California
A daring rescue to save an injured hiker in the California wilderness
Lemoore, CA — “It was December 5th, not a cloud in the sky,” recalls Kevin Depaolo, an adventurist who’s visited 49 out of 50 states in a van that he customized himself. “It was sort of the scenario that you’d expect something to go wrong, unfortunately.”
That scenario was a rock hounding trip high in the California wilderness between the Sierra Nevada and the Inyo Mountains. “It’s desolate. I was there for five days and I didn’t see a single person.” Fortunately, Depaolo wasn’t alone. He and a friend were digging for interesting rocks that lay beneath the surface near large boulders that have been sitting for thousands of years untouched. “We were digging and I sat back to rest and all of a sudden my friend yells ‘Kevin look out!’ and before I can even look up, this giant boulder just nails my entire body.”
I kept yelling, ‘you have to get it off! It’s killing me!
Depaolo was trapped. The boulder pushed him onto his back, crushing his pelvis and threatening to roll further down the hill. Depaolo’s friend quickly takes his pick axe, lodging it under the boulder to keep it from rolling further and injuring Depaolo even more. “I kept yelling, ‘you have to get it off! Its killing me!” Depaolo was able to free his left leg, revealing one of his major injuries, a severed artery that the boulder was applying pressure to keeping him from bleeding out.
“My friend then called for help, but my right leg remained trapped and that’s where we spent the next seven hours.” There’s only one road in and out of the area and where Depaolo was trapped, it took him and his friend two hours to hike there. The Inyo County Search and Rescue team that was dispatched to find Depaolo spent six hours on the phone with his friend to pin point their location. Depaolo recalls seeing a helicopter spot them and circling a few times, only to fly off. It was several hours later until help arrived.
“It was dark at that point, about 8pm, when I finally saw the headlamps coming over the ridge. The guys immediately started getting to work.” The Inyo County Search and Rescue team devised an unique pulley system to lift the 10,000lb boulder off Depaolo’s leg. Drilling two bolts into the boulder and a rope to an anchor drilled into a massive boulder down the hill, the Search and Rescue team was able to lift the boulder with the help of a high lift jack, a special tool used to free large off-road vehicles. Once Depaolo was free, the immense pain started to hit. “At that point we needed to get to the hospital. But we were in such a remote area, there’s no way they could carry me down the hill. We needed external help.”
The California Highway Patrol was originally tasked with airlifting Depaolo out, but once the sun went down, there was nothing they could do as their helicopters aren’t fitted for night rescues. Depaolo faced the possibility of spending the night on the mountain, where temperatures fall below freezing. Knowing that he may not make it through the night, Inyo County Search and Rescue made a call to the nearby Naval Air Station in Lemoore, where their elite Search and Rescue team is equipped for night rescues in their helicopter.
“The ground crew was able to send us an exact lat and long. There was nowhere safe to land. The only safe place was miles away.” HM2 Matthew Rector was the medical tech on the mission who repelled down to package up and lift Depaolo off the mountainside. From there it was a 45 minute flight to Community Regional Medical Center in Fresno, CA. It was there Depaolo learned the extent of his injuries. A severed femoral artery, a fractured pelvis in two places and dead tissue in his leg from the impact of the boulder which led to many surgeries and a skin graft.
Fast forward three months and Depaolo is recovering well. He’s able to walk and take short trips, including back to NAS Lemoore to meet his rescuers for the first time since seeing them in the Inyo Mountains. “Seeing those guys and interacting with them, they’re extremely cool guys. It was a life changing experience. I think about those guys almost every day of my life.” What’s next for Depaolo? “Its inspired me in a way that I want to give back and help people in the same way they were able to help me.”
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California
Man charged with murder, kidnapping their 5-year-old child before fleeing to Mexico
A 40-year-old Los Angeles man was charged with murder after allegedly killing his girlfriend and kidnapping their young child before fleeing to Mexico, according to authorities.
Ruben Fregosojuarez has been charged one count of murder and one misdemeanor count of child abuse under circumstance or conditions other than great bodily injury or death, according to a Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office news release. Authorities first identified him as Ruben Fregoso but Los Angeles County prosecutors listed him as Ruben Fregosojuarez.
On Monday around 12:39 p.m., the Los Angeles Police Department conducted a welfare check in the 2600 block of South Alsace Avenue in West Adams, police said in a news release.
Officers found a woman dead inside the home “as a result of violence” and the woman’s daughter missing, police said. On Monday night, the California Highway Patrol issued an Amber Alert for the child, Daleza.
Photos obtained by NBC4 appear to show Fregosojuarez in a parking garage in San Ysidro with the girl on Sunday. The California Highway Patrol has listed her age as 4 years old but Los Angeles police say the girl is 5. She is also described as the suspect’s daughter.
The alert said that the girl was last seen with Fregosojuarez, who allegedly abducted her in a 2019 Land Rover Discovery, on Sunday at about 4 a.m.
The CHP posted in an update that the vehicle was found but that the child and man were still missing. The girl is described as 3 feet tall, 45 pounds, and having black hair and brown eyes.
California
23andMe Sued by California Over Massive 2023 Data Breach
California’s attorney general is suing the consumer genetics testing company formerly known as 23andMe, alleging the company failed to protect customers’ sensitive personal information in a massive 2023 data breach that exposed the ancestry and genetic data of nearly 7 million people.
Attorney General Rob Bonta filed the lawsuit on Thursday in San Francisco Superior Court against Chrome Holding Co., formerly known as 23andMe, accusing the company of failing to properly investigate or respond to numerous warnings that its systems had been compromised. The company’s mail-in self-testing kits became synonymous with DNA testing before it filed for bankruptcy in 2025.
In 2023, cybercriminals breached 23andMe’s systems by using a “credential-stuffing attack,” which involves bombarding online accounts with huge sets of user names and passwords stolen in previous unrelated attacks. Over a period of months, the intruders were able to make off with the personal data of more than 6.9 million people.
“23andMe’s security measures were so lax that the threat actor was able to operate undetected within 23andMe’s systems for over five months, and remarkably, 23andMe only began investigating after the threat actor offered the stolen user data for sale on the dark web and reached out to 23andMe to demand a ransom,” Bonta’s office said in the complaint.
The San Francisco-based company, which allowed people to submit genetic materials and get a snapshot of their ancestry, revealed in October 2023 that hackers had accessed customer information in the prolonged data breach that targeted customers with Chinese or Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry. The stolen data of more than 1 million Asian-Pacific Islander and Ashkenazi Jewish users was later posted for sale on the dark web.
“The sale of this data on the dark web took place amidst a period of mounting anti-Asian American and Pacific Islander and antisemitic hate and violence,” Bonta said in a press release. “This is disturbing and incredibly dangerous.”
A January 2024 lawsuit accused the company of not doing enough to protect its customers and not notifying certain customers that their data had been targeted specifically. It later settled the lawsuit for $30 million.
23andMe representatives didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
At its peak, 23andMe became the best-known name in the emerging area of DNA self-testing, with users paying upwards of $99 for kits that gave them insights into their genetic makeup, potential relatives and ancestry. But the company’s momentum slowed down in recent years after its $3.5 billion public offering in 2021.
Last July, TTAM Research Institute, a nonprofit led by Anne Wojcicki, 23andMe’s cofounder and former CEO, acquired 23andMe’s assets for $305 million.
California
Newsom signs law to shield California elections from federal interference
Gavin Newsom, California’s governor, signed legislation Wednesday that aims to shield California elections from federal interference, saying he expected Donald Trump’s administration to try to meddle in the midterms this year.
The law, which took effect immediately and came days before next Tuesday’s primary, prohibits any person – including federal agents – from accessing voter rolls or election technology without a court order. Law enforcement officers are restricted from disrupting election workers, except in public safety emergencies.
Trump administration officials so far have said they have no plans to send immigration agents to polling locations across the US, a concern raised this year by several Democratic secretaries of state. But Newsom warned “we have to be prepared for everything” because “there’s no rules any more with the Trump administration”.
Voting is already under way in California’s closely watched primary for governor, where a crowded field of Democrats and two viable Republicans are vying for just two spots on the November ballot. Under the state’s open primary system, only the top two vote-getters advance to the general election, regardless of party affiliation.
Newsom, who cannot seek a third term, said the election law is a response to “legitimate anxiety” about Trump’s tactics, primarily in Democratic-led states, where the president has deployed federal agents over the objections of local leaders. The Democratic governor warned against underestimating someone who “doesn’t believe in free and fair elections”.
“I expect the worst with Trump because he’s done the worst,” he said at a news conference.
White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson told the Associated Press later Wednesday that Trump is committed to ensuring that Americans have full confidence in the administration of elections.
“Instead of levying false attacks at the President, Newscum should look in the mirror,” she said in a statement, using Trump’s derogatory nickname for Newsom.
In an interview last year with Vanity Fair, Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff, knocked down the idea that Trump would deploy the military to suppress voting, saying it was “categorically false”.
The California law also makes it a crime to knowingly take voted ballots out of the custody of election officials.
Earlier this year, the FBI under Trump seized the 2020 general election ballots from Georgia’s most populous county, which is heavily Democratic and has long been at the center of the president’s false claims that fraud cost him the race. The FBI and justice department also have sought records from previous elections in the largest counties in Arizona and Michigan.
Trump triggered a national redistricting frenzy ahead of the midterms when he urged Republicans in Texas and elsewhere to redraw their US House districts to help the party retain control of the closely divided chamber. Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, Florida and Tennessee also have enacted new maps that could benefit Republicans, and Louisiana is expected to be next.
Republicans so far think they could gain as many as 14 seats from redistricting in November, while Democrats think they could gain six in California and Utah.
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