The shooting reportedly occurred in the area of Highway 1 and Mar Monte Avenue. The shooter, who reportedly fled the scene, was probably known to the victim, according to Sheriff’s Office spokesperson Ashley Keehn.

Law enforcement officers were searching for the suspect, in a white Honda Odyssey van, and they employed Project R.O.P.E., or Roadblock Observations Plan of Enforcement. The countywide alert calls on law enforcement agencies to monitor likely escape routes. Shortly before 5 p.m., the Sheriff’s Office released the emergency alert status.

“Detectives are actively working on this case, and we will have more information when it becomes available,” Keehn said of the search Monday evening.

The weather agency warned of large breaking waves of 15 to 20 feet throughout the greater San Francisco Bay Area, expected to continue to pound the county’s damaged coastline and offer dangerous swimming conditions. Ahead of the worst projected impacts, the Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Office issued a flood evacuation warning Thursday afternoon to neighborhoods along Beach Drive, Las Olas Drive and Potbelly Beach Road, citing the expected increased tide, high surf and existing reduction of beach sand.

At the same time, widespread national news coverage of Santa Cruz County’s severe weather impacts has reached Bolinas resident Lloyd Kahn reminiscing about another of the area’s most significant storms, in December 1955. Kahn told the Sentinel about being a 20-year-old who seized the opportunity to grab his surfboard and roommate George Kovalenko and put their surfboards in the San Lorenzo River on the outskirts of the city so they could paddle all the way to the river. Kahn, now an 87-year-old author and publisher, described the duo as “just a couple of dumbass surfers” weathering winter conditions in the days before the modern wetsuit came into popularity.

“There were refrigerators and cars and sections of houses going down the river and every bridge was demolished. We were paddling to stay away from all the stuff that was bobbing around in the water. It was fun, because we weren’t standing up but we were going pretty fast,” Kahn said. “The bridges were collapsed, but we got under sections of all them.”

Asked if the two men suffered any consequences for their dangerous actions at the time, Kahn said they managed to elude charges.

“(Authorities) accosted us when we got down there,” Kahn said of arriving at the river mouth. “I don’t know why they were going to arrest us, what the charges would have been, but they got diverted and we slipped out of there. So, we got away.”

Responding to the call

Authorities with local fire agencies, among the first to respond to flooding as well as ocean, river and stream rescues, told the Sentinel on Thursday that they were gearing up — once again — for a likely increased response in coming days. Whether it be for those caught in unexpectedly rising waters, thrill seekers without the sense to stay safe or dry-land observers who get too close to the water, officials said they had already undertaken plenty of water rescues this year.

Mike DeMars, spokesman for Central Fire District of Santa Cruz County, said the more than 300 response calls for his agency have been unusually high this month, though he could not say what percentage were related to water rescues alone.

Santa Cruz Fire Department’s Marine Safety Capt. Brian Thomas said that people were out in the water Thursday, taking the risk even with plenty of debris floating around them and jammed onto beaches and stairways. He described a tree’s root ball, larger than a truck, lodged on Main Beach. With the Santa Cruz Small Craft Harbor’s entrance largely unnavigable due to washed-up silt, Harbor Patrol boats cannot assist in ocean rescues, Thomas said. While the marine division has jet skis, conditions and water debris make the waterways frequently unsafe to navigate, he said.

“The only thing we’ve got in our favor is the winds are not favorable for surf conditions,” Thomas said from the Lifeguard Quarters on the Santa Cruz Municipal Wharf on Thursday morning. “It’s making the ocean very crossed up with a side wind. Even right now, looking at eight or so people in the water, it’s not good waves that they’re catching. So, it’s really keeping the crowds down to a minimum. People that understand the ocean know that it’s not fun to go out right now.”

In a majority ruling dated Friday, the California Court of Appeal for the Sixth Appellate District found that Michael Cheek, who committed two violent rapes in the 1980s in Santa Cruz and Contra Costa counties, could not be placed in the proposed home because it is within a quarter-mile of a school.

“That ruling was a victory for parents’ rights to educate their children in the way they see fit,” Santa Cruz County Assistant District Attorney Alex Byers said Tuesday. “It was a victory for public safety for our county, specifically for the citizens of Bonny Doon that have this situation thrust upon them.”

The decision noted that a private home school on the same road as Cheek’s future apartment appeared to have been created after neighbors were alerted of Cheek’s pending placement. That issue, however, was not enough to prevent the justices from overruling Cheek’s placement at a nearby home, however, because the statute does not require the school to have been operating for any particular time, according to the ruling.

A sexually violent predator, by state definition, is a person who has been convicted of a sexually violent offense and has a diagnosed mental disorder that makes the person a danger to others.

On Tuesday, Santa Cruz County Superior Court Judge Syda Cogliati said she planned to maintain a hold on the Iris Lane rental property while legal proceedings continue, as the appellate decision would not be finalized until after a 30-day period had lapsed. Defense attorney Stephen Prekoski, representing Cheek, said that it was unclear whether he would use that time period to seek an appellate rehearing of the case, or to appeal the case to the state Supreme Court.

Cogliati, who had made the initial ruling freeing Cheek to be placed in Bonny Doon in November 2021, also questioned whether the home school still existed and suggested a hearing would be needed to verify the facility’s continuing existence may be in the future.

Prekoski also told the court that he planned to refile a petition for his client to be conditionally released without a set location, considered a “transient release.” Cogliati denied Prekoski’s earlier bid for such an allowance in October. Prekoski, however, said that “transient release is the obvious option, given the egregious amount of due process violations that Mr. Cheek continues to suffer.”

“I would like for the court to include a gag order until the address becomes public,” Prekoski said. “My experience in past counties has been that the sheriff engages in scare tactics with the neighbors of the parcel of property that is reserved, goes out there, publishes Mr. Cheek’s private medical information and freaks out the neighbors.”

Cogliati agreed, ordering those Butte County offices not to publicly disclose the address of the potential Butte County site ahead of the standard public notice.

Cheek’s next local hearing was set for 9 a.m. March 6.

Gary Yules, a 72-year-old Santa Cruz man, died Saturday, according to California State Parks. A passerby called 911 at 1:33 p.m. to report a man trapped beneath a fallen tree in the park.

State Parks officials, with the help of Santa Cruz Police and Fire departments extricated Yules and provided care, but he reportedly died at the scene.

Ten of the 22 people killed during a three-day storm that struck the region Jan. 3-5, 1982, fell victim to a fast-moving mudslide when Love Creek oversaturated a quarter-mile swath of hillside. Others, in Aptos, Soquel, throughout the San Lorenzo Valley and Santa Cruz died in their homes due to mud flows and crashing trees. In Scotts Valley, one woman was swept into Lompico Creek and a man into Carbonero Creek, while another man died there in a tractor accident while clearing a tree.

By comparison, seven people died in Santa Cruz County due to the Loma Prieta earthquake of 1989 and one man died during the 2020 CZU August Lightning Complex fires. In the past four days, Santa Cruz County has experienced a cumulative rainfall between 1 inch in South County to 5 inches near Scott Creek in San Lorenzo Valley, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s counts. After its first night of rain, the Love Creek storm had racked up 8 inches of rainfall in some areas and an estimated 11.5 inches of rain in 24 hours in the mountains.

Flooding, debris flows and mudslides also took their toll during the 1982 storm. Homes slid from their foundations, into roads and into creeks. At the time, Santa Cruz County officials estimated cumulative storm damages of more than $100 million, including $56 million to homes and private property alone.

Unlike in 1982, residents in the past week were given extensive notice of the pending storm, with mandatory evacuation orders issued ahead of Wednesday’s storm for high-danger areas nearest waterways throughout the county. While the urgent storm warnings amounted to little in some parts of the county, some residents — including those in Capitola living along Soquel Creek — remained as waves of water rushed upstream and flooded their yards, ignoring city evacuation orders, according to city officials.

A scaled-back third storm system is forecast to arrive locally Saturday afternoon and extend through Sunday.

Staff writer PK Hattis contributed to this report.

Santa Cruz resident Ar’Mani McCoy told the Sentinel that on the morning of Dec. 15, she was returning home from a dentist appointment via a stop at Ferrell’s. Along the way, she spotted smeared blood below a heart, lying on the sidewalk. Nearby was a crushed paper cup and a plastic grocery store bag filled with blood and what turned out to have a liver inside.

McCoy said her first response was that what she was seeing must be some kind of fake — surely not a real heart.

“So I turned around and walked past it again,”  McCoy wrote in an email. “There was a homeless man laying under the bus stop seat so I kind of freaked out so I called my boyfriend and he told me to stay and call 911.”

Soon after, Santa Cruz police sent an officer out to investigate. After providing some details, McCoy was told she could go home.

“I went home and 5 minutes later, he called to get my statement and told me that it was indeed a real heart and liver but they didn’t know if it was human or animal,” McCoy wrote.

The remains were sent to the Santa Cruz County Sheriff-Coroner’s Office for assessment. Forensic pathologist Dr. Stephaney Fiore told police investigators that the organs had not come from a human.

Fiore, reached for comment this week on the remains, noted that finding only a heart and liver in a grocery bag on the street was “very odd.” She said the size of the remains was large enough to be of concern that they were human in origin.

“We tested the blood associated with the organs with a qualitative test that looks for human hemoglobin and it was negative,” Fiore wrote in an email. “Like a Covid or pregnancy test. A line develops if detected. So all we can say is that they were not human.”

Fiore said that the organs may have originated from a large dog or deer. The liver, she said, also had evidence of blunt trauma, suggesting possible roadkill.

According to Santa Cruz Deputy Police Chief Jon Bush, the subsequent police investigation was not able to determine the origin of the apparently animal remains.

Bush said his department had received a report that a witness saw an individual going through a nearby dumpster earlier in the day. Ultimately, however, Bush said he could not be sure if that was where the remains had come from.

On a frosty-cold Sunday morning a week before Christmas, Judy Sambrailo’s American bulldog alerted the family to an unusual guest. Crouched on the back patio of the family’s home, the approximately 3- to 4-month-old cub appeared to have been tucked away for safekeeping by its parent. After reaching out to the nonprofit Native Animal Rescue of Santa Cruz County for help, the family immediately was referred to the state Department of Fish and Wildlife.

Kevin Foster, a Boulder Creek resident who has volunteered as a wildlife rescuer with Native Animal Rescue for the past six years, said it is not uncommon for the agency to be the first stop for locals when it comes to wildlife encounters. Large animals such as mountain lions, however, are not under the nonprofit’s purview.

“Our first directive was to keep your pets and your kids, stay inside and leave it be and make it quiet, hoping that mom will come and get it,” Foster said.

Happy HOLLY-days for this rescued mountain lion cub, who continues to improve!

Holly is already showing us a calm but curious demeanor. She has a growing appetite too

The Christmas spirit is strong in this one — we hope you are all feeling loved and cared for today as well! pic.twitter.com/SuC19mNA2a

— Oakland Zoo (@oakzoo) December 25, 2022

Sambrailo, who lives in the mountains above the Santa Cruz-Soquel area, said she immediately felt connected to the “adorable” young cub.

“We don’t know what happened to the mom. Unfortunately, she didn’t come back. That would have been the best-case scenario, definitely,” Sambrailo said. “But we think maybe it could sense the water was here, the pond, and needed water. I think it came to the pond and then found the closest place it could hide.”

“That’s when they said, OK, we need to come and rescue it,” Sambrailo said.

The cub was whisked away to the Oakland Zoo, whose wildlife veterinarians have taken in five mountain lions this year, alone, according to the zoo’s response on Twitter to community questions Thursday. The zoo’s updates on Holly have garnered hundreds of thousands of views, likes, comments and reposts on Facebook and Twitter.

The newly arrived cub — dubbed Holly in honor of the holidays — was in critically ill condition, Oakland vets determined. Holly was warmed and treated immediately with fluids, vitamins and medication, according to the zoo. By Tuesday, Holly’s bloodwork had improved slightly. On Wednesday, Holly was eating and described as feisty, with the veterinarians remaining “cautiously optimistic” about the cub’s recovery. As of the zoo’s most recent social media post Friday, Holly continued to respond positively to treatment, though “a long road ahead” remained.

In the case of severely sick or young animals such as Holly, the zoo cares for the animals “until they recover enough to find suitable forever homes.” Sambrailo said she and her family hope one day to meet up with the cub again.

While mountain lions typically pose little threat to humans and generally avoid any human interaction, members of the public are reminded that mountain lions are wild animals and their behavior may be unpredictable, as with any wildlife, according to Fish and Wildlife. When encountering a mountain lion, people should never approach the animal nor run away from it, and always provide the mountain lion with an escape route, officials recommend. Report large wildlife encounters online at apps.wildlife.ca.gov/wir or contact Native Animal Rescue at 831-462-0726.

“The social determinants of health, they could be racism, intimate partner violence, just the stress of day-to-day going to work, food insecurity,” Homeless Persons’ Health Project clinic manager Joey Crottogini told more than 120 people gathered at the Veterans Memorial Building. “So, when you add all of these things up and it happens repeated, repeatedly, repeatedly, exposed to that, we call that complex trauma. This is something that people experiencing homelessness face on a day-to-day basis.”

Over years spent on the streets, those cumulative stresses “have a profound impact on somebody’s health,” Crottogini said.

Joining similar efforts across the country, community members had gathered on the shortest day of the year to remember and celebrate the lives of homeless people, along with those who had previously spent time without housing, who had died in 2022. Santa Cruz County’s annual Homeless Memorial, by some estimates in its 24th year, returned for the first time in three years to an in-person event locally, after two years of virtual remembrances designed for health safety during the coronavirus pandemic.

According to the best estimates of data gathered by the Homeless Persons Health Project staff members, some 91 individuals died while experiencing homelessness in Santa Cruz County in the past year. The 91 deaths recorded as of Dec. 5, said Homeless Persons Health Project analyst David Davis, was down from approximately 95 in 2021. Hinted at by the Narcan opioid overdose antidote boxes piled free for the taking next to the memorial’s spread of muffins and bottles of water, the year’s largest factor in homeless death was listed as accidental overdoses. At 26 deaths, accidental overdoses accounted for nearly 29% of the 2022 deaths, just ahead of the 25 “data pending” deaths, according to the clinic’s annual report.

This year’s tally amounts to a rate 5.6 times higher than their housed counterparts, according to a report by the clinic. This year, for the first time in 15 years, the average age of death among those experiencing homelessness dipped below 50 to 49 years of age, Davis said.

“If housed people passed away at the same rate as those experiencing homelessness, over 11,000 housed people would have died this year, instead of 1,900,” Davis said. “The disparity between housed and homeless deaths continues.”

During his years working in the profession, Crottogini said he realized that he was unlikely to be behind grand, sweeping system changes. Instead, he would need to support change on a smaller level.

“I always say you can start by saying, ‘Hello.’ You can start by just smiling,” Crottogini said. “Acknowledging their existence because too many times people experiencing homelessness or people on the verge of poverty are faced with the stigma, discrimination, that prevents people from getting services.”

Event attendee Randolph Tolley put a finer point on the issue.

“It’s horrible when you’re sleeping on the street and you’re woke up by the police and told you have to move,” Tolley called out from the audience. “The stress of blowing up in front of police, there’s the No. 1 reason.”

In addition to potential spaces at privately operated homeless shelters throughout the county, those seeking shelter spaces in the Santa Cruz city-run sites at 1220 River St. and in DeLaveaga Park at the National Guard Armory are recommended to contact outreach staff at 831-359-5996 to be notified as openings occur.

KSCO-AM 1080’s employees in recent weeks were notified that the station, after a reliable 75 years of live local content, essentially was “closing up shop.” All paid staff and contractors were told they would be let go by Dec. 31, if the station had not sold to a new owner, KSCO General Manager Michael Olson confirmed Thursday.

“Then, we just received an email from MZ, on his cruise, suggesting that we will be broadcasting into the new year,” Olson said, referring to station owner Michael Zwerling, who left this week for a trip to Mexico. “I have no details on that and will not know anything, probably, until he gets back just after Christmas.”

Zwerling, reached by email Thursday, wrote that while his staff would be laid off at the end of the year, he planned to continue broadcasting operations, “minus the expensive local programs that I have personally funded (for many years) beyond what advertising revenues were received.” He estimated that personnel cost to produce the station’s core broadcasts came to about $11,000 to $12,000 monthly.

About six weeks ago, Zwerling began listing the sale of the 10,000-watt AM station with a 50,000-watt reach online. In the most recent Craigslist advertisement, KSCO, along with its lower-powered sister station KOMY 1340 AM, and the broadcasting business’s five licenses are offered for a $1.5 million sale price. The station’s buildings, broadcasting infrastructure and three parcels of land, including 1 acre of “relatively flat land” and approximately 12 acres of lagoon at 2300 Portola Dr., are separately offered for $6 million in the listing. Buyers interested in the broadcast license but not the infrastructure may be able to reach a deal to lease the building, parking lot, event patio, garage and towers for $15,000 a month, according to the advertisement.

Zwerling said his advertisements had received “lots of interest from all over the country but no offers as of yet.” While Zwerling’s experience with the station was to have its expenses exceed revenues, he said KSCO did not have to operate “in the red.” Instead, he said he would like to find others willing to transform the station into “a platform for those who share my vision to become individual, INDEPENDENT entrepreneurs to own their broadcast time on the station, expand to worldwide podcasting operations which could become very successful businesses unto themselves!”

This is not Zwerling’s first attempt to get out of the radio business. The real estate investor and station owner, who turned 71 in November, similarly announced sale plans in September 2007. Zwerling, the station’s third owner since its inception in 1947, took over the station in 1991.

Zwelling denied a recent action against him by the Federal Communications Commission’s audio division of the media bureau had played a part in his decision to sell. On Wednesday, the agency upheld an October opinion to levy a $20,000 forfeiture order against Zwerling Broadcasting System Ltd. The division chief’s report said Zwerling had been “willfully and repeatedly” operating “at a variance from its authorized parameters” during overnight broadcasts for more than 30 years.

“In the nineteen nineties I made the decision that was NOT in the public interest, convenience, and necessity for all points east of 41st Avenue to lose the KSCO signal at sundown — to protect a 50 KW signal from Dallas for God’s sake???!!!,” Zwelling wrote. “Not a single interference complaint in over 30 years and multiple surprise FCC inspections during that period but suddenly we are fined.”

The media bureau was not swayed into mitigating or excusing the fine by Zwerling’s response last month that the station’s nonconforming operations allowed it to “serve those in our broadcast area who would not otherwise have had access to the news and information they needed,” according to the decision. Zwelling said he intended to pay the fine shortly, “under protest” and move on with the license renewal. The station’s internet streaming and FM translators will minimize the impact of reduced nondirectional broadcasting at night, he said.

According to an update from the Santa Cruz Police Department late Thursday afternoon, the remains were later determined not human, after an assessment by the Santa Cruz County Coroner’s Office.

Officers were alerted by a 10:21 a.m. 911 caller who believed she had seen “a human heart in a bag full of blood and possibly other body parts” on the 1400 block of Ocean Street, as broadcast over police radio communications.

The Coroner’s Office was called to the scene to collect the remains for further examination, according to a post to the Santa Cruz Police Department’s social media. According to police, the medical examiner would make the final call on whether the remains were animal or human.

“At this time, the remains are unidentified, and the investigation is still developing,” department officials wrote.

Calls to police officials earlier Thursday were not immediately returned.