It was another discouraging week for my Best of Bill roundup of Noozhawk’s Top 5 stories of the previous seven days. But the news that the remains of Jack Cantin had been found and positively identified is truly a triumph worth celebrating.
Also worth celebrating is the Santa Barbara County visit of Pedal the Pacific and the dozen young women who are cycling 1,700 miles from Seattle to San Diego to raise awareness about sex trafficking.
After a year off “because of COVID,” the 2021 team pedaled into the county on July 21 on the nonprofit organization’s fourth expedition down the coast.
As our Janene Scully reported, they were met in Lompoc by an enthusiastic community contingent organized by Ann McCarty, executive director of the North County Rape Crisis & Child Protection Center.
Dinner was provided by the Lompoc-Vandenberg Branch of the American Association of University Women; Teresa Loya, Vandenberg Space Force Base’s sexual assault response coordinator, “coined” them with a unique award from the base; overnight accommodations were extended by Trinity Church of the Nazarene; and Bicycles Unlimited tuned up their wheels that evening.
After lunch at El Capitán Canyon on the Gaviota coast on July 22, the team dropped off their bikes at the Montecito Inn for storage before being hailed as heroes at a barbecue at a host family’s home.
On July 23, the women are attending breakfast at the Santa Barbara Club, followed by a roundtable discussion with the county Human Trafficking Task Force led by Megan Rheinschild, director of the District Attorney’s Office’s Victim-Witness Assistance Program.
A luncheon presentation is being made at the Santa Barbara Yacht Club at the behest of the SBYC Women, and the Junior League of Santa Barbara is hosting a dinner to compare notes about the league’s own human trafficking outreach and programs.
Before leaving for Oxnard on July 24, the outreach committee at All Saints By-the-Sea Episcopal Church will send the team off with breakfast and a blessing by the Rev. Vicki Mouradian, associate rector.
I’ve been privileged to be part of all three previous Pedal the Pacific stops in the county, and this latest one is even more exciting because of its growth and reach.
Unfortunately, it’s needed now more than ever because sex trafficking is a revolting scourge in our community, one that often seems to be a step ahead of us.
But Pedal the Pacific is making a difference, and you can, too. Please click here for more information, or click here to make an online donation.
In other news, Noozhawk had an audience of 113,535 readers this past week, according to our Google Analytics.
What follows is my take on the Top 5 stories you were reading most. But remember: This is my opinion column, not a news story.
1. Remains of 17-Year-Old Jack Cantin Recovered 3½ Years After Deadly Montecito Debris Flows
Jack Cantin — a 17-year-old Montecito resident, Santa Barbara High School junior and Eagle Scout — was swept away in Montecito’s deadly Jan. 9, 2018, flash flooding and debris flows that claimed 23 lives, including that of his dad, Dave.
He was presumed dead in the horrifying disaster, but his body and that of a neighbor — 2-year-old Lydia Sutthithepa — were never found.
Until around Memorial Day, which is when his mom, Kim, says his remains were discovered less than a mile downstream from the family’s demolished Hot Springs Road home.
“All my mama fibers in my body said he didn’t go to the ocean, and I knew he didn’t,” she told Beth Farnsworth of KEYT News.
Cantin wouldn’t disclose where her son’s remains were found, saying it was “sacred ground” and will not be revealed. She said the discovery was withheld to allow time for lab analysis and other investigation.
While the boys in Cantin’s family — husband, son and dog — perished, she and her daughter, Lauren, somehow survived when their house broke apart around them.
For 3½ years, search crews and volunteers have periodically scoured a 110-acre zone looking for Jack and Lydia, whose family lived about 150 yards up Montecito Creek from the Cantins in Old Spanish Town.
In the end, Cantin said, the UC Santa Barbara Anthropology Department and assistant professor Danielle Kurin, a forensic biologic anthropologist, played key roles in the discovery.
“The amazing thing is, I will have Jack to bury at the cemetery next to his father, with dignity, so that I can have closure,” she said. “My family can have closure. Jack’s friends can have closure. And, the community can have closure.
“I know this community was amazing and everyone was rooting and praying that we’d find these kids.”
Rest in peace, Jack, and prayers of continued strength to your family and to the Sutthithepas. We’re sorry you had to lie there alone all this time.
2. Bill Macfadyen: Deadly Highway 101 Collision Has Far-Reaching Impacts
As tragic as the deadly July 15, multivehicle crash on Highway 101 on the Gaviota coast was, it was even more heartbreaking than we knew at the time.
As our Giana Magnoli first reported, the 7:55 a.m. wreck killed two people, critically injured four and snarled traffic throughout much of the county for hours afterward.
On July 20, the Santa Barbara County sheriff’s Coroner’s Bureau identified the two dead victims as 52-year-old Maria Sanchez De Bautista and 20-year-old Yazmin Bautista Sanchez, both of Santa Maria.
The mother and daughter were passengers in a Ford Expedition that the California Highway Patrol says triggered the frightful collision near El Capitán State Beach, eight miles west of Goleta.
According to the CHP, the driver of the northbound Expedition — identified by the CHP as 29-year-old Beatriz Bautista Sanchez of Santa Maria, another daughter — lost control and hit five other vehicles, one northbound and the others southbound, while the SUV flipped on its side and crossed all four lanes of traffic and the median.
Beatriz Sanchez and two other passengers, Leticia Bautista Sanchez, 26, and Luis Bautista Sanchez, 22, also of Santa Maria, suffered critical injuries and were transported by American Medical Response ambulances to Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital as was the driver of a southbound Dodge minivan.
The identities of the occupants in the four southbound vehicles were not released, but all are Santa Barbara County residents, from Buellton, Lompoc and Orcutt.
The CHP is still investigating the circumstances of the collision.
Fermin Ancelmo, the nephew of Maria Sanchez De Bautista and the cousin of the other four people in the Expedition, opened a GoFundMe account to assist the family with medical and funeral expenses.
He said the family was returning from Mexico, where they had gone for the funeral of an uncle who had died in May.
Ancelmo described his aunt as “a hardworking, caring and loving person” who strived to give her children a better future.
“Every time you’d see her she would have a smile on her face and give you the biggest and warmest hug,” he recalled.
Yasmin, he said, was a straight-A student who was transferring to UCLA in September.
“Going to UCLA was one of her biggest goals,” Ancelmo said.
Just $5,700 had been raised as of July 23. Click here to make an online donation.
3. Santa Barbara Man Charged with Murdering Father, Attempting to Kill Another Man
A Santa Barbara man has been arrested and charged in the murder of his father and the attempted murder of another man.
As our Jade Martinez-Pogue first reported, 29-year-old Casey Augustin Tolivar was arrested July 15 at a residence in the 600 block of North La Cumbre Road, just north of Calle Cita.
Santa Barbara County sheriff’s spokeswoman Raquel Zick said deputies went to the home on a welfare check and found Tolivar inside.
According to Zick, the deputies learned that he had “assaulted a victim with an object, and that the victim fled the residence with serious injuries.”
That wasn’t all.
Also inside the house was a body, which Zick identified as 72-year-old Bradley Tolivar, the suspect’s father. Further investigation, she said, determined that his death was “suspicious, and not from natural causes.”
Tolivar initially was arrested for on suspicion of assault and booked into County Jail for an attack on Stevan Lubarsky, which Zick said allegedly involved a glass bottle and a rock.
She said the subsequent autopsy on Bradley Tolivar determined that his preliminary cause and manner of death were the result of homicide by blunt force trauma, reportedly from a steel bar.
As a result, she said, Tolivar was re-booked on suspicion of murder. He was to have been arraigned July 20 and, as of July 23, was being held without bail.
Investigators believe the elder Tolivar was killed sometime between July 10 and July 14, Zick said.
4. ZIP Code Analysis Charts Santa Barbara County COVID-19 Vaccination Disparities
Our Brooke Holland and Jade Martinez-Pogue took a long look at Santa Barbara County’s COVID-19 vaccination data and found a fairly stark delineation by ZIP codes.
According to the county’s Community Data Dashboard, 60.9% of eligible county residents were fully vaccinated as of July 23, which isn’t terrible until you look at the area numbers as Brooke and Jade did. That’s where the disparities become obvious.
I could recount the numbers myself, but our Giana Magnoli’s nearby graphic illustrates it far better than words.
Two tiny communities — Summerland and Casmalia — book-end the chart, with nearly 100% of Summerland’s roughly 400 residents fully vaccinated but only 32% of Casmalia’s 150 residents similarly protected.
But whereas most of the South Coast, the Santa Ynez Valley and Los Alamos are at 60% or higher, the Lompoc Valley is under 50% and a horizontal band across the North County, starting with the Santa Maria Valley, is between 50% and 60%, as is Isla Vista and the sparsely populated Gaviota coast.
To no one’s surprise, including that of county Public Health Department director Van Do-Reynoso, those lagging ZIP codes also happen to be the regions that have had more coronavirus cases.
She said the department has 23 community partners to help with vaccination outreach, but the reasons behind the reluctance aren’t as deplorably simple as the national news media make them out to be.
Dr. Chuck Fenzi, CEO and chief medical officer of the Santa Barbara Neighborhood Clinics, says barriers include a fear of needles, as well as the vaccine’s development and possible side effects.
And he said there are some patients “who just simply don’t want to have the vaccine,” while there are others who don’t show up for their second-dose appointments.
Click here for vaccination locations in the county, including walk-up appointments.
5. Public Health Recommends Everyone Wear Masks Indoors, as COVID-19 Cases, Hospitalizations Rise
Aaaaand they’re back.
With massive media attention about the Delta variant preceding an uptick in COVID-19 cases, the Santa Barbara County Public Health Department has resurrected its recommendation that everyone — whether vaccinated or not — wear masks when indoors in public places.
That’s not an official state public health directive; California requires only the unvaccinated to wear masks in such settings. Nor is it a change of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention policy.
“Out of an abundance of caution, people are recommended to wear masks indoors in settings like grocery or retail stores, theaters and family entertainment centers, even if they are fully vaccinated, as an added layer of protection for unvaccinated residents,” according to county public health officials.
That’s right … “as an added layer of protection for unvaccinated residents.”
Never mind that the previous item on vaccination disparities by ZIP codes noted that a majority of county residents has been vaccinated, ergo a minority has not been vaccinated.
When two of the three separate COVID-19 vaccines first began being distributed last December, masks were still a reasonable precaution.
Things are vastly different today, as those same county public health officials acknowledged when they reiterated in our Giana Magnoli’s story that the now three free vaccines are safe, effective and offer sweeping protection against serious illness and death from the coronavirus and its inevitable variants. That’s a ginormous contradiction.
As Dr. Chuck Fenzi of the Santa Barbara Neighborhood Clinics explained above, there is a range of reasons for the resistance — many of them understandable and a few … just not valid at all.
I’m not seeing how a message of “get vaccinated but remain masked” changes many minds. With the data unmistakably pointing to a pandemic of the unvaccinated — as it always was — it seems to me that the more effective strategy is to address the unvaccinated as responsible citizens that most actually are.
A handful of readers critical of my critiques frequently reminds me that I’m neither a medical doctor nor an epidemiologist. While I’ve never claimed I was, they’re absolutely right.
But I am a journalist, and I can guarantee I know more about the practice of communication than your average medical doctor or epidemiologist. A lot more.
To help boost our vaccination levels closer to herd immunity, perhaps the outreach instead should directly explain the long-term effects of how vaccines work, as well as transparently address the as-yet-unknown long-term risks of these particular shots.
Also helpful would be concise and simply stated FAQs about common medical situations, such as pregnancy, pre-existing conditions, obesity and smoking.
Additionally, there is nothing more persuasive than personal examples. While we all love being hectored by government officials and celebrities we don’t know, there are literally thousands of locals who have lived to tell the tale of their encounters with COVID-19. Ask them to share their stories, particularly as they relate to inoculations. We all know these people; they have credibility.
But masks alone? I suspect the vaccinated public is done with them. I know I am.
• • •
Last Year on Noozhawk
What was our most-read story this time last year? Actor Orlando Bloom Seeks Public’s Help in Finding Missing Dog in Montecito.
• • •
Bill Macfadyen’s Story of the Week
Wait till the guests start writing their Yelp reviews of the wedding: Couple Allegedly Offered Wedding Guests Better Food Depending on How Much Their Gift Cost.
• • •
Best of Bill’s Instagram
I took my Instagram feed to President Ronald Reagan’s beloved Rancho del Cielo this past week, and it was well worth the trek. Sadly, I also encountered a #coopershawk tragedy closer to home.
• • •
Watch It
This hair-brained alleged thief stole a car from the wrong woman.
(Fox 2 Detroit video)
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— Bill Macfadyen is Noozhawk’s founder and publisher. Contact him at wmacfadyen@noozhawk.com, follow him on Instagram: @bill.macfadyen, or click here to read previous columns. The opinions expressed are his own.
