Cover Story

Lompoc’s Alex Taylor and Tamara Cravit met online in 1998, back before it was trendy to do so.    “We met in a chat room on IRC, how sad is that?” Alex said with a laugh. The couple had already been planning a commitment ceremony in their synagogue when the California Supreme Court ruling legalizing […]

Bill Denneen didn’t set out to be a pioneer. Still, that’s the path he started on when he decided in the early 1960s that his life’s goal was to be completely self-sufficient by generating his own power, collecting his own water from the sky, and growing his own food. A self-described activist, Denneen was born […]

Once upon a time, there was a well-meaning group of politicians—the 110th Congress—that approved a law requiring lead and phthalate testing for children’s products. The politicians penned the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008 (CPSIA) after thousands of children’s toys, clothes, and other items were recalled because of unsafe lead levels. Not long after, […]

Every actor has a role he or she is dying to play: the career-defining character who would mark the pinnacle of dramatic success.    Likewise, every theater has one play it hopes to someday produce: the one that seems impossibly out of reach but worth dreaming about anyway. Ask around, and that play is almost […]

Caren Ray teaches social sciences at Santa Maria High School. Throughout her career, she’s taught that subject at the advanced placement and honors level, as well as to learning-handicapped students. She’s currently working on her administrative credential. She’s on track to have her master’s degree completed in July. She also recently received a pink slip. […]

It’s 6:30 p.m. on a Friday evening on Main Street. A woman driving a sedan pulls a sharp U-turn in front of a group of 14 Santa Maria Police Department officers and various onlookers. She speeds off down Pine Street with orange safety cones lodged in the car’s wheel-well, and a patrol car soon tracks […]

A new millennium had dawned. The world was still easing itself into 2000, inching down slowly like the new year was a steaming hot tub, grateful that the warnings of a global technological meltdown were just the rantings of conspiracy theorists. You know, crazy people. And just as citizens everywhere were finally allowing their lives […]

There are fights, and then there are fights. During World War II, Filipino soldiers fought alongside their U.S. counterparts, sharing the same fears, fights, and fates as part of the guerrilla resistance. They were on the front lines of the battle of Corregidor, they fought at Bataan, and they walked in that infamous journey that […]

In 2005, Santa Maria resident Melissa’s* daughter, Stephanie*, was a happy and healthy 16-year-old. She went to school, hung out with friends, and spent time with her family. “She was always a happy-go-lucky child. She was always very spirited,” Melissa said of her daughter. All of that began to change when a relative moved in, […]

At the headwaters of the Santa Maria River lies a vast oak-studded ranch, the quintessence of the Central Coast’s characteristic rural landscape. Here in the fresh air of the Avenales Ranch, the gentle mooing of cows and calves is likely to be punctuated by the otherworldly bugling of tule elk or the high-pitched yowl of […]

Californians have a love-hate relationship with rain: Too much, and we’re taking bets on which McMansion will fall down a cliff. Too little, and we’re worrying which golden hillside will burst into flames next. With recent reports of a statewide drought and Los Angeles facing water rationing for the first time in its history, it’s […]

Almost 40 years to the day after an offshore drilling platform near Santa Barbara malfunctioned, pouring millions of gallons of crude oil into the ocean and polluting 35 miles of coastline, the state’s offshore oil reserves were nearly opened for business again. The Houston-based Plains Exploration and Production Company’s proposed foray into the Tranquillon Ridge […]