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GILROY

For terrific summer fun, it’s hard to beat a concert at Fortino Winery in Gilroy. On a very warm evening, a group of us arrived just as the sun was setting and in time to snag the last table. We came stocked with picnic baskets full of submarine sandwiches, heirloom cherry tomatoes and summer salads.

Police throughout Santa Clara County will begin their annual end-of-summer DUI enforcement campaign Aug. 19 by placing extra officers on the roads and conducting sobriety checkpoints until Labor Day.The crackdown is known as the “Avoid the 13” campaign, which places extra law enforcement resources on the road to limit drunk or impaired driving during the holidays and other high-traffic times.“During this period (Aug. 19 to Sept. 5), local law enforcement will show zero tolerance for drunk driving,” reads a press release from the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Office.The Avoid the 13 effort will deploy two DUI/drivers license checkpoints and another 42 DUI “saturation patrols” to stop and arrest alcohol- and drug-impaired drivers during the 18-day end-of-summer period, police said.Operations in South County include saturation patrols in the cities of Morgan Hill and Gilroy on Aug. 19, 20, 25, 26, 27, 28 and Sept. 1-5, according to the press release.The California Highway Patrol will conduct a DUI/license checkpoint at an unspecified location in unincorporated South County the night of Aug. 20.According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, more than 10,000 people die each year in drunk driving crashes nationwide. In California, 882 deaths at the hands of drunk drivers occurred from 2010 to 2014. During the 2014 Labor Day weekend, 40 percent of the fatalities in traffic crashes involved drunk drivers.“People need to understand that drunk driving is not only deadly, but it is illegal,” said Sheriff Laurie Smith. “Drunk driving is a massive problem in the United States, with more than 10,000 people dying annually. Drivers need to pay attention to their own driving, but also to others on the road who could be driving drunk. It is your business. If you think you see a drunk driver, report them—call 911.”Of the 9,967 people who died in impaired-driving accidents in 2014, 64 percent were themselves drunk drivers, the press release added.The county’s Avoid the 13 DUI task force is funded by a grant from the California Office of Traffic Safety, through the NHTSA.

City of San Jose Airport Commissioner Tom Cruz will challenge incumbent appointee John Varela for South County’s seat on the Santa Clara Valley Water District Board of Directors in the Nov. 8 election, according to election officials.The qualifying period for candidates ended this week, and the latest list of candidates on the Registrar of Voters’ website shows Cruz and Varela vying for the District 1 seat on the seven-member board.The board appointed Varela to the seat December 2015, after former Director Dennis Kennedy resigned due to health reasons. Varela was appointed to complete Kennedy’s unfinished term, which expires after the November election.Kennedy, a former longtime mayor of Morgan Hill, died in March age 77.Cruz and Varela were both among the 21 applicants for Kennedy’s seat when the SVWD board began the appointment process last year. After a public interview process, the board chose Varela.Varela, a 38-year Morgan Hill resident, is a former mayor and city councilman for the City of Morgan Hill. He is also an entrepreneur and co-founder of a number of nonprofit organizations in South County, and of several for-profit companies in the renewable energy industry. He is also the co-founder of South Valley Angels, an organization that helps people start small companies.Cruz, a south San Jose resident, works for the County of Santa Clara and is a San Jose Mineta International Airport Commissioner. He ran against Kennedy in the November 2014 election for the District 1 SCVWD seat.District 1 on the SCVWD board includes South County from south San Jose to Gilroy, and unincorporated areas in the southern and eastern areas of the county.The SCVWD provides wholesale drinking water to the county’s 1.8 million residents, and has an annual budget of about $524 million.

Sobrato quarterback John Bell throws a pass during Sobrato’s intersquad scrimmage held at the high school on Friday.

Firefighters this afternoon extinguished a vegetation blaze on the side of U.S. 101 north of Morgan Hill, just minutes after crews finished mopping up another fire in the same vicinity that burned about 100 acres since Wednesday.

As a staff member of Live Oak Adult Day Services, I help care for many seniors here each day, but I am not a caregiver in my private life. My husband is healthy, my sons are adults, and my parents and grandparents, sadly, are gone now. My dad died quite suddenly in his forties. My mom was just in her sixties, still working, fully independent, and busy as a bee when she suffered a stroke. I remember the dawning realization that I was about to become a caregiver. My siblings gathered with me around her hospital bed, and we planned out a schedule for each of us to assist our beloved mom during her upcoming hospital discharge and recuperation. We were actually grateful to have the chance to give back to mom.

Peeking through racks of clothes this week, I was on the lookout for someone looking fabulous and fashionable. The timeless Coco Chanel once said, “Simplicity is the keynote of all true elegance.”