The town of Reedley has about 25,000 people — and five different public institutions that offer career education to its residents. There’s the high school, the adult school, the community college, the job center and the regional occupational program. In some cases, they work together to teach skills, such as welding.

Other times, they compete for the same students.

In a hearing last month, California Assemblymember Al Muratsuchi, a Democrat from Torrance, said that he worries some workforce programs are becoming increasingly “Balkanized,” despite numerous efforts to promote collaboration. Gov. Gavin Newsom said he’ll help unify these programs by creating a Master Plan for Career Education. State agencies are required to create the plan by Oct. 1, though Newsom hasn’t said when he’ll release it.

At Reedley College in rural Fresno County, Dean of Instruction David Clark acknowledged that some programs compete — in other parts of the state — but said that in this small town, that issue is less relevant. “In Fresno, you might flip someone off and never see them again, but here, that’s your neighbor,” said Clark. Instead, he said, local workforce leaders in Reedley have close personal relationships with one another and collaborate frequently.

What’s more, he said that each institution serves a different population: Historically, community colleges focused on high school graduates, providing them with vocational training or a pathway to a four-year university. Adult schools offered short-term courses, such as English as a second language, often to immigrants and older adults. Regional occupational programs arose as a way to help high schools consolidate and coordinate expensive career training classes. Job centers were a place for adults to get help finding work.

To some extent, that’s all still true, but over the past few decades, the lines have blurred. High school students are taking college-level classes at growing rates. More than 40% of community college students in California are 25 and older, according to data from the Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office, and the system is investing in short-term classes that rival the courses at many adult schools. While job centers once placed people directly in jobs, they’re now facing a push from state and federal leaders to send jobseekers back to school so they can earn better wages in the long-term.

The state’s existing higher education plan is from 1960 and “was designed to serve a very different California,” wrote Elana Ross, a spokesperson for the governor, in an emailed statement. She said the “current budgetary conditions” — namely, two years of multi-billion dollar deficits — “call us to work together more effectively.” The office refused to speak to CalMatters in an on-the-record interview.

In the hearing, Muratsuchi said he’s skeptical that the governor’s new plan will yield substantive changes to this convoluted system. “These are the same agencies that have failed to collaborate,” he said. “Why do we expect different results?”

‘Redundancy’ in Reedley

Clark has lived in Reedley for 35 years, and as he walks around the community college campus, he shares the town lore with pride. In 2002, the town voted against the construction of a Walmart. The town doesn’t have a movie theater or a mall either, he said. “People have tried to maintain that Norman Rockwell lifestyle.”

It doesn’t always reflect reality — Walmart, for instance, built a location just five miles away, in the town next door — but Clark said that Reedley is still more vibrant than some of the other rural towns in the Central Valley.

The reason is agriculture: It’s the “world’s fruit basket,” according to the town’s chamber of commerce. Reedley specializes in growing and shipping stone fruit such as peaches, plums and nectarines.

First: Students measure part of a tractor engine in their agricultural mechanics class at Reedley College. Last: Instructor David Tikkanen shows student Francisco Fernandez how to work on an engine lathe when shaving a metal rod. Photos by Larry Valenzuela, CalMatters/CatchLight Local

For the roughly 7,500 Reedley College students taking a career technical education class, the most popular programs are in agriculture and manufacturing, which overlap considerably, said Clark. Classes in health care, such as those for nursing assistants, are another common path, especially for women.

In a series of large classrooms, each one as big as a warehouse, college students learn how to repair tractor engines, how to weld the pieces of a truck bed, and how to create the metal pieces used in food packaging machines. Some equipment, such as machines for metal cutting, can cost the school over a million dollars per device. Most of the training for nursing assistants takes place at a retirement home.

On certain days, the college shares these classrooms with the Valley Regional Occupational Program so it can run its own manufacturing courses for high school students. By using some of the same facilities, the high school saves money and helps introduce students to college, said Fabrizio Lofaro, superintendent of the occupational program.

But for welding courses, which are more popular, the high school has its own facilities and offers less advanced courses.

The workstations for a welding class at Reedley High School. Photo by Larry Valenzuela, CalMatters/CatchLight Local

At night, and on weekends, the regional occupational program works with a different institution, Kings Canyon Adult School, to offer another set of welding classes focused on working adults.

Noe Mendoza, the learning director of the adult school, acknowledged some “redundancy,” especially with the community college. What makes adult schools different, he said, is that they’re accessible for adults who lack a high school degree or who need short-term, career-oriented training.

“They’re field workers or they’re working in the warehouses, the cold storages, and they want something different,” said Mendoza. “If it’s given here, it seems more attainable, even though it’s the same class.”

Community college leaders, however, insist that their courses are accessible too. In June, state leaders announced a policy change meant to draw adults without high school degrees toward college. Since the start of the pandemic, community colleges have spent millions of dollars recruiting older adults by offering shorter classes and career-oriented programs — sometimes reaching out directly to farmworkers.

Five different entities competing for students and money

Community colleges and adult schools have long competed for students. In the 1990s, the issue came to the fore when six Southern California school districts sued their local community colleges, saying that the colleges had overstepped their boundaries by teaching certain classes, such as high school equivalency courses or English as a second language. The judge found that both systems had a right to teach these classes.

The lawsuit is emblematic of long-standing duplication and conflict in adult education: A 2012 report by California’s Legislative Analyst’s Office found “inconsistent state-level policies” and a “widespread lack of coordination.”

“These are the same agencies that have failed to collaborate. Why do we expect different results?”
— Assemblymember Al Muratsuchi, Democrat from Torrence

Similar competition exists between K-12 schools districts and regional occupational programs. California created the regional occupational programs in the 1970s as a way to consolidate career training across school districts. But the school districts aren’t required to collaborate with the occupational programs, and in some cases, districts launch their own career technical classes instead.

The federal government also invests in career education. Some of the money goes directly to community colleges and K-12 school districts, but the largest allocation goes toward California’s 45 workforce development boards, which operate the state’s nearly 180 job centers. For years, these centers helped low-income adults, unemployed adults, and certain youth find jobs, but research shows that sending a person back to school can yield better long-term results.

Now, job centers provide many students with tuition subsidies or cash to help cover daily expenses, such as rent and transportation, during school. Last month, a CalMatters investigation of job centers across the state found that roughly half of those subsidies went to for-profit trade schools, even when community colleges offered free or low-cost courses nearby. In some cases, graduates of these trade schools earned less than $30,000 a year.

In the eastern half of Fresno County, which includes Reedley, 16 students received a tuition subsidy in the past year to study agriculture, either through a welding or heavy equipment program, according to the Fresno Regional Workforce Development Board. Some attended Lofaro’s regional occupational programs, while others attended Advanced Career Institute and the Institute of Technology, two local for-profit institutions.

Student Felix Nevarez welding a piece of metal during a class. Photo by Larry Valenzuela, CalMatters/CatchLight Local

Fernanda Mendoza, a program coordinator at the job center closest to Reedley, said she recommends the private programs over the public ones because the for-profit schools provide students with “more of that one-on-one interaction.”

A hodgepodge of job training options create barriers for students

Over the past decade, state leaders have tried to revamp the career training system to foster collaboration. But critics say the interventions have created more bureaucracy and made few real changes.

In 2015, California created the Adult Education Program, which today sends out over $650 million a year on the condition that each region administers the money through a consortium of local adult schools, community colleges, and regional occupational programs.

The following year, the state created the Strong Workforce Program, which sends over $100 million a year to 72 community college districts.

Then, in 2018, California launched the K-12 Strong Workforce Program, but to ensure that high schools and colleges work together, the money flows through another regional network — which is different from the adult education consortia.

These three programs are just a fraction of the billions California taxpayers spent on career education in the past five years. Many agencies — including the state’s Education Department, Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office, Labor and Workforce Development Agency, and Rehabilitation Department — all have additional pots of money for similar programs.

A medical dummy lies on a bed for a nursing assistant class at Reedley High School. Photo by Larry Valenzuela, CalMatters/CatchLight Local

In Reedley, Lofaro said he applies for many of these grants. One of his competitors is another regional occupational program, which works with a different set of K-12 school districts in Fresno County.

Last year, Assemblymember Muratsuchi unsuccessfully proposed a bill that would merge the K-12 Strong Workforce Program with another, existing program run by the state’s Education Department.

The governor’s office hasn’t made any of its recommendations public, but it’s led forums across the state about the new plan. Kathy Booth is the director of the Center for Economic Mobility at WestEd, a nonprofit organization, and she helped the governor’s office engage with the public. In the hearing with Muratsuchi, she shared feedback from local leaders, who said the state’s workforce systems have created barriers for students.

“If you are a person who gets a partial training in one area, and then you need to get to a different area, it’s almost impossible to make that jump,” she told lawmakers. “And that is really underscored by this incredible lack of coordination between funding and underlying data.”

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Adam Echelman covers California’s community colleges in partnership with Open Campus, a nonprofit newsroom focused on higher education.

Financial support for this story was provided by the Smidt and Irvine foundations.

Just before 2 p.m. on Thursday, the National Interagency Fire Center announced the detection of a wildfire in southern Humboldt. The small blaze is located near Dean Creek just east of Redway. (See the map below.)

PG&E cameras pick up a faint wisp of smoke rising from the wooded area.

We will update if the situation becomes concerning. 

Just a quick note in case you missed our soft launch yesterday: 

LoCO Elections is back!

LoCO Elections is that thing we do twice every other year, in which candidates who are willing take questions directly from the LoCO electorate. It’s pretty fun!

Do you have a question for a candidate for Eureka City Council, Arcata City Council or Fortuna City Council? Go on over to LoCO Elections, click on that candidate’s head and find the link where you can put your question to them! If that question is not insane and/or irrelevant, it’ll be put to them!

Also, of course: You can scroll down and read the other questions that other people put to the candidates and their answers. It’s pretty fun! A lot of candidates have really enjoyed it in the past, as have their constituents.

Now, are you a candidate for Eureka or Arcata or Fortuna City Council who is not signed up for LoCO Elections? Check your back email for my invitation for you to register. Can’t find it? No problem — just shoot me a line at hank@lostcoastoutpost.com and I’ll set you up.

Happy election season!

From the Arcata Police Department website.

It’s nearing midnight. You’re on your way back home from doing whatever it is you do, and as you approach a stop sign, you barely tap the brakes, swing through the intersection and keep moving. The fact that you just whipped a California Stop is as far away from your mind as you are from Mars. A pair of LED headlights flick on in the rearview and permanently damage your retinas. Blue and red lights spin, your mind whirls and all you can think is: Why? There was no one around!

Get a chance to ask this Saturday, when the Arcata Police Department will host an open house and barbecue at the police station from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

APD hopes it’ll be a learning opportunity for people who don’t often interact with police officers.

“I think when we deal with people, it’s generally during times of emergencies, high stress, high emotions,” APD Sergeant Brian Hoffman told the Outpost yesterday. “I think the vast majority of people don’t have a lot of contact with the police, and so there can be this stand-off-ishness. So it’s really just getting people to come down and meet everyone and let people realize we’re just like everybody else — fathers, brothers and sons and daughters.”

Hoffman says past events like this one have been successful.

“I think if you ask a lot of people about the local police in the area, I would think that they would say that Arcata PD is the most empathetic, and we really go out of our way to try to have a connection with people who are dealing with them,” Hoffman said. “Generally, it’s during the worst times in people’s lives when we’re called in. So it’s good for officers too to be able to see people and recognize ‘Hey, there are people that like what you do and are glad we’re here.’”

The Arcata Police Department is located at 736 F Street, Arcata.

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Dear Editor:

Your coverage of Measure F, the Housing for All and Downtown Vitality Initiative, leaves out the main purpose of voting Yes on Measure F: to allow for more housing for hard-working families, seniors, and workers while ensuring downtown businesses don’t shut down or move away. It is very clear if you read the ballot measure.

Thousands of Eurekans signed petitions so voters could say YES to Measure F, enabling more housing in Eureka and supporting small businesses. Two former mayors and more than 50 downtown business owners also support Measure F.

Measure F does two essential things for Eureka: one, it will open up the Jacobs site by zoning it for hundreds of homes to be built there, and two, it saves our Downtown small businesses by ensuring they have the accessible parking they need to survive. It is not one or the other, housing or business. Measure F does both.

As co-sponsors of this important ballot measure, we want the additional housing Measure F to enable, not just the limited housing currently planned that wipes out Downtown parking. We want a thriving future for Eureka. That’s why we are voting Yes on Measure F.

Michelle Costantine, Eureka
Mike Munson, Eureka

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PREVIOUSLY:

• Ballot Battles, Lawsuits and a Ticked-Off Millionaire: CalMatters on Eureka’s Parking Lot Wars
• Security National Has Spent $710,645 and Counting on Measure F, the ‘Housing for All’ Initiative
• Eureka City Schools’ Deal With a Mystery Developer for the Jacobs Campus is Dead
• Anonymous AMG Communities Confirms Death of Jacobs Campus Deal, Vows to Try Again After Election Results
• Security National Just Dropped Another $286K Into Measure F, Bringing Its Total Spending to Nearly $1M
• How Will the Collapse of the Jacobs Campus Deal Impact Measure F? It Won’t, Backers Insist.
• What’s Next for the Jacobs Campus? The Eureka City Schools Board of Trustees Will Consider Five Options at Thursday’s Meeting
• Humboldt Progressive Democrats Endorse Candidates in Arcata, Eureka City Council Races, Urge ‘No’ Vote on Measure F
• Measure F Could Wreak Legal and Financial Havoc on Eureka, California Housing Defense Fund Warns
• With $1.15M From Security National, Measure F is Now the Most Expensive Ballot Initiative in Eureka History
• THE ECONEWS REPORT: What If Measure F Passes?
• The Measure F Campaign Called Him a Criminal and a Cheat. He Has a Different Story to Tell.

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If you live in Humboldt County, you’re probably accustomed to people complaining about the quality and availability of health care. But that’s not what you’ll get when you talk to 71-year-old Eureka resident Jane Mitchell. She has nothing but praise for the wraparound services she receives through Redwood Coast PACE.

“If PACE wasn’t here, I doubt I’d still be alive,” Mitchell said in a recent phone interview. 

PACE, which stands for “Program of All-inclusive Care for the Elderly,” is a nationwide model of care designed to help people “age in place” rather than move into nursing homes. There are 177 PACE organizations operating in 33 states and the District of Columbia, but Redwood Coast PACE, which is celebrating its 10th anniversary this month, is the only rural PACE program in the state. 

Its success was by no means a given, but after opening with just two participants in 2014, the program, operated though Humboldt Senior Resource Center (HSRC), has gone on to serve more than 650 older adults over the past decade. (It currently serves 318 participants per month.) HSRC opened a second Adult Day Health & Redwood Coast PACE Center in Fortuna in 2020, and a third location, including a day center and rehab facilities, will soon open on the Mad River Community Hospital campus in Arcata.

For participants — a term the program’s care providers prefer to “patients” — the coordinated care they receive can literally be a life saver.

“PACE has increased my lifespan, I think, by at least 20 years,” Mitchell said. “Maybe longer.”

Until about two years ago, Mitchell was suffering from a variety of serious health issues, including limited mobility due to injuries from an old a car accident, plus diabetes and high blood pressure, which led to a series of strokes. She’d tried and failed to lose weight and was mostly confined to a wheelchair, but Mitchell’s granddaughter, who worked at PACE, urged her to enroll in the program rather than continue with the nurse practitioner who’d been her primary care provider. 

“She didn’t like the way I was being cared for, and she can be rather persuasive in her own way,” Mitchell said. Her granddaughter has two kids of her own, and she wants Mitchell to have time to bond with them.

PACE serves people age 55 and older who require a nursing home-level of care but who wish to remain living at home or in the community. Licensed and regulated by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and the California Department of Health Care Services, Redwood Coast PACE employs an interdisciplinary team of “care partners,” including physicians, nurses and nurse practitioners, social workers, a dietician, physical and occupational therapists and more. For qualifying participants, 100 percent of PACE’s services are covered by Medi-Cal and Medicare. 

Mitchell followed her granddaughter’s advice and now has a team of people who help manage her care. She said she’s lost 40 pounds in the last six months. Her diabetes is well under control, and through a combination of medications her blood pressure has gone way down. With help from a physical therapist, Mitchell is also walking again and only needs her electric wheelchair for longer journeys.

“I feel happy that I’m being cared for,” Mitchell said, “so much so that I’m telling all of my friends that are 55 and older, ‘Go to PACE. If you really want to be taken care of, go to PACE.’”

She credits PACE with giving her the chance to know her great-grandchildren. She has now convinced both her husband and her brother to join PACE.

“I can be very persuasive as well,” she said.

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The Outpost recently sat down with Redwood Coast PACE Director Barbara LaHaie and Medical Director Dr. Jennifer Heidmann to talk about why the program has been so successful here in Humboldt County. And in a separate interview we spoke with Humboldt Senior Resource Center CEO Melissa Hooven, who described the program’s development and explained the ways it differs from most medical care in America.

“It was quite a leap of faith for the people that brought this program into our community,” said Heidmann, who joined the organization a few months before the program opened its doors. “It’s not an easy task to start a PACE program, and it takes a lot of organization and courage to do it in a rural area in particular.”

Hooven said the idea to bring a PACE program to Humboldt County arose from various stakeholders in the community, including her predecessor Joyce Hayes, who worked with HSRC for 28 years.

“When Joyce was going around the community and doing presentations to stakeholders, we all thought, ‘We don’t think this is gonna work — like, this is wild,’” Hooven recalled. 

But the stakeholders pushed forward, navigating all the regulatory hurdles required to implement the new model, and with support from the region’s state representatives the program launched in September of 2014.

LaHaie, who spent nine years working for the Humboldt County Department of Health and Human Services (and who considered staying there through retirement), joined the Redwood Coast PACE team about eight and a half years ago. When she started, she said, there were 72 participants, and administrators said they’d need to reach 100 to break even.

“And that was true,” LaHaie said. “When we got to 100 we started to be able to spread those costs over [the whole group].” 

All care is coordinated through PACE, which serves as both provider and insurer.

“We have someone who makes all the appointments for the participants,” LaHaie said. “We have a driver that comes and picks them up and takes them there. We have an in-home care [team] that works for us as well. They’ve got their meals. I mean, who wouldn’t want this kind of medical care?”

Hooven agrees. “We in the PACE world refer to it as the model of care that everyone should have,” she said. “It’s incredible. When you’re referred to the program you go through the enrollment process and all of a sudden you have a team of people supporting you … from your intake team to your social workers, physical therapy, occupational therapy, so you have full rehab.”

Plus there’s a primary care physician, a nursing team, a day center with a gym and a range of social activities, such as bingo, cooking demonstrations, on-site meals, exercise classes and field trips.

“It’s just a phenomenal program that I think is working in our area because of the unique challenges that we have here,” Hooven said. “We manage whole-person care. We’re responsible for their medications, making sure they get to specialty services. Sometimes that means we have to fly them out of the area to get the care that they need.”

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Research has validated claims that PACE programs are not only a superior model of health care when it comes to patient outcomes; they’re also more cost-effective for the state and federal government.

PACE programs receive a set amount monthly from Medicare and Medicaid, and those monthly payments are 15 percent lower, on average, than Medicaid would typically pay for low-income seniors, according to the National PACE Association. 

“Part of the reason the PACE program in general is popular on both sides of the [political] aisle is that, ultimately, it saves money for the system because people are not having to get their primary care in the ER as much,” Heidmann said. “And there are no really long stays in the hospital because of [having] nowhere to go afterwards.”

Studies have shown that PACE programs reduce hospitalizations, emergency room visits and nursing home stays. A recent New York Times report notes that participants survive longer than similar patients in less comprehensive programs. Plus, research shows that PACE participants report higher levels of satisfaction with their care and experience better overall quality of life.

“We look at health as holistic,” Dr. Heidmann said.  “It’s not just the diseases you have or the treatments or tests that you’re getting … it’s [about] what matters most to you and what supports you need to be able to live your life fully as you age.”

Geraldine Moon, a 58-year-old Arcata resident and Redwood Coast PACE participant, told the Outpost that she was forced to use a four-wheeled walker to get around before coming to PACE but now gets around without it.

“And then the medical people are really super nice, too,” she said. “They helped me adjust my medicine and things like that. … But everybody’s there to help us, and I really like that. They really enjoy their work, and they really want to help us. And, see, I’ve been to places where I know that that person doesn’t want to help, and I don’t understand why they’re at that job. You know what I mean? But everybody at PACE loves their job.”

Moon likes to socialize and play bingo, and she can do both at Redwood Coast PACE. She’s looking forward to the new location opening in Arcata.

“They helped me mentally, physically, emotionally — about every way there is,” she said.

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LaHaie said she often hears from family members of PACE participants who say they were on the verge of quitting their job so they had enough time to care for an elder in their lives. But once they find Redwood Coast PACE they know their family member has someone to help them get dressed and showered, take them to medical appointments, etc.

“They’ll say, ‘Now I know I have someone to do that so I can spend time with my husband or kids … I have a little bit less pressure and stress in my life,’” LaHaie said.

Heidmann said she also sees transformation occur among participants who come in with little or no family or friends, people suffering from loneliness and who “probably have had a lot of trauma in their life.”

Over time, as such people participate in the program, receiving personalized care and socializing with peers, they “actually develop a sense of trust and self-love and community” Heismann said. “I’ve seen people come in really not okay — not acting appropriately, angry at the world — who transformed into excited to come to the day center. … So I think community is a huge, a huge part of transformation here as well.”

She pointed out that U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy last year declared a national loneliness and social isolation epidemic, warning that the mortality impacts of such conditions are on par with daily cigarette smoking and worse than obesity.

“During the pandemic, PACE participants were much less likely to die than people who share the same characteristics … in nursing facilities or congregate living,” Heidmann said. “Heads kind of turned toward PACE nationally during the pandemic because of that.”

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A major challenge for many rural health care providers, including those here on the North Coast, has been the difficulty in hiring and retaining health care professionals. Hooven said that there are certainly times when Redwood Coast PACE is affected by such problems, forcing them to resort to hiring traveling nurses (aka “locums”). 

But this model of care has proven attractive to providers as well as participants. 

“The kind of care we provide is intriguing to professionals in the medical space because it’s not a hospital” or other setting where people are often tempted to move from place to place, Hooven said. “And I think we have been fortunate to have people who are like, ‘Oh, I want to try this.’ Or a lot of times it’s peer-to-peer referrals.”

The program employs roughly 70 people in its in-home care team, which travels to participants’ residences and helps them for two hours, four hours, even up to eight hours. 

“Sometimes it’s just helping them to do laundry, helping them prepare food, helping them with medication, things like that,” Hooven said. “It can [also] be social work, behavioral health, nursing and primary care physicians.”

Offering everything from nutrition guidance and preventative care to dental, vision and mental health services, Redwood Coast PACE routinely rates around a 90 percent satisfaction rate among both participants and caregivers, LaHaie said. 

Public and political calls for universal health care or even just a public health insurance option have diminished significantly since 2020, but LaHaie would like to see the PACE model expand beyond senior citizens.

“I have a vision for it being the model of care for all ages, but also all incomes,” she said.

Lee Earnest Astorino
November 25, 1947 – August 3, 2024

Lee Earnest Astorino peacefully passed away on August 3, 2024, surrounded by dear friends whom he cherished as family, following a brief illness. His departure has left an irreplaceable void in the hearts of those who were fortunate enough to know him.

Born on November 25, 1947, in Manhattan Beach, California, Lee was the younger of two children. From his earliest days, he had a natural charisma that drew people to him, and he cherished every friendship he formed. Lee had an incredible gift of remembering those who crossed his path, always greeting them with warmth and kindness. A man of profound moral integrity, his heart was as clear and generous as it was steadfast.

Lee spent his early years in the sunshine of Manhattan Beach, raised in a loving home by parents who were both educators. During his high school years at Mira Costa High School, Lee immersed himself in drama and choir, two passions that remained central to his life. After graduation, Lee proudly served his country in the Marine Corps, completing a tour of duty in the Vietnam War.

His love for the theater never wavered, and it was while volunteering at a local playhouse that Lee’s life changed forever. At a pre-show cocktail party, he met Robert, the man who would become the love of his life. Together, they shared a love story filled with devotion, joy, and laughter that spanned decades.

In 1986, Lee, Robert and their two beloved dogs, Killer and Princess, moved to their “temporary” home in Eureka while planning to build their dream house. Although that house never came to be, they created something far greater — a home filled with love, friendship and lasting memories.

Lee’s diverse talents and interests were reflected in his life. He loved cars, co-owned an appliance store with his brother, and ran his own gardening service. Anyone lucky enough to attend one of his tea parties could witness his passion for gardening firsthand. He loved taking long walks, working out in his home gym and playing Pinochle. Lee and Robert’s annual Christmas Open House was a hallmark of their life together, with elaborate decorations and joyful celebrations for over a decade.

Around 1993, Lee began working at Etter’s Victorian Glass, specializing in picture framing. For approximately 22 years, he worked alongside Bill Etter, enjoying every moment of crafting art for his community. After Bill’s passing, Lee purchased the frame shop and continued to nurture its legacy until his last days.

A man of deep commitment to his loved ones, Lee experienced one of his happiest moments on October 13, 2013, when he and Robert exchanged vows in front of their closest friends — a day that will forever remain etched in their hearts.

Beyond his personal passions, Lee was devoted to his community. He was actively involved in the Masonic fraternity and proudly served as Master of Ferndale Lodge #193 F&AM. He held many offices in the Order of the Eastern Star, serving as Worthy Patron in both Ferndale Chapter #23 and Camellia-Star #63. Lee also belonged to the Northern Valley of Scottish Rite Masons, was a dedicated leader in the Order of the DeMolay and served as Rainbow Dad in Humboldt Assembly #216 International Order of Rainbow for Girls.

Through these organizations, Lee was honored with many accolades, including the prestigious Hiram Award (Freemasons), the Service Award (Order of the Eastern Star), Knight Commander of the Court of Honor (Scottish Rite Masons) and the Degree of Chevalier (Order of the DeMolay). Lee’s life exemplified service to others—he was known for his honesty, fairness, kindness and commitment to his community.

Lee was also active in the town of Ferndale, his church and with hospice care. A dedicated volunteer, he cherished his role as a docent at the Ferndale Museum, sharing his love for the town’s rich history.

Preceded in death by his father Lawrence Astorino, his mother Patricia (Jellison) Astorino, his brother Michael Astorino and his husband Robert Schorer, Lee is survived by a few cousins, beloved in-laws, nieces and nephews, and countless friends who were, in every sense, his family.

A celebration of Lee’s extraordinary life will be held Sunday, September 29 at 2:00 PM at the Ferndale Veterans Memorial Building in Ferndale, CA. Please join us in celebrating this extraordinary man. In lieu of flowers, please consider donating to the Ferndale Museum in remembrance of Lee.

Lee Earnest Astorino will be truly missed by all who had the honor of knowing him, but his spirit of kindness, love and unwavering dedication to others will live on forever in our hearts.

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