurok Health and Wellness Center near Martin’s Ferry Bridge.
The Wah-Sekw-Won Treatment Center, a 53-bed, approximately 26,000-square-foot health and wellness center, will house an inpatient and outpatient facility to provide residential substance use disorder treatment, behavioral health services, intensive outpatient services, and ancillary support services to Yurok and other Native American tribal members and the surrounding community. Once completed, it will be the first and only tribally run inpatient wellness center in the region. Offering culturally based and conventional treatment options, the integrated wellness model planned for the facility aims to address the physical, mental, and social health needs of residents ranging from infants to the elderly.
“We are meticulously planning every aspect of this effort to provide high-quality, culturally centered healthcare services that help individuals restore balance to their lives,” said Joseph L. James, Chairman of the Yurok Tribe. “This facility will provide a broad range of supportive care services as part of an expanding, sovereign, community-driven behavioral health system.”
Construction of the facility, located near Weitchpec, is expected to be completed in spring 2028. The project is supported by a $26 million Bond Behavioral Health Continuum Infrastructure Program (BHCIP) Round 1: Launch Ready award funded through the Behavioral Health Infrastructure Bond Act.
“I want to express sincere gratitude to California Governor Gavin Newsom, the California Health and Human Services Agency and Department of Health Care Services for their strong commitment to advancing healthcare access and outcomes in tribal communities,” said Yurok Vice Chair Rose Sylvia.
Earlier this year, the Yurok Tribe broke ground on a $7.9 million Youth Center adjoining the Weitchpec Tribal Office. Informed by the voices and needs of Yurok Tribal youth, the facility will provide culturally centered behavioral health services, including mental health care, substance use disorder treatment, educational support, and community wellness programming for tribal youth ages 12 to 23.
The Tribe was also awarded a $12 million California Department of Health Care Services (DHCS) grant to develop a Peer Respite Center as part of expanding behavioral health infrastructure in the Weitchpec area. The project will provide a peer-supported recovery and respite center serving individuals transitioning from residential treatment and their families, providing community-based recovery support and temporary lodging. The center will complement the clinical and youth focused facilities nearby.
These projects will greatly expand health and wellness services for those in need. In addition to these critical services, the centers will employ dozens in the healthcare, education, case management and administrative staff.
Today, the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office announced that an autopsy found that the cause of death in this case was a sudden cardiac event rather than a drowning. Read more here.
Press release from the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office:
On July 22, 2026, at approximately 4:17 p.m., the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office Emergency Communications Center received a 9-1-1 call reporting a possible drowning at Kimtu Beach in Willow Creek.
Humboldt County Sheriff’s deputies, along with emergency medical personnel, responded to the scene and contacted the reporting party.
According to the reporting party, a family member had last been seen floating on a flotation device in the Trinity River near Kimtu Beach. A short time later, the flotation device was found overturned in the river, and the individual was no longer visible. Witnesses reported seeing the individual being carried downstream by the river’s current.
The individual was subsequently located and recovered from the water unconscious. Emergency personnel immediately initiated lifesaving measures, including CPR. Despite their efforts, the individual was pronounced deceased at the scene. The decedent was released into the care of the Humboldt County Coroner’s Office. An autopsy is pending to determine the official cause and manner of death.
The Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office extends its deepest condolences to the family, friends, and loved ones affected by this tragic incident.
This marks the third drowning in the Trinity River within the past week. The Sheriff’s Office urges everyone recreating local rivers to exercise extreme caution. River conditions can change rapidly, and swift currents, cold water temperatures, and hidden hazards can quickly become life-threatening even for experienced swimmers.
The Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office encourages residents and visitors to make safety their top priority while enjoying the region’s rivers this summer. These waters can be deceptively dangerous, even for experienced swimmers.
Even when it’s hot outside, the river is still very cold. The cold water can cause your muscles to seize up, making it difficult or even impossible to swim. Just a few seconds in cold, fast-moving water can lead to tragedy.
The Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office Boating Safety and Swift Water Rescue Team advises the public to take the following precautions when recreating near or on the water:
Always wear a properly fitted U.S. Coast Guard-approved life jacket when boating, kayaking, paddle boarding, or swimming.
Never leave children unattended near rivers or creeks. Always keep a close eye on kids and make sure they are wearing life jackets.
Avoid alcohol and drugs when participating in water activities, as they impair judgment and reaction time.
Do not underestimate the current. Even if you’re a strong swimmer, the power of moving water can knock you off your feet and carry you downstream in seconds.
Stay informed about river conditions and obey all posted warning signs and closures.
Emergency services are often limited in remote river areas, and response times can be delayed. Taking precautions ahead of time can save lives.
We urge everyone to prioritize safety and make smart choices around our waterways.
The Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office extends its sincere appreciation to the Hoopa Tribal Police Department, California Highway Patrol, CAL FIRE, and Hoopa-Willow Creek Ambulance Service for their assistance and coordinated response during this tragic incident.
A grizzly sow and cub on June 2, 2016. Photo by Jim Peaco, National Park Service.
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The grizzly bear on California’s flag went extinct a century ago in the Golden State. Now, a group of tribes and environmentalists is urging the Legislature to study whether it’s possible to bring them back.
Grizzlies once lived across most of California. As many as 10,000 may have roamed before the Gold Rush. They were so prevalent that when California settlers tried to form their own nation, they called it the Bear Flag Republic.
Settlers systematically exterminated the animals, and they were gone by the 1920s, leaving the smaller black bear as the only surviving bear species.
A century and 34.5 million more people later, Inglewood Democratic Sen. Laura Richardson’s Senate Bill 1305 would task the California Department of Fish and Wildlife with creating a “roadmap that evaluates whether, and under what conditions, reintroduction of the grizzly bear is feasible and advisable.”
The measure provides no funding to carry out the study, which could be provided by a future Legislature or an outside group. And even if it were funded and its recommendations acted on, it would be several years and require help from a potentially adversarial federal government before a grizzly bear’s claws ever cut tracks in California.
The proposal’s hypothetical nature has done little to ease tensions over the prospect of some day returning the continent’s second-largest land predator to the nation’s most populous state.
On one side are organizations representing rural communities, hunting organizations and ranchers.
They argue it’s preposterous to consider re-introducing aggressive 800-pound bears to California’s degraded, drought- and fire-prone landscapes. Rural areas, they say, are already overwhelmed with conflicts with mountain lions and growing black bear and wolf populations.
Hadwick’s sprawling rural district in northeastern California has faced years of tensions over predators, especially wolves, killing livestock and frightening small towns.
Environmentalists, tribes support
At least 40 tribes, environmentalists and animal welfare organizations support the bill, according to the CalMatters Digital Democracy database.They say bringing back the state’s biggest apex land predator would improve the ecosystem and right an ecological wrong from California’s past.
“I can see the ways in which my homeland has suffered from the loss of iconic species such as the grizzly, and that this loss lingers in our heart and in the attenuation of a millennia-old relationship,” Tiana Williams-Claussen, director of the Yurok Tribe’s wildlife department, told lawmakers last month. The Yurok and Tejon tribes are the bill’s cosponsors.A 2025 study from a coalition of tribes, environmentalists and university researchers found that the Yurok lands on the north coast as well as the nearby Klamath Mountains and Trinity Alps could be suitable grizzly habitat.
The study also singled out the southern Sierra Nevada including Yosemite, Kings Canyon and Sequoia national parks as well as the Transverse mountains that span from San Bernardino County to Santa Barbara County.It estimated the habitats could sustain between 424 to 1,713 grizzlies, though it recommends bringing in a population of 25 grizzlies to start. Grizzlies can be found in Alaska, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho and Washington.
Supporters of the proposal say grizzlies would help California’s ecosystem. The giant omnivorous bears till soil as they root up meals, helping restore conifer forests, prairies and oak savannas, easing fire danger.
Grizzlies also serve as a check on overpopulation of prey. Grizzlies could reduce California’s human conflicts with black bears since grizzlies compete for food with their smaller cousins. Grizzlies also kill and eat black bears.
“The loss of grizzlies might have been one of those contributing factors to that (black bear population) overgrowth,” Williams-Claussen said in an interview.
Grizzlies and the urban-rural divide
Supporters’ arguments have appealed to the Democrats who control the Legislature.
Only Republicans have voted against the bill, which is pending before the Assembly Appropriations Committee when the Legislature returns Aug. 3.
Richardson didn’t return an interview request for this story. The measure’s Democratic coauthors are lawmakers from Southern California representing predominantly urban districts.
Even so, learning to coexist with them is just part of living in a beautiful state filled with wildlife, Stern said.“We want to live in a California where — that risk — there’s some beauty in it,” said Stern, who represents the Sherman Oaks area of Los Angeles. “To have that element in our lives, as opposed to just sterilizing our landscapes and our nature so that nothing else could ever be a risk … I think it makes us more human to have wildness in our lives.”
From left, state Sen. Henry Stern and state Sen. Laura Richardson. Photos by Fred Greaves for CalMatters
Elizabeth Washoe, a Native American from Modoc County, hears that kind of talk from urban residents and rolls her eyes.
“There’s nothing I would love more than to see grizzly bears on the beach at Santa Barbara chasing rich people,” she said.
But she said that would be cruel — to the bears.
Like many in California, Washoe’s people still pay homage to grizzlies through ceremonial bear dances, but she said it’s not “ethically right to bring them back.”
She hopes lawmakers consider what life would be like for the grizzlies they’d have captured and brought to California, where they would face a landscape radically different and eight times more populated than when the bears last lived here.
“The bears don’t have any say in it,” Washoe said. “Where they’re at, they’re living a pretty good life, and we’d take them and put them here in a landscape that is so dramatically changed from what it was the last time that the bears were truly living a good life here … I understand the idea of it, but to me it feels egotistical.”
State wildlife officials wary
The California agency that would be responsible for studying grizzly bear reintroduction does not appear eager to take it on.
The Department Fish and Wildlife, which hasn’t taken an official position on the legislation, does not comment on pending bills, spokesperson Peter Tira told CalMatters this week. Gov. Gavin Newsom’s press office also declined to comment.
But there’s no indication the department’s position on grizzlies has changed since a former spokesperson told a reporter in 2023 that wildlife officials can barely keep up with existing predator conflicts.
“Bringing another predator into the state that we would have to manage and come up with some program to figure out what happens when the grizzly attacks a human or kills livestock does not seem feasible for us,” then-spokesperson Jordan Traverso told the Alta Journal.
The department is chronically underfunded and understaffed. A legislative analysis for this year’s bill notes that Fish and Wildlife has enough cash and staff to complete just 38% of its existing duties. The department “would be unable to absorb the demand this roadmap would have on staff time and resources” according to the analysis.
David Bess, who recently retired as its top law enforcement officer overseeing California’s game wardens, said the department is “drowning in work,” much of it trying to manage conflicts with predators already on the landscape.
“I just don’t see where the department even has the capacity to do it,” Bess said.
Trump’s grizzly proposal
Now, President Donald Trump’s administration has added a new wrinkle to the debate.
Earlier this month, the administration issued a proposed rule change that seeks to return management of grizzlies to states, despite the bears being protected under the U.S. Endangered Species Act.
Environmentalists fear Trump’s proposal would allow conservative states to begin killing grizzlies to appease ranchers and big game hunters.
The proposed federal rule wouldn’t impact California’s grizzly proposal, since the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service would be in charge of any reintroduction program, said Andrea Zaccardi, carnivore conservation legal director at the Center for Biological Diversity, which supports Richardson’s legislation.
But having the bears in environmentally friendly states such as California could prove helpful if other states begin aggressively killing them off, she said.
“Hopefully, they would be managed more responsibly there,” said Zaccardi, whose organization has unsuccessfully petitioned the feds to return grizzly bears to California.
That’s because a li’l ol’ wildfire has broken out down by the mouth of the Eel. Humboldt Bay Fire, reporting to Facebook, says that Loleta Fire is on the case. But that has not yet stopped their foul smoke.
Sadly we must follow precedent and insist that Loleta pay us back for this intrusion upon a beautiful summer day. From now until the smoke is gone we are declaring a 50 percent tariff on all goods produced in Loleta. Rake your dunes, people!
You may choose to remit payment in the form of pints of Jersey Scoops if you wish.
An 18-year-old has been charged with attempted murder for a shooting behind McKinleyville High School on Sunday. Today, Dameon Bradfield pleaded not guilty to all charges levied against him.
The Humboldt County District Attorney’s Office charged Bradfield with felony assault with a firearm and attempted murder, alongside firearm enhancements that could add decades to a prison sentence if convicted. He’s also accused of using a firearm in violation of probation, charged as a misdemeanor, according to court records.
Bradfield was arrested after allegedly shooting a 24-year-old in the leg on July 19 around 11:50 a.m., following a verbal altercation.
According to the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office, Bradfield fired four to five rounds at the man, who was later transported to the hospital with non-life threatening injuries.
Bradfield’s location was traced to an Arcata address using an ankle monitor he was wearing, where he was arrested.
The court appointed attorney Greg Kreis today, who previously represented Bradfield in juvenile matters. Bradfield remains on a no bail hold.
The preliminary hearing was set for July 29th.
Court records indicate two people sought restraining orders against Bradfield while he was under the age of 18.
One was for allegedly spraying a neighbor and his children, seven and ten, with bear mace. This request was granted. The second was for allegedly attempting to run over a 15-year-old and threatening him with a gun. This request was denied after the petitioner failed to attend a hearing.
Plaintiff in Abortion Care Lawsuit Can’t Block Therapy Records, Trial Pushed Out Five Months
The outcome of three lawsuits filed against Providence St. Joseph Hospital are becoming further enmeshed. The scheduled trial date for one of the three that allege the hospital denied emergency abortion care was pushed out five months today.
Anna Nusslock, Eureka chiropractor, is the plaintiff for both an individual lawsuit and central in a case brought against the hospital by the state. They each allege Providence denied her emergency care while she was suffering a life-threatening miscarriage.
In court filings for the individual case, attorneys cited a preference to see the outcome of the lawsuit filed by the state of California before taking the remaining two to trial.
Both parties agreed to move the case forward, and a new trial date was set for May 10, 2027.
A judge also ruled Tuesday the plaintiff can’t block hospital attorneys from accessing therapy records.
The court ruled against a motion to quash therapy subpoenas issued by the hospital’s attorneys, who are seeking two years of notes from a pair of therapists who treated Nusslock.
In a declaration, attorneys for Nusslock point out that she has not objected to eight other third-party subpoenas into her private, personal, medical and mental health history. It describes prying open the two years of records as “deeply intrusive and largely irrelevant.”
But in his ruling, Judge Timothy Canning wrote that despite strong protections in California surrounding the privileged information shared between a therapist and their patient, an exception exists — the patient-litigant exception.
The lawsuit argues the hospital inflicted emotional distress and Nusslock was diagnosed with PTSD as a result of her experience. Court documents state the incident also caused her anxiety, grief and depression.
Canning cited case law that found if a patient raises a specific ailment in litigation, they may no longer justifiably seek protection from its exposure, in the interest of fairness.
“The court finds that Plaintiff’s emotional distress claims are not of the ‘garden variety’ type but are claims Plaintiff specifically and affirmatively asserted in her complaint arising from the wrongdoing alleged,” Judge Canning wrote in the ruling. He found the medical records are directly relevant to Nusslock’s mental, emotional and physical damages.
Canning ruled the scope is limited to communications directly relevant to the specific condition at issue. The records won’t be made public without a court order.
Hospital staff allegedly refused to treat Nusslock during a life-threatening miscarriage of twins when she was 15-weeks pregnant, due to a fetal heartbeat policy at the hospital. She was sent away with a bucket and towels. The lawsuit alleges Providence violated a law that requires hospitals treat patients in emergencies and the Unruh Civil Rights Act.
Attempts by the hospital to dismiss the ongoing lawsuits were previously unsuccessful.
A separate lawsuit is similarly slowly moving forward, filed by anonymous patient “Jane Roe,” who detailed similar and repeated experiences at the hospital. In this case also, Providence attorneys are seeking Roe’s therapy records, as she claimed significant emotional harm as a result.
