May 28, 2022
As I was checking out of the neighborhood Rite Aid the other day, I noticed a young man fill a small cart mostly with liquor bottles and walk past the waiting line and out the door. A man in line loudly pointed this out to the clerk. She shrugged and said, “Yep, it happens all day long, every day. They know they can steal without any penalty. They fire us if we try to do anything about it.”
A reader had just written me about witnessing the same situation at the same J Street store while eating ice cream cones with his kids. He said his children were aghast. He noted three nearby Rite Aid stores face closure. The locations on Folsom Boulevard and in Midtown have already closed. The Alhambra location was in process of shutting down. And the J Street location just had an armed robbery.
Apr 28, 2022
Law enforcement is perhaps the highest risk profession in our country. With the goal to make it home safe each day, officers face danger and risk from the unpredictability they encounter with every call. As a mother of a former police officer, I know the worry doesn’t end with the officer. It extends to family and friends.
Placer County Deputy Paul Solbos founded Warriors Always Ready, a nonprofit that provides high-quality physical and mental training for first responders and veterans through his Code3 Brazilian jiu-jitsu program.
Solbos’ inspiration was a call for service that put him in serious doubt he would make it home safe. His story begins like so many tragic law enforcement stories.
Apr 28, 2022
Ann Huntsman made a bold, life-changing decision in 2017. Turning 80, she decided to uproot from Cupertino and move to Sacramento to be near her only grandchild.
“I had lived for decades in a two-story, six-bedroom Spanish-style home where we raised our family,” Huntsman says. “It was very traditional, a job to maintain, and I had accumulated years of possessions. But it was time for me to start again in a whole new style of living.”
Huntsman is a retired nurse and investor in health care technology. Her daughter and family live a mile away. She could not be happier.
Mar 28, 2022
The Woodside condominium complex in Arden is a hidden gem. It’s a gated community on Howe Avenue between Sierra Boulevard and Northrup Avenue, and features a park setting with mature trees and gardens. The 725-unit planned apartment complex was developed in the 1960s and converted to condominiums around 1980.
Homeowner Lyn Efken has been a resident since 1982, when she purchased a Woodside townhouse. After she retired as a speech pathologist and program administrator, she managed other Woodside properties for homeowners who rented their units.
Mar 28, 2022
In May 2019, I wrote my first article on the tragedy of homeless people living on our streets. The column was titled “Is Sacramento Dying?” It was based on the documentary film “Seattle Is Dying.”
The film was produced by Seattle TV station KOMO in 2018. It begins with a bold thesis: This is about an idea. For a city that has run out of them. What if Seattle is dying? Can it ever recover?
The column was the most widely shared article on our website—shared thousands of times. Many readers feared our city was following Seattle’s course, driven by a lack of civic leadership.
The response helped me recognize the inadequacy of Sacramento media coverage. Homeless problems were not being seriously discussed in 2019. At Inside, we vowed to publish news, viewpoints, ideas and solutions in every issue moving forward.
