NEWS

By Nick Sestanovich | [email protected] January 14, 2025 at 3:30 PM PST WATSONVILLE — The Watsonville Community Hospital and Pajaro Valley Health Care District are starting off 2025 with new faces in key roles. At its December meeting, the board...

Trust is not built on words alone—it is forged through action, teamwork, and empathy. This holds true in times of prosperity, but is even more critical during hardship and crisis. Few experiences unite people like the shared journey from loss to pain, to recovery, and...

Amid all the national furor and tragedy surrounding health care and insurers over the past two weeks, locally there is much more to the story than denied claims and disputes about out-of-network providers. For many people, including a sizeable number of Santa Cruz...

Pajaro Valley Health Care District’s governing board has appointed a new member to fill former chair John Friel’s seat. Marcela Tavantzis, 64, a longtime City of Watsonville employee, was chosen from among four applicants for the vacant seat on the five-member board...

New food bank opens Monday with expanded hours WATSONVILLE — Harnessing their collective expertise, two nonprofits in South Santa Cruz County have joined forces to provide resources to families in need and fight against regional inequities. In what officials have...

  Second Harvest Food Bank Santa Cruz County is combining those two key factors by partnering with Watsonville Community Hospital to bring the new Nourish fresh pantry to the hospital. The grand opening is 3:30 p.m. Thursday, February 15. “At Watsonville...

  In March 2020, Gilroy resident Lisa Marquez woke up to police officers banging on her door. They told her that her 17-year-old son was in an ambulance on the way to the hospital. By the time she got there, he had died of fentanyl poisoning after ingesting what...

WATSONVILLE — The last time Matko Vranjes, the interim CEO of Watsonville Community Hospital, was in the cafeteria at Watsonville High School in late 2021, the mood was a lot more somber. The hospital had begun bankruptcy proceedings, and its owner at the time —...