From stories of heartbreak and loss that pulled at our heartstrings to tales of triumph, headlines in the Gilroy Dispatch over the past year prove there’s much more to the Garlic Capital than the stinking rose.
In 2014, voters rejected a half-cent sales tax measure that would have increased Gilroy’s sales tax from 8.75 to 9.25 percent—the highest in Santa Clara County—and they voted in two incumbents and a former councilman to the city council.
Two of Gilroy’s youngest angels earned their wings after hard-fought battles, including Caley Camarillo and Jennifer Lynn Kranz, who died from cystic fibrosis and a rare form of brain cancer, respectively. Their families transformed the pain of losing a child to disease into motivation to help others, whether it’s helping the wishes of a dying child come true to helping fight pediatric cancer—and the community stood behind them.
From these tales to many others, here are a few of this year’s most memorable stories:
HOT TOPICS
Voters reject sales tax measure
Despite the injection of more than $35,000 in the coffers of the campaign in favor of the half-cent general-purpose sales tax measure, mainly from developers and car dealers, Gilroy voters rejected Measure F by just over 550 votes.
The tax measure would have increased Gilroy’s sales tax from 8.75 to 9.25 percent. Opponents of the tax measure accounted for 55.8 percent of the vote, with 2,682 votes, while supporters garnered 44.2 percent, with 2,128 votes.
Mayor Don Gage initially proposed the “Quality of Life” tax measure as a way to fund a variety of capital improvement projects in 2013, but the measure grew to include increased funding for public safety after a poll was commissioned by the city.
A legal homeless encampment?
Local leaders and community members, some homeless or formerly homeless, appealed to city and county officials Dec. 1, pleading for a safe and legal place for Gilroy’s homeless to stay temporarily while they work on finding more permanent shelter.
Representatives of the Gilroy Compassion Center—a nonprofit that provides daytime outreach services to those in need—asked for the city council’s support in requesting a donation of between 10 and 20 acres of public land from the county for a permanent private campground for homeless who are registered to receive services in South County.
“We believe this is, of course, not a permanent solution, but it’s a very practical solution that works today,” said Joseph Davis, a volunteer at the Compassion Center, which is driving the effort. “The county’s parks department owns 46,000 acres of land and most of it is unused. They’re a vastly underutilized resource.”
Camping anywhere but in areas officially designated as campgrounds is illegal, and those who camp within city limits risk receiving a ticket for the misdemeanor offense.
Sign ordinance draws criticism, leads to revision
When City Council passed a revised version of Gilroy’s sign ordinance that banned A-frame signs, permanent banners and costumed advertisers, it sparked concern throughout the small business community. But after that spark grew through community activism and door-to-door outreach by business owners and concerned citizens, the fire could not be ignored—or extinguished.
At its June 9 study session, the council decided to reconsider the ordinance and incorporate suggestions of a local collective that, in collaboration, developed signage standards in hopes of keeping signs that entice customers through the doors.
While the city adopted the collective’s suggestion to have a uniform type of A-frame throughout downtown, the council has stood firm on its restrictions on banners—restrictions that some business owners say is hurting their bottom lines.
Disability retirees still a mystery
The Santa Clara County Civil Grand Jury, in a June 2013 report, said too many public safety employees in Gilroy are claiming the tax-free haven of disability retirement. Six of 14 police and fire retirees, or 43 percent, claimed disability over the past five years. Of the six, four claimed a disability after they retired.
The Gilroy Dispatch filed multiple requests to obtain the names of the six retirees, which were initially denied by the City Attorney’s Office. The Dispatch then appealed to City Administrator Tom Haglund, who upheld the denials and said releasing the names would violate state and federal law. The Dispatch then appealed to the city’s Open Government Commission, which also ruled the records are not public.
Interestingly enough, after the Dispatch sent the exact same request tothe formerly embattled city of Bell in February, Bell released the names of eight retired disabled police officers, since its firefighters are not under contract with the city.
Fire chief lawsuit settles
The year-long saga surrounding a lawsuit brought by former Gilroy Fire Division Chief Edward Bozzo and Fire Division Chief Phillip King—who has since retired—against the city of Gilroy came to an end in January.
The lawsuit, in which Bozzo and King claimed they were cheated out of a combined $30,000 in overtime pay, was dismissed after both parties agreed to a settlement outside of court, Gilroy Human Resources Director LeeAnn McPhillips said.
After Judge Edward Davila granted the city a summary judgment in 2013, Bozzo and King’s attorney appealed the ruling. Bozzo and King agreed to drop the appeal if the city paid their legal fees specifically for that appeal—in the $2,220 range. The city racked up more than $88,509 in legal fees fighting the lawsuit.
Bozzo, who retired in December 2011, received an annual salary of $167,386 and will collect a pension of $10,800 each month for the rest of his life, while King most recently collected a salary of $180,232.
Dog left to die in stolen car
Michael McVey never had a chance to say goodbye to his beloved dog after a pair of thieves stole his car from the Gilroy Walmart parking lot and ditched it in San Jose, while his female Akita, named Keiko, was waiting in the back seat. They left the animal to die, leaving her inside McVey’s Nissan Pathfinder for four days before authorities located the vehicle and found Keiko dead at a San Jose Walmart 30 miles away.
Keiko died in the back seat after being deprived of food and water, waiting for the owner who raised her from a puppy and had been by her side for 15 years.
What McVey said hurts is the fact that his abandoned car—with Keiko still inside—was sitting in the San Jose Walmart parking lot for four days unnoticed by the store’s own security patrol.
“Keiko was the most gentle, sweetest dog you could ever meet,” McVey said. “She’s the kind of dog who when she saw somebody down in the dumps she’d make them smile. She’s a one in a billion dog. There are great dogs out there, but she was the one.”
Red Barn advocates block demolition
The iconic yet long-neglected “Red Barn,” as locals call it, lodged within Christmas Hill Park has been living on borrowed time ever since the City Council called off the bulldozers last February, following an impassioned plea from the president of the Gilroy Historical Society, Connie Rogers.
Since then, supporters formed the Save the Red Barn Committee with the goal of just that, garnering enough support to block demolition and collect ideas to find a new purpose for the facility, one that has sat boarded-up and fenced off since the 1990s. The committee’s members have been digging into the structure’s history, the land it sits on, its original owner and its overall historical significance—and they’re adamant that the barn is a valuable resource that could become an asset for the community. But if it comes down, as demolition is slated for February 2015, the group says Gilroy will lose a significant chunk of its storied past.
New apartments coming downtown
A five-story apartment complex and the tallest building in the Garlic Capital—proposed to be 58 feet tall—is coming to downtown as soon as summer of 2015. The 263-unit affordable housing complex, developed by Idaho-based multifamily housing group Pacific Companies, is scheduled for construction on the southwest corner of 10th and Alexander streets.
The 6.8-acre development will rejuvenate a site that’s sat blighted and vacant for several years and fill a demand for units open to households with low income, according to Tammy Brownlow, president and CEO of the Gilroy Economic Development Corporation.
The City Council approved the architectural and site plan for the project dubbed San Ysidro Courts in a 4-2 vote Aug. 18, with Council Members Dion Bracco and Cat Tucker dissenting.
COMPELLING READS
Family hopes for a holiday miracle
To a stranger, Stefani Miller and her three children appeared ready for Christmas. The family’s tree was decorated and their stockings were all hung with care—even Peanut’s, the family dog. But the gingerbread houses and peppermint bark served as a distraction from the ever-present reminder that Christmas might never be the same.
On Sept. 30, Miller thought her husband and high-school sweetheart, Greg, suffered a heart attack. He refused to go to the hospital, however, and assured his wife he’d go after he rested and felt better. Two days later, at 5:45 a.m., Oct. 1, Stefani found her husband dead on their bedroom floor. Greg had bled out from an aortic aneurysm at the age of 43.
The loss of her husband and father to her children—Shiloh 17, Justin 15 and Shoko, 6—took an immeasurable toll on the family, one that grows larger the closer the holidays get.
Stefani, who supported the family working two jobs seven days a week, was placed on leave at work a week after her husband’s death. With no life insurance and survival benefits, and with Social Security and unemployment slow to come in, the purse strings of a family already living modestly tightened even more. Emotionally, the loss has been incalculable.
“He was larger than life—a big ol’ teddy bear. He’s passionate, articulate, he’d do anything for anybody—everything for us,” Stefani said. “It’s like trying to get out of bed and stepping down on the floor and realizing your left leg is gone. How do you walk?”
Miracle on 10th Street
Bryan Byrne had been praying for it every day for 38 years: a call from his long-lost son, whom he hadn’t heard from since he gave up his only child, then 7, for adoption.
When he received a call from his son, Craig Faeth—now 45—Byrne literally fell out of his wheelchair.
The pair reunited in Gilroy Jan. 2, and though Byrne, a 67-year-old Gilroy resident, is legally blind due to macular degeneration, the reunion was the clearest moment in his life.
When Faeth called his father, he wasn’t even sure he had the right phone number.
“I just thought I’d be starting a process, you know,” Faeth said, adding he was expecting his father to say, “’yeah I’m your dad, but that was a different time in my life and I’ve moved on and you should too.’”
But “that was never the case—never,” Byrne said.
Gilroy’s newest angels
Caley Camarillo and Jennifer Lynn Kranz were much more than the diseases that ultimately took them away. They were loving daughters, sisters, fighters and inspirations to others.
Camarillo lost the battle to cystic fibrosis at the age of 12 on June 13, after being diagnosed with the disease shortly after a checkup with a physician when she was 1-month-old.
Though Caley is gone, her mother, Teresa Camarillo, is working to ensure her daughter’s memory will live on. When she was 4, Caley’s dream of visiting Disneyland was made real through the Make-A-Wish Foundation. But one wish isn’t enough, Teresa said. As a sick child gets older, their dreams, desires and capabilities change—and there’s really no opportunity for another wish to be granted. That’s where the Breathe for Caley Foundation comes in.
“Caley and I had talked the last year of her life about how unfair it is to basically only get one wish when you’re chronically ill child,” Teresa said. “I’ve made a lot of cool things happen for Caley through social media, but not everyone is as lucky or gets the right people to notice them. This was kind of our way of giving back for basically the luck we’ve had.”
The foundation aims to grant another wish to chronically ill children or those who have been re-diagnosed who haven’t had a wish granted in five or more years.
Similarly, Libby and Tony Kranz transformed the pain of losing their oldest daughter, known as JLK, to a vicious form of cancer into motivation to help unravel pediatric cancer across the country—for the sake of their three remaining children and others around the country.
Aug. 12 marked the six-month anniversary of the death of Jennifer and the Kranz family launch their national nonprofit called Unravel Pediatric Cancer as a lasting tribute. The organization’s creation was a result of Jennifer and her family’s struggle with a rare form of brain cancer called diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma. She died 3.5 months from the day she was diagnosed, on Oct. 23—her sixth birthday.
Libby, co-founder and Unravel CEO, and Tony, co-founder and treasurer, hope to raise awareness nationwide of pediatric cancers and collect funds to support cutting edge medical research to treat the diseases—and one day find cures.
GHS students form anti-bullying club
“Every day I put a smile on,” said David Galindo, tugging at the bottom of his sweater as he spoke to a classroom full of students. “I’ll be happy at school and at home, but at night when everyone is sleeping I feel myself slowly starting to get depressed. I look outside at the stars and sometimes I just wish I could disappear because I feel like no one cares.”
Galindo, a junior, was one of several Gilroy High School students who, instead of bowing to threats of reprisal for speaking out, found the courage to share their stories about bullying to the newly minted Anti-Bullying Club on Sept. 25.
Club founders Valerie Cejas and Morgan Howard, juniors at GHS, are on a quiet crusade to end bullying—and their voices are getting louder as others join the fight.
Approximately 20 students, a mix of all four grades, as well as English teacher Janet Lavelle and Howard’s mother, Melissa, assembled in room B20 for the club’s inaugural meeting.
“I just want the awareness of the problem,” Howard said. “I want people to come together.”
Local band turns heads
A rock band that plays everything from classic rock to punk, turned heads during the Fifth Street Live music series in downtown Gilroy—and for good reason. The band, called Head Strong, is comprised entirely of local kids between the ages of 10 and 14.
Two seventh graders and an eighth grader at Brownell Middle School handle the vocals, while a freshman at Gilroy High School and a seventh grader at Ascension Solorsano Middle School play guitar and a fifth grader at Luigi Aprea Elementary School plays the drums.
Watching the band practice and perform in front of an audience is a dream come true for many of the parents, who either bang their heads and dance to the music or film their children while they perform.
“We’re definitely proud,” said Andora Salcido, mother of singer Noelle Salcido. “As parents, it feels good to see them doing what they love, whether it’s kicking a ball or whatever. All the parents are proud.”
IN THE HEADLINES
Don Christopher Sports Complex opens to packed crowd
It took nearly $4 million, 736 days and the work of more than 300 people from 52 companies for the vision of seven men to become a reality.
More than two thousand Cougar fans—many dressed head to toe in teal, gold and black—filled the stands of Christopher High School’s new Don Christopher Sports Complex for its grand opening Sept. 5. Roughly 2,300 spectators packed the stadium and the Cougars christen their stadium with a 12-6 win over Sobrato High. Christopher and his wife, Karen, donated $3.4 million toward the stadium’s final $3.9 million price tag.
Saint Louise Hospital’s pending sale
The Daughters of Charity Health System announced this year that it was selling its six-hospital network—including Gilroy’s Saint Louise Regional Hospital—to for-profit Prime Healthcare. The California Attorney General’s Office has the authority to approve or reject the pending deal, and is garnering public input on how the sale would impact the community. Many elected officials, including a majority of the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors and 18 California legislators, have publicly spoken out against the sale. But DCHS officials have said Prime remains the only viable bidder—and the hospitals could close if the attorney general rejects the deal.
Murder charge against Gilroy doctor dropped
County prosecutors dropped murder charges against a Gilroy doctor initially accused of hiring another man to murder his 74-year-old wife. Dr. German Baldeon, 68, emerged from the South County Courthouse in Morgan Hill Oct. 7 a free man, after evidence came to light clearing his name of any involvement in the April 1 stabbing death of Doris Mae Knapp in the couple’s home on the 1400 block of Bristlecone Court.
Baldeon, a physician with locations in Salinas, was arrested in June and charged with Knapp’s murder. Her death was originally ruled a suspicious death by Gilroy police.
Prosecutors put forth that Baldeon hired 59-year-old David Galvez—a friend of Baldeon, police said, who killed Knapp in exchange for a condominium the couple owned in Ecuador. Police converged on Galvez’s home in Tracy to execute a search warrant, but the man had already fled the country, according to prosecutors.
Galvez was taken in custody at the Santa Clara County Jail in December after surrendering at the American Embassy in his native country of Ecuador.
Council opts for an in-house city attorney
By early 2015, Gilroy officials hope the search for an in-house city attorney—a sea change from its position since the early 1990s of using the city’s contracted legal firm, San Jose-based Berliner Cohen—will have finished and an experienced attorney will fill the new role at City Hall.
The Gilroy City Council voted to form a committee Feb. 24 to seek a new attorney, and they interviewed the top three candidates in November—the result of an eight-month nationwide search. The committee is close to making its selection and the new city attorney could be serving Gilroy by January, Mayor Don Gage confirmed.
GFD hires first woman in a management position
Throughout her life, Mary Gutierrez has fought to prove she can excel in male-dominated fields—whether it’s competitive bodybuilding, sparring with Marines or fighting fires. Now, she’s breaking down barriers as the first woman in a management position with the Gilroy Fire Department.
On Oct. 1, Gutierrez took over as chief of the GFD’s paramedic division. She manages a group of firefighters who are just as qualified at quashing blazes as they are at saving lives through emergency medical procedures, she said. Gutierrez, who has lived in Gilroy the past 11 years, most recently served as battalion chief with the San Jose Fire Department and worked as a firefighter-paramedic for 15 years.
Fatal shooting at Las Animas Park an act of ‘self defense’
A fatal shooting in Las Animas Veterans Park in February—initially reported by police as an attack on a 68-year-old Gilroy man depicted by friends and family as “helpful” and “loving”—was examined in an entirely new light after court files detailed the event as an act of self defense in the face of violence and racism.
Authorities decided not to charge alleged shooter Jerome Moore with homicide, according to a formal complaint filed with the Santa Clara County Superior Court. Though Moore was arrested on a murder charge Feb. 12 and booked into jail the next day, the 33-year-old Gilroy man “was acting in reasonable self defense” when he shot Martin Gonzales of Gilroy, according to court records. Moore told police he was targeted and ganged up on by a group of up to 30 men because of the color of his skin, court documents show.
Gonzales was pronounced dead Feb. 11 from a gunshot wound to the abdomen minutes after the incident occurred at approximately 6:10 p.m. on the sidewalk on the 300 block of Mantelli Drive.
Detectives confirmed that Moore—who was stabbed twice by an unknown assailant—was defending himself from the attacks of between five and six men, including Gonzales, based on multiple witness statements.
Phil Robb’s musical magic lives on at GHS
Described by supporters as a catalyst behind restoring Gilroy High’s choral music program and a dedicated educator who instills character, revered former choral director Phil Robb will have a lasting legacy.
On May 27, Gilroy Unified School District staff, the school board, high school choir students, family and friends gathered to dedicate the Phillip Robb Music Building in honor of Robb, who retired June 14, 2013 after a 30-year career.
Changes on Gilroy City Council, GUSD Board of Education
Incumbents claimed two of the three open seats on the Gilroy City Council, and a former council member secured the third seat.
Roland Velasco, who served two terms as a council member beginning in 1999, secured 22.4 percent of the vote, with 2,370 votes, followed by incumbents Peter Leroe-Muñoz and Dion Bracco with 20.6 percent and 20.3 percent, respectively, with 2,177 and 2,154 votes.
In the race for four open seats on the Gilroy Unified School District Board of Education, newcomer Linda Piceno took the lead with 19.4 percent of the vote, followed by incumbent Jaime Rosso and newcomer Heather Bass, with 18.2 and 17.7 percent of the vote, respectively.
Incumbent Patricia Midtgaard defeated Tom Bundros, who served multiple terms on the board, by just over 180 votes. Dom Payne, who was not re-elected, secured 11.2 percent of the vote.
