SANTA CRUZ > City councilmembers and Homeless Services director announces reform proposals

More than a week has passed since the death of Santa Cruz resident and business owner Shannon Collins, who was stabbed to death by a stranger around noon on Monday, May 7. The suspect is a transient from San Francisco with an extensive history of violent crime. Collins' death spurred a widespread and heated community dialogue about public safety, homelessness, city policies, and more. Today, Wednesday, May 16, three Santa Cruz city councilmembers and the head of the the Homeless Services Center responded by announcing eight proposals for how the city can reform its handling of these issues.

SANTA CRUZ > Residents participate in ‘I am Shannon’ march
Yesterday, Monday, May 14, marked one week since the tragic death of 38-year-old Shannon Collins, a Santa Cruz resident and business owner. Collins was stabbed to death in broad daylight in the Lower Broadway neighborhood of Santa Cruz while walking back from a hair appointment. The suspect, Charles Anthony Edwards, is a transient from San Francisco with a history of violent crime. (Read more in this week’s news section.) To commemorate Collins, a few hundred residents participated in a Take Back Santa Cruz-organized rally and march at 7 p.m. yesterday.

Locals race for a greener China

Kimberly Bingham and her husband were only planning to stay in China for a year. Six years down the road, the Santa Cruz couple—along with their two children—have found themselves making leaps and bounds to help the biggest continent on Earth a greener place for us all.

Bingham, who was born and raised in Santa Cruz, is now teaching in Suzhou, China.  She is currently training with a team for the Great Wall Marathon, a race that has been run by only about 11,000 people to date. She plans on running not only as a test to her own physical strength—the race consists of 5164 steps—but also as a fundraiser for the Million Trees Project, which is dedicated to improving both ecological and humanitarian conditions in inner Mongolia.

“Living abroad, especially living in Asia, you see things that are sometimes really difficult to see—both human suffering and just general damage to the planet ... you have to decide pretty early on if you are going to care about the things you see,” Bingham says.  “If this were about planting a tree in China and walking away, it would be a waste. I really appreciate that the Million Tree Project is focused on the big picture ... reforestation is of critical importance for the overall health of our entire planet.”

SANTA CRUZ > Take Back Santa Cruz plans community event to commemorate Shannon Collins

Late last night, Tuesday, May 8, Take Back Santa Cruz founder Analicia Cube posted the words “I am Shannon Collins” on the group’s Facebook page.    

At the time of this writing, nearly 20 others—men and women, alike—had followed suit and commented that they, too, are Shannon Collins.

Collins was a 38-year-old Santa Cruz resident and downtown business owner who was brutally murdered on Monday, May 7 in the city’s Lower Broadway neighborhood. According to the Santa Cruz Police Department, the attack was random and had no clear motive. The attacker was Charles Anthony Edwards, a 43-year-old transient from San Francisco with “an extensive violent crime history.” You can read more about the incident here.

 “I am Shannon” is also the name the TBSC event Cube has planned for Monday, May 14—one week after Collins’ death. “We are all her,” Cube says. “You could be her. I could be her. She was one of us. That’s the basic sentiment.”

WATSONVILLE > Friday discussion aims to spread awareness of CalFresh eligibility

Santa Cruz County has been taking advantage of more food assistance programs than ever over the last few years, but Second Harvest Food Bank thinks that public awareness of available resources could use a boost.

This Friday, May 11, Second Harvest Food Bank will hold an event highlighting the CalFresh program (formerly known as food stamps and now federally known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP). According to a Second Harvest press release, CalFresh is being seriously underutilized.

“Currently, less than 50 percent of eligible Californians are benefiting from this valuable program,” says Second Harvest’s Deborah Yashar in the press release.

Food aid programs in Santa Cruz have been seeing spikes in use over the past several years. In 2003, 32,618 people in Santa Cruz County were served by the Second Harvest Food Bank. By 2010, that number had grown to 52,400.

Students benefiting from free or reduced cost school meals have also increased in number—while still below the California average, students receiving these benefits went from 36.4 percent of students to 50.9 percent.

SANTA CRUZ > Police have released the identity of the local woman who passed away yesterday, Monday, May 7, due to a brutal stabbing attack. The victim was Shannon Collins, the well-known and beloved co-owner of Camouflage in Downtown Santa Cruz.

Collins, who was 38-years-old, was accosted and repeatedly stabbed on the 300 block of Broadway Street around 11:50 a.m. yesterday. She was pronounced dead on the scene. Police say the suspect, 43-year-old transient Charles Anthony Edwards, hails from San Francisco—where they say he has “an extensive violent criminal history”—and had been in Santa Cruz for about a week. He did not know Collins.    

“After interviews with multiple witnesses, and Mr. Edwards, investigators established that the victim did not know Mr. Edwards,” said a Tuesday SCPD press release. “It appears as though this was a senseless, unprovoked and random attack by Mr. Edwards upon an innocent victim. There is no clear motive.”

Edwards was booked at 9 p.m. Monday and remains in police custody. His photo will be released after the police department has finished conducting photo lineups with witnesses, of which they say there were “a high number.”

SANTA CRUZ > Data from the third annual event is in

The variety of offerings at the recent Project Homeless Connect (PHC) included everything from reading glasses and dental screenings to one-on-one assistance and ID cards.

The April 17 event was the third annual installment of PHC—a one-stop shop that crops up once a year to provide a wide range services and support for the growing homeless population in Santa Cruz County.

“Homelessness is a really hot topic in Santa Cruz,” says Samantha Green, research analyst for Watsonville-based nonprofit Applied Survey Research, which organizes the event along with the United Way of Santa Cruz County. Together, the organizations gather 45 service agencies and 450 community volunteers for an eight-hour event that Green says has visibly changed lives.  

 “It’s wonderful to see people who were homeless two years ago who have a home now, who have gained weight, who we can see again, and who can see people who they’ve been helped by,” says Green. “It’s really amazing.”

SANTA CRUZ > Facelift of historic skate park draws local nostalgia, ire, and some hasty negotiations by city officials

The face of one of the first public skate parks in the world is being replaced by four inches of rebar and concrete. Derby Skate Park, which was built in the 1970s, is a landmark of skateboarding history stationed on Santa Cruz’s Westside. Recently, Santa Cruz public officials felt that the timeworn curves and slopes of Derby had become too dangerous to allow.

“Derby Skate Park is undergoing a much needed resurfacing,” says Mauro Garcia, parks superintendent of the City of Santa Cruz. But Garcia noted that the community is, to put it mildly, miffed about the repairs.

“When Zack [Wormhoudt] went to the city to fight for his father’s park, the city told him that the bell had been rung,” says local skater Owen Commons. “[City councilmember] Ryan Coonerty wrote to my brother [and told him] that it was a foregone conclusion.”

 Skaters and community members were angry largely due to what they saw as poor communication by the city regarding the impending repairs. The city has changed tack recently, and has moved to work more closely with the local skating community following the rush of public outrage.

SLUG REPORT > Botanical tour of historic district to be given by plant experts and historian

Plant experts Angel Guerzon and Suzanne Schettler and historian Frank Perry will be offering a guided botanical tour of the Cowell Lime Works this Saturday, May 5 on the UC Santa Cruz campus. The leisurely one-mile, two-hour walk will be interspersed with snippets of information from resident experts.

“We’ll be examining the district's garden plants and native vegetation, and learning what they tell us about the historical development of the site,” Perry says.

According to Perry, the lime works supplied lime for the building of San Francisco on the heels of the Gold Rush. Facts like these will be par for the course, along with others like “How big does a Monterey Cypress grow in 145 years?” (This answer, and others, will be provided on the tour.)

SLUG REPORT >  New database built at UCSC allows for massive data storage, allowing for leap in cancer research

A large-scale data repository has just been built at UC Santa Cruz, bringing cancer researchers one step closer to a truly comprehensive biomedical cancer research database.

Funded by the National Cancer Institute, UCSC’s new Cancer Genomics Hub will allow researchers to manage and analyze the large quantities of gathered data necessary for precision treatment of cancer. UCSC bioinformatics expert David Haussler’s team established the hub, which is in an initial “beta” release.

“By providing researchers with comprehensive catalogs of the key genomic changes in many types of cancer, these efforts will support the development of more effective ways to diagnose and treat cancer,” Haussler said in a UCSC press release.