Santa Cruz News

My post traumatic stress is horrible. I've had a horrible life. The saving factor was that I found pot. It saved me, saved my life. My nightmares were gone...

For the past few weeks, she has traversed Northern California, from Watsonville to Merced and to San Francisco, but with a purpose -- to plant the seed of Santa Cruz in the heart of our first lady Michelle Obama.

It wasn't until after he dragged his body onto the beach near Fisherman's Wharf --" nearly five and a half hours after leaving Santa Cruz on his paddleboard --" that Craig Waltz learned about the shark.

As city leaders furlough staff and slash services to help bridge a $9 million budget gap, a look at city finances shows the city paid a total $88,930 to 40 retiring workers in 2008 for vacation and sick days they never took.

Monday, trustees for Santa Cruz City Schools weighed a second major step in overhauling the district's cafeteria program, but chose to delay a critical vote until a new food services director is hired next month and the financial impact is reviewed.

The California sea otter, whose numbers have only recently begun to rebound from the devastating fur trade, appears to be struggling again.

Santa Cruz author Jill Wolfson doesn't shy away from challenging subject matter for her children's and young adult fiction.

A woman walking home alone after a night out with friends was attacked and sexually assaulted in the Seabright neighborhood late Sunday, police reported.

Opponents of a plan for the city to provide UC Santa Cruz with water for 4,000 more students are predicting a legal fight if the plan is approved by regulators.

At the end of 11th grade Career Day, Bill Levonian had no idea what he wanted to do with his life.

A man who works three jobs to support his family - including one as a limousine driver - has won a $39 million jackpot in California's SuperLotto Plus.

Requests to spare the state from mass budget cuts have been so numerous they jammed Assemblyman Bill Monning's fax machine.

Experts in preventing violence against women and police will meet with Seabright residents Thursday to quell fears and answer questions following the attack and rape of a woman walking home in the neighborhood Sunday night.

June 23, 9:39 PM Comment RSS The Santa Cruz city council passed unanimously by voice vote this afternoon an emergency 45-day moratorium on medical marijuana dispensaries, though mayor Cynthia Matthews said "motion approved" so quickly after calling for a voice vote of those "opposed" that it was impossible to tell if anyone was opposed.

Bay Area couple: 'He stole my house!' "He stole my house!" said Tom Decker and Maria McArthur on their site, " Get out of my house! " "We said, 'This is our home,' and he said,'This is my home'," Tom Decker said of the Ben Lomond "dream" home he and his wife Maria McArthur planned to live in when they retired.

A 28-year-old woman found beaten and lying on a Santa Cruz street told officers she was sexually assaulted, police said Tuesday.

June 23, 9:39 - The Santa Cruz city council passed unanimously by voice vote this afternoon an emergency 45-day moratorium on medical marijuana dispensaries, though mayor Cynthia Matthews said "motion approved" so quickly after calling for a voice vote of those "opposed" that it was impossible to tell if anyone was opposed.

The current regulations prohibit medical marijuana dispensaries within 600 feet of drug abuse treatment or recovery facilities and mental health facilities. This is nothing but reefer madness. Fred Gardner, who is the foremost chronicler of the medical marijuana movement, published a survey of doctors in Counterpunch of October 2006. According to this survey 30% of medical marijuana patients in California use it for depression and other psychiatric conditions. And not one of them ever shot up a schoolyard. Meanwhile, over 10% of America is on some kind of SSRI and 5% of those will experience manic psychosis as a result according to Fox News. That works out to 1.5 million maniacs waiting to explode. This same report states that 7 of the previous 12 school shooters were either on or withdrawing from an SSRI.

For the first time, Natural Bridges State Beach is offering tours of the tide pools in Spanish.

Someone is holding a SuperLotto Plus lottery ticket worth $39 million sold at the Santa Cruz Market on California Street in the Circles.