Application deadline for Section 8 housing voucher waitlist in Anaheim extended

• March 31, 2023

Anaheim officials have extended the deadline for getting in applications for the city’s waitlist for vouchers that help with paying rent.

The city now has funding for 300 more of the vouchers, commonly referred to as Section 8 vouchers, from the federal Housing and Urban Development Department. They are administered by the Anaheim Housing Authority, which is looking to build back up the waitlist it turns to when vouchers come available.

The housing authority recently updated its waitlist, checking in with previous applicants and found many had either found housing, moved or were no longer interested for other reasons. So it opened the window last month for accepting 10,000 new applications, which were originally due April 6, but that deadline has been extended to April 14.

The city will give priority to applications received from people who live or work in town as well as veterans, said city spokeswoman Erin Ryan. Once a lottery has been held to order them on the waitlist, another lottery will be held to fill in the remaining slots up to 10,000.

“We are just shy of the 10,000 waitlist slots we looking to fill,” Ryan said, adding that applicants will be notified May 11 if they’ve been added to the list and their position.

That notification will be by email, she said, and emphasized those filling out applications need to use an email they will have access to at that future time.

Already, about 6,300 households are using vouchers from Anaheim to help pay a portion of their rent. The voucher holder is required to spend about 30% of their income on rent, and the voucher pays the rest.

Eligibility is based on an individual’s or household’s income level — for example, a family of four with a household income up to $67,750 is eligible for housing assistance.

Anaheim is one of four housing agencies in the county that administers the vouchers.

The city is providing computer access and language and other assistance with applications on weekdays during business hours at the Anaheim Housing Authority, 201 S. Anaheim Blvd.

There are resources for people who don’t speak English as their first language through the Access California Services office at 300 W. Karl Karcher Way as well as help for those with disabilities at the Dayle McIntosh Center, 501 N. Brookhurst St.

Get information and the application at anaheim.net/applysection8.

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​ Orange County Register 

WWE just made the dreams of 20 Make-A-Wish kids come true

• March 31, 2023

Cody Rhodes, Finn Balor, Carmella, Liv Morgan and announcer Alicia Taylor of the WWE teamed up to pay a visit and interact with 20 families through the Make-A-Wish program at Universal Studios on Friday.

“That’s the best part of this job,” Rhodes said. “Any time you can take this modicum of fame that you get from sports entertainment and pro wrestling and you can help someone with it, that’s an absolutely beautiful thing.”

The families took photos and received autographs from the wrestlers before taking a private studio tour and having access to the theme park.

The wrestlers also invited the families to attend WrestleMania 39 this weekend.

“I can look at other things and say it’s really special, but I bet I leave this week thinking that’s the most important thing I did, when you really put it all in perspective,” Rhodes said.

Rhodes will compete in the main event against Roman Reigns for the Undisputed WWE Universal Championship match on April 2 at SoFi Stadium.

Balor and Morgan are also scheduled to compete during the company’s biggest annual event.

Related links

WWE’s WrestleMania 39 takes center stage in Inglewood this weekend
Cody Rhodes views WrestleMania 39 as ‘biggest chapter’ of his career

​ Orange County Register 

Orange’s Hannah MacDonald, 22, remembered and cherished for her heart

• March 31, 2023

Hannah Rae Luna MacDonald was going places. Anybody who watched her grow up in her hometown of Orange, or met her however briefly, could see that.

The 22-year-old already had gone so far, living her dream in New York City.

Hannah Rae Luna MacDonald graduated in May 2022 from The Hotel School at Cornell University. (Courtesy of the MacDonald family)

She graduated May 2022 from The Hotel School at Cornell University – a proud “Hotelie” of the nation’s top hospitality school – and a month later started as a project coordinator for foodservice design firm Jacobs Doland Beer.

As busy as work and fun (somehow seeing 40 plays in the span of eight months) kept her, MacDonald still visited home, including just in March for a best friend’s bachelorette party.

That trip was the last time family members would see her alive, blowing a kiss to her parents as she passed through airport security. It was the last chance for neighbors on East Palmyra to say hello as she walked her beloved dog, Luna.

Two days after her flight back to New York, MacDonald died in her sleep on March 23 at her Eastside apartment. Her roommate, worried she hadn’t woken for work that morning, found her lifeless in her bed.

The shock has reverberated from her newly adopted town to her university town to her hometown. Her death, in their words, has “broken” her parents, Nancy Luna MacDonald and Brady MacDonald, both accomplished journalists based in Orange County.

An autopsy indicated MacDonald had an enlarged heart. There had been no prior hint of illness, nor clue of a genetic disorder. Her parents won’t get any clarity until the medical examiner’s tests are completed in two months. Or, maybe, never.

What they do know they shared on Facebook: “… preliminary results show she had a dilated heart. The poetic version of that is something we already knew – she’s got a BIG BIG heart. Perhaps too big for her body to sustain all the electrifying love she had to give …”

That heart.

It’s a constant in remembrances: “Heart of gold.” “Pure-hearted.” “Warm and open heart.”

She grew up both adventurous and grounded.

From 4 years old into her teens, the girl with the long curly hair braided in two signature pigtails sold lemonade from a curbside stand to raise money for pediatric cancer research.

She was the first-born child on a tight-knit block whose celebrations included an annual Independence Day sidewalk parade led by a roller-skating MacDonald.

She played youth soccer. Sold Girl Scout cookies. Practiced piano. Learned to tap dance. Did her homework and made the honor roll.

Maternal grandparents Rachel and Fred Luna lived nearby. Her “Tata” Fred took care of her all day from 5 months old to preschool, and then after school. He affectionately called her “Changa” (Spanish for monkey) for her boundless energy and curiosity.

“She gave me more of a workout than the 35 years that I worked,” said her heartbroken grandfather, a retired municipal maintenance supervisor.

Hannah Rae Luna MacDonald, at right, loved the Disney character Peter Pan. (Courtesy of MacDonald family)

A big fan of Disney movies, she’d stretch out on the coffee table with garden flowers scattered around her, pretending to be Snow White. “Tata,” she’d say, “come and kiss me so I can wake up.”

She never lost childlike joy for theme parks, a beat her dad covers for The Orange County Register and Southern California News Group. Disneyland truly became her happiest place on Earth, Peter Pan her favorite story.

“She was this old soul who lived to always be youthful and childlike,” Brady MacDonald said in a tearful interview.

The young woman who took a post-college, month-long solo trip through Europe walked every morning as a child hand in hand with her dad to St. John’s Lutheran School. “Nana” Rachel picked her up in the afternoon, their routine until MacDonald started ninth grade at the Culinary Arts & Hospitality program of Orange County School of the Arts in Santa Ana.

The close bond with her parents never wavered.

Clockwise from top, Brady MacDonald, daughter Hannah and wife Nancy Luna on vacation in the Bay Area. (Courtesy of the MacDonald family)

They loved to travel and took their daughter everywhere with them – from her first road trip to San Diego in an infant seat to places across the country and overseas, and summer sojourns to Prince Edward Island to visit her dad’s family in Canada.

“I remember her singing a song she had written about marshmallows in the back seat of the car while traveling the back roads together in PEI,” her aunt Jackie MacDonald wrote in an email.

At ease among adults, she’d tag along to news assignments with her mom, a former Register reporter who writes about the restaurant industry for Insider: “She’d be talking to chefs about food and restaurants, and they’d be enthralled with her,” Nancy Luna MacDonald said.

She loved to cook. In the kitchen beside her Nana, she learned to make Christmas tamales. She also mastered her paternal grandmother’s raisin pie recipe.

“Nothing was too difficult for her. She always knew she could figure it out,” said Rachel Luna, who treasures the rosary her “Mija” remembered to bring back last year from Vatican City.

Cornell alumni Al Zelinka and Anna Pehoushek, a couple on Palmyra, eagerly wrote a college referral letter for MacDonald – and not just because she taught their son, whom she babysat, to make great barbecue.

“Most of us view her like you would a niece,” said Zelinka, city manager for Huntington Beach. “Can you imagine, if she’d had the chance to live a full life, what all would have happened in her life?”

Her parents will bring her ashes home on one last road trip together, joined by her Uncle Neil MacDonald. They’ve met her friends and co-workers in New York City and will drop by some of the sites she loved best – “to walk in Hannah’s shoes.”

On their cross-country drive, they’ll stop at places they didn’t get to yet as a family.

Her mom described their plans this way: “Let’s just take our baby home. In the fashion we always did with her, the way we always traveled.”

​ Orange County Register 

Kings look to salvage trip against Kraken, Canucks

• March 31, 2023

Launching into a road trip with the longest points streak in team history at their backs, the Kings have played two games in which they’ve scored one goal and accumulated no points thus far.

They’ll look to salvage their journey with a two-game sojourn in the Pacific Northwest to face the Seattle Kraken on Saturday and the Vancouver Canucks on Sunday.

They’ve played two of the stranger games of their season against those two clubs, in a campaign that’s featured other oddities and that faced significant uncertainty on the injury front Friday.

Back on Nov. 29, the Kings and Kraken played the highest-scoring contest of the 2022-23 season, a 9-8 overtime victory for Seattle, which also won its two other meetings with the Kings this year. Vancouver has also captured both matchups with the Kings this season, including a bizarre 3-2 shootout win on March 18 in which the Kings dominated play for 50 minutes before descending into an abyss.

Though they’ve confronted the unexpected, the Kings, who had been the NHL’s top team by points percentage for two months prior to stumbling out of the gate on this trip, will not over-think their back-to-back set.

“We’ve just got to have a couple goals on the power play, have a good forecheck and keep going here,” winger Alex Iafallo said.

The Kings’ power play, which remained tied for the second-best conversion rate in the NHL entering Friday’s schedule, has sputtered this month. Absent a 4-for-5 performance in a sinewy 7-6 victory over St. Louis, the Kings have only made good on 15.8% of their power plays, which would place them in the bottom quarter of the league.

In Thursday’s 2-0 loss in Edmonton, the Kings were without leading scorer Kevin Fiala, who might have aggravated the lower-body injury he sustained in Colorado on March 9, as well as another potent force, forward Gabe Vilardi. Around 90 seconds into the match, the Kings lost half their top defensive pairing when Mikey Anderson was illegally checked into the boards by Oilers star Connor McDavid.

Anderson should be considered out for the weekend’s action after the Kings recalled defenseman Tobias Bjornfot on an emergency basis, with Vilardi remaining in California and Fiala also appearing questionable at best.

Thursday’s tilt was described as “a hell of a game” by Kings coach Todd McLellan and as having a postseason feel by defenseman Matt Roy, and indeed it impacted the playoff outlook with Edmonton springing over the Kings in the standings.

If just when it appeared the Kings would be healthy again things have been thrown into flux up front and on the blue line, at least the situation in goal has solidified somewhat. After the Kings turned over their tandem completely – they entered the year with Jonathan Quick and Cal Petersen but have been alternating between Pheonix Copley and Joonas Korpisalo of late – McLellan finally gave at least a hint of who his starter might be for the playoffs. Korpisalo started both the first two games on the trip, the first time either netminder has received consecutive nods since his arrival at the beginning of the month.

Though Korpisalo lost both games in regulation, he only ceded three goals and gave the Kings an opportunity in both.

“He made some big saves for us, especially up top, tips and stuff like that. He was making huge saves and that gave us momentum going into each shift,” Iafallo said.

But the Kings have been stymied by Jacob Markstrom and Stuart Skinner in two straight, and now will likely face a nemesis in net who has almost always elevated his game against his former club, Martin Jones. Three of his 25 wins, his best total since 2018-19, have come against the Kings this season and he has 22 career victories against the Kings, eight more than he’s earned against any other franchise, in 32 decisions.

Defenseman Vince Dunn has been an unlikely scoring leader for Seattle, a hair ahead of forward Jared McCann. Former Colorado Avalanche forwards Joonas Donskoi and Andre Burakovsky are both out of action. Donskoi hasn’t played yet this season due to a concussion and Burakovsky has been recovering from a lower-body injury he sustained on Feb. 7.

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Vancouver will deploy one of hockey’s top scorers in the middle and best playmakers on the back end. Elias Pettersson’s 95 points have him tied for the fourth most of any center this season and the seventh most of any skater. Quinn Hughes’ 65 assists represent the NHL’s sixth-best total and trail only Erik Karlsson’s 69 among rearguards.

Though the Canucks careened and skidded through most of the season, which led to a coaching change and the departure via trade of leading goal-scorer Bo Horvat, they’ve been much sharper lately. Since returning from injury on Feb. 27, only two goalies have more victories than former Junior King and current Canuck Thatcher Demko. To that point, the Canucks ranked 27th in points percentage, but since then they have posted the fourth-best mark league-wide.

KINGS AT SEATTLE

When: Saturday, 7 p.m.

Where: Climate Pledge Arena

TV/Radio: KCOP (Ch. 13)/iHeart Radio

KINGS AT VANCOUVER

When: Sunday, 5 p.m.

Where: Rogers Arena

TV/Radio: Bally Sports West/iHeart Radio

​ Orange County Register 

Ducks acquire rights to Judd Caulfield from Penguins

• March 31, 2023

The Ducks could have another member of the 2019 draft class – specifically, one from the heralded U.S. National Team Development Program – in the organization after acquiring the reserve rights on Friday to right wing Judd Caulfield from the Pittsburgh Penguins.

In exchange, the Penguins received the reserve rights to defenseman Thimo Nickl, who was drafted by the Ducks in the fourth round (No. 104) in 2020. Caulfield was taken in the fifth round, 145th overall, in 2019.

Caulfield, 22, has spent the last four seasons playing for the University of North Dakota and told the Grand Forks Herald last week that he intended to come back for a fifth season. But Friday’s trade could end up changing the game plan.

If he ends up signing with the Ducks, Caulfield would join USNTDP teammates Trevor Zegras and Drew Helleson in the organization. In 2019, Zegras was drafted in the first round (ninth overall) and Helleson went in the second round (No. 47) to Colorado and was traded to the Ducks last season in the Josh Manson deal.

UND men’s hockey coach Brad Berry praised the consistency and versatility of Caulfield, a 6-foot-4 power forward from Grand Forks who had 19 points (10 goals, nine assists) in 39 games this past season.

“Physically, he’s a grown man,” Berry told the Orange County Register. “He has an unbelievable character. He’s a guy that plays a 200-foot game. A guy that skates extremely well.

“He can also play all parts of the game and was called upon by us, our organization, to play in every situation – power play, penalty kill, 5-on-5, 4-on-4, 6-on-5, everything.

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“He was part of a leadership group and a team that won three Penrose Cups, league championships, three years in a row here. I know he’s a guy that works hard every single day on and off the ice to get to that level.”

Berry spoke to the evolution of youth hockey in North Dakota.

“Fifteen years ago (it) wasn’t known as much for developing hockey players,” Berry said. “So you see now with Tyler Kleven, who just played in his first NHL game with Ottawa (on Thursday). It’s become an area where players have developed and same with Judd.

“At the end of the day, he’s done a great job developing. This is a day that he’s so excited about, as well as we are.”

DUCKS AT EDMONTON

When: Saturday, 7 p.m.

Where: Rogers Place

TV: Bally Sports SoCal

​ Orange County Register 

Is the CBD Industry Slowly Disappearing?

• March 31, 2023

Everywhere you look, there’s a sense of doom and gloom suffused into the CBD industry. Some of the most common complaints include:

– You can’t just sell low-grade hemp to anyone at artificially inflated prices anymore
– Shoppers are more discerning, making low-quality products harder to sell
– Federal regulation is still upcoming, rattling CBD brands that lack integrity

As you can see, none of the prognostications of disaster currently being hurled at the hemp market are founded in factual reality. CBD is not dying, disappearing, or anything of the like. The industry just isn’t as dramatic as it once was, and almost all of the bad actors have been weeded out.

How did this massive transformation take place? We’ll walk through the timeline below. Then, we’ll provide the market’s best predictions regarding the global white label CBD renaissance that’s about to take place.

The 2018 Hemp Boom

In 2018, everyone learned what CBD was, and lots of farmers decided they wanted to grow it the following season. The reason was a piece of legislation called the 2018 Farm Bill, which made it legal to grow hemp containing less than 0.3% THC in the United States for the first time since 1971.

Predictably, 2019 was a bumper year for hemp production. The bill passed at the end of 2018, so the following growing season, thousands of inexperienced and almost universally unprepared rural farmers switched out their genetically modified corn or soy crops for poorly sourced hemp seed, which they were certain would yield a cash crop worth its weight in gold.

For a small handful of hemp farmers, the dream was realized. Most, however, were soon crowded out either by larger, more capable producers or simply by their optimistic lack of proper preparedness. Expecting initial costs to be offset by sky-high per-pound biomass pricing, some would-be hemp farmers were even driven bankrupt by 2020-2021.

A Consolidating Industry

Sourcing high-quality bulk CBD had been a challenge for brands prior to 2018, but no more. Suddenly, everyone from Joe Farmer to slick Mr. Corporate was hocking bags of CBD weed on LinkedIn, Instagram, Craigslist, or in your email inboxes. CBD was incredibly plentiful — but that created a conundrum.

Like THC cannabis before it, the artificially raised pricing of the CBD industry was supported by a false sense of scarcity — in turn enforced by a stigmatized, outlawed status. Now that CBD hemp was just as widely available as corn or hay, however, producers of low-quality products could no longer get away with undeservedly charging top-dollar prices.

So, yes, today’s CBD industry is undeniably haunted by bitter complaints from has-beens or wannabes who simply couldn’t cut it in the new, more professional market that emerged in the wake of the 2018 Farm BIll. Brands like Colorado Botanicals with actual moral fortitude, however, thrive in this new environment, which rewards honest, hard work rather than skulduggery and deceit.

Evolution, Not Dissolution

CBD might no longer be in the headlines every day, but that’s not a sign it has gone away — rather, CBD has just been normalized to the extent that nobody makes a big deal out of it anymore. The production of CBD products has mainly been taken over by responsible, larger companies that properly prioritize honest value and consumer safety.

To be honest, CBD was never anything more than a trend to some — even to companies that made and sold it. Despite the fact that CBD has genuine, undeniable benefits, these companies treated CBD like it was a scam — and to them, it was. For the rest of us, though, CBD has become a simple, reliable solution to many of life’s aches and pains: a solution that will be here for life.

CBD Is Bigger Than Ever Before 

Back in the early days of the CBD industry, most people who used hemp had already tried cannabis or were desperate for anything that might help. Now, though, hemp is no longer solely the territory of drug enthusiasts and the seriously ill. Mothers, fathers, grandparents, and people of all ages and walks of life rely on CBD on a daily basis, and the cannabinoid has lost what little association with THC that it once had.

And no, the fact that CBD is now so popular isn’t evidence it’s a scam. CBD isn’t propped up, after all, with multi-million-dollar TV ads and free cruise ship vacations for family physicians. It’s supported, on the contrary, by the honest opinions of millions of people who have used CBD and experienced its benefits for themselves.

Bit by bit, person to person, knowledge of CBD has spread like the opposite of a virus. This “contagion” of healing and freedom has now “infected” the entire American populace — and there does not appear to be a cure.

Massive CBD Growth Ahead

In May of 2022, respected market analysis firm Grand View Research made waves by predicting the global CBD industry would reach a valuation of $22 billion by 2030. In 2022, the global CBD market was only valued at around $6 billion, marking a nearly 17% yearly increase over the eight-year projected period.

If other analysts are taken into account, though, Grand View’s predictions may turn out to be somewhat conservative. Competitor Brightfield Group, for instance, believes CBD may be worth $16 billion globally just by 2025 — though Brightfield has been overly optimistic before. With the global CBD industry reaching an estimated $9.4 billion in 2023, however, we’re on track to at least closely coincide with Brightfield’s predicted value.

No, CBD Isn’t Going Anywhere

CBD has become big enough to be its own mature industry with a spider web-like network of suppliers, clients, and distributors. Hemp white labelers like Arvanna are confident that the CBD industry will only continue to solidify over the coming years, driving product quality even further up while eliminating any final traces of corruption and product contamination.

It still pays to research CBD products thoroughly before buying, but the days in which you couldn’t tell if CBD was high-quality are long past. Trustworthy CBD companies tell you everything you need to know up front, and they don’t have anything to hide when you come knocking.

​ Orange County Register 

Family in Anaheim offering $5,000 reward for return of stolen urn bearing son’s remains

• March 31, 2023

The Anaheim Police Department is seeking the public’s assistance in finding a stolen urn with the ashes of a young boy inside.

On March 21,  Anaheim PD received a call about a theft from the front porch of a home on the 300 block of South Illinois Street. Department officials met with the victim, who said that a package containing an urn with her young son’s ashes inside had been stolen.

Detectives are investigating the theft, which they believe occurred between 4:30 p.m. and 6 p.m. on March 21.

The victim has offered a $5,000 reward for the safe return of the urn, no questions asked.

Anyone with information about the theft is urged to contact Anaheim PD at 714-328-8153.

​ Orange County Register 

UCLA adds former Navy coach Ken Niumatalolo to staff

• March 31, 2023

UCLA has hired former Navy football coach Ken Niumatalolo as the program’s director of leadership, the school announced Friday.

Niumatalolo, Navy’s winningest head coach, was fired at his locker after the Midshipmen’s 20-17 double-overtime loss to rival Army in Philadelphia in December.

Niumatalolo – who had a reputation for graduating his players, his honest approach and avoiding NCAA infractions – will serve as an adviser to the program’s staff and players, according to a UCLA press release.

UCLA recently hired Niumatalolo’s son, former Utah tight end Ali’i Niumatalolo, as an offensive line graduate assistant. Former Navy assistant coach Bryce McDonald is UCLA’s chief of staff, and assistant coach Brian Norwood is one of Niumatalolo’s best friends.

Niumatalolo had a 109-83 record in his 15 seasons leading Navy, where he won six of 10 bowl games, both school records. No head coach had won eight consecutive games in the Army-Navy series until Niumatalolo began his career by doing so (2008-15), and his 10 wins overall is also the most in the history of the rivalry. Niumatalolo’s teams earned the Commander-in-Chief’s Trophy, awarded annually to the military service academy team with the best regular-season record against the other two teams, a program-record six times. Niumatalolo also joined Wayne Hardin as the only Navy coaches to beat Notre Dame three times.

The Midshipmen had struggled recently, though. They finished with four wins or less three seasons in a row and have gone 2-5 against both Army and Air Force since 2016.

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Niumatalolo’s 2015 team won a program-record 11 games, something they did again in 2019, with both teams finishing in the top 20 of the final Associated Press Top 25 poll.

Just the second Polynesian head coach in FBS history and the first Samoan head coach at any level, Niumatalolo was selected to the inaugural class of the Polynesian Football Hall of Fame in 2013.

​ Orange County Register