As spring approaches, many hobby gardeners unpack their planting trowels, plan their seed rows and stock up on potting soil. But some diligent gardeners work year-round, scattering seeds into the wind to add cheerful splashes of color wherever they go. These environmental activists, known as “guerrilla gardeners,” have gained popularity on social media in recent years by creating videos showing how to create a guerrilla garden, how to “clean up” empty plots of land. bombarded with seeds” and much more.

@treasurewellwisher Non-invasive species only #planttok #guerrillagardening ♬ Fairy Fountain – Mikel & GameChops

But these videos have raised numerous questions among viewers about the controversial practice: What is guerrilla gardening? Is it even legal? When did it start? Should I get involved? Consider this your friendly introduction to this longstanding activist practice.

What is Guerrilla Gardening?

Guerrilla gardening is the practice of planting the seeds of edible plants or flowers on unused or aesthetically unattractive land. This can be done with or without the consent of the property owner. Guerrilla gardening can take a variety of forms, from designing and planting traditional garden plots for an underserved community to “seed bombing,” or throwing seed balls out the car window onto a plot.

How did guerrilla gardening begin?

miriam-doerr/Getty Images

According to DenGarden.com, guerrilla gardening “has its roots in New York City in the 1970s and has since spread to other cities around the world.” The start of the movement is largely credited to activist Liz Kristy and the Green Guerrilla group. From then on, Guerrilla Gardening has spread worldwide and many key figures continue Kristy's work. Richard Reynolds, for example, is a British activist whose guerrilla gardening efforts in South London are remembered. Additionally, Ron Finley of South Central LA founded the Ron Finley Project to teach guerrilla gardening techniques.

What are some examples of guerrilla gardening?

Many established community gardens across America originally began as guerrilla gardens. The Liz Kristy Community Garden in Manhattan is obviously a tribute to guerrilla gardeners, but you may have also come across other guerrilla gardens such as the Garden of Hope in Philadelphia, the Green Street Community Garden in Chicago, or the Phoenix Community Garden in San Francisco.

Is guerrilla gardening legal?

Not exactly. Guerrilla gardening was viewed as an inherently illegal, anarchist act because it depended on planting and cultivating other people's land without permission. However, in recent years the definition has expanded to include those who garden on public land, often with permission. In short, the legitimacy of your guerrilla gardening practice depends on how closely you pursue it.

How can I run Guerrilla Garden legally?

Liliya Filakhtova/Getty Images

If you're a nature lover, you might be thinking about starting your own guerrilla gardening practice. While growing more plants isn't usually a bad endeavor, it's worth considering a few factors before you start sowing seeds.

As this TikToker explains, you first need to choose plants that are suitable for your region. Choose native, noninvasive varieties that won't crowd out the region's other plants.

Also, choose your location very carefully. Choose a small, uncultivated plot of land that no one owns. Discuss your gardening decision with nearby businesses or residents (yes, this takes away some of the anarchist appeal, but also ensures that you are supporting the very community you want to help).

@octaviachill Part 2 will decide what to plant! #guerrillagardening #guerrillagardening #anarchy #activism #environmentalists ♬ Original sound – Ellen Miles

Finally, call your local government to make sure you are not unknowingly violating local laws. And if guerrilla gardening still seems a little too risky for you, you can always volunteer, start a community garden, or simply share the fruits of your own labor with food pantries or others in need.

The post What Is Guerrilla Gardening? | Household Handyman appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

English

Since arriving in San Francisco from Nicaragua in September, 11-year-old Enyel Cruz has learned the value of a good night’s rest.

At a unique shelter for public school children and their families at Buena Vista Horace Mann K-8 Community School, the soccer-loving sixth-grader sleeps on a mat laid out in the gym alongside his parents and his 15-year-old sister. During the day, the mats are piled up to make room for regular student activities at the bilingual Mission District school.

“In Nicaragua, I slept well,” Enyel said in Spanish through a translator. “Here, my back hurts.”

In the afternoons, Enyel stays in an afterschool program while his sister does her homework at a McDonald’s. In the evenings, the whole family then left back up to enter the shelter. The next morning, they wake up at 6 am to clear out. The kids go back to school, while parents Juan Gomez and Silvia Cruz look for work as they await help on their asylum cases.

Gomez, who grew up on Guerrero Street before he was deported to Nicaragua, praised the stayover program, which is run by Dolores Street Community Services. But the constant back and forth wears on the family.

When asked what he wants in a home, Enyel’s answer was simple: “To eat well, be stable, not have to get up at 6 am”

“It’s hard on us to be able to get up in the morning,” Gomez said of the shelter. “Especially when you have nowhere to go. Not working and sometimes not having money, you know, it affects you a little bit. So, I don’t like seeing my kids like that.”

(From left) Enyel Cruz, Juan Gomez, Silvia Cruz and Ashley Arguello Cruz pose for a portrait at Buena Vista Horace Mann K-8 Community School. | Alexis Cuarezma for The Standard

A Rise in Family Homelessness

The Gomez-Cruz family is part of an uptick in families experiencing homelessness in San Francisco. The phenomenon is partly driven by job loss, the high cost of living and a surge in asylum seekers. The city logged 616 unhoused families enrolled in response programs in the last quarter of 2022, up from 578 families in the prior three months.

At a Jan. 13 hearing on family homelessness called by Supervisor Hillary Ronen, the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing said the city enrolled 493 families in its homeless response system during the same fall/winter period of 2021.

San Francisco Unified School District tallied 2,061 students as experiencing homelessness, self-reported by their families. In its count, the district includes students living in SROs or doubled up with other families.

Of the 2,090 homeless students in the 2020-21 school year, 44% were Latino, 24% were Chinese, 14% were Black, and 4.7% were Filipino.

An impending closure of the Oasis Family Shelter in December led to a shortage of beds in the overall family shelter system, leading families to camp outside Buena Vista Horace Mann (BVHM) while waiting for a spot. Since then, Oasis reopened, and the capacity of BVHM’s stayover program increased.

Buena Vista Horace Mann has a unique program with Dolores Street Community Services to provide shelter for families, many of them recent immigrants from Latin America. | Alexis Cuarezma for The Standard

In the overwhelming number of cases, households experiencing homelessness are headed by women. This year, the city will add a couple hundred units of permanent supportive housing for families and another couple hundred to subsidize rent.

But sooner or later, demand may exceed even that increased capacity.

“We’re riding the very, very edge of our capacity limits,” said Richard Whipple, interim director of the Office of Civic Engagement and Immigrant Affairs. “Nonprofit partners are well beyond their capacity. Every day more folks arrive. We’re in a very precarious situation.”

‘All Beginnings Are Hard’

Families seek shelter as a result of housing instability through loss of jobs, eviction notices they don’t fight out of fear, by being released from immigration detention centers, or by seeking jobs from rural areas where they may wind up living out of their vehicles . Many families that Dolores Street Community Services works with either have a history of domestic violence or are in the middle of it, according to executive director Laura Valdéz.

The uptick is driven, in part, by a surge of asylum-seekers. Of the over 620 immigrant students to arrive in SFUSD in 2022, over 80% are asylum seekers like the Gomez-Cruz children, according to Whipple.

Of the 10 families staying at the BVHM shelter as of Jan. 13, three are from Peru, and three are from Nicaragua, while others are from El Salvador, South Africa, Slovakia, and Guatemala.

Jose Mendoza and Maritza Guiterrez settled with their children—ages 6, 15 and 22—at BVHM’s shelter last week after fleeing Nicaragua’s political instability.

(From left) Maritza Gutierrez, Alexa Mendoza, Jose Mendoza, Joseph Mendoza and Carlos Rivas pose for a portrait at Buena Vista Horace Mann K-8 Community School. | Alexis Cuarezma for The Standard

Until their asylum case is heard and a lawyer assigned to them, both parents lack work permits for better job opportunities and the stability for their families that comes with that.

According to Whipple, the San Francisco Immigration Legal Defense Collaborative is seeing “record waitlists for representation.”

“You couldn’t have peace in the streets,” Mendoza, an electrician, said in Spanish through a translator. “We don’t have another option. All beginnings are hard.”

Mendoza said his 6-year-old thinks the back-and-forth “is like a game.” His 15-year-old was waiting to start school at SFUSD while his 22-year-old, who had to drop his pursuit of a degree in Nicaragua, was in the process of enrolling at City College.

At age 11, Enyel is already seeing a future past this instability. He’s known for a couple years now that he wants to be a soccer player like Cristiano Ronaldo or a lawyer. The first career choice he identified is to be an architect.

“To make a house,” he said.

English

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BOCA RATON, Fla., Aug 1, 2022 /PRNewswire/ — The Pulte Family, known in homebuilding for Bill Pulte’s experience inside of Pulte Homes now PulteGroup Inc, has completed a substantial investment in Los Angeles’s Fastest growing home services company, Absolute Airflow.

“Victor Rancour, Founder and CEO of Absolute Airflow, reminds me a lot of my grandfather and Founder of Pulte Homes, Bill Pulte. Like my grandfather Victor created his company with just a dream and one of his friends. Now four years later Absolute Airflow is one of the leading HVAC companies in Southern California,” said Bill PulteCEO of Pulte Capital and Former Independent Director of PulteGroup Inc.

“We are delighted to have The Pulte Family’s investment and substantial ownership in Absolute Airflow, as they have been tremendously helpful already, and we look forward to continuing to build this company with The Pulte Family,” said Victor Rancour, Founder of Absolute Airflow.

“When Bill Pulte founded Pulte Homes he was heavily involved in the daily operations of the company for 60 years. He always felt that a good founder and leader knew what was going on at every level of their company and they were willing to get their hands “Dirty right next to their employees when it was needed. Victor is known for doing this at Absolute Airflow. He goes out to jobsites regularly, knows every little detail of the job, and mentors his team extensively. The Pulte Family feels that with these qualities Victor and his team at Absolute Airflow will thrive while implementing parts of The Pulte Plan that Bill Pulte created as a playbook to run a successful business,” said a spokesperson for The Pulte Family

The Pulte Family may or may not disclose its sale of these securities and reserves the right to acquire more or dispose of said securities without notification.

(PRNews photo/The Pulte Family)

The Pulte Family

William J. “Bill” Pulte founded Pulte Homes, today PulteGroup Inc, in 1950 at age 18. Over the decades, Bill Pulte built Pulte Homes into The #1 USA home builder. In 2016, after retiring the first time, William J Pulte (1932-2018) and Bill Pulte (b. 1988), his grandson, successfully turned PulteGroup Inc around, even when non-business family members supported the failed Dugas Management Team versus the Pulte Homes Founder William J Pulte. Mr. Pulte (b. 1988) was a PulteGroup Director from 2016-2020. Bill Pulte’s Twitter Philanthropy became a giant success starting in June 2019, helping thousands of people and inspiring millions of people worldwide. Even after the passing of William J Pulte (1932-2018), their work together continues through a collection of Pulte founded organizations, including The Bill Pulte Foundation. The Pulte Family has multiple companies and investment vehicles.

See disclaimers for affiliated and unaffiliated organizations: PulteDisclaimers.com

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SOURCE The Pulte Family

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WEST ALLIS, Wis. — Volunteers are making sure a few local families “Feel The Love” by installing new HVAC units before winter approaches.

Alex Simon has been installing heating and air conditioning systems for Kettle Moraine Heating & Air Conditioning for three years.

He joined other volunteers on Saturday as a part of the “Feel The Love” campaign, a program by the HVAC systems company, Lennox, where volunteers install free HVAC units for families in need.

“We are in the industry of helping people and especially like today, where we are helping someone who really does need it. It makes you feel good,” said Simon.

(Spectrum News 1/Phillip Boudreaux)

Since the program began, Lennox has provided more than 1,000 furnaces to families.

On Saturday, some of those units went to the Voss family.

As their medical bills piled up, Diane Voss said they found out they needed to replace their HVAC unit.

And they didn’t know how they were going to get the money to pay for the new equipment and installation. Then, the “Feel The Love” campaign came in to answer their prayer, Diane Voss said.

“I was hoping and doing lots of praying. I talked to my daughters, and they did lots of praying. When they came out and interviewed us, they said that we can get one. I’m just ecstatic, overwhelmed and so thankful for everybody,” said Diane Voss.

“They really brought the people, a big crew of people, to install it,” her husband, Greg Voss added.

(Spectrum News 1/Phillip Boudreaux)

Lennox chooses families and individuals based on their commitment and service to those around them.

Simon said it brings him great joy to give people, like the Voss family, the proper heating system when the temperature drops.

“It’s definitely a lot of hard work and plus, it’s long and you gotta like what you do,” he said.

Marc Marchillo of Kettle Moraine Heating & Air Conditioning said he’s appreciative that their customers, and the company owners Bill Brink and Lennox, allow them to give back to the community.

“You can just feel the good vibes and the happiness. You can ‘Feel The Love.’ That’s where the name came from,” said Marchillo. “When you talk to the homeowners, recipients, you can see it in their eyes. They are so grateful. It’s good vibes, and that’s why we do it.”

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A 41-year-old San Francisco plumber who was on a losing streak at local casinos and faced eviction for not paying his rent was found guilty Monday of slaughtering a family of five inside their Ingleside neighborhood home after targeting them for robbery.

On its seventh day of deliberations, the San Francisco Superior Court jury found Binh Thai Luc, an undocumented Vietnamese immigrant with a violent criminal past, guilty of five counts of murder in the massacre of the Lei family on March 23, 2012.

The victims’ bludgeoned bodies were found covered in blood and household cleaning products in various rooms of the row house on Howth Street, which had been flooded with water. The damage was so severe and the scene so chaotic that investigators didn’t initially know if they were dealing with a quintuple murder or a murder-suicide.

Prosecutors said Luc used a hammer to commit one of the worst mass homicides in modern San Francisco history, though the weapon was never found. The defendant was also found guilty of five counts of attempted robbery and two counts of burglary.

Because Luc was convicted of murder with special circumstances — in this case, lying in wait and committing multiple killings — he faces life in prison without the possibility of parole. The charges made him eligible for the death penalty, but the district attorney’s office did not pursue that punishment. Judge Carol Yaggy will set a sentencing date Tuesday.

“This was a very gruesome, brutal murder, and we’re pleased we’re getting some accountability for the family and for the community,” District Attorney George Gascón said.

Luc said nothing after the verdict was read. Wearing a light-blue collared shirt and black vest, he leaned in occasionally to whisper to his defense attorney, Mark Goldrosen.

“He was quite disappointed,” Goldrosen said outside the courtroom. “He understands that this is the beginning of the process and there are appellate procedures.”

None of Luc’s family members, who occasionally attended the trial, came Monday, nor did relatives of the victims.

Police arrested Luc shortly after the killings at a hotel in San Mateo, where investigators found him reading an article in The Chronicle about the crime on his computer, prosecutors said.

He was found guilty of killing Hua Shun Lei, 65; his wife, Wan Yi Wu, 62; their daughter, Ying Xue Lei, 37; their son, Vincent Lei, 32; and his wife, Chia Huei Chu, 30.

Vincent Lei’s 12-year-old niece discovered the carnage at 7:45 am and ran out of the home screaming, “Mommy, bodies! Bodies!” A witness later heard the girl’s mother, Nicole Lei, on the phone, yelling hysterically, “They took the money! The money is gone!” prosecutors said.

While authorities did not have an eyewitness place Luc at the scene of the crime, Assistant District Attorney Eric Fleming used numerous pieces of physical evidence to link Luc to the killings.

Investigators said Vincent Lei’s blood was spattered on Luc’s jeans, which were discovered at his home. Inside the Lei home, crime scene technicians reported finding Luc’s blood on a pack of cigarettes, a receipt and a cabinet drawer. Luc had a cut on his hand when he was arrested shortly after the crime.

Police also found a fingerprint on a bottle of window cleaner inside the home that matched Luc’s right index finger, prosecutors said. The bodies were covered with bleach and other products, and the killer flooded the home by turning on faucets and detaching pipes under sinks.

Goldrosen didn’t dispute that Luc was at the scene around the time of the killings. Instead, he argued that someone else attacked the family, suggesting the real killer could have been one of two notorious Chinatown gangsters — or possibly a former boyfriend of one of the victims.

Goldrosen argued that the prosecution didn’t establish a motive for the crimes, which he characterized as “gang-style, loan-shark-style” slayings.

Fleming told the jury that Luc killed the family members while robbing them. He frequented Artichoke Joe’s Casino in San Bruno and had dumped thousands of dollars gambling in the weeks before the crime. The prosecution even said Luc lost money at a casino on the night of the massacre.

The jury was told Luc had been served an eviction notice for not paying his rent, a debt he settled immediately after the killings. When he was arrested, he had $6,518 in cash. Prosecutors said the Lei family kept thousands of dollars in the home, and that Luc knew Vincent Lei from local mah-jongg games.

Before the killings, Luc was convicted in 1998 of committing an armed robbery at a Chinese restaurant in San Jose. After he served eight years in San Quentin State Prison, officials handed him over to federal immigration authorities for deportation back to his home country of Vietnam.

Vietnamese authorities, however, refused to provide Luc with travel documents, and he was released from custody as required by federal law.

Evan Sernoffsky is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: esernoffsky@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @EvanSernoffsky

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Nemesio Isorena’s smile is what his family says they will always remember most about him.

The man died a day before his 63rd birthday on Halloween night after he was hit by a SamTrans bus in South San Francisco.

“We were actually going to celebrate his birthday,” his niece Alyssa Isorena said. “Like he was getting ready for that. Maybe he was going to buy something at Trader Joe’s for his birthday.”

Nemesio was not married and had no children, but was loved by his siblings, nephews and nieces. He also recently became a naturalized United States citizen – a proud American. The family has opened up a GoFundMe account to help pay for funeral services.

Family members also are waiting for more answers to answers on what happened the night of his death.

“We really don’t know what happened to him,” Alyssa said. “We’re still looking for answers.”

The San Mateo County Sheriff’s Office deferred NBC Bay Area to SamTrans when seeking comment on Nemesio’s death.

SamTrans issued the following statement Friday:

“We are sending our deepest sympathies and most heartfelt condolences to the family and friends of Mr. Isorena, who was fatally injured in an incident involving a SamTrans bus on October 31. We have reached out to the family to see how we can assist them “During this very difficult time. The safety of our community members, passengers and employees is always our top priority, so anytime an incident of this nature occurs, we are deeply concerned. We are currently working with all respective law enforcement and safety agencies regarding the incident, and in light of these pending investigations, we cannot provide any additional details.”

Meanwhile, the family continues trying to heal.

“We really don’t know what happened and it’s really hard for us to think about it,” Alyssa said. “We still can’t believe this happened. I’m still waiting for him to come home. But he’s never going to be here.”

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Employees said management declined to voluntarily recognize their membership in the Office and Professional Employees International Union Local 29 during a tense town hall on Friday. According to workers who spoke with KQED, Kisch told staff that a letter with a list of names was not sufficient to show unionizing was not an “actual, uncoerced decision on the part of each employee listed.”

Even without that recognition, workers will soon move forward with a ballot election.

“Most of us can’t afford to live in the city where we help people find housing,” said Juliana Dunn, who works with kids at Compass Clara House, a transitional housing program. “And we want to have a voice in that. We want to have a seat at the negotiation table. We don’t want to be dismissed.”

In a written statement to KQED, Kisch said that she respected the right of staff to decide whether to bring in a labor organization to represent them in collective bargaining.

“For more than 100 years Compass Family Services has been devoted to serving the homeless families in our community, including new arrivals,” she wrote in the statement. “If a majority of our staff decide that is in their best interest, we will honor that decision.”

Dunn said employees began talking about the need to improve working conditions around the fall of 2021. They were worried at the time that hybrid work options were ending, and staff would need to return to work in person five days a week.

Jobs at Compass can be both fast-paced and high stress, with workers having difficult conversations over the phone, sometimes in multiple languages ​​at once. That can make working in the office uncomfortable, and can place an unnecessary burden on Compass staff already struggling to balance child care on top of the secondary trauma of working with families experiencing homelessness. Staff at Compass are also overwhelmingly people of color.

Dunn said that when staff attempted to share their concerns about equity, workers felt dismissed. They said the work environment became even more uncomfortable because of microaggressions, like glares on the job or suggestions that they were replaceable. After that, workers began researching what union membership could look like.

Compass is not the only city nonprofit to see labor strife recently. Employees at the Tenderloin Housing Clinic, another San Francisco transitional housing provider, went on strike over the summer for the first time in history and ratified a contract for higher wages earlier this month. Staff at Hotel Whitcomb, one of the city’s hotels housing vulnerable residents under the state’s Project Roomkey program, have described the mental health toll on the job of regularly responding to drug overdoses.

Melani Gomez is currently a case manager at Compass. She previously was a client for about seven years. She relied on services through SF HOME, a program with Compass that provides rental subsidies and case management. Gomez said she went through about seven case managers during the years she used their services.

“You have to tell your story again and again and again. And sometimes you get tired,” Gomez said, adding that now she understands why so many of her case managers left. “Being a client really helped me grow and be where I am right now. But seeing the other side of that coin, they’re not very supportive of their own families who are working for them.”

Alex Arauz works at Compass’ Central City Access Point, one of the first points of contact for families experiencing homelessness. His official job title is “problem solver.” He said that without Compass, many families would be lost, calling every agency to see where they could receive help.

Before he worked at Compass, he worked at a union shop, Catholic Charities, but was looking for somewhere more progressive that embraced harm-reduction services. When he started in August, he said he heard murmurs of unionizing and workers who were scared.

“I have never experienced a workplace where every single worker was scared of what administration could do. And it shook me,” he said. “To be scared of this agency that said, ‘We’re all a family, we’re all here.’ That’s not something that I want to feel from an agency that says they have my back, and I thought we were all moving towards the same goals.”

The post ‘We Do not Wish to Be Dismissed’: Employees at Compass Household Companies in San Francisco Plan Vote to Unionize appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

Employees said management declined to voluntarily recognize their membership in the Office and Professional Employees International Union Local 29 during a tense town hall on Friday. According to workers who spoke with KQED, Kisch told staff that a letter with a list of names was not sufficient to show unionizing was not an “actual, uncoerced decision on the part of each employee listed.”

Even without that recognition, workers will soon move forward with a ballot election.

“Most of us can’t afford to live in the city where we help people find housing,” said Juliana Dunn, who works with kids at Compass Clara House, a transitional housing program. “And we want to have a voice in that. We want to have a seat at the negotiation table. We don’t want to be dismissed.”

In a written statement to KQED, Kisch said that she respected the right of staff to decide whether to bring in a labor organization to represent them in collective bargaining.

“For more than 100 years Compass Family Services has been devoted to serving the homeless families in our community, including new arrivals,” she wrote in the statement. “If a majority of our staff decide that is in their best interest, we will honor that decision.”

Dunn said employees began talking about the need to improve working conditions around the fall of 2021. They were worried at the time that hybrid work options were ending, and staff would need to return to work in person five days a week.

Jobs at Compass can be both fast-paced and high stress, with workers having difficult conversations over the phone, sometimes in multiple languages ​​at once. That can make working in the office uncomfortable, and can place an unnecessary burden on Compass staff already struggling to balance child care on top of the secondary trauma of working with families experiencing homelessness. Staff at Compass are also overwhelmingly people of color.

Dunn said that when staff attempted to share their concerns about equity, workers felt dismissed. They said the work environment became even more uncomfortable because of microaggressions, like glares on the job or suggestions that they were replaceable. After that, workers began researching what union membership could look like.

Compass is not the only city nonprofit to see labor strife recently. Employees at the Tenderloin Housing Clinic, another San Francisco transitional housing provider, went on strike over the summer for the first time in history and ratified a contract for higher wages earlier this month. Staff at Hotel Whitcomb, one of the city’s hotels housing vulnerable residents under the state’s Project Roomkey program, have described the mental health toll on the job of regularly responding to drug overdoses.

Melani Gomez is currently a case manager at Compass. She previously was a client for about seven years. She relied on services through SF HOME, a program with Compass that provides rental subsidies and case management. Gomez said she went through about seven case managers during the years she used their services.

“You have to tell your story again and again and again. And sometimes you get tired,” Gomez said, adding that now she understands why so many of her case managers left. “Being a client really helped me grow and be where I am right now. But seeing the other side of that coin, they’re not very supportive of their own families who are working for them.”

Alex Arauz works at Compass’ Central City Access Point, one of the first points of contact for families experiencing homelessness. His official job title is “problem solver.” He said that without Compass, many families would be lost, calling every agency to see where they could receive help.

Before he worked at Compass, he worked at a union shop, Catholic Charities, but was looking for somewhere more progressive that embraced harm-reduction services. When he started in August, he said he heard murmurs of unionizing and workers who were scared.

“I have never experienced a workplace where every single worker was scared of what administration could do. And it shook me,” he said. “To be scared of this agency that said, ‘We’re all a family, we’re all here.’ That’s not something that I want to feel from an agency that says they have my back, and I thought we were all moving towards the same goals.”

The post ‘We Do not Wish to Be Dismissed’: Employees at Compass Household Companies in San Francisco Plan Vote to Unionize appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

HOUSTON — Authorities say newly tested DNA evidence helped them make an arrest in the killings more than eight years ago of a family, including two boys, who were shot in their suburban Houston home.

Feng Lu, 58, who had long been considered a suspect in the case, was arrested on Sunday by police in San Francisco after his arrival from China, according to Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez.

Lu has been charged with capital murder in the deaths of Maoye Sun and his wife Mei Xie and the couple’s two sons, 7-year-old Titus and 9-year-old Timothy, the sheriff said in a tweet on Tuesday.

Lu was being held Wednesday at a jail in San Mateo County, California, pending extradition to Texas. Court records did not list an attorney for Lu who could speak on his behalf.

The bodies of all four family members were found on Jan. 30, 2014, in their home in the Houston suburb of Cypress. All had been shot in the head. Investigators said Sun was last seen alive leaving work on Jan. 24.

Lu was linked to the killings after new forensic testing done in January on samples that previously were not able to be identified showed that Lu’s DNA was found on a purse that belonged to Xie, according to a probable cause affidavit.

The DNA testing contradicted statements Lu had made previously to investigators in which he had said he did not know Xie or her children and didn’t know where the family lived, according to the affidavit.

Authorities have not disclosed a motive for the killings, but according to the affidavit, Lu had unsuccessfully tried to get Sun’s help with a promotion at work. Both had worked at Cameron International, which provides products and services to oil and gas companies.

Lu “stated he believed that (Sun) made derogatory comments about him to fellow co-workers … which may have been the reason he did not get the promotion,” according to the affidavit.

Investigators say Lu had bought a handgun a week before the killings and then returned it five days after the killings without the weapon’s barrel. Authorities allege Lu gave inconsistent stories about what happened to the gun’s barrel. Investigators also allege that bullets Lu had bought with the gun had likely been manufactured on the same machine as the bullet that killed one of the boys, Titus.

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Kimberly Balde of Chicago was sitting in a minivan, with her young nieces and an adult cousin, near San Francisco’s Lombard Street on Monday afternoon when she heard a loud and startling smash.

Kimberly looked behind her, across the back seat, to check on the children, ages 2 and 4, who were sitting in the third row. She saw that the window was broken, as well as a male suspect, who was wearing a ski mask and black gloves. The suspect was in the midst of grabbing a bag containing a laptop, a passport, the children’s birth certificates, headphones and more, she said. The strap of the bag was wrapped around the headrest where one of the girls was sitting.

The older child exclaimed, “A ninja took your bag,” Kimberly said.

“I didn’t really have time to react,” Kimberly said. “When it happened, I heard the window smash. I looked back and I looked at the kids and they were surprised. I jumped out of the car. It was a five-second deal.”

While Kimberly was rattled, she said that she’s relieved no one was hurt.

The San Francisco Police Department said it responded to the incident in Russian Hill at Hyde and Lombard streets, the top of the famous curving road, just before 3 pm

“The suspect took the backpack and got into a waiting vehicle, which was being operated by a second unknown suspect,” the department said in a statement. “The suspects then fled the scene.”

Smash-and-grab car robberies, with a thief breaking a window to steal a suitcase or purse left in the vehicle, are common in San Francisco. It’s not unusual to see the windows of multiple cars, parked in a row along an SF street, all broken.

Russian Hill falls under the jurisdiction of SFPD’s Central Station, which reports more larceny theft from cars than any other station in the city, department data showed. The station has seen a 179% percent increase in reports of theft from vehicles, when comparing data from Jan. 1 to Oct. 31 of this year with the same time frame last year.

Kimberly’s sister, Katherine, was using the restroom during the burglary and when she was returned to the car. When she saw the broken window, she was shocked.

“Throughout the whole vacation, we had been on guard with the smash and grabs,” Katherine said. “We’re aware it’s an issue in San Francisco. In Chicago, it’s armed robberies, carjackings. It’s nothing new to us. But this did surprise us.”

Kimberly had a tracking device on her computer, and she has been able to locate the laptop on GPS. The police department is investigating the incident.

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