HUMBOLDT COUNTY, CALIF. • FREE Thursday Feb. 8, 2018 Vol XXIX Issue 6 northcoastjournal.com STILLUnlike The Bachelor’s Bekah M, these people aren'tMISSING famous, their stories haven’t gone viral and they haven't been found By Thadeus Greenson and Linda Stansberry 10 Committee pitches committee 30 Eat your heart out 55 So much sax 2 NORTH COAST JOURNAL • Thursday, Feb. 8, 2018 • northcoastjournal.com Contents Serious Felonies 4 Editor 24 Home & Garden #StillMissing Service Directory Cultivation/Drug Possession 5 Mailbox 26 Humboldt Made DUI/DMV Hearings 5 Poem Special Advertising Section Cannabis Business Compliance Heaven ain’t a Place 27 Get Out! Domestic Violence 10 News Hand Making Skateboards in Arcata Juvenile Delinquency Crisis Delayed 28 Art Beat Pre-Arrest Counseling 14 NCJ Daily Social Media 16 Week in Weed 29 Arts! Arcata FREE CONSULTATION ‘Left Behind’ Friday, Feb. 9, 6-9 p.m. For Defense Work Only 19 On The Cover 30 Table Talk 732 5th Street, Suite C Still Missing Heart on a Stick Eureka, CA 95501 34 Music & More! Live Entertainment Grid [email protected] 38 The Setlist www.humboldtjustice.com Music and Poetry and Music N L O A R T N H U R COAS T J O 39 Calendar 707.268.8600 45 Filmland Love Makes Fools of Us All 47 Workshops & Classes Kathleen Bryson 55 Field Notes M. Sax’s Brass Clarinet Attorney 55 Sudoku & Crossword Former Humboldt County Deputy District Attorney Bulldog beauty contestants at the Inked Member of National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws Hearts Expo. More on page 14. 56 Classifieds (NORML) Member of California DUI Lawyers Association Photo by Mark Larson PARTS AND SERVICES ON: Honda Yamaha Polaris Suzuki KTM Kawasaki Harley-Davidson Can-Am CUSTOM BUILDS & FABRICATIONS ATVS • UTVS • TRUCKS • MOTORCYCLES PARTS • REPAIR • SALES CNC MILL & CNC PLASMA SERVICES 3990 BROADWAY, EUREKA 707.269.0991 northcoastjournal.com • Thursday, Feb. 8, 2018 • NORTH COAST JOURNAL 3 Editor Feb. 8, 2018 • Volume XXIX Issue 6 North Coast Journal Inc. Helping you create the www.northcoastjournal.com ISSN 1099-7571 © Copyright 2018 #StillMissing memories of tomorrow Publisher Judy Hodgson By Thadeus Greenson 707-443-2778 [email protected] [email protected] General Manager 800-462-2937 Chuck Leishman BekahM. #TheBachelor. for all the wrong reasons. Its popularity was www.Dalianes.com [email protected] News Editor There. I had to get the hashtags a by-product of our celebrity-obsessed, 522 F St • Eureka, CA Thadeus Greenson in right o the bat in the hopes reality-TV culture. [email protected] someone will actually read this. So in most iterations of the story we Arts & Features Editor In case you missed it, the Journal broke, which wound up read by millions of Jennifer Fumiko Cahill #broke a story last week that went viral and people, there was little if any mention of [email protected] wound up re-reported by publications from Humboldt County’s dubious distinction of Assistant Editor/Staff Writer the New York Times and Vanity Fair to having the highest per-capita rate of miss- Kimberly Wear Golf Digest and the Hollywood Reporter. ing persons cases in the state, much less [email protected] On one level, it was quite a phenomenon of the drug and alcohol abuse epidemic, Staff Writer to behold. the pervasive homelessness, the fractured Linda Stansberry We posted a story to our website at families and the clandestine history of [email protected] about 3:45 p.m. on Feb. 1, noting that a cannabis farming in the region that form Calendar Editor woman — Rebekah Martinez — listed on the foundation of this distinction. There Kali Cozyris [email protected] the California Attorney General’s data- was little if any mention of the dozens of Contributing Writers base of missing persons out of Humboldt people truly missing from Humboldt, peo- John J. Bennett, Simona Carini, Barry Evans, County is currently a contestant on the hit ple disappeared or presumed dead, leaving Gabrielle Gopinath, Collin Yeo television show The Bachelor, which airs grieving families searching for answers and Art Director/Production Manager on ABC and draws millions of viewers. We grasping for closure. (Consider that almost Holly Harvey [email protected] knew it was only a matter of time before 200 times more people read the Martinez RanchRanch Graphic Design/Production the story went viral. It checked all the story on our website than took the time Miles Eggleston, Carolyn Fernandez, boxes — the man-bites-dog element of to click through a slideshow of the people toto Jacqueline Langeland, Amy Waldrip, the unexpected with someone missing on who are actually missing.) Table Jonathan Webster Table national television and the inclusion of a And there was similarly little, if any, [email protected] celebrity — one who also happens to be examination of what this story says about Creative Services Manager young, female and objectively attractive. our law enforcement agencies and their Lynn Leishman [email protected] Add in the detail of a Humboldt County missing persons databases, o r the general Advertising Manager pot farm, and the story was click-bait gold. embarrassment of both ambling along Melissa Sanderson [email protected] It was still fascinating to watch it unfold. totally oblivious to the fact that one of The San Francisco Chronicle was the Advertising their listees was posting to Instagram and Linus Lorenzen [email protected] fi rst to repost the story the evening of Feb. appearing on national television. Tyler Tibbles [email protected] 1, but things didn’t really start moving until Now please don’t read this as an indict- Kyle Windham [email protected] around 7 a.m. the following day, when New ment of the Humboldt County Sheri ’s Classified Advertising York Magazine Associate Editor Madison O¡ ce, which we realize has 4,000 square Mark Boyd [email protected] Kircher tweeted the Journal’s story out to miles to patrol with limited sta and fund- We serve breakfast all day! Office Manager her 5,000 followers, which include a who’s- ing, not to mention a seemingly ever-in- Annie Kimball [email protected] who of entertainment media. The stories creasing pile of confi rmed homicide cases 623 Fernbridge Dr., Fernbridge Bookkeeper quickly followed: Decided posted at 8:21 a.m. to investigate. But it should be impossible Deborah Henry [email protected] W-M, 7 am - 2 pm • 707-786-3900 Buzzfeed at 9:14 a.m. The Daily Beast at 9:28 to read Martinez’s story and our coverage Mail/Office a.m. Vanity Fair at 10:31 a.m. The Washington of missing persons cases in general without 310 F St., Eureka, CA 95501 Post at 11 a.m. People at 11:03 a.m. USA Today seeing that there are some very real fl aws 707 442-1400 FAX: 707 442-1401 at noon, and the New York Times at 12:29 that need to be addressed if we as a com- www.northcoastjournal.com p.m. (Thanks to freelance journalist Kelly munity are really going to do all we can to Press Releases [email protected] Donahue, who compiled the times in a story fi nd the missing. GET SMART. Letters to the Editor [email protected] about the viral nature of our story.) And that’s what this conversation should Events/A&E [email protected] Music [email protected] Virtually all the reporting linked back to be about, right? There are people in this Classified/Workshops [email protected] our coverage, and we watched our website community who disappeared, seemingly numbers soar as hundreds of thousands of without a trace. They left behind people CIRCULATION VERIFICATION people who had previously been arguing who love them, people whose lives will be COUNCIL about whether Martinez — known as dominated by their absence and unan- Bekah M on the show — was too young to swered questions. This issue of the North The North Coast Journal is a weekly newspaper serving Humboldt County. Circulation: 21,000 copies distributed FREE at more than make out with Arie the bachelor, let alone Coast Journal is about them. 450 locations. Mail subscriptions: $39 / 52 issues. Single back issues mailed marry him, fl ooded to read our coverage. #StillMissing. ● at participating Humboldt restaurants. $2.50. Entire contents of the North Coast Journal are copyrighted. Now don’t get us wrong, the clicks are No article may be reprinted without publisher’s written permission. Printed on recycled paper with soy-based ink. nice and there’s something intoxicating Thadeus Greenson is the Journal’s news about a piece you produced capturing so editor. Reach him at 442-1400, extension LEARN MORE AT: On the Cover northcoastjournal.com/NCJsmartcard much attention. But we’re also keenly aware 321, or [email protected]. Fol- Photoillustration by Jonathan Webster that this story captured all this attention low him on Twitter @thadeusgreenson. 4 NORTH COAST JOURNAL • Thursday, Feb. 8, 2018 • northcoastjournal.com Build to edge of the document Mailbox Margins are just a safe area ANNUAL INVENTORY CLEARANCE Heaven ain’t a Place Biggest Sale of the Year Heaven ain’t a place ALL KNIVES $AVE UP ALL FOOTWEAR It’s a state of mind TO 75% UP TO 50% OFF It’s got everything You’re willing to find CARHARTT It’s got all of the rhythm, all of the rhyme & MORE! 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