Santa Cruz County Local News: Veterans

A group of vets will gather at St. Patrick’s Church and march to the Henry J. Mello Center, where the annual Veterans Day ceremony will be held.

A team of volunteers brought new life to the Veterans Memorial Building on East Beach Street by helping restore the facade of the 1934 historic landmark.

The Santa Cruz County Veterans Memorial Building serves as a hub for veteran services—and much more, as Good Times writer Mat Weir reports.

Fundraising push planned for this year.

The two women nominated by Veteran of Foreign Wars Post 1716 and American Legion Post 121 say they joined the military for similar reasons: neither knew what they wanted to do when high school ended.

Joel Haston, the new event coordinator at Veterans Hall, is a Santa Cruz local who has spent the past 18 years traveling the state, promoting concerts and growing his business.

Since the Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 1716 was founded nearly a century ago, it has been a place for vets to find camaraderie.

Opponents cite environmental concerns

Two years ago the California Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) established Project Roomkey in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. The idea behind the program was simple but important: protect people experiencing homelessness from coronavirus. The success of that program led to the development of Homekey in 2021, which strived to place homeless individuals [...]

At an afternoon gathering in Ben Lomond Saturday, local service providers united to mark the opening of a housing project meant to help veterans get and stay off the streets.  The Veterans’ Village, formerly Jaye’s Timberlane Resort, features a series of 10 rustic cabins swathed by dense redwood forest, right along Highway 9. And officials [...]

State Senator John Laird on Jan. 18 introduced Senate Bill 850 (SB 850), a bill to ensure families of fallen officers receive survival benefits regardless of family structure.  The impetus for the bill was founded in the deaths of law enforcement officers in the county the 17th District representative calls home. The first occurred in [...].