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For the third time in its history, the historic Lathrop House is set to be relocated.

And the very slow methodical moving process — 1 to 2 meters per hour — begins today.

Crews are launching into the process of inching the two-story, 10-room, 1869s-era mansion from its current location at 627 Hamilton Ave. across the street to its new home outside the historic courthouse, which of course houses the San Mateo County History Museum. At a cost to the county of $1.5 million, the Lathrop House is being moved to make way for construction of a new county office building and government parking structure, according to the county.

The move is expected to last until Sunday, possibly into Monday. In preparation, the 90-ton house was lifted five feet in recent weeks so that beams could be inserted underneath.

“The house will be hydraulically pushed on industrial rollers to its new home where it will be re-established on a new, seismically stable foundation and connected to existing utilities at the History Museum,” the county said in a statement.

Today, crews will very slowly begin moving the house to the edge of the block bordered by Marshall Street, a project set to last until Friday. Construction will pause Saturday, and crews are targeting Sunday for the final push across Marshall, which will be closed to traffic.

The Lathrop House is one of the oldest mansions in the Peninsula and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

In January 1858, Mary C. Lathrop bought the entire block of lots, including the site where the Fox Theater building stands, from the Arguello and Mezes families, according to the county. The Lathrop House was ready to be occupied in 1863, and was seven years later purchased by General Patrick Edward Connor, whose family kept hold of it until 1894. That’s when Redwood City public school trustees purchased it and moved it to the rear of the block to make room for a grammar school. In 1905, the wife of Sheriff Joel Mansfield bought the home and it was moved to the present Hamilton Street location, according to the county.

“The Lathrop House is a jewel of San Mateo County’s history and will be a wonderful addition in its new location where hopefully even more people can visit,” San Mateo County Board of Supervisors President Carole Groom said in a statement. “Moving the house just down the block lets us remain connected to our past while making way for our future office space.”

Frequently Asked Questions provided by the County

How big is Lathrop House?

Lathrop House has 10 rooms. The first floor is 1,808 square feet and the second is 1,558 square feet, for a total of 3,393 square feet.

How much does the house weigh?

The house weights approximately 90 tons.

How did crews lift the house and how long did it take?

Crews placed the house on top of 35, 45, 50 and 80-foot beams using hydraulic lifts and lifted it 5 feet above ground which is the optimal height to move the house to its desired location. This process lasted approximately two weeks and required much coordination and manpower to transport such long beams in the crowded downtown Redwood City area.

How exactly will the house be moved?

The house will be hydraulically pushed on top of industrial rollers. These rollers will be placed on top of the traveling beams which will span across the parking lot from Wednesday, May 8 through Friday, May 10 and across Marshall Street Sunday, May 12 and, if needed, Monday, May 13.

At what speed will the house move?

The rate of speed will be about 1 to 2 meters per hour. To accommodate the slow process, the County allocated five days for the total move.

Are special precautions needed to protect the house during the move?

Yes. Crews are taping and bracing some of the windows and walls that might be strained or damaged during the move. Also, all furniture inside the Lathrop House was removed and stored in three 20-foot containers to protect objects and items from falling and damaging the integrity of the house.

Will there be any changes to the house in its new location?

The interior of the house and its utilities (water, electricity, bathrooms) will be identical as it was before with the exception of the kitchen which will be decommissioned. The Gift Shop area will be combined with the office room next door to allow more space for gifts and souvenirs.

What work was needed to prepare the new site?

Crews coordinated all the electrical, plumbing and sewage connections History Museum staff as the Lathrop House will share all utilities with the museum. Also, the County built a foundation to accommodate the Lathrop House in the parking lot behind the museum. The new foundation is very sound, seismically stable and is an obvious upgrade to the old foundation were the Lathrop House previously sat.

Photos courtesy of the County

A Redwood City woman will not serve time in prison for attempting to drown her baby after giving birth in a McDonald’s bathroom in 2017, prosecutors said.

After sentencing Friday, Sarah Lockner, 27, received four years supervised probation and one year in county jail with credit for time served, since she was in custody during her court proceedings, the San Mateo County District Attorney’s Office said.

Lockner was also ordered to complete parenting classes, undergo counseling and to take all prescribed medications, prosecutors said.

Lockner was arrested Sept. 4, 2017, when she was a cashier at the McDonald’s at 185 Chestnut St. in Redwood City working the shift from 5 p.m. to 12:30 p.m. During her shift, she went to the bathroom multiple times complaining of stomach pain. When a co-worker went in to check on her, she saw blood on the floor. Lockner told her co-worker it was just a heavy period, but a second co-worker who went into check on her looked over the stall and saw a newborn baby face down in the toilet bowl with Lockner’s hand on the baby’s back, prosecutors said.

“As the co-worker stepped down, she heard the toilet flush,” said prosecutors, indicating she intended to flush the baby down the toilet.

While Lockner told her co-worker not to call police, the police were called. Officers found the baby with no pulse but breathing. The baby was rushed to the hospital and, after a medically-induced coma, is surviving on his own although his neurological prognosis is not known, prosecutors said.

Lockner had claimed at the time that she didn’t know she was pregnant, prosecutors said.

The Encore Books on the Square has been called Redwood City’s “hidden gem,” a label that fits a place located in the basement of the San Mateo County History Museum on Courthouse Square. Visiting the bookstore, which is virtually underground, is a bit like entering a Prohibition-era speakeasy: Go down a ramp and though a tunnel-like entrance that ends at a set of heavy doors. If anyone questions you, tell them “Pat sent me.”

In this case, Pat is Pat Young, a fitting surname for a 99-year-old who is definitely young at heart. A volunteer at the bookstore, Young was feted at a birthday party in her honor in February, an event that also marked the 20^th anniversary of Encore Books. It is operated by The Funders, a group of volunteer book lovers who gather, sort, catalog, price and sell new, used and rare books to raise money for the San Mateo County Historical Association, which runs the museum. Almost all the books sell for 25 cents to $2.50.

“Ever since I was a little kid in Burlingame I’ve wanted to be a helper and that I have been,” Young told the crowd of about 40 people at the birthday gathering. The plastic lei she sported was a light-hearted accent to the occasion, as Young tossed off several one-liners that drew laughs or applause. She told her audience that she had had a “good life, despite having spinal meningitis, being tossed through the windshield in a car crash and going through a divorce. I’m not sure which was worse.”

Young is the Funders Poster Chairman, meaning she fashions decorative themes at the bookstore, which consists of five large rooms housing more than 35,000 books in its collection. There are also three large spaces for sorting by the 22 volunteers who staff the bookstore five days a week. Young, a retired teacher who taught seventh and eighth graders for 34 years, should pose for a poster for recruiting volunteers, a field she knows quite well. The Red Cross and Mills Hospital, where she was in charge of the Candy Stripers program, are listed on her résumé. A fellow Red Cross volunteer introduced her to the bookstore in the mid-1990s and she has been one of the most active store volunteers ever since.

Young became a volunteer with the Funders when the History Museum was located at the College of San Mateo.  Founded in 1971, the Funders’ main functions then were annual book sales to raise money for the museum. The bookstore opened in February of 1999, the same year the museum debuted in the 1910 courthouse in downtown Redwood City. The book sales have resulted in $20,000 a year going to the San Mateo Historical Association for the museum, the Woodside Store in Woodside and the Sanchez Adobe in Pacifica.

Young said she “grew up with the museum.” That’s because the museum founder, Dr. Frank Stanger, and her parents were friends. Stanger would frequently visit her family while he was working to establish the museum, which he did in 1941. Young wants to set the record straight about Stanger, who looks very serious in the many photos of him featured at the museum. He had a great sense of humor, Young maintains, and even performed in musical comedies for the First Methodist Church in Burlingame where he also sang in the choir.

Those who can’t find what they want at Encore Books can walk a few blocks to the Redwood City main library on Middlefield Road, where a volunteer group called Friends of the Redwood City Public Library sells donated books to raise funds for such programs as Traveling Story Time and Authors at Local Schools. The store occupies a much smaller space, but still has a good selection gathered by 50 volunteers who put in 6,000 hours a year scanning and pricing books.

This story was published in the May print edition of Climate Magazine.

The annual Facebook Festivals series has become another reason to welcome summer.

The free events, the first on May 18, are basically exceptionally fun farmers’ markets held on five Saturday afternoons during the spring, summer and fall at Facebook’s Menlo Park headquarters at 1 Hacker Way.

Each with different themes, the festivals all feature a farmers market, food trucks, live music, a kids zone, artisans and crafts, craft beer and cocktails, educational expos and more. They are a fundraiser for various local charities and an extension of Facebook’s broader effort to address food insecurity and the lack of access to fresh, affordable, organic foods in local communities.

See the flyer below for event dates and themes.

Beyond the festivals, the company also sponsors the Facebook Community Mobile Market that visits Menlo Park and East Palo Alto every Sunday (excluding holiday weekends) to serve affordable and organic food.  You can view other efforts by the company to address this issue in the Facebook Community Website events calendar, which also includes events benefiting education, youth, community and animals.

Proposals to increase the sales tax to expand Caltrain service and fund electrification received approval by nearly two-thirds of voters in a public opinion poll conducted in March, just shy of the two-thirds needed to pass at the ballot box, according to the transit agency.

In March, Caltrain commissioned EMC Research to poll voters in San Francisco, San Mateo and Santa Clara counties on whether they would support a 30-year, 1/8 cent or 1/4 cent sales tax providing about $100 million or $200 million annually for the transit agency. The tax measure is being considered for the November 2020 Election.

The 1,416 people polled were told the proposed tax would be dedicated to funding Caltrain’s efforts to increase frequency and capacity and for electrification.

About 65 percent of those surveyed said they would support either the 1/8 cent or 1/4 cent tax proposals, nearly the two-thirds percentage needed for either measure to pass.

While that appears close, the measure is vulnerable to opposition, according to EMC Research. With more information, support for the measure would likely reach the needed two-thirds threshold, but in the face of opposition messaging, support for the tax reduced to 56 percent. Some voters said they can’t afford another tax given the high cost of living, new gas tax and bridge tolls. Some said public transit improvements won’t significantly relieve traffic, or believe private companies causing the traffic should pay for them.

In the poll, traffic and congestion ranked third as the Bay Area’s biggest problem. About 10 percent of voters said it was the region’s most pressing issue. The top ranking issue in the poll was affordable housing (38 percent) followed by homelessness (14 percent).

Over a century ago, President Woodrow Wilson signed a proclamation designating the second Sunday in May as a national holiday to honor mothers. It’s May 12 this year, and Climate turned to four local moms to offer some perspectives on motherhood.

Debbi Jones-Thomas: Single Mom and Her PALs

Debbi Jones-Thomas — the youngest of 13 children – quips that she’s “one-thirteenth the woman my mother was.  She had 13 babies and I had one. But I’m not complaining,” the Menlo Park resident added laughing.  “I take my blessings in stride.”

Jones-Thomas grew up in rural Kentucky but came to California in 1978 planning to go to Hastings Law School. She realized that the law was not her calling and ended up going to work for the City of Redwood City for 30 years. As a housing coordinator, among other duties she helped people get into housing or to rehab their homes.  “I wanted to be in service,” she said.  “I wanted to change one life at a time.”

The most important one, of course, was son DeBraun Thomas, who she raised as a single parent from the time he was 10 years old. His father’s company moved, she says simply, and “he went with the company.” The upheaval happened just as her son was entering the difficult middle school years and he had a very rough patch.

She got him into the Police Activities League, or PAL, — initially to go to summer school.  But adult mentors who knew the challenges he was experiencing – engineers, attorneys, police officers, a firefighter, teachers and coaches — took DeBraun under their wing. “It was such a positive experience that when he got his little heart broken, those were the people who helped him see that there was a tomorrow,” she recalled.

Eventually, “he came through it,” Jones-Thomas said.  “It was just those three hard years.” Throughout, she worried about her son constantly. “I didn’t know how I was going to get through but thankfully there were strong men in my life.”

As a single parent, funds were limited and, rather than hire a babysitter, Jones-Thomas would bring him to evening meetings with her. Wearing a little suit and tie, DeBraun would often accompany his mom to groundbreakings and open houses for new developments. In retrospect, she reflected, he learned about social justice because of the time he spent listening to City Council meetings.  DeBraun, now 30, lives in Lexington, Kentucky, where he is a musician and works for the local NPR affiliate, WUKY, and is active in his community.

Jones-Thomas, who retired in 2010, serves on the boards of PAL, as well as the library foundation and Kainos Home and Training Center in Redwood City. Occasionally, she encounters the children of people who she had helped when she worked for the city, finding them housing or getting their home fixed up. “One gal told me I changed the life of the whole family,” Jones-Thomas said.

But her most important role is the one she learned about from her role model mother:  “’Mother’  is the most precious title I’ve ever held,” Jones-Thomas said. “It’s been the greatest accomplishment of my life.”

Giselle Hale: Working Mom in the Kitchen

Redwood City Council member. Check. Worked on President Obama’s campaign. Check. Has a successful career at Facebook. Check. Felt guilty for missing her daughter’s puppet show due to a meeting at work and was called out for it by said daughter. Check that too. Bakes often to relieve stress. Check that one as well.

Giselle Hale deals not just with the work/home balance issues all working moms face but with additional demands as a result of her election in November. She got involved with family and women’s workplace issues after she became a parent and is a leadership advisor with the Washington D.C.-based National Partnership with Women and Families.

Hale has advocated for the Family Medical Care Leave Act, an initiative that would offer financial support for employees when taking leave to care for themselves or family members. “It would allow for when a loved one is dying or being able to care for a veteran in your family as well as when you’ve had a baby,” Hale explained. “It seems like a core value to be able to take care of the old and the young while also being able to pay our bills.”

Growing up in Wisconsin, Hale said her family didn’t have much money – not even enough to decorate for the holidays. Her mother worked long hours at her own ad agency, so Hale was dropped off at the nearby home of her Sicilian grandmother, who loved to bake cookies and cakes with her.

Living in California, Hale misses that immensely as a mom of girls ages 3 and 5. “Personally it’s been one of the biggest challenges of being a mother—raising my children so far away from relatives,” Hale said. “I wish I could have what I had growing up.”

So Hale follows her “Nana’s” example and bakes with her daughters. Often. Baking is not only a way to bond: It’s a great way to introduce math, chemistry and art to children in an organic way. Her girls especially like to frost sugar cookies and Hale always has a batch of frozen dough at the ready. They have baked so much that even her 3-year-old is wise to measuring and can run the hand mixer. “She is legit good,” Hale said with a laugh.

There are two optimal times to be in Hale’s neighborhood—when she has had a hectic day and any holiday. Both induce baked goods. “There’s something about making something with your hands which is so satisfying,” she noted adding that her family loves sharing their holiday cookies with neighbors.

“Every woman in my family has won some sort of baking contest,” Hale said.  How about her?  Check.

Shana Hackworth: Businessmom

Shana Hackworth, who has children 7 and 8, found it a lonely transition from full-time corporate work to being a stay-at-home mom six years ago, after the birth of her second son. “Mothering splinters you in a way that I didn’t anticipate,” she said. She missed having conversations with other adults. “You’re growing in caring for someone else, but at the same time you are losing part of you. There is a struggle with your identity.”

Out of that experience, albeit indirectly, Hackworth and Lauren Kelly, another Redwood City mother, formed a nonprofit called Moms in Business Collective. It all began about five years ago with casual conversations among friends and has morphed into a robust networking group that provides connections and support for women trying to balance careers and motherhood.

“I always wanted to be a mom, but I didn’t dream about being only a mom,” Hackworth said. “I needed a separate pursuit to maintain my sanity.”

She’s in her first year as a pre-school teacher but it was her work with a manufacturer of “safer” household products that sparked her desire to interact with other women who had small businesses they wanted to expand. They might be motivated by a desire to augment family income or have a pursuit that is different from mothering. Or both. The women began to meet more regularly and could give each other encouragement and advice on topics like how to squeeze work in between school drop-offs and pick-ups or the kids’ naps.

Recognizing that it is a privilege to own a business and to have a supportive community around them, Hackworth and Kelly proposed the formal creation of a grant-making nonprofit. Response was enthusiastic and Moms in Business Collective got its status confirmed in November 2016. Since then, they’ve provided $8,000 in grants. This year’s round of $8,000 worth of grants opens this month.

Another non-profit, Renaissance Entrepreneur Center in East Palo Alto, helped screen candidates and set up interviews. “The interviewees had taken business classes through their center so we knew they were already on their way to being successful,” Hackworth added.

Recipients included two Redwood City moms. One wanted to expand the neighborhood daycare she owns for a higher enrollment. She was able to purchase extra classroom supplies, a new snack table, and a large carpet, as well as pay for permits required to increase the capacity of childcare. “She wanted to offer those additional spots to the lower-income community and that was important to us,” Hackworth said.

The second mom runs a storefront restaurant business in San Jose who didn’t have a commercial kitchen on her premises. She used the grant to buy a stove and an ice machine and complete the rest of the kitchen.

Moms in Business gets together quarterly for mixers and has about 60 members and attendees, ranging from young moms to grandmothers – and people whose businesses cater to moms. “This group is really a check and balance for me,” Hackworth said. “There’s a relatability. It just feels like home.”  Find them at www.mibcollective.org.

Ali Nuckles: Multi-tasking Maternity Ward Mom

If the lines between the work and home ever seem blurry, that would be understandable for Ali Nuckles, a labor and delivery nurse at Sequoia Hospital with young twins at home. She puts in 12-hour shifts at the hospital among expectant parents, new parents — and newborns — and then comes home to 2 ½-year-old sons eager to see mom.

“I don’t really get a break from changing diapers or parenthood,” Nuckles said. “It’s part of my job to help parents know how to change a diaper without getting peed on,” she added with a laugh. “Then I have to go home and get my own babies ready for night.”

As it happens, the abilities and lessons learned at each place informs the other. “I’ve had to learn to be patient,” said Nuckles, applying skills honed during nearly eight years of intense work situations. A baby’s heart rate suddenly plummets. Or a regularly planned delivery becomes an emergency C-section. “Remaining calm and keeping more even keel is less stressful for everyone,” allowing her to focus when things get crazy. “If I’m stressed out or worried, I might not respond as quickly or forget something critical. It comes with experience.”

The only constant that Nuckles can expect at work is the inconstant. “Every day is different because you don’t know what kind of patients you’re going to get. They come in at all stages of delivery and dilation,” she explained. Even if no babies are born during her shift, babies cry and need diaper changes and heart rate monitoring. Pain meds may need to be administered or a nervous new mom needs breastfeeding advice. And then there’s paperwork. “Lots of it, at admission and discharge,” Nuckles added. “It’s never really quiet. The job constantly keeps you on your toes.”

But she isn’t complaining and is grateful that her current schedule gives her two or three long days at the hospital and every other weekend off. “It was really hard when I first went back to work because I would get home and my sons would already be asleep. I wouldn’t see them the entire day. At least now I get to do their night time routine with them when I get home from work.” A part-time nanny watches them on weekdays at Nuckles’ Woodside Road-area home and husband Mike on weekends. Sequoia, she added, is a flexible place to work and she was able to take a nine-month leave after giving birth.

Be assured that between motherhood and working with mothers, there’s no question which comes first. “I love being a mom,” Nuckles said. “That’s my most favorite job. But I also worked hard at becoming a nurse and I didn’t want to give it up… “I love being a nurse at Sequoia. It’s kind of a nice break from being a mom, which is the hardest job ever. You have more of a team at work. As a mom, you do more multitasking.”

This story was published in the May print edition of Climate Magazine.