Gregory Prokopowicz, 44, pleaded guilty last year to murdering Roselyn Policarpio, a Walnut Creek resident who had dated Prokopowicz for two years and told family members she was planning to break up with him that day. But Prokopwicz’s lawyer argued he should be found legally insane at the time of the shooting, which would have resulted in Prokopwicz being sent to a mental institution in lieu of prison.

Prokowicz launched an appeal of Judge Charles “Ben” Burch’s ruling last Dec. 21, court records show. His attorney declined to comment.

Deputy District Attorney Rachel Piersig, who prosecuted the case, praised Burch’s decision.

“This was a horrific domestic violence-related murder in which a young woman was senselessly murdered,” Piersig said in an email to this newspaper. “Prokopowicz will be serving 25 years to life in prison for his actions. It is our hope that his sentencing will bring a sense of justice to the family members of the victim.”

Under state law, prosecutors must prove that a person understood the nature of his or her act, or understood that it was wrong, in order to establish a criminal defendant was legally sane. Knowledge of wrongdoing can be proved by evidence the defendant tried to cover up the crime or elude police.

After the murder, Prokopowicz told Policarpio’s son over the phone that he’d killed her. He fled the area, and was located that evening in Martinez, where police initiated what became a standoff that lasted 19 hours and ended with Prokopowicz’s arrest.

Prokopowicz remains in the Martinez Detention Facility on a no-bail hold, pending transfer to state prison, court records show.

The new law is intended to ensure that seniors and other adults — in particular those who rely on cannabis for medicinal reasons — have access marijuana vaping products. Proposed by Supervisor Diane Burgis, the ordinance allows permitted cannabis retailers located in unincorporated areas to sell and deliver the products.

The ordinance passed 3-2 with supervisors Federal Glover and Candace Anderson voting no.

During the first reading of the ordinance on Dec. 6, Burgis said the motivation behind the revised ordinance was that the 2019 law hurt seniors and other adults who rely on cannabis vaping products for both recreational and medical reasons. In particular, it affected homebound seniors in unincorporated areas, she said.

“What we’re trying to do by having policies here in Contra Costa County is to give people a way to access safe products,” Burgis said.

At the December meeting, both Glover and Anderson voted against the ordinance, saying it would send mixed messages to the public and betray an effort led by Contra Costa youth who wanted the ban in the first place.

“We clearly took a leadership position back in 2019 when we had a number of our students throughout this county that came before us and asked for the leadership to put this ban in place,” Glover said. “And I’m not going to turn away from that. I think it’s important that that we listen to our youth when they cry out and ask for this help.”

Glover said there is no evidence “that vaping does not cause problems to individuals” and partially lifting the ban would send “false messages or confusing messages to our public that it’s OK to do this this while at the same time saying that we want to prevent it.”

On Tuesday, groups advocating for cannabis access told the Board of Supervisors that banning pot vape products has created an illicit black market for the product and disproportionately affected vulnerable populations who rely on cannabis primarily for medical reasons.

Renee Lee, a resident of the retirement community of Rossmoor who runs an organization with a mission to help seniors legally access and safety use cannabis, said the majority of medicinal cannabis users in the unincorporated community near Walnut Creek prefer vaping.

“I am so happy,” Lee said after Tuesday’s vote. “It’s like a big weight off my shoulders … (the ordinance) had been very unfair.”

Sarah Armstrong of American for Safe Access, the country’s largest and oldest advocacy organization for medical cannabis patients, said forcing people to travel medicinal marijuana “often stimulates a black market because they simply cannot go to the nearest dispensary if they don’t have one near them.”

Before the vote, Burgis emphasized that the ordinance makes no change to the current ban of tobacco and flavored tobacco vaping products; nor does it allow for new dispensaries in unincorporated areas.

“This does allow the sale of one particular set of cannabis products, which are already sold in many cities of Contra Costa County and are available to purchase in nearly every other part of the state that has approved cannabis retail sales,” she said.

In passing the ordinance, the board also directed Contra Costa Health Services to begin working on an awareness program about the dangers of youth cannabis vaping. Supervisor John Gioia said creation of such a program was a major factor in his decision to support the new legislation.

Authorities on Tuesday identified the dead man as 24-year-old Joseph Salmeron, from El Sobrante. He was a passenger in the car.

Around 10:25 a.m. Sunday, California Highway Patrol officers received word of a possible crash in the eastbound lanes near Oak Hill Road involving a sport-utility vehicle, according to a social-media post from the agency.

When CHP officers arrived, they found a Toyota Yaris that had left the roadway and struck a tree in the center median.

The driver had life-threatening injuries. There was no update on her condition available Monday.

No Sig-alert closing lanes for any investigation was issued. Anyone with information may call the CHP’s Contra Costa office at 925-646-4980.

Contact George Kelly at 408-859-5180.

Tesla grandstandinglooks ridiculous

John Blumenthals’s article regarding feeling “embarrassed” to drive a Tesla is a perfect example of how political polarization has become ridiculous (“I bought a Tesla; now I’m embarrassed to drive it,” Page A7, Jan. 4).

It’s people like him that create the animosity we have today and why it’s hard to get anything done in this country. Love him or hate him, Elon Musk made the electric car more accessible and popular in this country, and if you truly care about climate change then you would look past petty political differences to embrace a real solution to carbon emissions.

He says he doesn’t feel “comfortable” driving it anymore. Give me a break. If he polled the CEOs and boards of directors of all the corporations of products he consumes then he might decide he has to live off the land in the woods somewhere; honestly. we’d be better off having that kind of intolerance out of our society.

Max RitterLivermore

Ranked choice savesmoney, draws voters

When I was on the San Leandro City Council I helped bring ranked choice voting to San Leandro.

The reasons were: it saved the city money (pay for one election instead of two), it saved the candidates money (only had to fundraise for one election which helped less-well-off people run), and it was more democratic since two to three times as many people turn out in a November general election than the June primary, or a run-off special election after November. That is what democracy is all about. It shouldn’t be about who can appeal to special interests or is rich enough to self-fund.

If readers want to learn more, please go to fairvote.org. Studies show RCV helps elect more women and people of color, who are underrepresented in most elected governmental bodies. Instant runoff voting is easy.

Jim ProlaFormer vice mayorSan Leandro

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Voters deserve betterthat 2020 replay in 2024

If Republicans learn from their disappointing midterm performance that it’s finally time to dump Donald Trump, then the outcome of the midterms will be the best it could possibly have been for the party.

If Joe Biden decides as a result of the midterms that he has a mandate to run in 2024, then the outcome will be the worst possible for Democrats.

We can do better in 2024 than a rerun of the awful choices of 2020.

Daniel BrintonLafayette

Seeno III committedto family companies

As we approach Saturday’s critical hearing with the Concord City Council on the term sheet for the Concord Naval Weapons Station project, an editorial Friday in the East Bay Times has attempted to tie a familial legal dispute to this critical development.

Albert D. Seeno III categorically denies all his father’s allegations. The editorial is part of a persistent campaign to attack the Seeno family and its members. The dispute and editorial are not material to the project — and its multitude of benefits. The editorial does nothing to advance the work required to entitle, process or deliver the weapons station project as envisioned.

Albert D. Seeno III remains committed to the Seeno family of companies and its employees. It is unfortunate the editorial is exploiting a family dispute, attempting to derail the work of Concord First Partners as they continue working to implement the City of Concord’s vision for the weapons station project.

Louis ParsonsPresident, Discovery BuildersConcord

The number of COVID patients in Bay Area hospitals reached 940 on Wednesday, just a few beds shy of the August 2021 peak when the delta variant of the virus was surging. We’re still nowhere near the two biggest spikes — 2,028 COVID patients in the pandemic’s first winter in January 2021 and 1,914 last January during the omicron wave.

But this year has its own twist.

“Emergency rooms are packed,” said Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, a UCSF professor of medicine who specializes in infectious diseases.

And it’s not just COVID that is crowding ERs and filling hospital beds. While fewer COVID patients are seriously ill from the virus compared to previous winters, the resurgence of other viruses such as influenza and RSV are combining forces and making it trickier for all of us — and our doctors — to know why we’re feeling so rotten.

“Back in the old days, sure people were sicker, but it was simpler algorithmically” to know it was COVID, Chin-Hong said. Now diagnosis and treatment are a more complicated equation, with so many viruses spreading.

This week, 12 public health directors in the larger Bay Area joined to encourage residents to take precautions and help “ease the burden on local health systems.” They recommend five basic steps: Get vaccinated against flu and COVID, stay home if you are sick, wear a mask in indoor public places, get tested if you feel sick, and get treatment if you are.

Limited space isn’t the only challenge health care facilities are struggling with. Chin-Hong said high rates of illness among staff and a current shortage of Tamiflu, used to treat the flu, are contributing to the challenges.

“For every patient that’s admitted to the hospital,” said Dr. Robert Rodriguez, professor of emergency medicine at UCSF and attending physician at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital, “we’re probably seeing another three people who don’t get admitted.” And with emergency rooms having to board admitted patients until space is freed up in the hospital, “that backs us up and inhibits our ability to see patients,” he said.

Suzanne Leigh, spokesperson for UCSF, said the number of COVID patients has doubled to 38 since Nov. 1, but it’s lower than it was on Aug. 1. Just under half of current COVID-positive patients are hospitalized because of their infection, a big difference from early in the pandemic. The rest have what’s considered incidental COVID, meaning they were admitted for other reasons and also tested positive for the virus.

Dr. Niraj Sehgal, chief medical officer for Stanford Healthcare, said over the past week Stanford has 25-35 patients with COVID, 10-15 with influenza and 5-10 with RSV. In an email, he said the overall patient numbers “remain exceptionally high.”

For the first two years of the pandemic, the Bay Area’s COVID hospitalization rate was lower than the state’s, but ever since April of this year the tables have turned. For nearly all of the last nine months, the number of patients hospitalized with COVID per 100,000 residents has been higher in the 6 counties surrounding the San Francisco Bay than in the rest of the state.

While the Bay Area’s COVID hospitalization rate is slightly above the state’s as a whole, other parts of the state are also seeing their hospitals getting slammed. Los Angeles County’s Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer announced on Thursday that hospitals in the county have the lowest number of beds available since before the pandemic, four years ago.

But despite the surge in hospitalizations, there is good news in year three of the pandemic: Thanks to vaccines and therapeutics such as Paxlovid, the severity of COVID-related illnesses is much lower in this wave.

At Stanford, Sehgal said, it has been rare in recent months to see a COVID patient require a ventilator.

The 55-year-old man is being held at Contra Costa jail in lieu of $46,000 bail, records show. He was charged with two felonies and a misdemeanor, all connected to the Nov. 17 incident when he allegedly made the threats.

Police say that at around 3:45 p.m. Nov. 17, he called the dispatcher and accused a CHP motorcycle cop of kicking his mirror, then speeding off on Highway 24.

“If I could have killed him, I would have,” he allegedly told the dispatcher, later adding, “I wanna know who the dirty (expletive) pig cop was so I can go after him and his family.”

“I need (the sergeant’s) name and badge number too. I’m gonna (expletive) him up too,” he allegedly said.

A records check revealed the man had prior arrests for making threats and assault on a peace officer. He was formally charged in Contra Costa Superior Court on Dec. 7, according to court records.

“Food was rationed. We got like 10 eggs per month for a family of five and one pound of oil,” says Compestine, who lives in Lafayette. “I think about food all the time, because I feel like I was half-starved growing up. That’s how I ended up writing cookbooks and fiction centered around food.”

So when COVID hit her hometown of Wuhan, food was foremost in Compestine’s mind. She worried about family members who still reside in the city. Were they hungry? How were they getting groceries, when the whole city was on lockdown? Eventually, she came across a story about young volunteers who were cooking meals and delivering staples to people quarantined at home.

Compestine reached out to one of those volunteers – a niece of a friend, who she interviewed over WeChat – and that connection shaped the protagonist of her new middle-grade novel, “Morning Sun in Wuhan” (Clarion Books, $17) which the New York Public Library named one of 2022’s “Best Books for Kids.”

Set in early 2020, 13-year-old Mei is the daughter of a doctor working endless pandemic shifts at the hospital. Alone at home, Mei begins to cook for her neighbors at an emergency kitchen, hauling food to their high-rise apartments with ropes and baskets.

“Morning Sun” at times reads like a thriller, as the virus courses around Wuhan, with people collapsing in public and panic and fear clouding the air.

But food is embedded in its heart. Some of the masks characters wear – perhaps due to misinformation or lack of supplies – are made with cabbage leaves and citrus peels. The writing is rich in appetizing descriptions, like Mei’s class erupting “as if someone dropped water into a wok full of hot oil,” and a nurse passes through a crowd that “quickly seals back like a thin stew.” The novel’s chapters are interspersed with illustrated recipes young chefs can cook themselves, like hot dry noodles with spicy sesame sauce and eight-treasure rice pudding. (See her recipe for hot dry noodles here.)

Compestine recently took time to talk about food, the book and her beloved Wuhan. (This interview was edited for brevity.)

Q: What made you want to write about Wuhan?

A: I feel half of me still lives there. Every night — often — I dream about my life in Wuhan, even though I’ve been in this country for 30 years. My brother and childhood friends still live there. Before this whole COVID breakout, I was ready to go to Wuhan.

Q: What was it like having relatives there when the virus hit?

A: It was really heartbreaking. Every day I would watch the news. You saw the bodies piling up in the hospitals and people crowded in the hospital hallways.

At one point, my older brother said, “I really need an N95 mask, so I can go to the hospital and get some medicine.” Those masks were the hardest thing to come by. Finally one of my friends gave me an N95 mask, and I spent like $150 to send it the fastest way. It got confiscated – it never got to them. I felt really desperate.

Q: Can you tell us about these food brigades that organized during the pandemic?

A: In China in these high-rise buildings, every compound would have a small volunteer group. There was no government organization; the young people just decided they’re going to help people themselves. They risked their lives to deliver food, which was a lifeline. For people like my brother, who are older, they don’t have a mask and are locked inside. They’re really dependent on these young volunteers. That’s how they survived for months.

Q: What made you decide to have “Morning Sun” double as a cookbook?

A: I was just at a birthday party for a Chinese friend, and we had so much food. Then a while ago, I went to an American friend’s birthday party, and it was so little food. (Laughs.) For Chinese people, particularly in Wuhan, food is such a big symbolic thing in our life. It’s how we express our love and friendship to each other.

I never understand when Americans go to visit their sick friends, and they bring flowers. I’m thinking, “What does that do? You can’t eat a flower.” For my friends, I bring food – be practical.

Q: What is the food scene like in Wuhan?

A: It’s next to the Yangtze River, so we get a lot of seafood and a lot of fish from the river. Also because it’s a big industrial city in central China, there’s food going from north to the south and vice versa, so we have food from all over China gathered there.

I just think Wuhan cuisine is the best cuisine. It’s not as spicy as Hunan or Szechuan food, but it emphasizes fresh seafood and vegetables and very healthy versions of Chinese food. A lot of this you have to put caring and love into to make well. I simplify it in the book, so that young readers can make it too.

Mark your calendar: Compestine will talk about her writing at 4 p.m. on Jan. 19 at Books Inc., 3515 California St., San Francisco; booksinc.net

“At home I’m on a low-carb diet,” says Compestine. “But the last time I went to Wuhan, I was like, ‘Forget about that.’ I ate it every day. It brings back a lot of my childhood memories.”

Hot Dry Noodles

Makes 4 servings

INGREDIENTS

12 ounces rice noodles, fresh or dry

¾ cup Spicy Sesame Sauce (see below for recipe), homemade or store-bought

¼ cup julienned cucumber (peeled, seeded and cut into matchsticks)

¼ cup bean sprouts (optional)

¼ cup chopped roasted peanuts or any other nuts you prefer

DIRECTIONS

Cook noodles according to package directions. Drain and rinse with cold water to prevent sticking. Place noodles in a large bowl. Pour the Spicy Sesame Sauce over the noodles. With chopsticks, toss noodles to evenly coat with sauce. Garnish with cucumber, bean sprouts (if using) and roasted nuts. Divide into four small serving bowls and enjoy with chopsticks.

Spicy Sesame Sauce

Makes ¾ cup

INGREDIENTS

½ cup toasted black or white sesame seeds

2 cloves garlic, chopped

1 green onion, green and white parts, chopped

2 tablespoons soy sauce

2 tablespoons lemon juice

2 teaspoons sesame oil

¼ teaspoon fresh chili or dry red pepper flakes

¼ teaspoon salt

DIRECTIONS

Put all the sauce ingredients in a blender. Blend on high for about 30 seconds or until smooth. Cover and let the flavors meld in the refrigerator for about 30 minutes or overnight before using.

— Courtesy Ying Chang Compestine

Saratoga soccer player Mateo Porta (28.51%) finished second and Lincoln-San Jose basketball player Sam Wagner (15.84%) placed third.

Congratulations to all the candidates for this week’s recognition.

Roth, a senior, helped Acalanes improve to 4-0, scoring a goal and assisting on two others in a 4-0 victory over Newark Memorial.

A week earlier, he scored twice in a 4-0 win over Foothill.

Before that, he had two goals and an assist in a 3-0 victory over Granada.

To nominate an athlete for next week’s poll, email highschools@bayareanewsgroup.com by Monday, Dec. 19, at 11 a.m. Please include stats and team results.

We also review stats submitted to MaxPreps.com by coaches/team statisticians for consideration.

Winners are announced each Friday on the Mercury News & East Bay Times websites and, starting Sept. 30, in the print edition of the Mercury News and EB Times sports sections.

Past winners

Nov. 28-Dec. 3: Austin Shelton, San Ramon Valley football

Nov. 21-26: Jae’Von Reels, Bellarmine football

Nov. 14-19: Dashiell Weaver, Campolindo football

Nov. 7-12: Nate Bell, Liberty football

Oct. 31-Nov. 5: Angel Barraza, Dublin football

Oct. 24-29: Zachariah Norton, Hayward football

Oct. 17-22: Shane Timmons, Saratoga football

Oct 10-15: Owen Neitzel, Leigh water polo

Oct. 3-8: Salvador Espinoza, Lincoln-San Jose football

Sept. 26-Oct. 1: Antonio Arenas, El Camino football

Sept. 19-24: Nic Austen, College Park water polo

Sept. 12-17: John Ben Pau Mendoza, San Ramon Valley football

Sept. 5-10: Luke Baker, San Ramon Valley football

Aug. 28-Sept. 3: Luke Llabres, Willow Glen water polo

Aug. 22-27: Mikhail Popov, College Park water polo

Over objections from neighbors who sued to halt the project, a California appellate court last month ruled the 315-unit Terraces of Lafayette complex planned for the heart of that East Bay suburb meets state environmental requirements and building can begin.

The ruling is the likely culmination of a series of protracted skirmishes that helped galvanize a growing YIMBY — or “Yes In My Backyard” — movement, a new generation of outspoken and sometimes litigious pro-housing activists. The controversy and the YIMBY coalition it ignited have spurred California officials to crack down on growth-averse cities blamed for exacerbating a deepening housing affordability crisis.

“The folks who initially objected to this project, and have been fighting it ever since, poked a sleeping bear,” said Matt Regan, a housing policy expert with the Bay Area Council business association.

One of the early YIMBY advocates, Sonja Trauss, hardly knew what she was doing when she sued Lafayette seven years ago to force the city to approve the Terraces apartment complex. Trauss, then in her mid-30s, had only recently quit her job as a math teacher to dedicate herself to haranguing Bay Area cities into permitting more housing — the denser, the better.

Up until that point, Trauss and her fellow millennial activists — most of whom had little background in housing policy but were united in feeling priced out of the region — had been gaining attention mainly for showing up to city meetings to voice loud support for proposed developments and square off with older homeowners bent on killing the projects.

But when Trauss learned about a compromise plan to downsize Terraces of Lafayette from hundreds of apartments to 44 single-family homes, she saw a new opportunity. Without a lawyer, she wrote and filed a petition arguing the move violated a then-little-known state housing law called the Housing Accountability Act.

She was confident the optics of suing an exclusive bedroom community to allow apartments would stir controversy.

“Even just the name Lafayette, even if you don’t know anything, it sounds like what it is,” said Trauss, who didn’t live in the city. “If it had been called Danville, it just wouldn’t have been as good.”

Local media couldn’t resist the story, and neither could the New York Times. And with the Terraces fight lifted to the national stage, a flood of enthusiasm poured in for the YIMBY cause.

While Trauss’ suit ultimately failed — though the apartment plans would eventually resurface — she and her allies harnessed the new energy to create multiple nonprofit advocacy groups, including YIMBY Action, which now has chapters across 17 states.

“I spent the last six years giving the same speech: You have an address, you have an opinion and you have a hearing to go to and give that opinion,” Trauss said.

At home in California, the YIMBY nonprofits would go on to sue more jurisdictions — often successfully — including Berkeley, San Francisco, Los Altos, Huntington Beach, Rancho Palos Verdes and most recently Santa Clara County, which advocates have accused of imposing illegal zoning restrictions near Stanford University.

They’ve also become political power players, cultivating allies in lawmakers and regulators in Sacramento, sponsoring a raft of state legislation to compel cities to approve more housing and raising millions of dollars in funding — including from tech millionaires like Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman.

“There are now political consequences when cities ignore their housing obligations,” said Regan with Bay Area Council.

Still, the YIMBY argument that much more housing of all kinds and affordability levels is needed as soon as possible has yet to convince everyone. That’s especially true for some neighborhood groups and low-income tenant advocates, who view the YIMBYs as an extension of corporate development interests hungry to upend the character of local communities and further gentrification.

Michael Griffiths, president of Save Lafayette, the neighborhood group that sued to stop the Terraces project, echoed those sentiments. He described Trauss and company as “ill-informed” and “out-of-order” outsiders who “show up and create problems” for cities.

Griffiths, who takes issue with the notion the Bay Area is grappling with a housing “crisis,” said the YIMBYs, city officials and courts who backed the project are ignoring the wildfire risks and increased pollution that would come with building on the 22-acre site at Pleasant Hill and Dear Hill roads just off Highway 24.

Save Lafayette will “follow the legal process through its proper protocol” to challenge the appellate court decision, Griffiths said, though he declined to give specifics of what that could look like.

Trauss, who is no longer part of the battle, said it’s time to start building.

“The people involved with Save Lafayette should be ashamed of themselves,” she said in a statement when the ruling against the group was announced. “They have denied housing for more than 700 middle-income people for the last 10 years while they fought this project.”

Dennis O’Brien, the Terraces developer — who expects the project and its 63 below-market units could be completed by 2026 — calls Trauss a friend despite being on the opposite side of her initial lawsuit a half-decade ago. O’Brien credits the YIMBYs with reframing the state’s housing debates and convincing lawmakers to act, adding some of the reforms have been key to moving the Terraces project forward.

“Sonja and her generation have stood up for the fact they could not find affordable housing in San Francisco and the Bay Area,” he said, “and decided to do something about it.”