In recent years, people’s habits have shifted away from drinking, and now the Trump administration’s tariffs on wine are another hit.
Joe Arias just opened Frenchie Wine Bar in Dolores Heights five months ago, during a tumultuous time for the wine industry. But he’s doing what he can as tariffs drive prices up.
“It’s a great champagne,” Arias said, pointing to one of the shelves. “It has a great price for champagne.”
Arias is trying to keep prices competitive and give his customers the best bang for their buck.
The recent uncertainty has made things more difficult, especially for a new small business.
“With tariffs, you don’t know exactly what will be the increase of pricing from when you order wine, maybe a month before and the month after,” said Arias, explaining how the prices are constantly fluctuating.
Previously, the U.S. imposed hefty tariffs on imported wines, driving up prices and hurting exports.
Then the U.S. Supreme Court struck down some of those tariffs, saying President Trump overstepped. Now the administration is trying to put new tariffs in place through other routes.
“In the end, that means tariffs are really taxes on American consumers,” said Peter Andrews.
Andrews is the founder of Culture Wine Co., they specialize in and distribute South African wine, an area that was hit by some of the highest tariffs, 30%.
“Thirty percent is not a number I can absorb, it’s not a number I can ask my suppliers or my wineries to observe, and it’s certainly not a number consumers can absorb,” said Andrews. “So everyone has to make a sacrifice there.”
He says every part of the supply chain is hurting financially.
Wineries are feeling it in a variety of ways. Jamie Kutch owns Kutch Wines in Sonoma County. For two decades, his company continued to grow year after year, shipping his American wine to other countries, but recently, tariffs have changed that.
“We’re seeing a big pushback of purchasing on American wines,” Kutch explained. “I think a lot of the rhetoric coming out of the administration has caused challenges to some great partners that we’ve had for almost two decades. Between Denmark and Sweden, we’ve seen an evaporation of almost 30% of our goods being rejected and not being purchased.”
Kutch is worried. If this continues for another three years, he’s not sure if his winery will be able to weather the storm.
Back at Frenchie Wine Bar, Arias is continuing to diversify, offering foreign wines, American wines, and even some small plates. It’s all in an attempt to build up a defense against the constant changes.
“There is always a bit of concerns, but I think we are going to do the right thing to bring good wines to the people who come to our wine bar,” Arias stated.
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California wine giant Gallo is set to close one of its Bay Area production facilities, laying off nearly 100 workers there and at four other wineries and tasting rooms in Napa and Sonoma counties, the company announced.
Gallo, the largest wine producer in the world by volume, announced the cuts in a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notice filed with the state. The company will permanently close its Ranch Winery in St. Helena, resulting in 56 workers losing their jobs. Other layoffs at the Louis M. Martini Winery and Orin Swift Tasting Room in St. Helena, and at J Vineyards and Frei Ranch in Healdsburg, will total another 37 positions.
The notice was filed on Feb. 12 and will be effective by April 15.
“GALLO is aligning parts of our operations with our long‑term business strategy to ensure we remain well‑positioned for future success,” a Gallo spokesperson told CBS News in an emailed statement. “As part of this process, we made the difficult decision to reduce certain Wine Country operations. These changes are driven by market dynamics, evolving consumer demand, and available capacity across our wineries.”
All the affected employees will receive support, transition packages, and opportunities to explore other roles with the company, the spokesperson said.
In September 2025, Gallo also closed its Courtside Winery, a production facility just north of Paso Robles in San Luis Obispo County, resulting in the loss of 47 jobs. The spokesperson said the layoffs and closures “do not materially impact” its tasting rooms in Napa, Sonoma, and San Luis Obispo counties.
Founded in 1933 by brothers Ernest and Julio Gallo, the Modesto-based company is also the largest family-owned winery in the U.S. and owns over 100 different wine labels, including top-selling wines such as Apothic, Barefoot Cellars, Clos du Bois, Ecco Domani, MacMurray Estate, and Ravenswood. In 2024, the company changed its name from E&J Gallo Winery to simply Gallo to better reflect its portfolio, which includes spirits such as New Amsterdam vodka and gin, Camarena Tequila, and Diplomatico Rum.
A man who rammed a vehicle into the front of a Petaluma jewelry store Saturday afternoon, Jan. 31, was attempting to thwart a robbery, according to police.
The robbery at Gold Rush Jewelers at 385 South McDowell Blvd. was reported about 4:46 p.m. Saturday to Petaluma police, the agency said. According to a preliminary investigation, six people wearing ski masks entered the store armed with hammers, pepper spray and at least one gun. One person held the four employees at gunpoint while the others smashed the display cases and removed jewelry.
A male bystander who happened upon the scene got into the suspects’ idling vehicle and slammed it into the business, damaging a roll-up door and some windows, Sgt. Ryan McGreevy said Tuesday. The man later told police that he had been trying to block the robbers inside.
McGreevy said the man’s method was “unorthodox,” but he is not suspected of any criminal charges.
The crash prompted the robbers to flee — four into the vehicle that had been rammed into the store and two on foot into a neighborhood across South McDowell Boulevard. One of the suspected robbers pepper-sprayed the bystander as he tried to get out of the car, police said.
With the assistance of the Sonoma County Sheriff’s helicopter Henry-1, officers later found the men they said fled on foot. One was spotted jumping down from a rooftop and trying to hide under a vehicle while the other was later seen sitting in a backyard, police said.
William Clarance Butler of Pittsburg and Mosha’e Koron Howell of Antioch were arrested and booked into the Sonoma County jail. On Monday, both of the 18-year-old men were charged in Sonoma County Superior Court with four counts of robbery and one count of conspiracy — all felonies. Both are being held without bail and set to appear Feb. 17 in court.
On Saturday, police also located a bag of jewelry between the store and the neighborhood where the two men had fled, McGreevy said Tuesday. The owner of the store is still determining how many pieces of jewelry were taken during the robbery and the value of those items.
The vehicle in which the other four robbers fled the jewelry store was found abandoned in a nearby neighborhood and authorities later determined it had been stolen in Brentwood. Authorities, including a K9 unit, searched for hours for the other four individuals to no avail. As of Tuesday, authorities have not identified the four robbers or located the gun used in the robbery.
None of the jewelry store employees were injured but told police they were emotionally shaken after the robbery.
Petaluma police are asking that anyone with information, including security camera footage, contact Detective Alyssa Hansen at 707-781-1291 or ahansen@cityofpetaluma.org.
You can reach Staff Writer Madison Smalstig at madison.smalstig@pressdemocrat.com. On X (Twitter) @madi_smals.
Windsor police said two people who were shot on Monday may have been targeted.
Around 5:30 p.m., police were alerted to a shooting at Estrella’s Market, which is located at 10351 Old Redwood Highway.
Police said two people were injured in the shooting, and it’s believed they were targeted. The victims were taken to the hospital, and investigators are looking into the shooting.
There is no threat to the public, police said. No arrests have been made.
The end to a wild week of whipsawing weather across Northern California is at hand.
Sunny skies, calmer winds and cooler temperatures are forecast to return to the Bay Area on Saturday and linger into early next week, offering a respite from a weeklong parade of storms that felled trees, flooded roadways and caused power outages affecting thousands of people.
In the Sierra, clouds were expected to part beginning Saturday, potentially allowing skiers easier access over Interstate 80 and Highway 50 to take advantage of several feet of fresh powder around Lake Tahoe.
A few final rounds of rain and gusty conditions were expected throughout the day Friday, particularly around midday and into the early afternoon as a final band of storms sweep through the region.
But in a word, the weather should be “beautiful” for the last several days of 2025, said Dylan Flynn, a National Weather Service meteorologist.
“The sun will be shining, the wind will be light — it’s going to be really nice,” Flynn said. “The only potential drawback will be cooler temperatures that could dip overnight into the 30s for parts of the Bay Area, making it “noticeable, especially compared to how warm it’s been,” he added.
The calmer forecast comes after a drumbeat of storms pummeled the Bay Area, bringing with them hurricane-force gusts that toppled trees and left many residents celebrating Christmas in the dark.
Several thousand people were without power Friday morning, the vast majority in the Santa Cruz Mountains, along with other parts of the Peninsula and in the South Bay, according to Pacific Gas & Electric’s outage map. In all, the storms knocked out power to more than 777,000 people across PG&E’s California network, and about 41,000 of those people remained in the dark late Friday morning, said Paul Moreno, a spokesman for the utility provider.
Overnight Thursday into Friday, the weather service received reports of downed trees affecting Highway 152 and several boats damaged in the Santa Cruz Harbor from more bands of storms that rolled through the area.
Radar indicated a potential water spout in Monterey Bay right outside of Santa Cruz on Christmas Day, Flynn said, though it was not immediately clear whether it came ashore and caused any damage. The weather service also issued a tornado warning over the Santa Cruz Mountains later in the day, though it later appeared unlikely that anything touched down. Formal survey teams have not yet been dispatched.
Perhaps the greatest damage to emerge late this week came at the Lick Observatory atop Mt. Hamilton, where gusts of up to 114 mph on Christmas Day ripped open the shutter to its 36-inch Great Refractor dome, the observatory announced Friday. The dislodged shutter, which weighs more than two tons, “fell outward onto the roof of the Great Hall, crushing several structural beams,” according to a press release.
Though the telescope itself was not damaged, repairs to the facility are expected to take months. Complicating matters are the fact that the telescope’s precision lenses and electrical systems could now be “vulnerable” to precipitation, the observatory said.
“This was a frightening moment for our staff,” said Matthew Shetrone, deputy director of the University of California Observatories, in a statement that lauded his staff’s work to protect the telescope. “When the storm broke, everyone was safe, but the spiritual core of our observatory had been damaged.”
In all, since the first storms came ashore last weekend, Oakland and San Francisco have received more than 4 inches of rain, while the Oakland and Berkeley hills — along with the Santa Cruz Mountains to the southwest — received between 5 and 8 inches of precipitation, the weather service reported. San Jose received about 1.75 inches of rain, while similar totals were measured in Mountain View and Palo Alto and slightly more than 2 inches fell over Fremont.
The highest totals came in the North Bay, where Mt. Tamalpais received 15.11 inches of snow over the last week, according to the weather service. More than 6 inches fell in Tiburon, and Fairfax.
To the east, snow continued to fall over the Sierra — providing a direly-needed lift to Lake Tahoe-area ski resorts that had delayed their openings amid an unseasonably dry start to the season.
Several ski resorts reported another two feet of powder from early Christmas morning to just before dawn on Friday, according to Scott Rowe, another National Weather Service meteorologist. That latest dumping left Soda Springs with 72 inches of snow so far this week, while Kirkwood reported 59 inches of powder, and Bear Valley said it had received 58 inches of snow.
Borreal reported 47 inches of snow this week, as of early Friday morning, while 58 inches of snow had fallen at the summit of Palisades Tahoe.
Accessing those ski resorts remained difficult Friday. Caltrans continued to enforce chain controls over Interstate 80 over Donner Pass and Highway 50 over Echo Summit. Still, the new solid base layer of snow was a welcome sight.
Just a week ago, on Dec. 19, California’s statewide snowpack was at 12% of its seasonal average, with the state’s northern-most peaks registering just 4% of its normal snowpack total for that date, according to the California Department of Water Resources. Central California — including much of the Lake Tahoe region — also was at just 12% of average.
But as Friday, the state stood at 69% of its snowpack average for the day after Christmas, with northern California coming in at 44% of average and the Central Sierra reaching 73%. More snow was expected to continue falling Friday before easing off this weekend.
“We’ll take any snow at this point in time,” Scott said.
Jakob Rodgers is a senior breaking news reporter. Call, text or send him an encrypted message via Signal at 510-390-2351, or email him at jrodgers@bayareanewsgroup.com.
Around 6:30 p.m., a driver hit a pedestrian and was seen driving away westbound on Southwest Boulevard, from Snyder Lane.
The person who was struck died at the scene, police said.
Investigators said they believe the vehicle is a 2014 to 2018 Chevy Silverado based on the crash debris left at the scene. And police said witnesses told them the truck appeared to be black with a lift kit and chrome wheels.
It should also have a substantial amount of front-end damage.
Anyone with information is asked to call police at 707-584-2612.
The latest twist came Monday in the high-profile case of animal welfare activist Zoe Rosenberg, who awaits sentencing for her role in taking four chickens from a Perdue Farms processing facility in Petaluma: a celebrity endorsement.
Oscar-winner Joaquin Phoenix, one of Hollywood’s most esteemed actors, released a statement through the group Direct Action Everywhere, or DxE, urging the Sonoma County District Attorney’s Office to prosecute Perdue’s Petaluma Poultry facility for “years of documented cruelty,” rather than focusing its attention on activists such as Rosenberg.
“Criminalizing people for rescuing suffering animals is a moral failure,” Phoenix wrote. “Compassion is not a crime. When individuals step in to save a life because the system has looked the other way, they should be supported — not prosecuted. We have to decide who we are as a society: one that protects the vulnerable, or one that punishes those who try.”
In addition to circulating the statement to media outlets, DxE posted it on Facebook and Instagram. By 3 p.m. Monday, the post had been shared more than 1,800 times, and had attracted nearly 2,000 comments, most of them supportive of Phoenix’s message.
Carla Rodriguez, the Sonoma County district attorney, said her office had not heard directly from the actor, and she had not spoken to him.
Zoe Rosenberg talks to supporters outside the Sonoma County Hall of Justice after being found guilty of felony conspiracy. Photo taken in Santa Rosa Wednesday, Oct. 29, 2025. (Beth Schlanker / The Press Democrat)
Rosenberg, a 23-year-old Cal student billed by Berkeley-based DxE as an “animal cruelty investigator,” was convicted Oct. 29 by a Sonoma County jury on charges of felony conspiracy and three misdemeanors. She is set to be sentenced Dec. 3 and could face up to 4½ years for her actions at the Petaluma Poultry processing plant during a 2023 incursion there by activists.
If it seems odd to see a movie star insinuate himself into the legal affairs of Sonoma County, it fits Phoenix’s lifelong support of animal welfare. He has been vegan since the age of 3.
When he won the Best Actor award for his dark portrayal of the title character in the movie “Joker,” he took the opportunity to speak out on animal agriculture.
“We go into the natural world, and we plunder it for its resources,” Phoenix told the audience in Hollywood while accepting his Oscar at the 92nd Academy Awards ceremony. “We feel entitled to artificially inseminate a cow, and when she gives birth, we steal her baby even though her cries of anguish are unmistakable. Then we take her milk that’s intended for her calf, and we put it in our coffee and our cereal.”
The next day, Phoenix backed up his words with action. In partnership with the activist group LA Animal Save, he helped remove a cow and newborn calf from a slaughterhouse in Pico Rivera, with permission from the owner, and relocated the animals to the Farm Sanctuary property in Acton. Both locations are in Los Angeles County.
Phoenix won other awards for “Joker” in 2020, and he took up the cause of animal liberation at each step. Before the British Academy Film Awards, known as the BAFTAs, he helped drape a 400-square-foot banner from London’s famed Tower Bridge, declaring “Factory farming destroys our planet. Go vegan.”
Direct Action Everywhere insists producers such as Petaluma Poultry run factory farms that are too large to ensure animal welfare. Local dairy and poultry businesses vehemently disagree, a debate that came to a head in 2024 when DxE members championed Measure J, which sought to sharply limit the size of those operations in Sonoma County. The measure suffered a resounding defeat at the polls.
A month before the BAFTA demonstration, Phoenix thanked the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, which at the time hosted the Golden Globe Awards, for adopting vegan standards at its 2020 ceremony.
“But we have to do more than that,” he urged the Golden Globes audience that night. “Together we can hopefully be unified and actually make some changes. It’s great to vote. But sometimes we have to take that responsibility on ourselves.”
A DxE spokesperson said Phoenix’s statement on behalf of Rosenberg was coordinated by his social impact advisor, Michelle Cho.
Petaluma Poultry was locally owned until 2011, when it was acquired by Perdue Farms, the Maryland-based agribusiness giant. The company still buys its chickens from local farms. DxE has claimed for years that conditions at the Petaluma facility are cruel to the birds and unhealthy for consumers.
Perdue Farms denies such claims and has petitioned the courts to prevent DxE demonstrators from protesting at the homes of Petaluma Poultry executives.
Direct Action Everywhere activists protest at the Santa Rosa home of Jason Arnold, Petaluma Poultry director of operations, on March 22. (Direct Action Everywhere) Direct Action Everywhere
“Petaluma Poultry is very committed to proper animal care,” local spokesperson Rob Muelrath said on behalf of the company. “Our birds have room to move around, access to the outdoors, and things to keep them engaged. They’re raised on a healthy diet without antibiotics.”
Muelrath added that the facility is regularly visited by U.S. Department of Agriculture inspectors, and by Global Animal Partnership, a nonprofit that rates welfare standards at farms, ranches and other businesses related to meat production.
The Sonoma County Superior Court judge in Rosenberg’s trial, Kenneth Gnoss, prohibited her attorneys from introducing documentation DxE had collected at the processing plant in Petaluma.
Her attorneys argued she acted out of moral duty to save animals she believed were suffering. She said after the verdict, she had no regrets about her actions.
Her legal team is planning to appeal.
“The jury found Zoe Rosenberg guilty on all counts,” Muelrath wrote to The Press Democrat. “The break-in was a well-planned, deliberate breach of private property with the intent to steal — a criminal act that was deliberate, strategic, and bordering on corporate espionage or agro-terrorism.”
Phoenix’s filmography also includes starring roles in “Walk the Line,” “Her,” “The Master” and, most recently, “Eddington.”
You can reach Phil Barber at 707-521-5263 or phil.barber@pressdemocrat.com. On X (Twitter) @Skinny_Post.
An earthquake with a preliminary magnitude 4.1 struck northern Sonoma County Monday morning, officials said.
According to the U.S. Geological Survey, the earthquake struck less than a mile northwest of the Geysers at 7:08 a.m. An aftershock with a preliminary magnitude of 2.8 struck the same area less than a minute later.
The Geysers geothermal field, known as the world’s largest, is a seismically active region and is home to 18 geothermal power plants.
Map of an earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 4.1 that struck near The Geysers in Sonoma County on Nov. 24, 2025.
U.S. Geological Survey
Visitors to the USGS website, mostly in Sonoma County, reported weak to light shaking. The quake was reportedly felt as far away as San Francisco to the south and Clearlake to the north.
There are no immediate reports of damage or injuries from the quake.
On Thursday, a rocket was scheduled to launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base carrying a special payload with a North Bay connection. The lift-off didn’t go as planned, but students at Sonoma State University are still excited by the chance to put their learning into practice and into orbit.
The university has been part of a project called “3UCubed,” helping to create a small satellite, about the size of a loaf of bread, that will soon be launched into orbit.
“It separates from the rocket, and then it starts to fall towards Earth,” said Dr. Laura Peticolas. “But it’s falling so fast that it keeps going around Earth and comes back around.”
That’s the way all satellites work, and they can stay up there for years, even decades, before coming back down. But Dr. Peticolas, 3UCubed’s principal investigator at SSU, said we are currently in a season called “Solar Max” where huge storms on the surface of the sun are throwing particles at the Earth, having a negative effect on orbiting vehicles.
“So, what was happening is that satellites were flying through that, and then they were suddenly de-orbiting way faster than anyone expected,” said Dr. Peticolas. “So, we want to understand what’s making that happen. And when does it happen and how does it happen?”
That’s what the 3UCubed satellite will be studying, and it will be monitored from the roof of one of the school’s buildings. A receiver will gather data for about five to 10 minutes every 12 hours as the satellite passes overhead. They’re particularly interested in a focused area called “The Cusp,” sitting high up on the Earth, where the particles seem to be more concentrated. Dr. Peticolas is particularly excited by the project because things like this are usually reserved for larger research institutions like UC Berkeley.
Sonoma State is considered a “teaching university,” but she thinks there is an important benefit to including them.
“Doing research with students is a way to train the next generation of teachers and professors,” she said. “And so, teaching universities need these kind of real-life experiences so that our students can go out and speak about what it is to be engineers and be scientists and be computer scientists in the real world.”
And her excitement seems to be contagious.
“I was pretty hesitant about diving deep into physics,” said second-year student Jack Engblom. “But after I took the first semester, I started to fall in love with it.”
“It’s a small school, so it’s kind of hard to not be passionate about such a small program,” said Nick Froehlich, who wants to study astrophysics. “So, everyone here knows what they’re doing, they know what they want to teach and it’s very specialized. So, I do enjoy my time here.”
Physica is one of the majors that was eliminated along with team sports in last year’s budget cuts. The hope is that the 3UCubed project, and the passion of teachers like Dr. Peticolas, will convince the powers that be to reinstate the physics major at SSU.
Because of cloudy weather over Vandenberg AFB, Thursday morning’s launch was postponed. The next possible window will be Nov. 26, the day before Thanksgiving.
A Sonoma County judge allowed Asia Lozano Morton to await trial outside jail under strict supervision and set her next court date for Dec. 4, according to court records.
Morton must wear a GPS ankle monitor, surrender her passport and get permission from the court before leaving California. She’s also barred from owning guns or using drugs and from contacting her boyfriend, Richard Lund.
Tuesday’s hearing was Morton’s first court appearance since her arrest Friday in the Oct. 3 shooting death of Mark Calcagni.
Lund, 43, remains in custody without bail. Police say he’s accused of shooting Calcagni five times near Calcagni’s home on Brookwood Avenue before driving off in a Toyota RAV4.
Investigators believe the killing was planned and may be connected to Calcagni’s decision to fire Lund and Morton from their jobs at the Condor Club, a North Beach landmark known as the nation’s first topless bar.
Police arrested Lund at his home in Dublin. Morton was taken into custody at San Francisco International Airport when she returned from a trip to Spain.
Police said Calcagni had returned home from work around 5 a.m. when he was shot. A passerby found his body on a nearby sidewalk about 90 minutes later.
About 260 sexual abuse lawsuits were paused when the Catholic Diocese of Santa Rosa filed for bankruptcy in 2023. That has been a frustration for survivors who want the actions of their abusers, and the failings of the powerful institution that obscured the crimes, dragged into the daylight.
Now, it looks like a few of those survivors may have their days in court.
The judge in the bankruptcy, Charles Novack of the Northern District of California, recently put a small set of lawsuits on the path to trial, where they are expected to set a baseline for the diocese’s potential financial liability.
It’s an important step, those involved say, in pushing insurance companies to enter into a global settlement with the diocese and the dozens of people who say they were harmed by predatory church figures. And it could offer a rare chance for claimants to speak openly of their abuse in a courtroom, and to gather additional information through the legal discovery process.
When cases are “quieted” by bankruptcy, said Dan McNevin, who is on the board of directors of the advocacy group Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, or SNAP, it means “the public won’t have a clear read on who enabled the abuse, who covered it up and whether those people are still in power and behaving in that fashion.”
When McNevin was molested in the Oakland Diocese, he said, the bishop there told him his abuser, the Rev. James Clark, had no prior record. After he sued, McNevin found out Clark had in fact been convicted of a sex crime before moving into his parish.
“His file was sanitized. There was no record of his probation,” McNevin said. “We got the information by deposing the former chancellor of the diocese. So discovery is really important.”
Little has been revealed publicly about the cases Novack is allowing to proceed.
Should any of the plaintiffs win those lawsuits, it’s likely funds recovered in judgment would be held in trust, said Jennifer Stein, an attorney with Jeff Anderson & Associates, a Los Angeles-based firm that has represented thousands of victims of predatory priests. That money would be distributed later among qualifying survivors.
The Santa Rosa Diocese, which oversees 42 parishes reaching from American Canyon in Napa County to Crescent City near the Oregon border, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in March 2023. Like Catholic dioceses across the U.S., the local jurisdiction said it was facing an existential threat from a massive wave of sex abuse suits.
Bishop Robert Vasa of the Catholic Diocese of Santa Rosa, Oct. 13, 2025. (Kent Porter / The Press Democrat)
Christopher Chung/The Press Democrat
Mike Tarvid filed a lawsuit against the Santa Rosa Catholic Diocese after harboring a secret for nearly 50 years involving his abuse at the hands of North Coast priest Gary Timmons. Photo taken in Santa Rosa on Dec. 12, 2022. (Christopher Chung/The Press Democrat)
Kent Porter/The Press Democrat
Father John Crews, the former executive director of the Hanna Boys Center in Sonoma Valley, was among 39 names released in 2019 by the Santa Rosa Diocese, listing those who committed child sexual abuse or were credibly accused of such crimes. Hanna Boys Center is a co-defendant in dozens of lawsuits against the Santa Rosa Diocese. Crews resigned in 2013, when he was first accused of child sex abuse by the widow of a man who had been assaulted at a Sebastopol church. He was last known to be in South Carolina. (Kent Porter/The Press Democrat)
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Bishop Robert Vasa of the Catholic Diocese of Santa Rosa, Oct. 13, 2025. (Kent Porter / The Press Democrat)
By that time, the Santa Rosa Diocese had been served with about 160 claims of sexual abuse under a 2019 state law that opened a three-year window for survivors 40 and older to file personal injury cases for past child sex abuse cases.
By August 2023, the diocese had paid out at least $35 million in settlements, dating back to the 1990s, at the onset of a painful worldwide reckoning with sexual abuse by clergy within the Catholic church.
In January 2019, the diocese released a list of 39 of its priests and bishops who committed sexual abuse and misconduct, or had been credibly accused of doing so, between the 1960s and the 2010s.
The efforts of survivors are now moving along two tracks. There is Novack’s courtroom, the setting for one of 17 bankruptcy cases nationwide involving Catholic dioceses, including six in California — Oakland, San Francisco and Sacramento among them. Another 20 dioceses have emerged from bankruptcy since 2005.
And there’s Judicial Council Coordinated Proceeding 5108, or JCCP 5108, which consolidates hundreds of lawsuits against multiple Catholic dioceses in Northern California. That proceeding is being administered in Alameda County Superior Court.
The decision by religious leaders to file for bankruptcy demonstrates the strength of the abuse cases, according to Stein. “They would not be taking such expensive, egregious measures if there weren’t fear of liability,” she said.
Bishop Robert F. Vasa of Santa Rosa, leader of the diocese since 2011, acknowledges the gravity of the threat.
“It’s absolutely no secret that sexual abuse lawsuits, even in the secular world, bring huge judgments in a court of law,” Vasa said. “So there’s no doubt in the case of the church they be equally large if not larger. But it’s beyond our scope to generate the money to pay for those. Regardless of whether it’s a $1 million judgment or a $2 million judgment, we don’t have the resources in a million years is to pay for those.”
Long list of co-defendants
A bankruptcy court exhibit filed in April offers detail on sites connected to the alleged abuse in the Santa Rosa Diocese.
The largest share of complaints, 60 in all, name Hanna Boys Center, the 80-year-old residential school and service campus for at-risk youth that has sought to remake itself with a retooled mission even as new suits piled up alleging long-ago abuse.
But the list of diocesan sites is long and varied.
Camp St. Michael, an outdoor ministry in Mendocino County that ceased operation in 2011, is named in 25 claims. The diocesan cathedral, St. Eugene’s in Santa Rosa, is named in 13. Nine are tied to St. Bernard’s Catholic Church in Eureka, nine to St. Rose of Lima church in Santa Rosa, seven to St. Apollinaris in Napa and six to Cardinal Newman High School in Santa Rosa.
In all, 27 diocese sites are represented.
The exhibit laying out that information pertains to a subset of 207 cases that include co-defendants. The state court is currently weighing a request to allow those suits to proceed against the co-defendants, even if they are paused against the diocese. The church is fighting the effort, arguing that because co-defendants such as Hanna Boys Center and Cardinal Newman are covered by the same insurance policies as the diocese, any legal fees or settlements they end up paying will only further deplete the money potentially available for the wider pool of survivors.
The Santa Rosa Diocese estimates the sexual abuse cases levied against it would average $2 million each in monetary demands — liability that could surpass half a billion dollars if the church were to lose all the cases. In its bankruptcy petition, the diocese reported unidentified assets valued between $10 million and $50 million.
To get a more accurate read on liability, it is common in litigation spanning multiple districts for the court to select one or more cases to proceed to trial. Novack signaled his approval in the bankruptcy, and the diocese worked with a committee of unsecured creditors in the case — made up of sex abuse survivors — to identify a handful of representative cases.
“The committee wanted several cases released for trial to kind of set a benchmark — what are these cases worth in a real trial?” Vasa said. “Just to say to the insurers, ‘If these go to trial, there may be a huge judgment.’”
Insurers called out
Insurance companies are a major player in these bankruptcy proceedings. Some of the other parties believe they are an impediment.
The insurers have been “woefully deficient in fulfilling contractual promises” to pay claims, said attorney Rick Simons, who serves as a liaison for the hundreds of sex abuse cases that make up JCCP 5108, the consolidated civil action.
“They sold these policies in the ’70s, the ’80s, the ’60s, some into the 2000s, for $25,000, $35,000 and $55,000 apiece,” Simons said of the insurers. “Now they owe, nationally, billions and billions of dollars in claims. They don’t care about rules and laws. They just want to keep saying no so they can negotiate a lump sum that’s like 8 cents on the dollar.”
Just over a year ago, the creditors committee petitioned for a two-hour court conference allowing survivors to read personal statements. “This proceeding is likely the only opportunity that Survivors in Santa Rosa will have to seek acknowledgement and justice for the decades of isolation and pain they endured,” the committee argued.
The church supported the motion. At least five insurance companies opposed it — Lloyd’s of London, Pacific Indemnity, Pacific Employers Insurance, Century Indemnity and Westchester Fire Insurance, the latter four all under the umbrella of Pacific. Novack granted the petition over their objections, and survivors were allowed to read statements during a private conference on Feb. 6.
Meanwhile, committee members have joined the diocese and its insurers in several rounds of court-approved mediation. Vasa insists all parties, including the church, are working hard to reach an agreement everyone can live with.
“It’s kind of a dance,” the bishop said. “What is a reasonable number that the committee will accept, so that survivors will see they’ve done their due diligence? We can never compensate for all the harm done. But we can manifest care and concern, and demonstrate that we are not trying to stand in the way of what is just.”
You can reach Phil Barber at 707-521-5263 or phil.barber@pressdemocrat.com. On X (Twitter) @Skinny_Post.
Highway 101 is a vital commute for tens of thousands of people traveling between Marin and Sonoma counties. But some drivers said recent changes to the carpool lane hours are making their commutes longer and more frustrating.
Katie Clayton, a hairstylist who drives from her Rohnert Park home to a salon in Novato, said the morning drive has become very stressful.
“It affected my commute by adding at least 30 minutes to my commute every morning,” Clayton said. “It’s frustrating, and people don’t deserve to be sitting in traffic that was never there before. Don’t fix what’s not broken.”
Earlier this month, on Sept. 8, Caltrans extended the high-occupancy vehicle (HOV) lane hours on Highway 101 in the North Bay. The new schedule runs from 5 to 10 a.m. and 3 to 7 p.m. in Marin and Sonoma counties. Previously, the hours were shorter and differed between the two counties. In Sonoma County, it was 7 to 9 a.m. and 3 to 6 p.m., in both directions. In Marin County, the previous hours were 6:30 to 8:30 a.m. southbound only and 4:30 to 7 p.m. northbound only.
Caltrans said the updated hours align the North Bay with the rest of the Bay Area.
“This is a big change, and Caltrans doesn’t take it lightly. We’re doing this to improve safety in the Bay Area,” said Caltrans spokesperson Vince Jacala.
Clayton, however, said the change is forcing more solo drivers into the general lanes, slowing traffic for everyone. She started a petition on Change.org, which had nearly 5,000 signatures by Sunday afternoon, with hundreds of drivers sharing their stories and frustrations.
“Cars sitting on the freeway, trucks sitting on the freeway, just wasting gas, putting more emissions into the atmosphere. That’s the polar opposite of what they’re claiming it’s going to do,” Clayton said.
Jacala said Caltrans consulted with other North Bay transportation agencies before making the switch. The expanded hours also coincide with the opening of new lanes between Novato and Petaluma, part of the Marin-Sonoma Narrows project.
“Caltrans and the different agencies, we’re going to take a look at that. We hear you very loudly. We’re going to take a look at that. And the traffic engineers are going to take a look at the analysis, whatever time it takes. And then, we’ll decide,” Jacala said.
While Caltrans said any reversal of the new hours would require time and a careful study, Clayton and others said they are not backing down.
“I don’t plan to give up, and I don’t think other people are going to give up. This has added hours to people’s day,” she said.
Some city and county officials also agreed with Clayton, saying the expanded hours don’t reflect changed commute patterns since the COVID-19 pandemic. Caltrans maintains that any adjustments would likely be months away.
Da Lin is an award-winning journalist at KPIX 5 News. He joined KPIX 5 in 2012, but has been reporting the news in the Bay Area since 2007. Da grew up in Oakland, and before his return to the Bay Area, he spent five years covering the news at three other television stations in Texas, Southern and Central California. He also spent five years reporting at KRON 4.
A battle is brewing in the small town of Forestville in the Russian River Valley over a proposed project that has become a flashpoint.
The owners of a quarry want to build a modern asphalt plant. But plenty of residents are pushing back, saying they’re concerned about potential environmental impacts to the community.
Mining, crushing, and selling rock has been the Trappe family business for decades.
“We take the rock and it goes through a processing plant. And we break it out into everything from base, which is being made here, to rock going to other asphalt plants” said Jonathon Trappe of Canyon Rock Inc.
Trappe now wants to build an asphalt plant on the site of Canyon Rock quarry. With only two asphalt plants currently operating in Sonoma County, it’s good for business.
“I feel like we can do it better than the next guy because of how we look at things. We own that responsibility to do it right,” Trappe told CBS News Bay Area.
But a growing group of residents are banding together to fight the proposed project.
Darek Trowbridge is a local winemaker, and farmer, whose family has for generations lived off the land. He has become the leading voice for Russian River Community Cares, a dedicated group of more than 700.
“It’s different if the asphalt plant is somewhere where it’s not right next to a town or it’s not in extreme fire danger. There are plenty of places that are closer to the freeways,” said Trowbridge.
They’re concerned about potential environmental impacts including contamination of nearby waterways, and more trucks on local roads.
“We’re going to have bigger tankers coming through town, and we’re going to have much more toxicity,” said Trowbridge.
Trappe sees it differently, arguing trucks wouldn’t have to make extra trips to other asphalt plants for road projects if a new one is built on site.
“It would eliminate the traffic associated with moving that rock,” said Trappe.
Sonoma County officials are already in the process of putting together an environmental impact report (EIR).
John Mack is the Natural Resources Division Manager for Sonoma County, who points to Canyon Rock’s concrete plant already on site.
“Ancillary facilities are allowed at quarries. This facility already has at least one. It’s allowed. Whether it makes sense here, that’s what the environmental review is supposed to get to,” said Mack.
Mack said the county had to pause the EIR process for months because of a violation at Canyon Rock.
“There was an enforcement matter at this facility. They expanded into some areas where they weren’t permitted,” said Mack.
As both sides dig in, the county says completion of an EIR could take years.
Trappe lives on the property of the quarry and says health concerns are not an issue.
“I have an immunocompromised kid. The asphalt plant, we’ll be adjacent to it. I feel comfortable with it,” said Trappe.
“A large company can have such a big impact on a community. That’s our worry. Will they roll over the community as if it doesn’t exist? To us, that’s not okay,” said Trowbridge.
It took years for Trowbridge to grow and preserve various dry goods. Now he’s fighting to preserve a part of his community.
A representative for the Trappe family and Canyon Rock Company says it has asked but not heard back from the Russian River Community Cares group to meet and hear their concerns.
After the EIR is completed, the county planning commission will hold a public hearing.
The Board of Supervisors will then make a final decision, but the county said that could be years down the road.
When Kenny Choi jumped into the backseat, he never thought he would be introducing his ride share driver to National Public Radio. The hour-long ride to the airport turned into a conversation that included politics, the economic divide, and the cultural differences between the East Coast and the West Coast.
