People

The day after a 7.0 earthquake hit Port au Prince, Martinez couple Anna and Steve Land boarded a plane with a 37-member medical team headed to Haiti. As the plane neared landing, Anna leaned towards the small thick windows but it was dark and most damage faded into the night. Upon arrival to the U.S. Embassy, the team waited for their mission, eventually heading to a golf club, where they began setting up an outdoor treatment center.more...

New San Jose State football coach Mike MacIntyre continued to keep a feverish pace on the recruiting trail with National Signing Day just a few days away. The latest addition to the Spartans stable was big Travis Raciti from College Park High School. Raciti paid a visit to the campus and met with MacIntyre to seal the deal last Sunday.

At CP, Raciti played both tight-end and defensive tackle. He even lined-up as a linebacker in some defensive schemes. No matter where this solid young man played, he was a force to reckon-with for the opposition. more...

Replicating fabric patterns and colors popular when Abe Lincoln was a boy, members of the Martinez-based Anne Loucks Chapter of the national organization Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) spent six months constructing a quilt that would have looked right at home in a 19th-century log cabin.more...

Citing superlative training and a long tradition of disaster relief support, an emergency room doctor at Martinez’s Contra Costa Regional Medical Center (CCRMC) told the Gazette on Friday afternoon the reasons why she and three of her ER colleagues are leaving for Haiti on Monday.

CCRMC Doctors Brenda Reilly, Bill Peterson, Pramita Kuruvilla and Neil Jayasekera are scheduled to arrive in Haiti on Wednesday to wield their medical training on a population overwhelmed by disaster following the 7.0 earthquake on Jan. 12. more...

Will it be Julliard? The Manhattan School of Music? Or a different city and the New England Conservatory of Music?

Martinez’s own jazz prodigy, Joe Warner, 17, this week sent out a round of college applications for next fall, and recorded his audition CD in his studio, a.k.a. the  garage adjacent to his family’s pink house on the corner of Alhambra Avenue and Mellus Street. more...

Police in the Northern California city of Redding issued a “Missing At Risk Adult” report this week on a  former Martinez native who has possibly returned to the area.

She is considered at risk due to mental health issues, said Sgt. Bruce Bonner of the Redding Police Department Investigations Unit.more...

In a Walnut Creek courtroom Monday, as dozens of friends, family members and racing colleagues of slain bicyclist Mark Pendleton looked on, the man accused of killing Pendleton was handcuffed and led off to jail for a second time, despite entering a plea of not guilty. more...

On Monday, the man police say killed bicyclist Mark Pendleton in Nov. 2008 will be arraigned in a Walnut Creek courthouse.

Pendleton, 49, an ardent bicyclist and member of the Wells Fargo Racing Team, was returning to his Alhambra Way home from a routine training ride to Port Costa when a motorist drifted across the center line and struck Pendleton, killing him almost instantly before driving away. The hit-and-run accident occurred on the west shoulder of McEwen Road, about half a mile north of Route 4.more...

As a Shell employee, Gordon Johnson has more than a passing interest in finding solutions to global warming. The environmental engineer is on the faculty of the University of San Francisco’s Environmental Management Graduate Program, where he applies his expertise in industrial wastewater treatment, groundwater and soil remediation, air pollution compliance and hazardous waste compliance,more...