Coastal View News • April 11, 2024

Fuel Her Fire raises funds, awareness for Girls Inc.

Persoon will be new middle school principal

Look, up in the sky!

Stout home is “Lookin’ Good”

Above, Rick Olmstead was awarded the 2023 Carpinterian of the Year honor during the Community Awards Banquet, held on Saturday, April 6; at left, high school senior Lizbeth Alpizar Farfan took home the title of 2023 Junior Carpinterian of the Year and a $10,000 scholarship for college. The

Carpinteria’s Architectural Review Board will review a mixed-use project proposed for the Lagunitas area at 6380 Via Real during its Thursday, April 11 meeting. Story poles for the project – which comes to the city via RPG Carpinteria, LLC – went up last month at the 8.63-acre property.

The proposed project would include a 159-unit apartment complex, a 2,224 square-foot market/café, a 3,820 square-foot R&D office space and a separate 2,889 square-foot R&D office space and 301 parking spaces, with 196 on the surface and 105 underground. The property is zoned industrial/park research, according to city staff documents.

The meeting is scheduled to start at 5:30 p.m. at Carpinteria City Hall, 5775 Carpinteria Ave. See the full agenda online at bit.ly/CarpinteriaCityMeetings. ––Evelyn Spence

The project proposed for 6380 Via Real includes a 159-unit apartment complex, R&D office space, a market/café and underground parking spots.

The project’s Building 1, as seen from Via Real looking north.

BRIEFLY

COMPILED BY EVELYN SPENCE, JUN STARKEY AND JENNA DAHLIN

New assistant city manager hired

The city of Carpinteria’s new assistant city manager is Ryan Kintz, city staff announced this week; he is scheduled to start on April 29.

Kintz – who has a master’s degree from the UC Santa Barbara (UCSB) Bren School of Environmental Science and Management, and two bachelor’s degrees from UCSB in environmental studies and physical geography – has worked as the assistant to the city manager for the city of Goleta for the past four years.

He also previously worked with the city of Ventura for seven years in several roles, including environmental specialist, management analyst and interim code enforcement manager, according to Teresa Illasin with the city of Carpinteria’s Human Resources.

Illasin said Kintz played a pivotal role in helping Goleta create its Five-Year Strategic Plan, and in helping the city develop a recent sales tax measure.

Carpinteria City Manager Michael Ramirez, who previously worked as Carpinteria’s assistant city manager before his promotion to city manager in December, said in a press release that Kintz’s “prior municipal experience and unique skill set align strongly with the goals and priorities of our city council.”

We’re excited to add Ryan’s fresh perspective and positive energy to our team,” he added. “His selection reinforces our city’s commitment to excellence in governance and service delivery.”

Goleta City Manager Robert Nisbet – a former city of Carpinteria employee – said in a press release that he is happy for Kintz, and confident he will “have a positive impact in Carpinteria.”

“Ryan’s hire is an exemplary demonstration of the region’s commitment to fostering the growth of our community’s future leaders. As a former city of Carpinteria employee myself, I am particularly proud to see the hire of talented individuals like Ryan to contribute to the advancement of Carpinteria,” he said.

“Central Coast cities serve as breeding grounds for cultivating talent, and Ryan’s appointment underscores our shared dedication to nurturing and supporting that talent and keeping that talent in the region.”

YouthWell opens applications for internship

YouthWell, a nonprofit organization dedicated to mental health awareness and advocacy, has opened applications for an internship on its Youth Advisory Board (YAB) for the 2024-25 school year; applications are open to all ninth through 12th grade students in Santa Barbara County.

The YAB program teaches students about mental health while encouraging mental health leadership development, and community advocacy. This year’s program will begin with a mandatory orientation in May 2024, and programming will run from August 2024 to May 2025. Students will be expected to commit eight to 10 hours per month to YAB responsibilities, including local meetings, county-wide meetings and advocacy campaigns on their campus. Program interns will also help plan the annual Student Advocacy & Mental Wellness Summit.

Applications are due by May 1, and can be submitted through the YouthWell website at youthwell.org/youth-advisory-board. For more information, contact yab@youthwell.org.

Water heater informational webinars: April 11,

17

Carpinteria residents could quality for $4k worth of incentives

The Tri County Regional Energy Network (3C-REN) – an energy partnership between San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara and Ventura counties – will host two online webinars this month to educate residents about heat pump water heaters, which are more efficient and eco-friendlier than gas heaters, according to a press release from 3C-REN.

The English webinar is scheduled for April 11 at noon, and the Spanish webinar for April 17 at 6 p.m. Access the webinars online at bit.ly/3C-REN-Webinar.

According to 3C-REN, most Carpinteria residents can access $4,000 worth of incentives for heat pump water heaters, funded through 3C-REN’s Home Energy Savings Program and TECH Clean California.

Residents who don’t speak English as their first language, who qualify for discounted utilities or who live in mobile homes can qualify for entirely free systems. Proof of citizenship is not required to use the incentives.

The April 11 and April 17 panels – which will include water heater experts and homeowners – will address common questions about heat pump water heaters and whether they are suitable for Carpinteria residents’ homes.

Residents unable to attend the webinars can call 3C-REN at (805) 881-3877 or con- Ryan Kintz

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April’s Lookin’ Good Award goes to Stout home

Carpinteria Beautiful’s April Lookin’ Good Award goes to Lorie Stout, who, about eight years ago, transformed her front lawn on Calle Arena into a drought tolerant garden. Stout told CVN the move to a drought tolerant garden was the water-wise thing to do; her yard was designed by her friend, Sam Maphis of Earthform Design.

Proud Sponsor of the Lynda Fairly Carpinteria Arts Center 2024 Summer Concert Series

“There was nothing special about the yard and this new design really gave it some personality,” she said. “Over the last eight years I’ve taken some things out and rearranged some of the plantings, but it has the bones of the original design.”

Stout taught at Carpinteria High School for 30 years as the pottery teacher before retiring in 2016, and told CVN that she continues working on her artwork. She described working in her yard as “almost like painting in a way.”

“It’s a really fun yard to come home to,” she added.

––Evelyn Spence

Persoon to take over as middle school principal

Current Principal Lisa O’Shea has resigned from the district, effective June 30

BY JUN STARKEY

Jamie Persoon will take over as the principal of Carpinteria Middle School (CMS) in July of this year, Carpinteria Unified School District (CUSD) Superintendent Diana Rigby announced last week. The district is currently searching for a replacement for Persoon at Canalino Elementary and Carpinteria Family School (CFS).

“Dr. Persoon is well known in our community as a highly effective school leader and she demonstrates the skills and professional qualities that match the needs at CMS,” Rigby told CVN.

Persoon, a lifelong Carpinterian, has been at Canalino Elementary School and CFS for 25 years, the past 11 spent serving as principal. She began her time at Canalino and CFS in 1999 as a first-grade teacher. Before Canalino and CFS, Persoon said she spent three years at Aliso Elementary School; she began teaching in the same classroom that she spent her own first grade in, and her first grade teacher – Janet Johnson – assisted Persoon during that first year.

Persoon would go on to merge the Spanish and English-speaking students, along with her colleague Caryn Parker, to create a multilingual classroom of 40 students. She would teach first, second, fourth and fifth grades before becoming principal.

She told CVN that leaving her longtime school is bittersweet, though she is excited to be reunited with some of her students at CMS that passed through Canalino.

“(Canalino and CFS) has a wonderful staff and wonderful families,” she said.

Lisa O’Shea, the current principal of CMS, resigned from the district in March, which will be effective on June 30. She has been the principal of the middle school for the past six years, and she told CVN that working at CMS has been a highlight of her more than 35 years in public education.

“Through calm, compassionate and consistent leadership, CMS has been transformed to a school where a culture of caring and acceptance is valued and expected,” O’Shea told CVN. “(CMS) and the community of Carpinteria will always hold a special place in my heart, and I am grateful for the time I have been able to spend here!”

Superintendent Rigby also commend-

ed O’Shea, and expressed gratitude for her work at CMS. “Her focus on students and their wellbeing has resulted in positive changes at CMS – the school culture has become more positive with school-wide celebrations, positive restorative approaches to discipline and implementation of social-emotional curriculum,” Rigby told CVN. “Principal O’Shea has transformed the learning environment in CMS, and we are grateful for her leadership.”

Persoon’s own kids have gone through Carpinteria’s public schools, including CMS. Persoon said she has become familiar with many of the teachers at the middle school. “The benefit of a small town is you know most people,” she told CVN.

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Following her transition to CMS, Persoon said she plans to establish some priorities, including ensuring parents have access to the school, and implementing clear expectations for behavior. A panel will be held soon to confer with teachers and parents, Persoon said.

Despite the bittersweet departure, Persoon said she knows Canalino and CFS will continue to thrive. “I am confident that the students and staff will continue to thrive, create and innovate to ensure that the students are academically successful, feel included and engaged and have strong relationships,” Persoon said in a message to Canalino and CFS families.

Women at the Table

COURTESY PHOTO

Jamie Persoon, current principal of Canalino Elementary and Carpinteria Family School, will take over as principal of Carpinteria Middle School in July 2024.

KARLSSON

Carpinteria Vice Mayor Natalia Alarcon, left, speaks to attendees during the Women at the Table event on March 27 at the Carpinteria Woman’s Club; Alarcon, alongside, from left, Girls Inc. Executive

Director Jamie Collins, CUSD School board President Jaime Diamond and Councilmember Mónica Solórzano – moderated by Marybeth Carty – spoke about leadership, women’s issue and community building during the Wednesday night event.

Obituaries

01/20/1960 – 02/26/2024

Carrie Frances Bonior Edwards, 64, passed away in her Edmonds, Washington home on Feb. 26, 2024, after a twoyear battle with ovarian cancer.

Carrie was born on Jan. 20, 1960, in Chicago, Illinois to Caroline Gunderson and Eugene Bonior. Her family moved to Carpinteria in 1962 when she was two years old. There she attended Saint Joseph Church, Our Lady of Mount Carmel and Carpinteria High School.

Growing up, she was involved in many extracurriculars. She was a Girl Scout Brownie, a majorette, a junior lifeguard and was very athletic. In high school, she worked at her father’s restaurant, Gene’os Kitchen on Coast Village Road in Montecito.

After graduating early from Carpinteria High School, she received her associate degree and became a court reporter. In the fall of 1981, she moved to Seattle, Washington. There, she continued her court reporting career and traveled all over the country for depositions.

Carrie raised two children and eventually retired from court reporting to be a full-time mom after her youngest was born in 1998.

Carrie enjoyed live music, traveling and cruises, Dodgers baseball, riding her bike, walking her dog, tending her flowers in the summertime and catching up with friends.

She is survived by her husband Mark Edwards, her children Samantha and Scott Edwards and her brother Thomas Bonior.

A private celebration of life will be held at the Edmonds Yacht Club on May 16, 2024. Her ashes will be spread at several of her favorite locations.

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St. Jude

Oh Holy St. Jude, apostle and Martyr, great in virtue and rich in Miracles, near kinsman of Jesus Christ, faithful special patron in time of need, to you do I have recourse from the depth of my heart and humbly beg you to whom God has given such great powers, to come to my assistance. Help me in my present urgent petition. In return I promise to make your name known and cause you to be invoked. Pray for us all who invoke your aid. Amen Say three Our Fathers, three Hail Marys, three Glorias.

This Novena must be said for 9 consecutive days. This Novena has never been known to fail.

Marta Sprigg

08/26/1952 – 04/04/2024

Beloved mother, wife, sister-in-law, auntie, loyal to the core friend and allaround badass Carp legend left this world just as anyone who knew her would expect: on her own terms.

She was born in East Liverpool, Ohio to Robert Sr. and Martha Campbell; the family made their way to California via Orange County when she was six. They later moved to Santa Monica, where she graduated from Samohi in 1970. Soon after she met the love of her life, Jim Sprigg, while working at McDonnell Douglas Aerospace. In 1973 they moved to Carpinteria; the following year, they went down to a judge’s house and got hitched.

Marta and Jim were the perfect pair and spent 28 beautiful years together. They welcomed two daughters, Jennifer and Jessica. They played softball and golf, and spent many, many days at the beach.

When Jim passed suddenly in 2003, she was a pillar of strength despite her broken heart. In the year following his passing she valiantly cared for her ailing mother and comforted her daughters.

Both girls inherited her feisty demeanor, twisted sense of humor, long legs and deep love of music. Some of their fondest memories are of the many concerts they attended together such as Tom Petty, Steely Dan, Buffalo Springfield, Jackson Browne, Stevie Nicks, Bonnie Raitt, Bob Dylan, Heart and many, many more.

Over the years she worked at such local institutions as Ralph’s Market, Jostens and Pacific Beverage Company, where she made many lifelong friends and lasting connections. After retiring from PBC in 2017 every day became Saturday, and she spent her days doing whatever the hell she wanted – which usually included many adventures with her best friend Peggy Clarke.

While her absence will be a huge hole in our lives and the world will never be the same, we take comfort in the belief that she has been reunited with her one true love. Rest easy, Mommy. You won’t ever have to go bra shopping again or worry about the nightmare possibility of another Trump presidency. We will aspire to live life with the same strength, integrity, wit and charm that you did.

The girls would like to thank everyone who has supported and loved them through this brutal experience. In lieu of flowers, please consider a donation to HELP of Carpinteria, or at least just don’t vote Republican this November; she may haunt you for it.

A celebration of life will be held at a later date. Please contact Jenny or Jessie for information at jennysprigg@yahoo.com.

Spring open houses scheduled for April, May

Carpinteria Unified School District (CUSD) will hold several open houses during the end of April and beginning of May, which families are invited to attend.

The spring open houses include Aliso Elementary School, which will hold its open house on April 18, 5:30–6:30 p.m.; Carpinteria Middle School on April 25, 5:30–6:30 p.m.; Summerland School on April 29, 5:30–6:30 p.m.; Carpinteria High School on May 22, 5:30–7 p.m.; and Canalino and Carpinteria Family School on May 23, 6–7 p.m.

Appreciation

I would like to recognize the human resources team, Diana Zapata and Sandra Alonzo, and the site interview teams led by the principals, for their remarkable efforts in recruiting and hiring new staff for the 2024-25 school year.

Mental health

For the past three years at Carpinteria High School (CHS) and Carpinteria Middle School (CMS) students have been taught about mental health and how to seek help if they were worried about themselves or a friend using the Signs of Suicide (SOS) program. This program has been used by many schools for more than 20 years, and studies have shown that it effectively informs students about depression and suicide while reducing the number of students’ self-reported suicide attempts.

CHS/CMS will also implement a screening titled my Social, Academic, and Emotional Behavior Risk Screener (mySAEBERS), which is a brief norm-referenced tool for screening all students to identify those who are at risk for social-emotional behavior problems. The mySAEBERS tool is one of the only universal screening tools used to assess both the absence of problem behaviors and symptomatology and the presence of well-being and competencies. School counseling and mental health staff will provide any follow-up support needed by students.

Solar eclipse 2024

Carpinteria Unified School District (CUSD) provided solar eclipse glasses

for all students to observe the eclipse on Monday morning. CHS conducted a solar eclipse viewing party with a brief lesson prior to viewing the eclipse on proper safety procedures and why solar eclipses occur. ASB planned some fun activities around the solar eclipse, encouraging students and staff to wear their favorite space gear, with suns, stars, NASA emblems, etc. to celebrate space science!

COVID funding and layoffs

CUSD began receiving one-time Covid-19 funding allocations from both the state and federal government in March 2020 to address and mitigate the effects of both the learning environment as well as sanitization and safety needs resulting from the pandemic. Along with the immediate needs, Chromebooks, sanitization and cleaning supplies and equipment, etc., the district also began adding both certificated and classified support staff to address not only learning loss, but also preparing for a safe return to school.

By the end of the 2021-22 school year, the district added a total of 33.805 FTE, or 38 support staff. As the 2022-23 school year began, the district began to communicate the expiration of these funds by June 2024 and placing those in Covid-19 funded positions into the general fund as vacancies opened. By the end of the 2022-23 year, 15.55 FTE, or 17 employees, remained in Covid-19 funding.

Moving into the current school year, 2023-24 – the final year of available funds – the district began to either absorb these positions into the general fund, or not fill the Covid-19 funded positions as they became vacant. In February, the board approved Resolution No. 94-921 to lay off a total of 5.0 FTE. To date, the district has placed three of those into general fund open positions, leaving only 2.0 FTE to be laid off from the original 33.805 FTE Covid-19-funded positions.

Rotary Talent Showcase

On April 20, at the Alcazar Theatre, the Rotary Club of Carpinteria will produce its annual variety show with proceeds supporting the CUSD music program. We appreciate the club’s generosity in sponsoring the Arts, Music and Theater programs in our schools.

Measure U

The Canalino Learning Center GMP is on the April 9 CUSD board agenda, with the next steps initiating the lease-leaseback contracts with McGillivray this week. Temporary fencing will be installed the week of April 22 with the start of construction beginning the last week of April. Project completion is scheduled for November 2024. The Aliso Elementary School TK/K classroom building remains in the design phase with the architect, Robert Robles, currently working with the Coastal Commission permitting process.

Diana Rigby is the superintendent of Carpinteria Unified School District. For more information about CUSD, log on to cusd.net, or contact Diana at drigby@cusd.net or (805) 684-4511x222.

In CVN Vol. 30, No.

Carrie Edwards

Big item at upcoming meeting

Please attend this Architectural Review Board meeting on April 11 at Carpinteria City Hall, at 5:30 p.m. Developers want to build 159 units on 8.6 acres. Very, very high density! Don’t let the state or city destroy Carpinteria.

Connie Thompson Carpinteria

Praise for Carpinteria Children’s Project

I loved seeing the photos of the Carpinteria Children’s Project (CCP) “All in For Carp Kids” event in the CVN (CVN Vol. 30, No. 27). Thank you. CCP doesn’t get enough attention for offering the community a high-quality, inclusive preschool. It brings children together from every walk of life and really emphasizes social-emotional development in its age-appropriate dual language setting.

My young children – ages two and four years old – often come home with smiles on their faces, feeling proud and acting more mature for having just spent a day at school. (Big kids!) Their lead teachers have both worked in Early Childhood Development at CCP for 10 years, stability that is noticeable and increasingly rare. Early childhood is such an important age for preparing children for future successes and adapting to new environments.

I am really encouraged by the use of dual language at CCP to break down stereotypes and create more connections. Students at CCP learn from an early age that differences based on language and race are celebrated. As an Asian American, I appreciate the progress inclusive schools represent in communities like ours.

As a parent, it is heartwarming to experience how CCP engages and supports the individual student and the community. We participate in community events that CCP coordinates in partnership with other organizations – Posada, Dia de los Muertos, Christmas parade and the health fair – and because of that our children have a deeper connection to the broader community. The lead teachers, assistant teachers, aids, and staff all help my children feel seen, and they provide consistent guidance to help them develop their social and emotional skills.

I feel truly supported by our preschool. Seeing the broad community’s attendance and fundraising support of the “All in For Carp Kids” event only speaks to Carpinteria Children’s Project’s dedication to our community and collaborative spirit.

Libby Lok Carpinteria

Protect Carpinteria’s culture

Thanks again to the Carpinteria City Council for doing the right thing in keeping live music alive and well in Carpinteria.

Now that we’re a few weeks out from that meeting, I have two thoughts: First, in response to Eileen Marcussen (CVN Vol. 30 No. 29), Carpinteria is not an “idyllic retirement haven,” and to expect

“I am really encouraged by the use of dual language at CCP to break down stereotypes and create more connections. Students at CCP learn from an early age that differences based on language and race are celebrated.”

–– Libby Lok

hood: sometimes arriving late, having parties, playing music, etc. It’s like if you rented or bought a beachside property in Venice Beach and then complained that there were too many people making noise on the boardwalk morning, noon and night.

It’s the nature of a beach neighborhood that’s directly connected to a town to overhear the lively goings on of the town. There are often festivals in the field by the beach and festivals on Linden Avenue during the year. They all generate music, and you’ll hear it if you’re in the beach neighborhood.

If you want to live full-time or parttime in a quiet neighborhood… you choose a normal neighborhood like Concha Loma or across the freeway.

Carpinteria or any of its neighborhoods to be so, is in my opinion reductive to the point of patronizing.

Carpinteria is a city, with a vibrant culture, diverse citizens, prominent local businesses, and a burgeoning downtown. People come here to shop, eat and drink, sightsee, in some cases protest, the list goes on. Downtown Carpinteria and known community gathering spots like Island Brewing Company are places where society converges. None of those activities mentioned are by nature “quiet.”

Having lived less than 1,000 feet from State Street in my recent lifetime, I can attest to the notion that, if someone values peace and quiet in their home as a priority, they shouldn’t buy or rent a house less than 750 feet from a downtown area (and if they must, they should at least invest in headphones). To not expect that trade-off is in my opinion irresponsible.

Second, I wanted to see what Carpinteria’s municipal code says about preventing frivolous complaints by neighbors to the city. I was surprised to find that neither Carpinteria, nor Santa Barbara County, nor the state of California have anything in their books specifically preventing people using municipal resources to intimidate and harass neighbors. That ultimately leads to wasted tax dollars. It was even stated by the council how IBC had been unfairly targeted during this saga.

Unfortunately such harassment is not limited to Island Brewing Company, and the city council should do something to address this potential trend before other people are victimized.

William Breman Santa Barbara

Noise levels in Carpinteria

In response to the ongoing letters and public comments regarding noise levels affecting the beach neighborhood, particularly the music from Island Brewing Company (IBC), I would like to add my two cents. When I purchased my property in the beach neighborhood in 1998, I was already aware of the sounds of “vacationland.”

I had rented at Sunset Shores previously, so it was no surprise to me that you hear all kinds of noise when you’re living on the beachside of the tracks.

And over the many years, I got used to hearing that noise. Heck, there’s even a long freight train that barrels down the tracks late at night!

For the most part, people are on vacation when they’re in the beach neighbor-

Moreover, I am always moved to see the joy on people’s faces at IBC when they’re enjoying live music. They unwind, kick-back and enjoy the feelings only live music can give them… they may even sing along or dance! So, a big thanks to city officials, IBC and its supporters for keeping live music a part of Carpinteria!

Rick Sharp Carpinteria

What’s new at the harbor seal rookery?

This report covers April 1 – 7, 2024

CVN’s Seal Watch weekly report, written by Seal Watch volunteers, covers activities at the Harbor Seal Rookery. The group can be reached at carpsealwatch@ gmail.com or at (805) 364-3194. The rookery is located immediately east of Casitas Pier, between Carpinteria Bluffs Nature Preserve and Carpinteria State Beach.

NATURAL HISTORY NOTES

The majority of seal pups are born mid-February to mid-March, some as early as December and others as late as May. Mom has one pup which she will nurse for four-six weeks.

Now, it is difficult to tell adults from pups. The pups have gotten plump on very rich milk, with many still nursing, but almost as big as mom. When mom begins to wean, the pups will cry, “Maa Maa,” but have been taught to find food for themselves, and how to swim. They will be on their own soon, as mating season is coming.

VISITORS

Over 1,434 visitors were recorded. Volunteers talked with spring break visitors from Germany, Mexico, France, Denmark, Spain, Ukraine, California, New York, Washington, Tennessee, Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota, South Carolina, Utah, Indiana, Massachusetts, Arizona, Texas, Nevada, Idaho, Kansas, Montana, Mississippi, North Dakota, New Mexico, Delaware and Florida.

DISTURBANCES

Rocket launch boom from Vandenberg flushed out all seals from rookery, but most returned within minutes.

Please consider honoring the Marine Mammal Protection Act and not walking the seal sanctuary beach all year. Do not bring dogs, bicycles or loud voices to view the seals. Harbor seals, when disturbed, may flee and become separated from their pups. Volunteers ask that dogs always remain outside the rope area.

Carpinteria Seal Watchers do some monitoring of our local seals year-round; we would like to increase visitor services and data collection year-round, but more volunteers are always needed. Contact Seal Watch at carpsealwatch@gmail.com or at (805) 364-3194 if you’d like to help!

SUSIE CLOTHIER

How Roy Lee beat Das Williams 2-1 in their hometown, and what it could mean for cannabis

BY MELINDA BURNS

On March 5 election day, First District County Supervisor Das Williams lost every precinct in the city of Carpinteria to his challenger, City Councilmember Roy Lee, garnering only 33% of the vote in the town they both call home.

By contrast, in the 2020 race to keep his seat, running against Laura Capps, then-president of the Santa Barbara Unified School District board, Williams won every precinct and 56% of the vote in the city of Carpinteria.

The city’s 2-1 flip for Lee this year gave him a decisive boost of 3,497 votes toward his narrow win district-wide, final election results show. Lee won the district by only 565 votes, garnering 12,745, or 51% of the total, to Williams’ 12,180, or 49%. (Besides Carpinteria, the First District includes the eastern portion of Santa Barbara; and unincorporated Summerland, Montecito and Cuyama and Carpinteria valleys.)

As an architect of the county’s 2018 cannabis ordinance, Williams paved the way for the conversion of 33 flower greenhouse operations on unincorporated land ringing the urban boundary of Carpinteria to cannabis. To date, 170 acres of pot – about 129 football fields’ worth – have been approved for zoning permits just beyond the city limits. Of these, 116 acres are under cultivation, all in greenhouses with open roof vents that release the “skunky” smell of pot into the outside air.

“It’s like a black eye,” Lee said during a recent interview at the Uncle Chen Restaurant at 1025 Casitas Pass Road, where he is a chef and co-owner. “Carpinteria is known for our strong community values, our hospitality, our beaches, our mountains, our avocados and lemons. Now it’s ‘the land of weed,’ and we’re known for the highest density of cannabis ‘grows’ in the state, if not the country. How did that happen? It happened so fast, we were blindsided. Nobody from the council ever supported this.”

Many Carpinteria Valley residents view what’s been dubbed the “cannabis industrial complex” as a menace to their health and quality of life. Since mid-2018, records show they have filed 3,687 odor complaints with the county, including 71 this year. The stench of pot, they say, has caused them to suffer headaches, sore throats and respiratory problems.

But in a recent interview, Williams claimed cannabis didn’t have much to do with his defeat at the polls. Issue No. 1, he said, was Lee’s popularity; No. 2 was his own support for affordable housing.

“Cannabis didn’t come up a whole lot,” going door-to-door during the campaign, Williams said. “People who were incensed about it were incensed about it, but that was not the dominant dynamic by any stretch of the imagination, though it contributed to who gave money to Roy. There are vastly more people in Carpinteria who are worried about how housing shapes our little town than are concerned about cannabis.”

But Concerned Carpinterians, a loosely knit group with an email list of 350 people; and the Santa Barbara Coalition for Responsible Cannabis, a countywide group of 200 people, have been seeking stronger odor control for the cannabis

The county has approved zoning permits for 33 cannabis greenhouse operations around the city of Carpinteria, shown here as red and orange dots. Ten operations are still awaiting county business licenses.

industry since 2018. And so has the Carpinteria City Council with Lee on board, and many residents of The Polo Condos, Padaro Lane, La Mirada Drive, Sandy Cove, Shepard Mesa, Cate School and other neighborhoods.

“We didn’t think that Roy could win, but the groundswell from Carpinteria was the engine for it all,” said Ann Louise Bardach, a national journalist and a backer of Concerned Carpinterians. “Das can say what he wants to say, but the cannabis movement set the momentum. Everybody knows this. It was a political earthquake, a political miracle and hope against hope; and I give all of us a lot of credit. We made a lot of noise for six years.”

Williams said he’s tried and will keep trying to clear the air.

“I wish I was able to effect change more rapidly on cannabis,” he said. “I was always trying to do the right thing, even if it was more unpopular, but I think I should have been more inclusive in the deliberation of how to get to the right thing.”

As for his lackluster showing in town, Williams said, “Roy’s popularity in Carpinteria really helped him. I get that. He’s lived here longer than me. There were a lot of people who were potentially normally Das voters but still supported Roy because of those relationships. Lots of people who liked both of us had a hard time choosing. Walking doors, I still got a lot of positivity.”

Williams said his support for building more rental housing in Carpinteria for working people hurt him at the polls, too.

“People want young people to be able to live there, but they’re afraid of losing some of the charm,” he said, adding that he has always sought to tell his constituents what they need to hear, not what they want to hear. “I really think there are some things that need to be discussed truthfully. We have an inconsistency between the things we want and how we get there.”

Finally, Williams blamed low turnout for his defeat, noting that it was only 47% district-wide on March 5, compared to 65% in 2020. According to a statement from Williams’ office, this year’s turnout in Carpinteria was down by 15 points, and “preliminary data shows that the drop-off appears even larger among un-

der-45-year-old voters, Democrats and Hispanic/Latino voters.”

“There’s many authors of any campaign victory, but the biggest issue is turnout,” Williams said. “I hope people walk away from this knowing that it shows clearly how important it is to vote in a local election.”

“A boatload of yard signs”

Lee, a Taiwanese immigrant who has been a Carpinteria councilmember for the past six years, will not take office as county supervisor until Jan. 1, 2025. He was such a long shot to beat Williams, a politician with 20 years of experience in local and state government, that some Carpinterians figured they were playing the lottery when they cast their votes for him on March 5.

Yard signs were the first indication that Lee might pull it off, said Wade Cowper, Lee’s campaign manager and a longtime communications consultant for the Coalition for Responsible Cannabis.

“It was pretty apparent, early on, that we were going to be running up the score in Carpinteria rather than changing minds,” he said. “You could tell, driving around Carpinteria, that we had a boatload of yard signs – like, 10 to one for Lee is an understatement, by far.”

Back in 2018, residents such as Bardach were hiring exterminators to look for skunks under their homes – until it dawned on them where the stench was coming from. Outraged cannabis critics began packing into board hearing rooms and flooding the board with letters. Furious about a cluster of cannabis “grows” around the high school, they asked the U.S. Attorney’s office in Los Angeles to investigate (there was no response). In the 2020 elections, they backed Capps for su-

pervisor, but she failed to unseat Williams.

To date, the coalition has spent more than $1 million appealing cannabis projects (and losing); signing an odor control pact with growers (it fell through); suing the county (and losing); and filing two lawsuits against Carpinteria Valley growers (one was settled, and one is pending).

From the dais, Williams would occasionally upbraid his Carpinteria critics. He told them he was “enormously jaded” by their actions. He said they had “gotten angrier the more we tried to accommodate them.” He lectured them on “the moral bankruptcy of NIMBYism.”

“We voted for Roy because he will be a better listener,” said Anna Carrillo, a retired teacher who keeps close tabs on cannabis permits as a coalition member and a board member of Concerned Carpinterians.

No going back

Most growers in the valley have installed piping systems that set up a curtain of mist around the greenhouses to neutralize the smell of pot after it escapes outside. But the “skunky” smell persists in a number of hot spots around the valley, from the foothills to the beach, and the “laundromat” smell of the mist can be just as bad, residents say.

A key part of Lee’s campaign in Carpinteria was his support for the installation of state-of-the art filters, called carbon “scrubbers,” in every valley greenhouse, and a complete phase-out of the misting systems. A scrubber developed for the valley by the Envinity Group, a Dutch air purification firm, was shown 15 months ago to eliminate 84% of the

ELECTION

continued on page 9

COURTESY GRAPHIC

COURTESY PHOTOS

Roy Lee, left, won the District 1 seat on the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors last month, unseating incumbent Das Williams; both are Carpinterians.

continued from page 8

smell of cannabis before it escapes from the greenhouse roof vents and into the outside air.

The owners of Ever-Bloom, 11 acres of cannabis greenhouses at 4701 Foothill Road, installed 110 Envinity scrubbers in 2022 for about $2.2 million to settle a coalition lawsuit. But Williams has long opposed any requirements for scrubbers across the board, insisting he can get faster results by persuading growers to do the right thing.

Santa Barbara County is second only to Humboldt County for the number of active state licenses for cannabis cultivation – 710 compared to 1,207. And Santa Barbara County has approved 1,966 acres for cultivation to date: 170 acres in Carpinteria Valley greenhouses and 1,797 acres in outdoor grows, chiefly in the North County. (The outdoor grows are capped at 1,575 acres.)

So, no one is talking about turning back the clock on the industry here.

“The horse is out of the barn,” said Jill Stassinos, a teacher, a Concerned Carpinterians board member and an appellant on several cannabis projects. She said she went door-to-door for Lee, phoned eligible voters on his behalf and donated to his campaign.

“There’s no way they could go back, but they could remedy the ordinance they put in place,” Stassinos said. “We all felt Roy was a long shot and were so thrilled he won. It was like a beacon of hope. Roy unified people.”

“The solution is there”

In 2020, the Santa Barbara County Grand Jury concluded that the board “simply opened the floodgates” to the industry, with “some supervisors aggressively pushing their own agendas.”

But Williams stands by the cannabis ordinance, calling it “very strong in terms of accountability and standards on growers.” He notes that it is more expensive for growers to comply with standards here than elsewhere in the state. For example, greenhouse operators in this county must submit “odor abatement plans” as part of their permit applications.

“Mandatory odor control is a totally new thing, and Carpinteria is the only place that got it,” Williams said.

Even without Williams’ vote, the board could tighten odor control regulations before Lee takes office next Jan. 1.

Late last year, Supervisor Bob Nelson, who represents the Fourth District in Orcutt, Los Alamos, Vandenberg Village, Mission Hills and eastern portions of Santa Maria, requested a board hearing on the matter, saying a “shift to best available control technology” was needed.

That hearing is now scheduled for April 23. County officials will present information on the findings of Geosyntec Consultants, an engineering firm that has been inspecting misting systems at cannabis operations in the valley; and county planners, who have been using Nasal Rangers, an odor detection technology, to survey hot spots throughout the valley.

Supervisor Laura Capps, who was elected in the Second District in 2022, representing the eastern Goleta Valley, Isla Vista, UC Santa Barbara and portions of Goleta and Santa Barbara, says Carpinteria Valley growers who are creating an odor problem should be required to install scrubbers.

“I believe the Coastal Commission will be a motivated partner in fixing our ordinance,” she said this month. “I’m looking forward to a new chapter … one that is less divisive and more conducive to how we can all live together.”

Supervisor Joan Hartmann, who was re-elected on March 5 in the Third District, representing the Santa Ynez Valley, Lompoc, western Goleta and the Gaviota Coast, has said she supports banning any detectable odor beyond the property lines

at both Carpinteria Valley greenhouses and outdoor North County operations.

Currently, the county requires growers only to “prevent odors from being experienced within residential zones,” which leaves out parks, schools, roads and farms and has been difficult to enforce.

But at $22,000 each and a recommended density of 10 per acre, Envinity scrubbers are expensive. To date, only five of 20 active greenhouse operations in the Carpinteria Valley are fully equipped with them, county records show. Another six are slated to install them this year. But that leaves no requirement for scrubbers in two-thirds of the 170 acres of greenhouse cannabis approved by the county so far.

“We thought the board would immediately institute them, but they just kind of shrugged,” said Lionel Neff, a retired attorney, coalition director and a donor to Lee’s campaign. “The solution is there. It’s accessible, and yet the county doesn’t support it yet.”

Meanwhile, Ever-Bloom is in the final stages of testing an odor sensor developed by Envinity for permanent use inside valley greenhouses. Such a technology, providing detailed, time-based data, would be a breakthrough: it could help county inspectors identify which cannabis operations are responsible for the smell of pot in surrounding neighborhoods – a goal that so far has largely eluded them. The sensor is expected to be on the market this summer.

“That’s the kind of thing I want to see,” Williams said. “That’s very exciting.”

“Hard for Roy”

Besides scrubbers in every greenhouse, Lee’s supporters would like the board to require stricter zoning permits called “conditional use permits” for all new cannabis operations in the valley. For years, the city, Concerned Carpinterians and the coalition tried but failed to persuade the board to require these permits, which they believed could have limited the size, concentration and proximity of the greenhouse “grows.”

Under a conditional use permit, which automatically requires a county Planning Commission hearing, a project must be “compatible with” and “not detrimental to” the surrounding neighborhood.

In addition, Lee’s supporters want the board to ban detectable odors beyond greenhouse property lines; enforce odor regulations; install cannabis sensors around the high school; stop renewing the annual business licenses of growers whose greenhouses are a focus of odor complaints; reduce the overall acreage in valley cannabis through attrition or other means; and implement a complaint system that puts the burden on growers, not residents, to monitor the smell of pot.

“Those demands are going to be really hard for Roy to execute,” Williams said. Williams believes it would be a “bad idea” to require scrubbers in all greenhouse operations because better technologies could emerge in the future: “No

serious environmental law is drafted tying yourself to a status quo technology, even if it’s cutting edge.”

Besides, he says, any amendment to the cannabis ordinance to require scrubbers would have to be approved by the state Coastal Commission, a process that could take two years.

At his request, Williams said, Graham Farrar, owner of the Glass House Farms at 5601 Casitas Pass Road – three acres of greenhouses that have been a frequent target of odor complaints – has recently installed the first of 12 Envinity scrubbers.

Also, Williams said, he spoke to Tadd McKenzie, co-president of the Pacific Dutch Group, regarding International, a five-acre cannabis greenhouse operation at 4532 Foothill Road near Carpinteria High School. International has installed four Envinity scrubbers and converted to all-nursery marijuana plants. Nursery plants do not give off the odor of mature plants. (Concerned Carpinterians says it was the group’s appeal to the county Planning Commission that resulted in a requirement for scrubbers at this operation.)

Finally, Williams said, Autumn Shelton and Hans Brand of Autumn Brands, six acres of cannabis at 3615 Foothill – another address that has triggered odor complaints – “will be one of the next ones” to install scrubbers, “and that’s because I asked them to.”

“Some of them agreeing to change now is better than waiting years for all of them to change,” Williams said of valley growers. “I think there is going to be a lot of improvement this year, while I’m still in office. Anything that Roy initiates is going to take years.”

Last fall, however, tired of waiting, the coalition sued Case and Alex Van Wingerden, whom Williams said he had persuaded to install scrubbers at Ceres Farms, a nine-acre cannabis greenhouse operation at 6030 Casitas Pass Road. The lawsuit alleges that the Van Wingerdens’ operations at both Ceres and the Valley Crest Farm, an additional nine acres of cannabis at 5980 Casitas Pass Road, are creating an “ever-present noxious odor” in the neighborhood.

The lawsuit has been on pause this spring while the Van Wingerdens conduct a test of a scrubber called CleanLeaf. These scrubbers cost about $4,500 each.

“We’re not going to stand in the way of experimenting, but it’s our belief they will have to purchase Envinity scrubbers,” Neff said.

(One of the plaintiffs in the coalition’s lawsuit is Chonnie Bliss Jacobson, who lives on Casitas Pass Road. Campaign statements show that four members of the Bliss family, not including Chonnie, donated $22,000 to Lee’s campaign on Feb. 23, 10 days before the vote.)

“Mistakes were made”

Lee took office as a Carpinteria City Councilmember in early 2018, just as Williams was drafting the cannabis ordinance behind closed doors, consulting with growers and industry lobbyists.

Carpinteria residents were not paying much attention; the community was reeling from the shock of the catastrophic debris flow of Jan. 9 that year.

The city council, though, was already expressing its “deep concern,” firing off letters urging the board not to rush things, with Highway 101 buried in mud and Carpinterians unable to get to the board hearings.

“Virtually no revisions to the cannabis regulations… have been made to address the issues raised by the city,” a Jan. 29, 2018 letter from the city said.

In fact, since late 2017, Lee said, the council has sent 24 letters to the board, trying to rein in the burgeoning industry at its doorstep. The council urged the board, without success, to require conditional use permits for cannabis; create 1,000-foot buffers between cannabis greenhouses and homes and schools; require separation zones between greenhouse operations; cap the size of individual grows; set a standard so that odors “may not be detectable at the property line”; and share tax revenues with the city to address the increase in greenhouse traffic.

“We got minimal to no response at all,” Lee said. “I feel like they just threw the letters in the trash. It’s frustrating, because a lot of neighborhoods were affected so gravely. We spent a lot of our staff time working on those letters. That took a lot of energy and money, and nothing ever came of it. The county disregarded our experience.”

In its most recent letter, dated Nov. 13, the city reminds the board that, “dating back to at least 2017, the city has advocated for the most stringent odor control regulations possible.” The letter “strongly urges” the board to designate carbon scrubbers as the “sole best available control technology” for “nuisance cannabis odors.”

Lee said that his son, a student at Carpinteria High School – located just outside the city boundary near five cannabis operations – used to come home smelling like pot. Lee said he hears that students still sometimes get an overpowering whiff of the stuff when they open their classroom doors.

“The school is what really bothered me,” he said. “How can kids concentrate in the classroom? Imagine if it were next to San Marcos High School (in Goleta) or Santa Barbara High School. People would be incredibly angry. Yet it’s next to Carpinteria High. It feels like we get treated so unfairly…

“Many mistakes were made, and I won’t let that happen. That’s not how you run a business, that’s not how government is done. It has to be transparent. Now we’ve got loss of trust in our government. I will take this negative and turn it positive. I want to serve the people’s needs and wants. I’ll try to do it from my heart.”

Williams said that, taken together, what the city and the citizens’ groups were asking for was “legislating cannabis out of existence, and I think that would be a real mistake… I think the black market has far worse effects on society than marijuana grown by your neighbor at a greenhouse that pays a good wage to local people.”

During a campaign forum at Girls Inc. on Feb. 20, when Lee brought up the city’s multiple letters to the board, Williams responded: “We have to treat each other like neighbors. If there is something we need to talk about, we need to have discussions. I don’t think sending a strongly worded letter to the county is the way to solve a problem; it’s to have a conversation together about something.”

Melinda Burns is an investigative journalist with 40 years of experience covering immigration, water, science and the environment. As a community service, she offers her reports to multiple publications in Santa Barbara County, at the same time, for free.

SPENCE

Ever-Bloom’s operation at 4701 Foothill Road has 10 carbon scrubbers per acre on site.

Carpinteria’s Visiting Angels franchise sold

Laura Tunberg recently purchased the Carpinteria location of Visiting Angels, a home health care service located at 5565 Carpinteria Ave., Suite 1; it is the fourth Visiting Angels operation that Tunberg now owns and oversees.

Tunberg, who was born and raised in Carpinteria, owns two Visiting Angels operations in the San Fernando Valley and one in north Orange County, she told CVN. Visiting Angels provides senior care services, such as home, palliative and end-of-life care, as well as services for seniors suffering from dementia or Alzheimer’s disease.

Tunberg said with her leadership style, clients can expect a higher focus on customer and caregiver wellness, as well as better working conditions for caregivers

“You’re only as good as your caregivers,” she told CVN.

Methods of improving the experience for caregivers and clients, Tunberg said, include regular events at Visiting Angels of Santa Barbara, such as Alzheimer’s walks, birthdays of the month celebrations and sponsored activities. Tunberg also said she’s implemented a caregiver wellness program, which gives caregivers access to breathing, meditation and exercises to combat stress and fatigue.

“I spend a lot of time and energy

trying to figure out how to make the job better,” Tunberg said. “Caregiving can be a solitary and stressful job.”

Tunberg currently lives in the San Fernando Valley, having left Carpinteria after high school. She hopes to move back to Carpinteria soon, she told CVN, and when in town, she enjoys walking along the beach, eating at Giannfranco’s Trattoria and visiting the Palm Loft Gallery.

––Jun Starkey

Hey, baby!

Madden Benjamin McDermott

Madden Benjamin McDermott was born to Michael McDermott and Leah Ughoc McDermott of Salt Lake City on March 5, 2024, arriving at seven pounds, five ounces and 20 inches long. His grandparents are Sherry Berkowitz and Gene Wanek of Carpinteria; and Dave McDermott of San Ramon, California.

COMPILED BY JUN STARKEY | COURTESY PHOTOS

Arts center to host 2024 poetry contest reception

The Lynda Fairly Carpinteria Arts Center will hold a reception for its 2024 Poetry Contest on Sunday, April 14 at 2 p.m. in the Koch Courtyard, 865 Linden Ave.

One of the judges for this year’s contest in the adult poetry category is Carpinterian Zachary Murphy King, who will be judging the contest from Russia, according to Lana Ziegler, program coordinator for the arts center. King was a winner in the adult poetry category for the arts center’s 2023 poetry contest.

According to Ziegler, King is a freelance writer, translator and copywriter, and holds a doctorate in Slavic languages and literature from the University of Chicago. He currently lives in Saint Petersburg, Russia, with his wife and daughter.

The public is invited to attend the reception on Sunday, April 14 to hear the winning poems read aloud. There will also be a public mic portion for anyone interested in reading their poetry, Ziegler said.

Zachary Murphy King, pictured, will judge the adult poetry category of the Lynda Fairly Carpinteria Arts Center’s 2024 Poetry Contest from Russia; a reception for the contest will be held on Sunday, April 14.

Those interested in viewing the Christie Jenkins Photography & Celebrity Gallery can make an appointment by calling or emailing the studio.

“Gorgeous men” gallery opens in Carpinteria

Christie Jenkins has opened her Carpinteria gallery, Christie Jenkins Photography & Celebrity Gallery, to the public; appointments to see her work can be made by calling Jenkins at (805) 318-9043 or emailing CJenkinsStudio@ aol.com.

Carpinteria photographer Christie Jenkins has opened her gallery in Carpinteria, featuring dozens of men Jenkins has photographed throughout her career.

Jenkins’ gallery features an assortment of men she has photographed throughout her career, beginning from her book “Buns: A Woman Looks at Men’s” which was published in 1980. This book was the first ever photo book of men for women, Jenkins said in a press release, and the book and five subsequent calendars sold over one million copies. Following her rise in popularity, Jenkins began receiving requests from Hollywood agents to photograph their handsome actor clients. Jenkins’ studio, she said, eventually became known as “strictly men.”

A reception for Jenkins’ gallery was held on March 23; appointments to view it can be made by contacting Jenkins by phone or email.

COURTESY PHOTO

Laura Tunberg is the new owner of the Carpinteria location of Visiting Angels of Santa Barbara, a home health care service.

Celebrating small-town charm

COFFEE, CAREER AND KIDDOS

Carpinteria has my whole heart. The sun is shining, and the softest sea breeze is blowing. Lucky Llama got my iced coffee just right – oh, the simple joys. I feel immense gratitude for this beautiful city we call home.

This past Saturday, I attended the Community Awards Banquet held by the newly established Carpinteria Com-

munity Association. The pride for our community and this city was palpable. I laughed, cried and, most importantly, hugged many individuals I love and respect. I don’t think I’ve ever lived in a place like this. It was touching to hear about the generations of Carpinterians who have lived here and contributed to this town’s agricultural history and the ones who continue to make it the town it is.

The Junior Carpinterian of the Year finalists and the winner were inspiring. The winner, Lizbeth Alpizar Frafan, was seated at the same table as we were, and although I had just met her and her family that night, I shed a few tears when they announced her as the Junior Carpinterian of the Year and then again when I heard her speech. She thanked the community supporting her and local nonprofits like Girls Inc., who have impacted her life. That’s the power of Carpinteria. Numerous studies show that having a supportive environment and social and civic engagement significantly impact the

lives of children and their families, and we get to see that play out day in and day out. Carpinteria is a wonderful place for children to grow up in.

As the director of a local nonprofit that focuses on meeting the needs of Carpinteria’s children and families, I find it heartwarming to see people come together to support their neighbors, whether they know them or not. Many supporters give to our organization and other nonprofits because they want to see children succeed and their community thrive.

Carpinteria is the town it is because of every one of you. Thank you for contributing to the sense of community in this lovely beach town.

Carpinteria is the town it is because of every one of you. Thank you for contributing to the sense of community in this lovely beach town.

Teresa Alvarez is the executive director of the Carpinteria Children’s Project. She has over a decade of experience in the nonprofit field and a passion for helping children and families. Teresa was born in Guanajuato, Mexico, and moved to the U.S. with her parents at age two. Growing up as an undocumented student, she learned the importance of having mentors, a strong work ethic, and the value of education. Teresa holds a bachelor’s degree in Sociology from UCSB and a master’s degree in psychology from Antioch Santa Barbara. She currently serves on the Future Leaders of America board and is a founding member of the Santa Barbara Latino Giving Circle. Teresa loves to travel, read and chase after her two boys.

Safety first!

At left, members of Mandi de Witte’s Carpinteria High School AP Bio class view the Monday, April 8 eclipse, safely wearing their eclipse glasses; at top, CHS Principal Gerado Cornejo wore his alien costume for the occasion; and below, Mary Lewandowski’s kindergarten class at Aliso Elementary School upgraded their glasses with paper plates. KARLSSON

TERESA ALVAREZ

KARLSSON

Fueling girls’ fire

Carpinterians gathered at the Girls Inc. of Carpinteria campus on Thursday, April 4 for the organization’s Fuel Her Fire night, recognizing those who champion women and girls’ success. The Thursday night event – held previously as the Women of Inspiration luncheon – honored Tim Cohen, Sonia Aguila and Ellie Lou Olvera.

Cohen has served on the Girls Inc. board for 12 years and has contributed significantly to the Girls Inc. campus; Aguila – who has served for 26 years as an educator – has won several awards for her work, including Carpinteria Unified School District Teacher of the Year, California Bilingual Teacher of the Year, and National Bilingual Teacher of the Year; and Olvera has received praise and honors for her work combating period poverty, having received the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Award.

Several Girls Inc. scholars received scholarships that night. Natalie Martinez took home the $10,000 Powerade scholarship, the $10,000 Lucile Miller Wright scholarship and the Patty and Terry Bliss scholarship; Alejandra Lira Cardona the $10,000 Lucile Miller Wright scholarship and the Fuel Her Fire scholarship; and Lizbeth Alpizar Farfan – the 2023 Junior Carpinterian of the Year –the Smart, Strong, and Bold Senior Award and the $5,000 Lucile Miller Wright scholarship.

Dulce Perez also received the $5,000 Lucile Miller Wright scholarship; Gia Sharma the $500 Lucile Miller Wright scholarship; and Jessemar Marquez the Camila Griffin scholarship.

Spencer Brandt, left, and Winfred Van Wingerden shoot hoops.

Lei Talaro, Girls Inc. playground coordinator, checks out the basketball hoop. Tim Cohen was recognized for his extensive contributions to the Girls Inc. board and campus.

From left: scholarship winners Natalie Martinez, Lizbeth Alpizar Farfan, Vanessa Cardona, Jessemar Marquez and Alejandra Lira Cardona.

Natalie Martinez, center, was the recipient of a $10,000 scholarship from Powerade.

Gia Sharma took home the $500 Lucile Miller Wright scholarship.

Ellie Olvera was honored for her work combating period poverty.

Teacher Sonia Aguila was recognized for her 26 years as an educator and her work promoting bilingual education.

PHOTOS BY ROBIN KARLSSON

Merit award winners honored for dedication

Fifteen merit awards were given out to Carpinterians on Saturday, April 6 at the 65th annual Community Awards Banquet, honoring them for their dedication to the community. This year’s banquet was organized by the Carpinteria Community Association.

Each honoree received their merit award from another member of their respective organization, thanking them for their work in improving the community.

California Avocado Festival Presented to Olivia Sorgman by Gary Dobbins

California Women for Agriculture Presented to Liz Watkins (left) by Susan Pollard

Carpinteria Beautiful Presented to Bob Stokes (not pictured) by Ernie Merlan (left) and Bryan Mootz

Carpinteria Community Association Presented to Neal Bartlett by Donna Lemere

Carpinteria Education Foundation Presented to Janie Foley (left) by Pam Werner

Carpinteria Lions Club Presented to Robert Shroll (right) by David Hayman

Carpinteria Children’s Project Presented to Stefanie Colburn (right) by Teresa Alvarez

Girls Inc. of Carpinteria Presented to Scott Barash (left), Reiko Nagao and Darrell Brown by Jamie Collins (second from the left)

HELP of Carpinteria Presented to Donna and Doug Treloar (left) by Judy Goodbody

Carpinteria Woman’s Club Presented to Kathy Henry (left) by Marybeth Carty

Rotary Club of Carpinteria Morning Presented to Steve Gerteis (not present) by Carie Smith

Rotary Club of Carpinteria Noon Presented to Bob Berkenmeier by Karen Graf

The Lynda Fairly Carpinteria Arts Center Presented to Kathy White (left) by Kristina Calkins

Masonic Lodge #444 Presented to Jay A. Umali – accepted by Jun Reyes –by John Welty (left)

City of Carpinteria

Presented to Jack Niederpreum (second from left), Robin Kait and Ray Kolbe by Vice Mayor Natalia Alarcon, far left

PHOTOS BY ROBIN KARLSSON

2023 Carpinterian of the Year: Rick Olmstead

BY EVELYN SPENCE

Met with a standing ovation, lifelong Carpinterian Rick Olmstead accepted his award for 2023 Carpinterian of the Year (COY) during the Saturday, April 6 Community Awards Banquet at the Girls Inc. of Carpinteria campus.

“What a humbling experience this is,” Olmstead – a 77-year resident of Carpinteria – opened with. “I’ve known most of the prior (COY) recipients… I’ve been fortunate to have – I think John Moyer was the first recipient, am I right? – he’s my next-door neighbor.”

During his six-minute-long speech, Olmstead thanked the Carpinterians of the Year before him, the generous Carpinteria community and the city of Carpinteria.

He explained that when he was young, his father was offered a significant pay raise and promotion to move to the valley.

“I could’ve been a valley boy,” he said. “But no. He chose Carpinteria… He chose Carpinteria, and the values of Carpinteria, over money and a promotion. And to this day, I’m grateful for the decision my mom and my dad made.”

Olmstead and his wife, Trudy, have seven children and 24 grandchildren; they were joined Saturday night by his second daughter and her family. He later told CVN that his wife and Donna Lemere – banquet organizer and 1999 COY – got him to the banquet under a ruse, telling him that Trudy was receiving a merit award.

“I was totally surprised,” he told CVN. “I think if anybody should’ve received that (COY) award it should’ve been my wife for putting up with me for 52 years.”

“My wife has put up with me for 52 years,” he said during his speech. “Unbelievable. The first part of our marriage I was away 25 or 30 weekends a year, besides teaching. She raised our kids. And she did a great job. She did an unbelievable job of raising our seven kids. And I love you, Trudy. Thank you very much.”

He said during his speech that while he loved his time working in education and at Carpinteria High School, in his last 10 years, working with the homeless in Carpinteria has been just as rewarding.

“I could put out a bulletin tomorrow and ask for sleeping bags, ask for tents, ask for sweats, and I know I’ll find a stack of that stuff in my driveway within a week,” he told CVN. “The community has just been unbelievable, almost to the point that I’ve got a serious storage problem at the (Veterans) Memorial Building.” He also thanked the city for providing a place for the homeless community at the Veterans Memorial Building for the last ten years, and to Carpinteria for accepting

its homeless community members. “I’ve never seen anything antagonistic to my group,” he told CVN. “I can’t say thank you enough.”

Olmstead emphasized that – more than anything – he can’t see himself leaving his hometown Carpinteria. “My next move is with Mike Damron out on Cravens Lane,” he told CVN, referring to the Carpinteria Cemetery.

Olmstead was presented his award

by one of the 2022 Carpinterian of the Year award recipients, Gregg Carty. His wife, Geri Ann Carty, the other half in the 2022 COY duo, couldn’t make it; she was represented on Saturday by the pair’s daughter, Caitlin Carty Gude.

Carty and Carty Gude said Olmstead was chosen for his volunteerism, his generosity, community service and work benefiting the community. They described him as a quiet person who works behind

the scenes to ensure Carpinteria’s beaches remain clean and checks on Carpinteria’s most vulnerable residents, its homeless.

“(Our COY is a) humble, honest person of integrity, spending their retirement years doing for others, including those who are ill or unable to leave their homes,” Carty said on Saturday.

They said Olmstead was the driving force behind the Lunch Bunch and the Carpinteria Homeless Outreach group, who has “transformed the lives of many”; the group provides weekly meals, clothing, hygiene supplies and more for Carpinteria’s homeless.

He dedicates his time to St. Joseph Church Thrift Shop, setting up and always returning to do the takedown; helps out at the Santa Barbara Foodbank and the Santa Barbara Rescue Mission; and is an active member of his local church. He also spent 37 years in education, working as a former teacher and coach with the Carpinteria Unified School District.

He also told CVN that he drove semitrucks for Carpinteria Motor Transport for 10 summers, and picked lemons and avocados in the Carpinteria Valley for a summer.

Olmstead has also been inducted into the Santa Barbara Athletic Round Table Hall of Fame, the Santa Barbara City College Hall of Fame, and, soon, the Southern California Indoor Volleyball Hall of Fame for over 50 years of refereeing.

Lizbeth Alpizar Farfan is 2023 Jr. COY

BY EVELYN SPENCE

Carpinteria High School senior Lizbeth Alpizar Farfan accepted her 2023 Junior Carpinterian of the Year award on Saturday, with her parents, Sara Farfan and Nahu Alpizar, at her side.

The 2023 Junior Carpinterian of the Year award was presented by Lauren Gonzales, a 2008 Junior Carpinterian of the Year finalist.

Alpizar Farfan’s award comes with a $10,000 scholarship; the other 2023 finalists, Camryn Bernstein and Sara Fakinos, each received $3,000 scholarships.

Scholarship funds are donated throughout the year; this year, Gonzales said with a generous contribution from 1999 Junior Carpinterian Samantha Colson and her husband, Jeff Hamlin, the winner’s scholarship amount was bumped up to $10,000.

Alpizar Farfan told CVN last month that she has been accepted to UC Berke-

ley and UC Los Angeles, with a major in bioengineering. She has taken nine AP courses, has a 4.7 GPA, received the National Hispanic Recognition Award and was on the president’s honor roll. As a student-athlete, she was captain of the girls’ basketball team, played varsity softball, and was captain of the court on the girls’ volleyball team.

Alpizar Farfan was also a member of REACH, AVID, the MESA Club, Mission Scholars of Santa Barbara and Girls Inc.’s Eureka program.

In her acceptance speech, Alpizar Farfan – a first-generation college student – said this event shows how such a tightknit community like Carpinteria “can really raise such wonderful students.”

“I think that this is an honor even being here with these two amazing girls,” she said, referring to finalists Bernstein and Fakinos. “I’m really thankful to have grown up here and for all the sacrifices my parents made to get me here.”

KARLSSON PHOTOS

The 2023 Carpinterian of the Year Rick Olmstead accepts his award; at back, from left, are Gregg Carty and Caitlin Carty Gude, who presented this year’s COY award.

2023 COY Rick Olmstead hugs his daughter as his wife Trudy looks on.

The 2023 Junior Carpinterian of the Year is Lizbeth Alpizar Farfan, center, seen here with her parents, Sara Farfan, left, and Nahu Alpizar.

65th annual Community Awards Banquet comes home

BY ROBIN KARLSSON

The 65th annual Community Awards Banquet – held on Saturday, April 6 at the Girls Inc. of Carpinteria campus – marked a return to local organization of the time-honored tradition, this time spearheaded by the newly-focused Carpinteria Community Association.

Carpinteria’s brightest were honored during the Saturday night gathering. Lifelong Carpinterian Rick Olmstead won 2023 Carpinterian of the Year (COY), while Carpinteria High School senior Lizbeth Alpizar Farfan took home the 2023 Junior Carpinterian of the Year honor; Coastal View News was honored with 2023 Business of the Year, with speeches from publishers Gary Dobbins and Michael VanStry; and Luis Quintero and Arturo Monarres accepted their awards as 2023 Educators of the Year. Fifteen Carpinterians also took home merit awards.

Tim Bliss – the banquet’s platinum sponsor – gave a lengthy introductory speech about agriculture’s importance in the history of Carpinteria, and how that agriculture has shaped the Carpinteria residents know today. Other sponsors included Lynda Fairly and Richard Finkley, Chevron, Agilent, the Lions Club of Carpinteria, Clyde and Diana Freeman, the California Avocado Festival, Brownstein Hyatt Farber Shreck, Carpinteria Beautiful, Meister & Nunes, PC.

Carpinteria Community Association President Karen Graf also gave a shoutout to Coastal View News, Girls Inc. of Carpinteria, Island Brewing Company, Larry Nimmer, Mission Linen, Rockwell Printing, Mobi’s International Dirt Botanicals, Hilltop Flowers, Island View Nursery and Backdrop Boutique – Santa Barbara.

The banquet will return next year, Graf confirmed, with the date to be determined.

1999 COY Donna Lemere, left, with 1980 COY Fred Lemere.

Debbie Nomura, left, and 2011 COY Wade Nomura.

From left: Robbie

Platinum sponsor Tim Bliss speaks about Carpinteria’s history of agriculture.

From left: Spence, Robin Pam and Brian Werner Diana Freeman, silver sponsor.

Past Carpinterians of the Year – marked by their white sashes –Brown (1998), Rick Olmstead (2023), Fred Lemere (1980), Donna Mike Damron (2005), Wade Nomura (2011), Doug Treloar (2002), Terri Simber

PHOTOS

The 2023 Educators of the Year were Luis Quintero, left, and Arturo Monarres.

2005 COY

Robbie Van Eyek, Betty Brown and Elizabeth Van Eyek.

2023 Jr. COY finalists, from left, Camryn Berstein, Lizbeth Alpizar Farfan and Sara Fakinos.

left: Coastal View News employees Jun Starkey, Evelyn Robin Karlsson, Michael VanStry and Gary Dobbins.

– came in support of the 2023 Carpinterian of the Year, Rick Olmstead, center. Front row from left: John Welty (2004), Bob Berkenmeier (2007), Paul Wright (2016), Betty Donna Lemere (1999), Clyde Freeman (2021), Asa Olsson ( 2017) and David Powdrell (2014). Back row from left: Karen Graf (2009), Gregg Carty (2022), Beth Cox (2020), (2002), Marybeth Carty (2001) Lori Bowles (2019), Lou Panizzon (2012), Curtis Lopez (2018), John Franklin (1991), Winfred Van Wingerden (2003) and Bradley Miles (2008).

CUSD Superintendent Diana Rigby, second from the left, poses with the Future Farmers of America members, including from left, Jacob Mora, Evelyn Calkins, Bella Casbarro, Yohann Garcia and Angel Pineda.

COY Mike Damron, left, with his wife Susan.

Honor Roll

Duncan & Meredith Abbott

The Abe Family

Rick & Kathy Abney

Steve & Gale Abram

Cliff & Gayle Adams

Glenn & Valerie Alger

Hank & Pat Arellanes

Frank J. Artusio

Andy & Carol Bailard

Kevin & Donna Baird

Alterio A-G Banks

Virginia Barrison

Marianne Bartholomew

Fan of Stephen Bates

Patricia Beals

Melinda Bendel

Jane Benefield

Don & Vera Bensen

Jack Bevilockway

David & Barbara Bloedel

Danielle Bordenave

Christie & Jeff Boyd

Sue Boynton

Kathy & Robert Brooks

Wendy Brooks

Betty Brown

Conrad & Laura Buff

Kelli Butler

Carol Bury

Sally Ann Camp

Gary & Geri Campopiano

Jim & Valerie Campos

Chris Caratan

Carpinteria Beautiful

Carpinteria Seal Watch

Carpinteria Valley Association

Cynthia & Mark Carrillo

Anna & Gary Carrillo

Pamela Christian

Mike & Becky Clark

Jeff & Gayle Clay

Barbara Cleveland

Tim & Janey Cohen

Jim & Jolene Colomy

Jim & Mary Ann Colson

James Conger

Mary Conrad

Bruce & Judi Conroy

Norman & Mary Cota

Berlyn Cota

Jane Craven

Frank & Sandy Crowe

T. Culver

Cullen & Dottie Deck

Ellen & Rob Denholtz

Betsy Denison

The DiRado Family

Melissa Doyle

Glenn & Kathy Dubock

Paul Dunham

Gaby and Selden Edwards

Marsha Ehlers

Bill and Marianne Emery

Emmett Family

Dennis Engler & Terri Greenfield

Jaclyn Fabre

Lynda Fairly

The Faoro Family

Joyce Fernandez

Richard Finkley

Art & Louise Fisher

Sherrie Fisher

Mr. & Mrs. John T. Fly Sr.

Paul & Mary Foley

Bob & Elene Franco

Dale & Carolyn Frary

Clyde & Diana Freeman

The Fries Family

John & Christine Frontado

Stan & Ellen Froyd

Gene & Dee Funkhouser

Rudy & Rachel Garcia

Kaydance & Kenzington Gardner

Doug & Nancy Garrison

Gaynor Ranch

Roberta Germanetti

Amy & Chris Giles

Jeremy & Calla Gold

Joe Buffalo & Kaina Gomard

David & Annie Goodfield

Linda Gousis

Lin & Karen Graf

Bill & Sharon Green

Lisa Guravitz & Fred Shaw

Karen & Donald Guthrie

Louise Hansen & Jim Reginato

Scott Hansen

K & M Hanson

Doris Hardy

Dottie Hawkins

Marlene Hazen

Chris Hecox

In Memory of Bob Henry

Kathy Henry

Reggie Hepp

Tom & Linda Hernandez

Lynda Hershey

Hilltop Flowers, Inc.

Rose Hodge

Virgil & Lee Huelskamp

Diane M. Huerta

Katherine Hunter

John & Linda Hurley

Nancy Hussey

Robbie & Ed Hutto

Kim Ishida

Stuart & Fran Jaffe

Zoe Iverson & Gib Johnson

Donna & Bob Jordan

Gary & Marge Kelly

Carrie Kirchner

Richard Kitagawa

Alan & Carol Koch

Jim & Roz Kohute

Carla Kroman

Ron Lafrican & Luzzie Hernandez

Kristi & Tom Lammer

Las Palmalitas Ranch

Laughing Buddha

In Memory of Darrian Lee

Roberta & George Lehtinen

Fred & Donna Lemere

Jon & Sue Lewis

Patricia Lieberknecht

Lori Locker

Michael & Crescent LoMonaco

CK Lord & Al Clark

The Lou Grant Parent-Child Workshop

Paula J. Lund

The Luthard Family

Sara Lyons

Joe Macias

Wendy & Tim MacMurray

Susan & Randall Mailheau

Charlene Maltzman

Mrs. Sharon Manges

Peter & Elizabeth Mann

Harry & Patricia Manuras

Rosa Markolf

Rocky & Gail Marshall

Jacquie Martin

Lorenzo and Rosie (RIP) Martinez

Bill & Ann Matson

Mariko Matsuyama

On the first Thursday of each month, CVN publishes the Honor Roll to thank readers and advertisers for their generous support. For the past 14 years, this support has played a critical role in keeping CVN in the stands each week and full of local news that cannot be found in any other media. The outpouring of support inspired by the Honor Roll has established a deeper connection between the newspaper and its readers. Additionally, the hundreds of names that appear in the Honor Roll send a message to advertisers: Carpinterians are dedicated to their local newspaper. In turn, the staff of CVN is dedicated to its readers. As the publishers of your community newspaper, we appreciate the relationship we have with you, our readers, and we pledge to keep bringing you all the news of the Carpinteria Valley.

Ron & Barbara McClain

Jim & Jennifer McIntosh

Scott & Sherrie McIntyre

Amanda McIntyre

Carlena McKnerney

Laurie & Steve McMahon

Lois McNiel

Chuck & Dolores McQuary

Sharon & Craig Meister

Drew Merryman

Tom & Laurie Merryman

David Meyer & Shen Rajan

Norma Migliazza

Bradley & Emily Miles

Carrie Miles

Van & Joyce Moe

Dave & Louise Moore

Terry & Dianne Moore

Pat Moorhouse

Andrea & Bruce Morden

Peter & Ann Mullins

Tom & Kamie Mulroy

Steve & Jane Murray

Richard A. Nelson, Jr.

Andy & Yvonne Neumann

Langdon & Linda Nevens

Anh & Ha Ngo

Peter & Carol Nichols

Nola Treloar Nicklin

Robin & Jack Niederpruem

Weldon & Ann Nomura

Michael & Lori Noricks

Becki & Doug Norton

Marcy & Kevin O’Hara

Randy & Lisa O’Reilly

Julia Occhipinti

Rick & Trudy Olmstead

Jose & Irene Ornelas

Alonzo & Amy Marie Orozco

Barbara J. Orth

The Ota Family

Catherine Overman

Lou & Susie Panizzon

Marty & Nan Panizzon

Gail & John Persoon

The Piltz Family

Anita & Alex Pulido

Ted Rhodes & Joan Pascal

Elizabeth Risdon

Marilou Rivera

Laura Robinson

Greg & Laura Roinson

Tim & Beata Rose

Elizabeth Ross

Steve & Susan Ruthven Saito Family

Janis Salin

Theodore Sampson & Berdee Sampson - RIP Berdee

Dr. Suzanne Savoy

Wally & Janice Schilling

Nancy & Wayne Schoenfeld

Joyce Fernandez

Terry Scrivner

Kim Seefeld

Arlene & Jack Sega

Tony Segall & Deborah Dentler

Marty Selfridge

Shade Farm Management

Rick & Trish Shade

Megan Shannon

The Sinclair Family

The Skenderians

Lou Skiera

Annie Sly

Barbara & Sanderson Smith

Barbara A. Smith

Bob & Marcy Smith

John & Marge Soper

Ben & Julie Soto

The Sprigg Family

Terry Stain

Steve Starkey & Olivia Erschen

Barbara & Gordon Statler

Vicki Stevenson

Cherry Stockton

Bob & Kathi Stokes

Charles & Barbara Stoops

Mr. & Mrs. Barry L. Sullivan

Tom & Brenda Sullivan

Eric

Jim

Francie Townes

Ruthie Tremmel

Becky Brittain & Eric von Schrader

Mary Watts

Linda Zimmerman

Creamy Mushroom and Chick’n Pie

I was looking for different comfort food recipes. I found a creamy mushroom and chicken pie recipe on the internet that sounded good to me (vegetarian) and Robin (omnivore). So, using my creamy mushroom sauce recipe as a base, I created this recipe featuring frozen vegan Chick’n Tenders. I served it with a garden salad and a fresh-baked baguette. Comfort food, for sure.

Ingredients:

2 garlic cloves (minced)

¼ teaspoon fresh cracked pepper

9-ounce package Gardein Frozen Chick’n Tenders (cut into 1-inch pieces)

2 frozen pie crusts

¼ cup milk

Directions:

Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Bring Chick’n Tenders out of the freezer and allow them to thaw before preparing the sauce.

Heat olive oil and butter over medium-high heat. Sauté onion and mushrooms for five minutes. Add broth, bouillon, almond butter, garlic, pepper and Chick’n. Stir to combine. Cook for three minutes more or until creamy. Remove from the heat and set aside.

AM DAILY

1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil

1 tablespoon butter

1½ cups sweet onion (chopped)

18 TAPS, FREE SMILES & MANY FRIENDS WAITING FOR YOU!

8 ounces button mushrooms (remove stems)

FOOD…

2 cups vegetable broth

FRI: DISFRUTA 3-8 PM

Brush

SAT: SHRIMP VS. CHEF, 12 PM

½ teaspoon Better Than Bouillon (no beef base)

4 tablespoons natural almond butter

MUSIC…

FRI: GORDON CROWL UKULELE, 6-9 PM

SAT: SKA DADDYZ, 6-9 PM

SUN: SANTA BARBABRA TROMBONE SOCIETY, 5-6, HOLIDAY SING ALONG, 6-8 PM

805-745-8272 IslandBrewingCompany.com

Carpinteria Mon.-Fri. 6:30am-2pm •Sat.-Sun. 6:30am-3pm Bagelnet.com for Restaurant menu

Avenue • 805.566.1558 ext. 1

Place one pie crust in a pie dish. Press the crust firmly against the side and bottom of the dish. Prick the bottom and sides with a fork and bake, unfilled, for ten minutes. Remove from oven and pour the mushroom filling into the pre-baked pie crust. Place the second pie crust on top and seal the rim by pressing the edges of the crust together. Make a few minor cuts on the top crust with a paring knife to allow steam to escape.

Randy Graham is a noted chef and writer and has been a lacto-ovo vegetarian for over 38 years. Chef Randy has written and

published a series of seven cookbooks with original recipes developed over the period 1975 through 2020. He writes for the Ojai Quarterly, the Ojai Discover Monthly, and the California 101 Travelers Guide. His vegetarian recipes are published in newspapers throughout Central California under the header, Chef Randy. He and his wife, Robin, live in Ojai, California, with their dog Cooper. Robin and Cooper are not vegetarians.

Carpinteria Mon.-Fri. 6:30am-2pm •Sat.-Sun. 6:30am-3pm Bagelnet.com for Restaurant menu

Carpinteria Mon.-Fri. 6:30am-2pm •Sat.-Sun. 6:30am-3pm Bagelnet.com for Restaurant menu

the top of the pie with milk, turn the oven to 375 degrees and bake for 35 minutes or until the crust is golden brown. Remove from the oven and cool for approximately ten minutes before serving.

CLUB SCENE

COMPILED BY JUN STARKEY | COURTESY PHOTOS

Rotary Morning learns about education, local elections

Members of the Rotary Club of Carpinteria Morning presented donations to local teachers, learned about election proceedings and heard from the Santa Barbara County Superintendent of Schools at recent meetings.

At the club’s March 27 meeting, the club donated $687 worth of art supplies to Carpinteria Middle School (CMS) art teacher Ryan Ethington, club member Eric Von Schrader told CVN. President Carie Smith told club members that Carpinteria Unified School District Board Member Sally Green informed Smith that CMS is often overlooked in support.

”She put me in touch with Ryan, who said that art supplies for students are always needed. We are happy to help out,” Smith told club members.

Club member Sheila Hess, supervisor with the Santa Barbara County Elections Division, spoke at the same meeting about the process of preparing for an election.

“We have to update precinct boundaries and voter registrations, secure polling locations, recruit and train 900 poll workers, create accurate ballots, and test tabulation

Carpinteria Middle School art teacher Ryan Ethington, center, received a donation of $687 worth of art supplies from the Rotary Club of Carpinteria Morning; club President Carie Smith stands at right, with Carpinteria Unified School District Board Member Sally Green, left. equipment,” Hess told club members. According to Von Schrader, during the March primary election, 8,200 people voted in person, compared to 100,000 who voted by mail. Hess told club members that she expects voting by mail will continue to be popular in Santa Barbara County.

During the club’s April 3 meeting, Dr. Susan Salcido, the Santa Barbara County Superintendent of Schools, spoke to members about the state of education in the county’s 20 school districts and nine charter schools.

According to Von Schrader, Salcido spoke about how the Santa Barbara County Education Office (SBCEO) supports locally elected school boards and administrators with alternative education, special education and early childhood education programs, as well as budget reviews. Salcido also spoke about bringing together law enforcement and schools to improve school safety.

During her presentation, Salcido also discussed the graduation statistics for Carpinteria High School (CHS). CHS has a graduation rate of 96.6% and a college attendance rate of 69.3%, both of which exceed the county average, Von Schrader said.

Rotary Noon Talent Showcase: April 20

The Rotary Club of Carpinteria Noon will host its annual Talent Showcase, emceed by local journalist John Palminteri, on Saturday, April 20 at 6 p.m. at the Alcazar Theatre, 4916 Carpinteria Ave.

The talent show is open to any with talent, and proceeds from the event will go towards supporting education in the Carpinteria Unified School District. Since the talent show’s creation, proceeds have been used to fund the purchase of brass and wind instruments for high school and middle school jazz bands, string instruments for middle and elementary school students, books and sheet music and more.

A look at the greenery

From left: Carpinteria Unified School District Board Member Sally Green; Camilla Barnwell, director of communications for the Santa Barbara County Education Office; SBCEO Superintendent of Schools Dr. Susan Salcido; Rotary Club of Carpinteria Morning President Carie Smith; and Rotary member Art Fisher.

Rotary Club of Carpinteria Morning member Sheila Hess, left, spoke to the club at a recent meeting, including Morning Rotary President Carie Smith, right, about the behind-the-scenes work of local elections.

KARLSSON PHOTOS

On Saturday, April 6, select CARP Growers member farms opened their doors to members of the public for the first Community Field Day, offering free tours of cannabis greenhouses throughout the day. At left, Hans Brand of Autumn Brands speaks to tour attendees; at right, the Autumn Brands greenhouse. CARP Growers plans to make the field day an annual event.

CALENDAR

Thursday, April 11

Senior Center Activities: Senior Lecture Series Veterans Memorial Building, 941 Walnut Ave. 9:30–10:45 a.m. agewell@carpinteriaca.gov, (805) 881-1279

Dementia Caregivers Support

Group Carpinteria Community Library, 5141 Carpinteria Ave. 10:30 a.m. –noon. carpinterialibrary.org, (805) 684-4314

Senior Center Activities: Chair

Yoga Veterans Memorial Building, 941 Walnut Ave. 11 a.m. – noon. agewell@ carpinteriaca.gov, (805) 881-1279

Bilingual Postpartum Support

Group El Carro Park, 5300 El Carro Lane. 1 p.m. rmaldonado@carpchildren.org, (805) 566-1613

Senior Center Activities: Book Club Veterans Memorial Building, 941 Walnut Ave. 2–3:30 p.m. agewell@ carpinteriaca.gov, (805) 881-1279

Carpinteria Creative Arts Eighth St. and Linden Ave. 2:30–6 p.m. Handmade pottery, beach art, cards, jewelry and sewn articles. (805) 698-4536

Carpinteria Farmers Market 800 block of Linden Ave. Thursdays, 3–6:30 p.m.

Meeting: Architectural Review

Board Carpinteria City Hall, 5775 Carpinteria Ave. 5:30 p.m. bit.ly/CarpinteriaCityMeetings

Friday, April 12

Friday Fun Day Carpinteria Community Library, 5141 Carpinteria Ave. 10–11:30 a.m. For ages three – 11ish. carpinterialibrary.org, (805) 684-4314

Senior Center Activities: Bocce Ball GranVida Senior Living, 5464 Carpinteria Ave. 10–11:30 a.m. agewell@carpinteriaca.gov, (805) 881-1279

Senior Center Activities: Games and Gab Veterans Memorial Building, 941 Walnut Ave. 1–2:30 p.m. agewell@ carpinteriaca.gov, (805) 881-1279

Tweens Dungeons and Dragons Club Community Library, 5141 Carpinteria Ave 3–4:45 p.m. Full. carpinterialibrary.org, (805) 684-4314

Live Music: Evan Blix, Jackson Gillies, Darling Greatly, Peter Muller The Alcazar Theatre, 4916 Carpinteria Ave. 8–10:15 p.m. Doors open 7 p.m. $25. thealcazar.org, (805) 684-6380

Saturday, April 13

Santa Monica Creek Trail Restoration 4405 El Carro Ln. 9 a.m. – 5 p.m. (805) 705-3429

Household Goods and Hazardous Waste Day Carpinteria City Hall, 5775 Carpinteria Ave. 9 a.m. – 1 p.m. (805) 880-3415

Salt Marsh Nature Park Docent Tours Meet at the entrance across from the corner of Sandyland and Ash Avenue. 10 a.m. – noon. Free. (805) 886-4382

Preparación para el Examen de Ciudadanía Americana / U.S. Citizenship Test Preparation Class Carpinteria Community Library, 5141 Carpinteria Ave. 10–10:45 a.m. carpinterialibrary. org, (805) 684-4314

Children’s Book Event, Celebration of Children’s Literacy Aliso Elementary School, 4545 Carpinteria Ave. 11 a.m. – 1 p.m. (805) 617-5929

Composting Workshop Carpinteria Community Garden, 4855 Fifth St. 11 a.m. – noon tinyurl.com/carpcompost

Live Music: Rent Party Blues Band

Island Brewing Company,5049 Sixth St. 6–9 p.m.

All-Star Storytelling Showcase

The Alcazar Theatre, 4916 Carpinteria Ave. 7–9 p.m. Host: Jenna Tico. $20. thealcazar.org, (805) 684-6380

Sunday, April 14

Live Music: Joel Shaffer Island Brewing Company,5049 Sixth St. 2–5 p.m.

Lynda Fairly Carpinteria Arts Center Poetry Reception Lynda Fairly Carpinteria Arts Center, 865 Linden Ave. 2 p.m. carpinteriaartscenter.org, (805) 684-7789

Monday, April 15

Preschool Story Time Carpinteria Community Library, 5141 Carpinteria Ave. 10–10:30 a.m. For preschool-aged children. carpinterialibrary.org, (805) 684-4314

Senior Center Activities: Music Mondays Sing Along Veterans Memorial Building, 941 Walnut Ave. 10:30 a.m. – noon. agewell@carpinteriaca. gov, (805) 881-1279

Monday Mahjong All levels of play. 1 p.m. (805) 729-1310

Mind Games Carpinteria Community Library, 5141 Carpinteria Ave. 2–3 p.m. carpinterialibrary.org, (805) 684-4314

Tuesday, April 16

Senior Center Activities: Arts and Crafts Carpinteria Arts Center, 865 Linden Ave. 9–11 a.m. agewell@carpinteriaca.gov, (805) 881-1279

Carpinteria Writers Group Carpinteria Community Library, 5141 Carpinteria Ave. 10 a.m. – noon. (202) 997-0429

Senior Center Activities: Mind Body Balance Exercise Veterans Memorial Building, 941 Walnut Ave. 11 a.m. – noon. agewell@carpinteriaca. gov, (805) 881-1279

Junior Spanish Conversation Group Carpinteria Community Library, 5141 Carpinteria Ave. 12:30–1 p.m. For tweens and teens. carpinterialibrary. org, (805) 684-4314

Spanish Conversation Group Carpinteria Community Library, 5141 Carpinteria Ave. 1–2 p.m. carpinterialibrary.org, (805) 684-4314

Bridge Club Veterans Memorial Building, 941 Walnut Ave. 1–4 p.m. agewell@carpinteriaca.gov, (805) 881-1279

Carpinteria Improv Classes The Alcazar Theatre, 4916 Carpinteria Ave. 7–9 p.m. Cost: $10 at the door. thealcazar.org, (805) 684-6380

Wednesday, April 17

Meeting: Morning Rotary Carpinteria Woman’s Club, 1059 Vallecito Road. Doors open 6:45 a.m. Speaker: Patricia Tenyer/Herbal Medicine

COMPILED BY JUN STARKEY

The Howard School auction: April 27

The Howard School’s annual Auction Gala will take place on April 27, 5:30–10 p.m. at Lions Park, 6197 Casitas Pass Road; tickets for the event are available at TheHowardSchool.org.

The event will include an assortment of activities such as a silent auction, a wine toss raffle, dinner by chef Rossignol, a dessert dash and live music performed by the Cate School jazz combo. The highlight of the event will be the live auction, which will include coveted items, such as an original painting by local artist John Wullbrandt.

APRIL 7

Parents

fULL meAL InCLUDeS: *

Senior Center Activities: Walking Group Meet at Carpinteria Community Library, 5141 Carpinteria Ave. 9 a.m. agewell@carpinteriaca.gov, (805) 881-1279

1 whole cooked Tri tip foil wrapped

1 family size can of chili beans

Baby Meet Up Carpinteria Community Library, 5141 Carpinteria Ave. 9–9:45 a.m. Children under two. carpinterialibrary.org, (805) 684-4314

Knitting Group Veterans Memorial Building, 941 Walnut Ave. 1–3 p.m. Free. (805) 886-4382

Tickets and sponsorship opportunities are available, and can be secured by going through the school’s website at TheHowardSchool.org. Proceeds from the event will go towards the construction of a new play structure, as well as ensuring continued affordable tuition and supporting scholarships for students.

- 5pm

Parents for Carpinteria High School (PFCHS) will host two upcoming fundraisers: the first at the Santa Barbara Carriage Museum on Saturday, April 13 at 5 p.m., and the second with all Pizza Man Dan’s locations on Wednesday, April 17.

1 Large loaf of grilled garlic bread

4 Buttered corn-on-the-cob in foil

The fundraiser at the Santa Barbara Carriage Museum, 129 Castillo St., Santa Barbara, will benefit the after-prom party for CHS, to ensure students stay safe and sober. The event will include a tour of the museum, as well as two drinks and hors d’oeuvres. Tickets are $35 and can be purchased by contacting pfcarphigh@yahoo.com.

*Limited # while supply lasts!

Senior Center Activities: Mindfulness Meditation Veterans Memorial Building, 941 Walnut Ave. 2:30–3:30 p.m. agewell@carpinteriaca.gov, (805) 881-1279

The April 17 fundraiser is a collaboration with Pizza Man Dan’s. Interested parties can bring a flier to any of the eight Pizza Man Dan’s locations anytime on April 17 between 11 a.m. and 11 p.m. No coupons or discounts are applied, but 20% of proceeds will go towards PFCHS. If anyone is interested and does not have a flier, they will have to specify that they wish to support PFCHS.

Tickets on sale from Warrior athletes or call 252-1435 for more

Those with further questions can contact pfcarphigh@yahoo.com.

A reader sends a halo to Ryan Moore for bringing dirt back to Carpinteria.

A reader sends a pitchfork to theperson responsible for the sidewalk graffiti

A reader sends a halo to Sawaske Landscaping for taking such good care of Kinderkirk.

sends a halo to Burlene for making the Carpinteria Lumberyard Nursery area a joy to visit. “Her outgoing personality (Southern style), friendly conversation and plant knowledge make it a pleasure to visit and shop.”

A reader sends a halo to the generous person for paying for the reader’s gas when she forgot her ATM card at the gas station. “I’m sorry I chose the most expensive oil, I’d love to reimburse you, and thank you. I’m deeply moved by your generosity.”

A reader sends a pitchfork to people who can’t manage to dress up for the one event of the year that celebrates Carpinteria volunteers. “Be better.”

A reader sends a halo to everyone who supported the Playa Del Sur 4-H this year. “The members are looking forward to another successful year.”

A reader sends a halo to Valerie, the new volunteer at the Friends of the Library Bookstore, for cleaning and reorganizing the self-help section.

A reader sends a pitchfork to the developer who wants to put a newly proposed massive housing development/ office building/cafe off Via Real, including three-story buildings. “What is happening to Carp? So sad, we need stricter rules to prevent this from becoming such a common occurrence.”

A reader sends a halo to Desiree, the new masseuse at The Gym Next Door. “She could have coasted through it, but she worked really hard to relieve my back pain. I never experienced such a great massage.”

A reader sends a pitchfork to horse owners who don’t pick up after their horses while riding on the beaches.

A reader sends a halo to whoever left a sign telling people to pick up their dog-waste bags and stop leaving them on Casitas Pass Road.

A reader sends a pitchfork to a local sports group for “canceling games every five seconds due to a drizzle. Enough already! Let them play!”

A reader sends a halo to Sean and Dayna for being wonderful neighbors and helping the reader through another frazzled mom situation.

A reader sends a halo to Brian and Yuen, proprietors of always-friendly Hugos Restaurant in Shepard Place Shops. “On a chilly, drizzly day, they have the absolute best chicken noodle and vegetable soup (soba noodles) with lots of tender chicken and vegetables, served in a large steaming bowl; just the meal for a cold day to make you feel warm and comfortable, ready to face the rest of the afternoon.”

A reader sends a halo to the 93013 Fund, Uncle Chen Restaurant and Marybeth Carty for the surprise delivery of a delicious dinner complete with a fortune cookie, candy bar and painted rock. “Wonderful kindness and quite a thrill!”

A reader sends a halo to the anonymous person who left a $100 donation in the HELP of Carpinteria office mail slot this past week. “Thank you for your kindness.”

A reader sends a pitchfork to whoever has been leaving bags of dog waste on the ground along Casitas Pass Road. “Yes, it’s frustrating that the trash cans are gone, but is that really your best way of handling the situation?”

A reader sends a pitchfork to horseback riders at Rincon who don’t clean up after their horses. “Those of us who have dogs are careful to track down what they leave behind. The horses are beautiful to see but it is quite obvious on the pedestrian walkway down to Rincon. And what is left is worth 15 dogs!”

A reader sends a halo to CHS Boys Varsity Volleyball team for the consistent smiles, and excellent sportsmanship at every game, win or lose. “Go Warriors!”

A reader sends a halo to the staff of Jack’s Bistro for staying open during Covid-19. “Always a smile no matter how busy. A great way to start the day.”

A reader sends a halo to the Daykas for always being there to help with anything and never complaining. “Many thanks to the best neighbors ever. We love you all dearly.”

A reader sends a pitchfork to the person who hit the reader’s pickup in front of the reader’s house and didn’t stop. “Shame on you, and I hope you have karma insurance.”

A reader sends a halo to Brent at Zookers Meat and Seafood Market. “I made my first Paella. Brent’s patience, advice and fabulous seafood was so appreciated. So lucky to have this market in our town.”

A reader sends a halo to Mayor Wade Nomura for the city’s beautiful flower wreath at the Carpinteria Cemetery for the Memorial Day program.

A reader sends a halo to Tami and John at Robitaille’s for their constant smiles and over-the-top customer service. “The wedding favors were loved by all and brought a bit of Carpinteria to the Seattle wedding!”

A reader sends a halo to Eric’s Auto for always doing an amazing job on the reader’s car. “You always give me your 100%. You guys rock!”

A reader sends a halo to those who acknowledge people with disabilities. “When you encounter a person in a wheelchair or walking with a walker, please smile and say hello to that person.”

A reader sends a halo to Lance Lawhon at the Carpinteria Sanitation District for helping Kim’s Market.

A reader sends a halo to the gentleman who helped the reader’s daughter at the Franklin Trail. “She panicked when she saw bear tracks and it was getting dark. He kindly walked down the trail with her.”

A reader sends a halo to the Carpinteria Beautiful lady picking up trash in a neighborhood near the beach. “Thank you! We need all the help we can get keeping trash picked up in the neighborhoods on the beach-side of the tracks.”

A reader sends a halo to Kassandra Quintero at The Spot. “When the roof-top flag was twisted and lodged in the rain gutter, Quintero jumped into action and climbed up to the roof and untangled it so that it could wave freely. Way to show patriotism!”

A reader sends a halo to the wonderful man from the Food Cart who cleaned up the disgusting pile of garbage that was left next to the Friends of the Carpinteria Library.

A reader sends a halo to Emma and Justin. “It was a wonderful wedding, great food, spectacular location and great people! It was moving and wonderful.”

A reader sends a halo to Greg for all the great sidewalk art.

A reader sends a halo to Carpinterians who put out boxes in front of their homes full of surplus oranges, avocados, etc. from their trees. “Thank you for sharing your abundance.”

A reader sends a halo to all the beach community residents. “Thank you for parking in front of your home with your permit.”

A reader sends a halo to Janey Cohen and the Carpinteria Arts Center for offering such stellar educational, interactive and fun art classes. “How lucky are we?”

A reader sends a halo to Nikki at HEAT Culinary. “I went to my first class this weekend with my sister, who has been to four so far. I had the best time! Someone get this girl a TV show, she should be on the Food Network already.”

A reader sends a halo to Diana, a caregiver at Carpinteria Senior Lodge for nearly three years.

A reader sends a halo to La Cumbre Animal Hospital and Heal the Ocean for providing bags to pick up waste.

A reader sends a halo to Tom Sweeney for going out on Elm Avenue by the beach to clean up plastic bottles, bags, dirty gloves and masks.

A reader sends a halo to the California Department of Fish and Wildlife and the local vet for working diligently to save the Rincon Beach bear. “It’s a terrible shame to lose one of these magnificent creatures; however, I wouldn’t want it to suffer to a miserable death.”

A reader sends a halo to the Magical Fairy Kingdom on Willow Place, located off Oak Ave. “Young and old delight in seeing this kingdom and the enjoyment of play in a magical realm.”

A reader sends a pitchfork to the new parking zones. “All the “no parking/two hour” signs just made people park in my neighborhood. Seventh and the neighboring streets are a packed parking lot.”

A reader sends a halo to Bill and Rosana Swing for spending their Saturday taking photos for Junior Warriors Football. “We appreciate all you do for our families, players and program. You rock!”

A reader sends a halo to Woody, who helped the reader up from the sidewalk after they misjudged the curb. “Thank you!”

A reader sends a pitchfork to those who lied on their FAFSA and took scholarships away from kids who need it. Santa Via believes her stolen by

A reader sends a halo to the CVN team for getting the Coastal View News to us as soon as they could after a problem with the printer. “We were desperately looking for our print copies, and finally, the press cooperated! Thank you to them for keeping us all informed weekly!”

A reader sends a halo to DJ Hecktic for coming out early Saturday morning to support the Junior Warriors. “It made the kids so happy to hear you say their names—you’re a local celebrity to them!”

Submit Halos & Pitchforks online at coastalview.com. All submissions are subject to editing.

A reader sends a halo to Gloria and Mariel at the laundromat on Linden for being so nice and helpful, and for giving the reader a free wash.

A reader sends a halo to Diana Rigby, Superintendent of schools, and Debra Herrick, director of Boys & Girls Club, for removing the toxic Euphorbia fire sticks from the pots and landscape.

suspended. The man was cited, and his vehicle was released to a licensed driver.

2:37 a.m. / Public Intoxication / Bailard Avenue

Two men were contacted in a parked truck and both were extremely intoxicated with open containers of alcohol observed in the vehicle. One man was not being the most cooperative, but once he was convinced to exit the vehicle, a pat down search of his person was conducted. Deputies located a collapsible baton in the man’s front waistband. He was cited and both were released to a sober friend.

Friday, May 22

7:41 a.m. / Theft / 5500 block Calle Arena

he found a small baggie containing a white powdery substance underneath the driver’s seat of his recently purchased vehicle. The man stated he purchased the vehicle three weeks ago but didn’t find the small baggie until he’d removed the driver’s seat to fix the reclining mechanism. The incident was documented, and the baggie was booked into Santa Barbara Sheriff’s Office property for destruction.

Saturday, May 23

5:49 a.m. / Domestic Violence / 4100 block Via Real

Deputies responded after a woman reported her residence was burglarized the prior night. The woman stated a cartoon of almond milk and tools were taken from her garage. She told the reporting deputy that the tools belonged to her daughter’s boyfriend. The deputy attempted to contact the man via telephone multiple times with no response. The woman stated her garage door was unlocked during the night and is in the process of getting a new lock. She did not have any suspect information at the time. The incident was documented, and patrol will follow-up for further details of the stolen items.

A reader sends a pitchfork to the city of Carpinteria for “not only gentrifying the town and making it unaffordable to live in, but for the displacement of many working-class families who built this coastal city. Generations of Carpinterians had to leave this place because y’all just want to make money anyway y’all can. Because of this, many others and I lost our sense of community and it has been painful and isolating. You’re a bunch of sellouts who don’t realize what y’all have done until y’all can’t afford to live here either.”

A reader sends a pitchfork to the bicycle events on Foothill Road. “Purposely hosting huge rides that take up the whole road is irresponsible. There are countless bike lanes that were put in with our tax dollars to avoid this problem.”

A reader sends a pitchfork to the lifeguards braiding hair while swimmers are in the pool. “Not professional!”

A reader sends a pitchfork to city management who decided “not to trim the prodigious and neglected plant growth ringing the salt marsh, obscuring homeowners’ views as they monitor accidents caused by reckless electric bike speeders.”

A reader sends a pitchfork to the employees of the newer businesses on the Carpinteria Bluffs. “Learn to share the bike/walking path with locals… There will be four to five of you walking together and not a single one will scoot over just a tad to let a local pass through?”

Submit Halos & Pitchforks online at coastalview.com.

A reader sends a pitchfork to the Linden planters. “All the mushrooms growing there indicate too much water. Nice weed farm.”

Deputies responded to a motel on Via Real for a report of a domestic violence incident. Upon arrival, a deputy contacted a man and woman in the parking lot. After contacting both subjects, there were visible injuries on both parties. Due to conflicting statements regarding their mutual altercation and obvious injuries, both parties were arrested for corporal injury on a spouse.

2:07 p.m. / Found Drugs / 6000 block Jacaranda Way

A man was contacted after reporting

A reader sends a pitchfork to a restaurant owner for parking his vehicle in the spots right out front of his establishment. “Shouldn’t he leave those parking spots available for his paying customers?”

A reader sends a pitchfork to the City of Carpinteria for letting the bluffs turn into an ever-increasing dirt parking lot. “That is not what the bluffs were purchased for. Post No Parking signs immediately!”

A reader sends a pitchfork to the sheriff’s deputy using his radar gun the other morning in front of city hall. “Why don’t you go by one of the schools and catch all the speeders there in morning, and keep our children safe while walking to school.”

TO OUR READERS...

If you rush out to the newsstand every Thursday morning eager to learn of local happenings, clip photos for your refrigerator, or consider it your civic duty to engage with Carpinteria content exclusive to CVN, then it’s your time to become a Sustaining CVN Member. While we plan to continue to distribute CVN as a free publication, please consider supporting us and becoming a member who can proudly participate in our future.

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10:36 a.m. / Hit and Run / Cameo and Casitas Pass roads

Deputies responded to a report a of a black sedan crashing into a parked water truck. While en route, it was also reported the male subject driving the sedan fled the scene on foot. Upon arrival, deputies observed the sedan abandoned in the middle Cameo Road with major damage to the front right passenger wheel

OUR GOAL is to continue paying our hard-working staff and publishing a product that both chronicles and creates this special community. Imagine never again saying, “Did you see today’s Coastal View?”

IT’S ALL SURFING

CHRISTIAN

BEAMISH

A young guy who transports shaped blanks and finished surfboards back and forth between our shop at 500 Maple Ave. in Carpinteria and the fiberglass shop in Costa Mesa stopped in with a delivery the other week and we got to talking. He related a harrowing tale from last October, when he’d landed a gig on a fishing boat up in Washington.

Fifty miles offshore, in deteriorating conditions, with an ailing, alcoholic captain, the boat goes broadside to the waves, and capsizes. The fellow I know scrambles out of the pilot house and leaps overboard, but the captain is unable to escape before the vessel turns bow-up and quickly sinks.

A life raft in an orange capsule floats up in the debris field; the young man swims to it and pulls a cord to activate the self-inflation system. Thoroughly soaked in cold seawater, wearing work pants, a wool sweater, flannel shirt and knit hat, he clambers into the raft and surveys his situation.

An emergency beacon, meant to activate on contact with the water, fails to transmit. And so begins 13 days adrift and alone on the open ocean off the coast of the Pacific Northwest. The first order of business, he told me, is to wring out his work pants. Still soaking wet of course, the pants are useless for insulation, so he uses his sweater to cover his lower half, and then wraps himself in an emergency blanket that is on board the life raft.

The weather is rotten, a strong southwest swell rolling and running with slurries of whitewater. Sleep is a fleeting option. And you can imagine (or can we, even?) the feeling: rolling along in the pitch black under the tepee of the life-raft, picturing how the fishing vessel had listed and wallowed, the back half submerged, everything looking wrong like a house with its walls knocked in.

Then the bow swinging upright, a tombstone. A hissing release of air and the final slipping from view – all the while realizing the captain hadn’t gotten out, that he was down there somewhere, gone forever.

Eventually dawn comes, at some point sun. Rain in another period replenishes some water. The life raft has water on board and some biscuits as well. At some point, he uses a fishing kit that is also on board and catches a small salmon, which he eats entirely – best damn fish of his life. He has no way of knowing that the emergency beacon hadn’t deployed, or didn’t work. Which, one imagines, is probably for the best. After all, it would make a bleak situation all the bleaker to know that no one has any idea what had happened, that no one is searching for them, and that no one is coming to the rescue.

It isn’t until a week after the capsize that anyone begins to wonder why they hadn’t returned to port. The Coast Guard is notified, and they set up a 200-squaremile search grid. But in the heavy swell he has drifted well north and east of the search area, and after some number of days the search is called off and the vessel presumed lost.

By this time, he’s come into sight of land – close enough, perhaps 25 miles, for

From

at sea

trees to be visible. He’s drifted all way to Vancouver Island and a wilderness shore seems nearly in reach. Better to sleep with the bears in a forest, he may be thinking, then to be stuck on this damp and undulating raft.

And then, on the last day of their season, a crew of commercial halibut fishermen out from Vancouver Island, spots him. They bring him on board, feed him, share that essential human bond. Radio contact with the Canadian Coast Guard brings a patrol boat out to them. A helo arrives to take him off. On board the chopper, the Coasties give him a satellite phone to call his mother. She falls apart. He speaks to his dad. They hadn’t lost hope, they tell him.

I ask him finally – with a muddling disclaimer about not meaning to be “weird and religious” – if he prayed throughout his ordeal. Without hesitation he says he did pray, and that in the course of his time adrift the nature of his prayers shifted.

What was at first a kind of bargaining session (“If you get me out of this one, I’ll be a good person”), later seems to have became more of an acceptance (my words not his) – somewhat perhaps in the way of “thy will be done,” but even more of a surrender to oneness, a communion.

He told me it’s hard to say how it was between him and God, and I suppose that’s the way with each of us. Many of us would love to have a sure-thing conviction that God is working in our lives, but we are consumed by very earthly and seemingly human-dependent concerns.

I don’t relish the thought of two weeks adrift on the sea, unsure whether I am to live or die, but it seems quite possible that we are in fact, each of us, on a life raft nevertheless, and sustained by a force we cannot quite fathom.

I ask him finally – with a muddling disclaimer about not meaning to be “weird and religious” – if he prayed throughout his ordeal. Without hesitation he says he did pray, and that in the course of his time adrift the nature of

his prayers shifted.

Christian Beamish took leave of his position at Coastal View News in October 2020, to pursue his surfboard business, Surfboards California, full time. He continues his monthly column, and shapes at the surfboard factory showroom at 500 Maple Ave., in Carpinteria. The former Associate Editor of The Surfer’s Journal, Beamish is also the author of “Voyage of the Cormorant,” (Patagonia Books, 2012) about his single-handed expedition down the coast of Baja California by sail and oar in his self-built Shetland Isle beach boat. He now lives with his wife and two children in Ventura.

AninitiativeofHospiceofSantaBarbara

OurPromise: ToCareforanyone experiencingtheimpactofalifethreateningillnessorgrieving thedeathofalovedone.

CHRISTIAN BEAMISH

lost

to running surfboards up and down the coast (among other endeavors!), Mr. A is right where he needs to be.

Thursday, March 14

Library preschooler story time, 10:30 a.m., Carpinteria library, 5141 Carpinteria Ave., 684-4314

Rotary Club of Carpinteria meeting, 11:45 a.m.-1:15 p.m., lions Park Community Building, 6197 Casitas Pass road, non-members rSVP to 566-1906

Bingo, 1 p.m., Veterans Building, 941 Walnut Ave.

Farmers Market and Arts & Crafts Fair, 3-6:30 p.m., linden Ave. downtown, Craft fair: 684-2770

Free Stress Relief Veteran’s Acupuncture Clinic, 6-7 p.m. drop in, 4690 Carpinteria Ave. Ste. A, 684-5012

Karaoke, 8 p.m., Carpinteria & linden Pub, 4954 Carpinteria linden Ave.

Dusty Jugz Country Night, 9 p.m., the Palms, 701 linden Ave., 684-3811

Friday, March 15

CVCC Lunch & Learn, noon-1 p.m., Curious Cup, 929 linden Ave., 684-5479 x10.

The Peace Vigil, 5-6 p.m., corner of linden & Carpinteria Ave.

Music in our Schools Month Concert, 7:30 p.m., CHS cafeteria, 4810 foothill road, 684-4701

Back Track, 9 p.m., the Palms, 701 linden Ave., 684-3811

Saturday, March 16

Carpinteria Salt Marsh docent led tours, 10 a.m., free walks start from the park sign, 684-8077

Magicarp Pokemon League, 11 a.m., Curious Cup, 929 linden Ave., (619) 972-3467

Energy Balancing, 2-4 p.m., Curious Cup, 929 linden Ave., free

“The Quiet Man,” 8 p.m., Plaza Playhouse theater, 4916 Carpinteria Ave., $5

The Groovie Line, 9 p.m., the Palms, 701 linden Ave., 684-3811

Monday, March 18

Women of Inspiration, 11:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m., Girls inc. of Carpinteria, 5315 foothill road, $70, 684-6364

Basic Bridge, 1 p.m., Sandpiper Mobile Village clubhouse, 3950 Via real, 684-5921 Mah Jongg, 1 p.m., Sandpiper Mobile Village clubhouse, 3950 Via real, 729-1310

Bingo, 1 p.m., Veterans Building, 941 Walnut Ave.

Celebrate Recovery (Hurts, Hangups, Addictions), 6 p.m., first Baptist Church, 5026 foothill rd., 684-3353

CVCC’s Cuba Trip Meeting, 6-8 p.m., Carpinteria library Multi-Purpose room, 5141 Carpinteria Ave., 684-5479 x10

A Community Toolbox: How to Serve the Depressed Person with Understanding, 7-8:30 p.m., Carpinteria Woman’s Club, 1059 Vallecito road, 684-2509

Tuesday, March 19

Coffee with Cops, 9-11 a.m., Crushcakes, 4945 Carpinteria Ave., 684-5405 x437

Carpinteria Writers’ Group, 10 a.m.-noon, Carpinteria library multipurpose room, 5141 Carpinteria Ave., 684-7838

Sandpiper Duplicate Bridge Club, 1 p.m., Sandpiper Mobile Village Clubhouse, 3950 Via real, 684-5522

Battle of the Books club, 3:30 p.m., Curious Cup, 929 linden Ave., 220-6608

Beginner Meditation Workshop, 6:30 p.m., Curious Cup back meeting room, 929 linden Ave., 705-4703

Al-Anon Meeting, 7-8 p.m., faith lutheran Church, 1335 Vallecito Place, 331-4817

ESL Class, 7 p.m., first Baptist Church, 5026 foothill road, free, 684-3353

Wednesday, March 20

Morning Rotary meeting with Cyndi Macias, The Gym Next Door, 7-8 a.m., Woman’s Club, 1059 Vallecito rd., $10 Meditation, 10:30-noon, Carpinteria Woman’s club, 1059 Vallecito rd., 847-208-6520

Knitting Group, 1-4 p.m., Veterans Memorial Hall, 941 Walnut Ave., free, 684-8077

Fighting Back Parent Program, 5:30-7 p.m., Canalino School, 1480 Carpinteria Ave., 963-1433 x125 or x132

Each Sudoku has a unique solution that can be reached logically without guessing. Enter digits from 1 to 9 into the blank spaces. Every row must contain one of each digit. So must every column, as must every 3x3 square.

Kiwanis Club Meeting, 6 p.m., Veterans Memorial Hall, 941 Walnut Ave., 368-5644 Coastal View Book Club meeting, 7:30 p.m., Carpinteria Branch library, 684-4428

8 Ball Tournament, 7:30 p.m., Carpinteria & linden Pub, 4954 Carpinteria linden Ave.

ONGOING

Lani Garfield photography show, island Brewing Co., 5049 6th St., 745-8272

Michael Fisher Fish art show, Corktree Cellars, 910 linden Ave., 684-1400

Liz Brady art show, Porch, 3823 Santa Claus lane, 684-0300

Arturo Tello art show, friends of the library used Bookstore, 5103 Carpinteria Ave., 566-0033

“SPACE” exhibit, 855 At the Arts Gallery, 855 linden Ave., 684-7789

Monday, April 1

1302 hrs / DUI / Via Real and Bailard Avenue

A man working at a company in Carpinteria was being disruptive and using profane language. The man drove away and nearly collided in the parking lot. A deputy found the man driving on Via Real near Bailard Avenue. The man pulled over and immediately exited his vehicle and walked up to the deputy. The man postured in a fighting stance against the deputy, but the deputy was able to tackle the subject to the ground before getting struck by the man. The deputy and suspect did not sustain any injuries. The subject, although belligerent and extremely intoxicated, provided breath samples of 0.29% and 0.30% BAC. He was booked in Santa Barbara Main Jail without further incident. The vehicle was towed. Several open containers of alcohol were found in the vehicle.

A little light reading

sual of the subject until deputies arrived. The subject stated his parents lived in the community and he was trying to go home. The subject was found to be under the influence of alcohol and was arrested and booked at Santa Barbara County Jail.

Thursday, April 4

1051 hrs / Incident / Santa Ynez and Carpinteria avenue

A subject was contacted during a traffic stop for multiple vehicle violations as she left a local motel. The subject consented to a search of her vehicle. While searching the car, a forged social security card, and forged ID card with her picture and identification information belonging to someone else was located. The subject was arrested for the violations and booked at the Santa Barbara County Jail.

reverend McLean studies the good book in the Baptist Church, which was built in 1873 on the corner of Linden and Coast Highway (now Carpinteria Avenue) for $2,000. Complete with luxuries like an organ and hymnals, the young church was considered the height of modernity. McLean initially came to assist in “difficulties over discipline” around 1878, according to Georgia stockton’s book “La Carpinteria.” He left in 1883, but returned to resume his pastorate at the church in 1904, when Carpinteria became the McLean family’s permanent home.

CArPiNteriA VAlley MuSeuM of HiStory

As the nation gears up for March Madness (starting March 19), CVN thought it would be appropriate to stoke the fire of excitement with an image of Carpinteria’s version of highly competitive basketball. Sports rivals Carpinteria and Bishop Diego high schools vie for a piece of the ball at this Feb. 7, 1978 game.

2234 hrs / Incident / 5700 block Via Real

Readers–

1352 hrs / Incident / Carpinteria and Linden avenues

He said, she said

Carpinteria Plein Air Painters art show, lucky llama, 5100 Carpinteria Ave., 684-8811 Imagination & Inspiration show, Curious Cup, 929 linden Ave., 220-6608 He said, she said Bring on the funny!

A man was reportedly smoking out of a bong at the bus stop near a local business. The man admitted to taking “a few hits” from his glass bong, and he had an outstanding warrant. The subject was arrested and booked in the Santa Barbara Main Jail.

Tuesday, April 2

1403 hrs / Premise Check / Carpinteria State Beach

Deputies were conducting a premise check on the Carpinteria Coastline and state beach to ensure maximum public safety. Deputies discovered a seal, which appeared to have been injured or sick, laying in the sand, in distress. The California Department of Fish and Wildlife were summoned to provide assistance to the seal, and beachgoers were advised to give the sea mammal plenty of space while it rested, so it could return to the warm waters and reunite with his pod.

1614 hrs / Incident / 5600 block Carpinteria Avenue

A subject was contacted and found to have an outstanding warrant for his arrest. The man was arrested without incident and was later found to be in possession of methamphetamine, and identification cards and credit cards belonging to others. He was booked at Santa Barbara County Jail.

Deputies responded to a call where the reporting party stated there was a physical altercation with a family member. None of the parties desired prosecution, and a report was taken.

1824 hrs / Incident / Linden Avenue and Sixth Street

Deputies responded to a subject who had a campfire approximately 150” northwest of a local restaurant. The subject was contacted and provided a false name, and was subsequently arrested. While conducting a search incident to arrest, two Billy clubs and a flail mace were located. Additionally, a meth pipe and two car keys were located as well for a Corvette and a Mercedes. The subject was arrested for the aforementioned charges.

Saturday, April 6

1257 hrs / Incident / 5700 block Carpinteria Avenue

The victim reported an unknown suspect(s) falsely identified themselves as a representative for Southern California Edison and fraudulently charged the victim over $950 for their late electric bill. A report was taken.

1837 hrs / Incident / 4500 block Carpinteria Avenue

To learn more about Carpinteria’s unique and interesting past, visit the Carpinteria Valley Museum of History, open Tuesday through Saturday from 1 to 4 p.m. at 956 Maple Ave.

Civic

2219 hrs / Incident / 4600 block Carpinteria Avenue

Thursday, March 14

Friday, March 15

Deputies responded to a theft in progress. A female subject had stolen one beef jerky and one alcoholic beverage. The reporting party wanted to sign a citizen’s arrest for shoplifting. The subject did not want to talk to deputies. Deputies used the subject’s fingerprints and found their name, and discovered the subject had an outstanding $20,000 warrant for their arrest.

City of Carpinteria Architectural Review Board meeting, 5:30 p.m., Council Chambers, City Hall, 5775 Carpinteria Ave., 684-5405

0029 hrs / Incident / 1100 block Casitas Pass Road

SB S. County Architectural Board of Review meeting, 9 a.m., 123 e. Anapamu St., rm. 17, Santa Barbara

Monday, March 18

A subject was contacted during a traffic stop for failing to yield at the stop sign at Via Real and Santa Ynez Avenue. It was later discovered that the subject had a $20,000 warrant for his arrest. The subject was arrested without incident and booked at Santa Barbara County Jail.

2328 hrs / Incident / Sand Point Road

Tuesday, March 19

SB County Zoning Administrator meeting, 9:30 a.m., 123 e. Anapamu St., rm. 17, Santa Barbara, 568-2000

A subject was attempting to gain access to a gated community. He began pushing, jumping on and reportedly attempted to break the gate. Security maintained a vi-

Deputies responded to investigate a subject who appeared to be under the influence of drugs or alcohol. While conducting a consent search of the subject, three tooter straws, two burnt foils and a broken glass piece with white residue suspected to be fentanyl were found. The subject was arrested.

SB County Board of Supervisors meeting, 9 a.m., Board of Supervisors Conference rm., 105 e. Anapamu St., Santa Barbara, 568-2000

Carpinteria-Summerland Fire Protection District Board meeting, 6:30 p.m., Council Chambers, City Hall, 5775 Carpinteria Ave., 684-5405

Ongoing

County Supervisor Salud Carbajal drop in office hours, friday, 9 a.m.-5 p.m., Carpinteria Children’s Project at Main, 5201 8th St. rm. 101, 568-2186

CArPiNtEriA VALLEy HistoriCAL soCiEty

THROWBACK

Barnaby Conrad and the ignoble Nobels

BY STEPHEN BATES

The author and artist Barnaby Conrad – a Rincon Point resident from 1973 until his death in 2013 – credited two towering figures of 20th-century American literature with molding his career. He spent five months living and working with one of them but couldn’t elicit even a postcard out of the other.

In 1947, age 25, Conrad was writing his first novel in Santa Barbara when he learned that Sinclair Lewis was in town. Lewis, the author of “Main Street,” “Babbitt” and “Dodsworth,” was the first American to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. Conrad sent a deferential and diffident note, and Lewis invited him for tea.

“At 62, he was tall and fiercely ugly, quite the ugliest person I had ever seen,” Conrad would later write, “with a scarlet face ravaged and pocked and cratered from operations for skin cancer. Yet when he started to talk, one no longer was aware of a face, but only of a powerful personality and a towering imagination and great boyish enthusiasm.”

Lewis read the first 75 pages of Conrad’s novel and told him to throw away 72 because they were too descriptive. After reading the next 75 pages, he offered Conrad a job as his secretary in Williamstown, Mass.

Conrad moved into the Lewis house and ghostwrote letters, mowed the lawn and finished his own novel. When the book was done, Lewis gave the manuscript to his Random House editor, Bennett Cerf, who agreed to publish it. His principal duty was to keep Lewis company. They played chess every evening. Though a beginner, Conrad won the first game. Lewis, irritated, demanded a rematch. This time, Conrad deliberately fell into a fool’s mate. Lewis was elated. Thereafter, Conrad made a point of losing.

Conrad met a graduate student who managed a Williamstown bookstore, 26-year-old Ida Kay, and they began dating. In her frequent visits to the house, she and Lewis talked about books.

After five months, Lewis declared that he no longer needed Conrad’s services. Though unexpected, their parting was cordial. Lewis dropped him at the train station, predicted great success for his novel and gave him a first edition of one of his own novels inscribed to “the most amiable man living.”

Despite the warm sendoff, the dismissal left Conrad disheartened and perplexed. Decades later, he learned why he had been terminated: romantic rivalry. Lewis had grown enamored with Ida Kay.

“The aging novelist fell in love,” wrote Conrad, “fired me, and pursued this young lady – and his youth.” The effort proved fruitless; she declined his proposal of marriage.

Whereas he shared a house with Lewis, Conrad knew his second great influence – also a Nobel laureate – only through the page. Ernest Hemingway, wrote Conrad, “shaped my life, changed my life and almost cost me my life.”

Conrad read Hemingway’s “Death

Author, artist and ex-bullfighter Barnaby Conrad lived at Rincon Point from 1973 to his death in 2013. He’s seen here ca. 2010 amid bullfighting memorabilia.

in the Afternoon” at 17 and saw his first bullfights in Mexico soon after. Once, the audience booed a novice matador, and he retreated in disgrace. Encouraged by a friend and emboldened by tequila, Conrad jumped into the ring, waving his new Brooks Brothers raincoat as a cape. He got out intact, but the raincoat was a total loss. Conrad subsequently became a bullfighter in Spain. Even after he retired from the ring, bullfighting remained the dominant motif of his novels and his nonfiction – all because of “Death in the Afternoon.”

In a series of letters to Hemingway, Conrad effusively acknowledged this debt and tried to inveigle a response. He sent his first novel (the one he finished at Sinclair Lewis’s house), “The Innocent Villa,” with a long letter in 1948 but got no reply. His second novel, “Matador,” appeared in 1952 and became, in his words, “a surprise – especially to me – blockbuster.” He sent it to Hemingway. Again, no reply.

Conrad wrote again from a Spanish hospital in 1958 to tell Hemingway that he had returned to the ring for a charity event only to get badly gored. “I was lying in a hospital,” Conrad later wrote in the New York Times, “helpless, a victim

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CONRAD FAMILY

In their nightly chess games in 1947, Barnaby Conrad usually let Sinclair Lewis win. Conrad painted this portrait of the Nobel Prizewinning novelist at the chessboard.

of his damned book... So he had to reply this time, didn’t he?” Nope. Conrad next wrote to say that he was planning a trip to Jamaica; could he stop off in Cuba for a short visit with Hemingway? No reply. Conrad tried phoning.

His principal duty was to keep Sinclair Lewis company. They played chess every evening. Though a beginner, Barnaby Conrad won the first game. Lewis, irritated, demanded a rematch. This time, Conrad deliberately fell into a fool’s mate. Lewis was elated. Thereafter, Conrad made a point of losing.

Hemingway’s wife, Mary, said Conrad was welcome to drop by, but Ernest was ailing, and playing host would distract him from his writing. Conrad took the hint and stayed away.

Conrad later learned of a churlish 1957 letter from Hemingway to editor Wallace Meyer. Hemingway regretted letting Conrad excerpt “For Whom the Bell Tolls” in something he was publishing. The excerpt was “stolen” (Conrad actually paid $750), he said, and he wanted “nothing to do” with the younger author, for “my quarrel with him is what he has written about friends of mine and snide tricks he has played” (no elaboration). He derided Conrad’s writing, too: “to put my stuff in his is like salting a worthless claim.”

In an interview in 2012, writer Lesley M. M. Blume asked Conrad about the letter. “I suppose that he felt I had invaded his territory, which I had,” he said. “He felt that he owned bullfighting, and I think it hit a nerve that I dared to write about bulls.”

Wasn’t there room for both? In a book on Hemingway, literary scholar Keneth Kinnamon judges Conrad the second most important English-language writer on bullfighting, surpassed only by Hemingway. Whenever and wherever people care about bullfighting, Kinnamon writes, “Conrad will be read.”

Barnaby Conrad wrote more than 30 books, including the memoirs “Fun While It Lasted” (1969) and “Name Dropping: Tales from My Barbara Coast Saloon” (1994). He recorded the audiobook of “Name Dropping,” which features his spot-on impersonations of David Niven, Truman Capote and Richard Burton. It’s available on the Hoopla app to patrons of the Santa Barbara Public Library. Stephen Bates is coauthor (with Vince Burns) of the book “Rincon Point,” on sale at the Carpinteria Valley Museum of History and elsewhere. He is a professor of journalism at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

FRAN COLLIN

APRIL 11 , 2024

Warriors softball drops two games

Carpinteria looking to get back on track after spring break

BY RYAN P. CRUZ PHOTOS BY ROSANA SWING

Carpinteria softball headed into spring break on a high note, with the Warriors earning their second win of the year in a high-scoring Citrus Coast League battle against Channel Islands back on March 19.

In that win, the Warriors offense lit up the scoreboard, scoring 14 runs on 14 hits, led by senior Ashlee Mora and sophomore Cecilia Lemus with three RBIs each and senior Amarisse Camargo with her fourth home run of the season. Several Warriors finished with multiple hits in the victory.

But when Carpinteria returned from spring break to face Citrus Coast League rival Fillmore at home on April 2, the Warriors had trouble shaking off the rust from the two-week hiatus, giving up two runs to the Flashes in the first inning.

In the bottom of the first, Carpinteria answered, with Mora reaching third base and scoring off a sacrifice by senior Alexiana Jaimes to bring the score to 2-1.

Both teams were held scoreless in the second inning, but Fillmore got back on the board in the top of the third inning with three straight runs to take the 5-1 lead into the bottom half of the inning.

Once again, the Warriors answered back with a few runs of their own in the bottom of the third, when Mora got on base with a line-drive single and Camargo advanced with a double to put the runners on second and third base. Then Jaimes stepped up to the plate and knocked in both Mora and Camargo with a line-drive double to left field, bringing the score to 5-3.

But it was the final runs of the day for Carpinteria, and after Fillmore scored a few more, the Flashes claimed the win by a final score of 9-3. Jaimes brought in all three runs for the Warriors in the loss.

“I am really proud of the work Jaimes has put in over the last few weeks and you can see her hard work paying off in the games,” said Carpinteria coach Matt Mora.

Despite the loss, Carpinteria’s softball squad continues to show perseverance and improvement on both sides of the ball. Ashlee Mora, the team’s senior pitcher, has taken the circle in every game for the Warriors, and several players have made their mark playing in new positions this season.

“I am really impressed with our

Senior Alexiana Jaimes hit in all three runs for the Warriors against Fillmore. defense today,” coach Mora said. “We made a lot of good plays that we haven’t been making throughout this season and it really highlights the potential of this group.”

“Bella Velasquez has really stepped up taking over the third base position,” he continued. “She has played left field the previous three years and is really making a huge impact for us at third. She was the defensive player of the game for us today with seven chances, three assists and three put-outs.”

On Monday, April 8, the Warriors hosted Bishop Diego for a non-league matchup. But in this game, Carpinteria once again struggled to slow down the high-paced Cardinals offense. The Warriors gave up a dozen runs and suffered their second loss in a row by a final score of 12-2.

Carpinteria is now 2-8 overall and 1-5 in the Citrus Coast League, and the Warriors will hit the field again on April 16 for a league matchup against Santa Paula, the league’s second-best team with a league record of 6-1 on the season.

Senior Ashlee Mora has handled the Warriors’ pitching duties this season. Carpinteria senior catcher Amarisse Camargo snags an infield pop-up.

BY RYAN P. CRUZ

Freshman Elio Taha earned a sweep in Carpinteria’s win over Hueneme.

Warriors tennis rolls through Citrus Coast League

After Carpinteria boys tennis defeated Hueneme 15-3 on April 2, both teams prepared for a rematch one week later on April 9. In this match, Hueneme put up a much tougher fight, but it was still the Warriors who came out on top by a final tally of 11-7.

“We showed a new level of determination and inspiration for this match,” said Carpinteria coach Charles Bryant. “We had players missing, sick players and dual-sport athletes all showing tremendous heart in this tight matchup.”

In singles play, Warriors freshman Elio Taha defeated Hueneme’s top-ranked player to earn the 3-0 sweep. Senior Matthew Endow – who is also a co-captain of Carpinteria’s swim team – stepped up and won two out of three sets in singles.

Nolan Martin was fighting off illness, but still teamed up with his brother Lucas Martin to pull out another 3-0 sweep in doubles, as did the duo of Servando Campuzano and Edwin Hernandez.

“I keep saying it, but they are a great duo together,” coach Charles Bryant said of Campuzano and Hernandez. “Nothing fancy, but just good solid tennis. They each have quite a few shots in their arsenal and are learning to use them at the right time.”

“Overall, this was a true team effort,” Bryant said. “Everyone stepped up in some way or another and it shows the character of all the pieces of this team. I was very proud of all their efforts and each made a huge difference today.”

Carpinteria is now 8-4 overall and 7-2 in the Citrus Coast League, with a match set for April 11 against Channel Islands.

Carpinteria baseball picks up two wins

The Warriors baseball team got back into the win column, winning two out of its last three to advance to 3-6 overall on the season.

Carpinteria hosted Fillmore on April 3, and the Warriors snapped a five-game losing streak with a come-from-behind win over the Flashes, 7-4, picking up the Warriors’ second win of the season and first win in league play.

Fillmore took a 3-0 lead early in the game, but Carpinteria exploded for seven runs over two innings to secure the win.

Senior pitcher Shane Goodmanson earned the win for the Warriors – his first of the season – in a complete game effort with seven strikeouts and two walks.

On April 6, the Warriors were on the road to face Santa Clara, and Carpinteria carried the offensive momentum into this game, blasting 18 hits and cruising to a convincing 19-3 win over the Saints.

In this game, Carpinteria used six different pitchers, with senior Joaquin Ramirez getting the start and junior Aiden Alcaraz earning his first official win of the season with three straight strikeouts in the sixth inning. Sophomores Sam Medel, Charlotte Cooney and Noah Morente all tossed competitive innings, while senior Beto Martinez served as the closer with a perfect seventh inning.

On offense, senior Talon Trumble led the team with six RBIs on three hits. Carpinteria’s Oscar Velazquez also had a big game with three hits and three RBIs, while several Warriors – Goodmanson, Ramirez, Judah Torres, Anthony Ybarra and Isaac Flores – had two hits apiece.

“Overall, it was an important developmental day,” Carpinteria coach Pat Cooney said. “Seniors led the charge while some younger players gained valuable experience.”

On April 8, Carpinteria was on the road for a makeup game against Fillmore. In this game, however, Fillmore earned its revenge with a comeback victory over Carpinteria, 5-4.

Goodmanson and Ramirez both took the mound in the loss. Carpinteria is now 3-6 overall and 1-5 in the Citrus Coast League.

Warriors boys volleyball wins two more

Carpinteria boys volleyball returned from spring break ready for a busy week with three matches, and the Warriors pulled away with two wins to advance to 7-7 on the season.

The Warriors took on the Pacifica Tritons on April 3, with Carpinteria rolling through all three sets (25-18, 25-18, 25-23).

“Coming back from the spring break hiatus, securing this win was a satisfying start for the team,” said Carpinteria coach Favian Muralles.

The next day on April 4, the Warriors traveled up the hill to face crosstown rival Cate. This time, the Warriors were on the losing end of a 0-3 sweep (17-25, 17-25, 20-25) despite some noteworthy performances from Javier Reyes with six kills and Angel Zamora with 10 digs.

On April 8, Carpinteria got back into winning form with a five-set thriller at home against Channel Islands.

Channel Island took the first set before Carpinteria responded with a 25-18 win in the second set. The teams traded sets again, with the Warriors taking the third and the Raiders taking the fourth, before Carpinteria secured the win 15-7 in the fifth and final set.

Reyes led the way in the win with nine kills for Carpinteria, followed by Cole Rowbottom with eight kills.

“This victory holds special significance for the Carpinteria Warriors, as it redeems them from an earlier loss to Channel Islands in the season,” coach Muralles said. “With a current record of 7-7 overall and 4-3 in league play, the team is determined to finish the season strong and secure a spot in the CIF Playoffs.”

Carpinteria swimmers face Fillmore and Cate

It was a tale of two meets in two days for Carpinteria’s swim program. When the Warriors faced Fillmore on April 3, the Warriors swimmers dominated every event, sweeping the boys and girls races and taking both team titles. But the next day on April 4, Carpinteria had a tougher time against crosstown rival Cate, and the Warriors suffered losses in both the boys and girls team totals.

Against Fillmore, senior co-captain Jackson Melton set the tone by setting a new personal best of 1:52:12 in the 200 freestyle before taking the top spot in the 100 freestyle with a time of 50:55.

“He really came to swim fast today,” said Carpinteria coach Jon Otsuki.

Senior Matthew Endow also took two individual wins, taking the top spot in the 100 backstroke and then narrowly beating teammate Sky Korling in the 100 butterfly – a race in which both Warriors swam lifetime personal bests.

On the girls side, senior Lilli Nemetz grabbed two individual wins in the 100 butterfly and backstroke, while junior Giulia Piccoletti took first in the 100 and 200 freestyle. Warrior freshmen Mina Handall (200 individual medley and 100 breaststroke) and Hazel Dugré (50 freestyle) also took home wins for Carpinteria.

“This is the second consecutive league meet that the Warriors dominated their opponent by winning every event,” coach Otsuki said.

The next day, however, Carpinteria faced crosstown rival Cate, and it was the Rams swimmers pulling away in both the boys (87-49) and girls (83-76) competitions.

“I knew Cate would be tough this year,” Otsuki said of the up-and-coming aquatics program. “It only makes sense that the kids who participate in water polo would be a big contribution to the swim program.”

Despite the loss, several Carpinteria swimmers claimed individual wins on the day, including Melton, Korling, Jacob Otsuki and Asher Smith for the boys, and Nemetz, Piccoletti, Lucy Moore and Izzy Scott for the girls.

Carpinteria will be back in the pool this week for a dual meet against Channel Islands.

Thursday, April 11

*Carpinteria Boys Tennis vs Channel Islands, 3:30 p.m.

1

Friday, April 12

1

*Carpinteria Baseball vs Nordhoff, 3:30 p.m.

Carpinteria Swimming at Mt. SAC (Walnut), 1:30 p.m.

4

Saturday, April 13

Carpinteria Track & Field hosts 104th Russell Cup, 9 a.m.

ROSANA SWING

Cate Rams roundup

Cate baseball won three games in a row to begin the month of April, rolling through opponents Newbury Park Adventist (19-9), Bishop Diego (15-1) and Santa Clara (6-2) to advance to a season record of 8-3.

Cate’s offense was on fire in all three games. Against Newbury Park Adventist on April 3, the Rams tallied 17 hits and 11 stolen bases. On April 5 against Bishop Diego, Cate scored 15 runs, while only allowing one. In both games, Cate had a deep roster of players notch hits, and several players with multiple RBI’s.

On April 9, Cate started its league schedule with a road game against Santa Clara. And while the Rams didn’t score as many runs as the previous two games, Cate still managed to pull out a third straight victory, 6-2.

Cate boys volleyball had an especially busy week, capping off a crosstown rivalry win over Carpinteria on April 4 with a jam-packed weekend of matches at the Chatsworth Tournament in Calabasas on April 5 and 6.

In the tournament, the Rams played eight total matches, going 4-4 and earning second place in their division.

“This was an amazing weekend for the team in terms of team bonding, building confidence and showing themselves they can rise to the occasion and battle against some tough teams,” said Cate coach KC Collins. “I think this past weekend’s tournament set a new team mentality for the boys.”

Following the tournament, Cate got right back on track with a 3-0 sweep over Bishop Diego on April 9. In this match, Cate senior Ben Richmond led the way with 12 kills and 16 digs as the Rams cruised past the Cardinals in three straight sets. Cate volleyball is now 10-8 overall and 5-3 in league play.

And in Cate girls lacrosse, the Rams picked up two more wins – making it four straight – with victories over Thacher and Dos Pueblos.

On April 4, the Rams dominated Thacher, taking a 7-1 lead into halftime and hanging on for a 12-6 victory, led by Lucy Guilbert-Neal with three goals and two assists. Six total players scored for Cate in the win.

Against Dos Pueblos on April 9, the Rams took an even bigger lead into halftime, 10-1, before closing out for a final score of 15-7. In this win, Cate goalie Jeeyou Jung grabbed eight saves, while Sophia Ospina scored five goals and Maia Holmes pitched in with four goals.

Cate girls lacrosse is now 6-2 overall and 4-1 in league play.

ON THE ROAD

CVN kicks back in Hawaii

The Fiore Palm family of Carpinteria recently vacationed in Oahu, Hawaii. The family brought along their copy of CVN, and snapped a photo of brothers, from left, Elias and Phoenix Fiore Palm, giving a “shaka” at Lanikai Beach, on Oahu.

CVN down in Mexico

Carpinterian Michelle Oyler recently took a three-week trip down to Oaxaca, Mexico, to attend the Bacari Language School, where she snapped a photo with her copy of CVN. “Being back in a classroom full-time was fun and exhausting,” Oyler told CVN. “Exploring the culture, art, history, food and colors of Oaxaca was a rich and fulfilling experience.” She also told CVN she is “looking forward to continuing (her) Spanish language learning here in Carpinteria.”

Going on the road?

Aerobics time

Members of the Monday, April 1 Aqua Aerobics class at the Carpinteria Swimming Pool sport matching rash guards; according to class member Becki Norton, the class meets every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, 10–11 a.m.; workouts focus on stretching, toning, cardio and strength training.

“It is indeed very fun and I feel great afterwards,” Norton told CVN.

COURTESY PHOTO

Cate sophomore lefty Barron Crayton gets ready to swing.

Chrisman California Islands Center officially opens

From left, Kathleen Lord, Carpinteria Mayor Al Clark, Marla Daily, Sarah and Roger Chrisman and Kirk Connely celebrate the opening of the Chrisman California Islands Center with a ribbon cutting, to the applause of attendees at the center ’s April 4 grand opening. The center, at 4994 Carpinteria Ave., is open Tuesday–Saturday, 10 a.m. – 4 p.m.; archives are available by appointment.