Yearly Archives: 2021

Clover Stewart has spent much of the last 14 months zipping up COVID-19 casualties in body bags. At times, she has felt like one of the many living casualties of the pandemic – frontline medical workers who, at the height of the COVID-19 outbreak, have witnessed a lifetime’s worth of gruesome deaths in the course of a typical week. One night in March 2020, amid the frenzied efforts of the medical staff, the grim sounds of patients gasping for air, and the acrid smell of disinfectant, Stewart’s job got very personal: She recognized one of the deceased as the receptionist she and her pregnant daughter recently spoke with at a doctor’s visit.

There used to be a yogurt shop in Hemet which had some mind-blowing artwork on their wall. I always wondered if it was there for all the impatient customers waiting for their orders to be filled. It was a giant marine painting of all kinds of fish and deep-sea plant life. Embedded and well hidden within the huge watery panorama was another hard to see picture - the taunt was to find the obscure design. But even when you eventually found the hidden image, the next time you came back for yogurt, you usually had to find the hidden picture all over again. It drove me nuts.

Soboba’s Department of Public Safety recently welcomed Mikayla Mendoza to its newly created position of Emergency Services Coordinator. Under the supervision of DPS Director Brian Herritt and Soboba Fire Chief Glenn Patterson, she will plan, develop and coordinate multi-hazard emergency response and recovery activities in support of the Soboba Band of Luiseño Indians.

Rose Salgado, who helped steer the Soboba Band of Luiseño Indians through many years of growth and was a force for community betterment, passed away on May 14. She was 65. Rose was the youngest of six children born to Ernest Salgado Sr. and Fidelia Juarez Salgado. She, like her father and her siblings, was raised on the Soboba Reservation. She graduated from San Jacinto High School and attended the University of California, Riverside.

The Hemet/San Jacinto Student of the Month program presented its annual “Night of the Stars” on May 13, to announce its Student of the Year scholarship recipients. Chosen from those who had previously been honored as a Student of the Month during the 2020-2021 school year, one overall winner from each school was chosen to receive a $2,000 scholarship. Other nominees received a $100 gift card, and all got a keepsake box engraved with their name, the program’s logo and lots of goodies from program sponsors.