Community

Rebecca Plaza celebrated what would have been her son’s 20th birthday by placing a picture of him with a cake on the tree on Arroyo Circle where he died a year earlier.

BREAKING WALLS Gilroy’s Chamber of Commerce has a new touch, a statue calling attention to a trip to China. The nine-day trip from Oct.16-24 goes for $2,199 for Chamber members, $2,299 for non-members. Travelers will see Beijing, Shanghai, Suzhou and Hangzhou. The Chamber got the statue of a Terracotta  warrior from Citslinc, the company arranging the trip and will donate it after the trip to Gilroy Gardens.

Walking into the historic Willey House on Fifth Street in downtown Gilroy last Saturday, the infectious laughter of little girls greets you, second to the sweet scent of hair spray and perfume.

It’s hard to imagine, but what if studying math were fun?

If Billy Joel were passing through the South Valley, even the “piano man” would be impressed with Gilroy’s newest outlet store, The Piano Outlet.

Joe Lomeli didn’t know he was dead. He thought he was dreaming.

Hundreds of people flocked to see the creek overflow at Christmas Hill Park, saying it was a way of celebrating water in the face of a long drought. 

A Gilroy conservation group credited with returning steelhead trout to hundreds of miles of streams and the Pajaro River has found a much bigger fish to fry—Monterey Bay.Coastal Habitat Education & Environmental Restoration (CHEER) last week received final approval for a one-day event to remove river-borne garbage in Monterey Bay, according to Herman Garcia, CHEER founder and CEO.He plans to hold the event annually as a new prong in CHEER’S decade-plus effort to educate people about the damage to natural water resources caused by garbage and pollution.“It’s symbolic of the problem in the ocean, and it’s all coming from land-based sources,” he said.People believe ocean pollution is from commercial fishing and recreational boats, Navy ships and cruise liners, but that’s only five percent of the problem, according to Garcia.“Ninety-five percent comes from illegal dumping into coastal watershed and there are consequences to the marine habitat,” he said.In this region, that means the Salinas and Pajaro rivers, which drain into the Monterey Bay. The Pajaro alone drains 1,300 square miles of land in four counties and has 1,800 miles of streams.“Every winter, with the high levels of water from storms, all the garbage gets flushed into our bay, which is federally protected,” Garcia said.And while ocean pollution brings to mind the enormous floating garbage patch in the Pacific, that collection of refuse is dwarfed by what sinks to the ocean floors, he said.The cleanup has approvals and strong encouragement from the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, the U.S. Coast Guard and the Moss Landing Harbor District, on whose property the March 19 event will be staged. It’s billed as “CHEER’s First Annual Ocean Cleanup and Diving Extravaganza & Competition.”Event sponsors and exhibitors include NOAA’s National Marine Sanctuary Institutes, the state Dept. of Fish & Wildlife, the Coast Guard, the Santa Cruz Resource Conservation District, the Moss Landing Harbor District, and the Green Education Foundation, among others. Nearly two dozen groups will have exhibits for the public.And while no one knows exactly what will be found on the ocean floor, what’s pulled up, how much and by whom are expected to be the highlight of the event.That’s because, with the help of San Jose scuba diving clubs such as the Flipper Skippers, CHEER will deploy boats and 16 certified divers to depths up to 80 feet in a cash competition to pull the most debris from the bay floor at two locations, the mouths of the Salinas and Pajaro rivers.The event will be staged off Hwy. 1 in the north parking lot of the Moss Landing Harbor, by the Sea Harvest Restaurant. Divers will set out at 8 a.m. and return at 1 p.m.Garcia got the idea for the event at the Garcia family Christmas dinner in 2015. A guest told him that his dive group did garbage cleanups on the bay floor to help with the abalone harvest. But those dives stopped 35 years ago, the man said.Garcia’s reaction was immediate; “I was thinking, wow, what a wonderful idea to close our educational loop and make the connection between the watersheds and the ocean,” he said.Within two months, Garcia had lined up his permits, exhibitors and volunteers and was ready to turn to his plan’s two most important parts, the public and the media.“We’re losing the battle right now, there is more damage out there every day than we can keep up with; we need the help of the public and the only way to get the message out is through the media.Garcia’s and CHEER’s work is highly regarded by others involved in marine issues.“I applaud his efforts and I agree with is reasoning,” said U.S. Coast Guard Capt. Don Kelly, based in Monterey. “He wants to be able to show a nexus between the pollution in the rivers—even in the upper areas of the watersheds—and where it actually ends up, in the ocean,” Kelly said, adding, “I really do applaud him for making people understand the totality of the system.”The ocean floor cleanup will raise awareness of the need to keep rivers and the oceans healthy, he said. “Maybe it will make people think twice about” dumping and polluting.If you’re interested in volunteering or in the ocean cleanup, contact Garcia at herman@cheercentral.org or at info@cheercentral.org or at (408) 497-3037.

“It is so exciting that we can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel,” said Kathy Chavez, a local resident who has been working for more than two years to save the historic red barn in Christmas Hill Park from demolition.

Ten area veterans, including one Gilroyan were presented with hand-sewn quilts in honor of their service to the country at a reception at American Legion Mission Post 564 in Santa Clara last month.Presented by the South Bay Blue Star Moms, a military support group that sends care packages to service members, the quilts were given to veterans of the wars in Vietnam and the Persian Gulf, Iraq and Afghanistan at a moving ceremony on Feb. 20, where recipients were called one-by-one to the front of the room and wrapped in their quilt by loved ones.Called Quilts of Valor, they are meant to convey thanks to veterans for their sacrifice and are made to a particular size and standard. The foundation was started in 2003 by Catherine Roberts, whose son was stationed in Iraq. Through word-of-mouth and the Internet, the organization has spread across the country, awarding more than 133,000 quilts to date.Joseph Jauch, an Iraq War veteran from Gilroy who served two tours in the Army, was presented with a quilt by his mother, Jacqulyn Jauch of Gilroy, who pieced it together over a period of months. The patchwork design includes images of tanks and the dominant hue, army green.At the ceremony, Jacqulyn Jauch wrapped her son in the quilt, which included the label “Army Strong.”“He’s a very strong person; very committed and passionate about what he does,” said Jacqulyn Jauch, whose son joined up at age 19. “I’ve always admired him very much—he’s my hero.”What he has gone through during his service in the Army has made him a very strong man, she added.Jacqulyn Jauch said the group seeks to identify Vietnam War veterans to receive Quilts of Valor.“We always go out of our way to thank or hug our Vietnam veterans because they were treated so poorly when they returned. We make a special point for getting Vietnam veterans Quilts of Valor considering what they went through.”Two Vietnam veterans were presented with quilts at the ceremony.No easy task, Jacqulyn Jauch described the quilt-making process.“You have to lay out all the pieces, get the design how you want it to look, stack all the pieces of material in rows and in the right order so they’re sewn together in the right order.”While some quilts are more elaborate than others, with some of the quilters being more experienced, the aim is all the same: to give thanks and comfort.The South Bay Blue Star Moms hold two major fundraisers, a casino night in San Jose in the spring and fall spaghetti dinner annually and collect donations in support of their program that sends care packages to deployed service members. Their last shipment of care packages numbered 600 boxes, according to Jauch.For more information about their care package program, visit www.southbaybluestarmoms.org.