Community

You know the name of the guitar player in the band, but for 25 years the man in front of Santana has been singer Tony Lindsay.

Several months after temporarily shutting its doors and laying off dozens of workers, the United Natural Foods, Inc. (UNFI) distribution center on Cameron Boulevard in Gilroy is back up and running. Its first product shipment was dispatched late last month and a new general manager is leading operations at the state-of-the-art plant.“The future is bright for UNFI Gilroy, our associates and the community,” said Crystal Brennan, an 11-year veteran of the $6 billion publicly traded company, and UNFI’s first female general manager.“The state-of-the-art distribution center was built for growth and is temperature-controlled to handle a variety of natural and organic products that our customers want, while still being energy efficient. UNFI Gilroy has applied for Gold LEED [Leadership in energy and environmental design] certification,” she said.Brennan, a Texas native who worked at seven UNFI Distribution Centers in a variety of management positions, from human resources to operations and transportation before assuming the top job at UNFI Gilroy, said UNFI will “focus on giving back to the community through volunteer activities and green initiatives.”UNFI Gilroy was not yet fully operational when it was announced last July 21 that the 425,000-square-foot distribution center would delay its start of business until early this year because it lost a critical customer, Safeway, in its Northern California market.At that time, the Dispatch reported, then-mayor Don Gage had received a phone call and confidential note from UNFI’s chief operating officer, Sean F. Griffin, confirming the loss of Safeway and delay of the plant’s grand opening. Griffin said work would continue “on building and equipping the Gilroy plant with an eye toward opening in February.”Consequently, the company laid off the 38 employees who had just started working at the plant and offered good-will payments to the other, eligible new hires that had not yet started working.According to UNFI, more than 50 percent of the original active associates and others who had been offered positions are now working at UNFI Gilroy. The company has 132 employees, 43 of whom are Gilroy residents. The facility is huge and has room for expansion as the company gains more clients.Many of the hires have prior experience in warehouse operations, according to UNFI, and all associates receive extensive training regarding policy, procedure, operations, position function, equipment and safety.Brennan said that unlike other big warehouse companies, UNFI won’t replace workers with robots. The demands of the companies seeking their products are too specific for machines to do the work, she said, and the kinds of consumers who would buy the products would prefer knowing that people worked on the process, not robots.While earlier reports stated the Gilroy plant would eventually expand to 700,000 square feet, UNFI said there are no plans for expansion.The current plant size is 425,600 square feet.Gilroy UNFI ships to customers including Whole Foods, CVS and Sprouts.“I look forward to UNFI being an active member of the Gilroy community for many years to come,” said Brennan.

From a tough, fatherless boyhood to successes in college football, the military and real estate development, Robert James Dyer, who helped shape Gilroy as it is today, will be remembered Sunday, April 10 with what’s expected to be the kind of party he relished.

Shag Beauty Bar in downtown Gilroy went from hair salon to Project Runway last Sunday as 27 sewing students modeled their handmade outfits to a packed house.

The life and legacy of Cesar Chavez was celebrated with mariachis, an Aztec ceremonial dance and a moving speech by the late labor leader’s son, Paul, on April 2 at the first annual Cesar Chavez Day Breakfast in Gilroy.Hosted by local nonprofit Community Agency for Resources, Advocacy, and Services (CARAS), the breakfast and fundraiser was one of a multitude of events held across the country in recognition of what would have been the civil rights leader’s 89th birthday.Paul Chavez, one of Cesar and Helen Chavez’s eight children and president of the Cesar Chavez Foundation, told the gathering at Old City Hall restaurant that his father, even as he forged a social movement that resounded with people across the nation, was a normal person and would have been uncomfortable with all the attention.“Actually, he would be uncomfortable today; he would want us to be out organizing,” he said.Paul said it was his father’s personal experiences—working as a migrant farmworker and suffering from systemic racism while serving in the U.S. Navy—that informed his beliefs and compelled him to fight for social and economic justice, rather than any particular political ideology.There was no political ideology, he said, it was personal.Paul told of how his father, who grew up in a small town outside Yuma, Arizona, had to leave school to labor as a farmworker to help support his family, whose fortunes fell during the Great Depression.The experience affected him so deeply that 40 years later, Cesar Chavez could point out to his son the orchards he had worked in or a particular bridge he had slept under while toiling in the fields.“It’s this kind of upbringing that made him realize they needed more than a union, but a movement,” he said.Cesar Chavez would go on to found the United Farm Workers Union with Dolores Huerta, who in her 80s continues to support labor causes, and lead a successful grape boycott that would bring farmworker issues to the awareness of mainstream America.But, Paul said, for his father, the movement was never just about grapes and lettuce, it was about people.Cesar Chavez went on to establish the first credit union for farmworkers and a cooperative gas station with a mechanic. He also created a burial fund.Paul said his father wanted to address the needs and hopes of the community.Twenty-three years after Cesar Chavez’s death, 11 states now honor his birthday as a holiday. The UFW call to action, “Si Se Puede,” is part of today’s political lexicon.“I’m very proud and honored to see the memory of Cesar Chavez kept alive,” said Ernesto Olivares, a guest at the breakfast and officer of the Latino Family Fund, a project of the Gilroy Foundation. “We need to keep up the fight for social justice and farmworker rights as there are issues that still need to be addressed.”

If the one-lane traffic limit last summer on Hecker Pass was frustrating, expect it to be doubled this summer. While the Highway 152 construction continues, Highway 129 will also see slowdowns for the next nine months.

Waving blue pom-poms and screaming like their favorite team just scored the winning point, students at South Valley Middle School on Tuesday celebrated the school’s placement at the top of the leaderboard in a Bay Area math competition.Called LearnStorm, the initiative from Mountain View-based Khan Academy, is a nine-week math challenge open to all students in grades 3-12 that uses gaming concepts and a point reward system to encourage students as they gain greater math proficiency.At a special assembly on Tuesday, representatives from the academy along with Gilroy Unified School District superintendent, Deborah Flores; GUSD Board of Education member James Pace and school principal Anisha Munshi celebrated the school’s achievement in the math competition rankings, receiving a trophy for placing No. 1 on the Mastery Total Points leaderboard.“It is an amazing program,” said Valerie Kelly, South Valley Middle School math teacher and math department chair. During the assembly, Kelly presented top-scoring students with a certificates for their hard work.“The competition keeps them on task,” said Kelly, highlighting the point structure and the competition’s use of videos and diagrams to keep students engaged.All of the school’s math classes—more than 800 students—participated in the 9-week competition, which will culminate at a grand ceremony at Levis Stadium on April 5, where select schools in the Bay Area will be recognized.Flores said the competition, which started on January 29, and is made available to schools for free, rewards perseverance and reinforces skills taught in the classroom.“I love the way the program is set up,” she said, adding that her own son participated in a trial run of the competition last year at Gilroy High School. “It helps kids work through their math problems to figure out the answer.”Flores also appreciated the timeliness of the competition as a statewide math test is coming up in mid-April and the extra math preparation may help improve student scores.“I am hopeful that it will benefit individual performance in those assessments,” she said.Started as a pilot program at select schools in the region last year, the Khan Academy’s LearnStorm challenge is now available in counties throughout the greater Bay Area, from Napa to Santa Cruz.In the Bay Area, 1,000 schools participated in the competition this year, according to the Khan Academy.In addition to South Valley Middle School, Gilroy schools that participated include Gilroy High School, which placed second in Mastery below South Valley Middle School, Christopher High, El Roble Elementary, Glen View Elementary and GECA (Dr. TJ Owens Gilroy Early College Academy).To keep up with the latest school rankings, go to: learnstorm2016.org.

She was dying. Now she’s not and that’s cause for celebration.

Dressed in suits, slacks and sensible shoes, nearly 150 local high school students “rocked the mock” last week, participating in workshops and a mock job interview session that aimed to prepare them for future employment.