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San Diego organization fighting homelessness and addiction awarded $250K

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San Diego organization fighting homelessness and addiction awarded 0K


Aaron Barrett is lucky to be alive.

“I overdosed seven times,” Barrett said. “Twice, I was flatlined. No heart rate, no breathing, no pulse. And they were able to bring me back.”

Barrett spent decades addicted to drugs and alcohol, and for the last seven years of his addiction, homeless on the streets of San Diego.

“There’s a lot of despair and hopelessness amongst the homeless community. Every little bit they have, it’s so easily taken away,” Barrett said. “There were times where, you know, I slept out in the cold. I’ve eaten out of trash cans. I’ve gone and picked up recycling just to get some money, you know, to do whatever — either get high or maybe get a little bite to eat, maybe not. And that’s how it is for most people. That’s how they live every single day. They wake up cold and hungry, and usually they go to sleep cold and hungry.”

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When Barrett overdosed the last time in 2021, his wife found him on the riverbed and took him to the hospital.

“That’s when they told me I had a fever of 103, I had already gone septic and I had enough fentanyl in me to kill 30 people,” Barrett said, “and that if she wouldn’t have made it there within the hour or two that she did, there would have been nothing they could have done to save me.”

That was the moment Barrett said he began to turn his life around.

For years, he had been attending dinners hosted every Tuesday night by We See You San Diego, a nonprofit organization that invites anyone experiencing homelessness for a home-cooked meal each week.

“We host these dinner parties. We call them lavish dinner parties to show lavish love, to show people we believe they’re worthy of a better life,” said Laura Chez, We See You San Diego’s executive director.

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Chez, her husband and another couple began serving meals in 2017.

They began with just a handful of guests, but seven years later, they serve more than 100 people each week, providing dinner, clothing, hygiene products and more.

It also comes with an invitation for those battling addiction: We See You San Diego will pay for detox and residential recovery for anyone who wants it.

“We walk alongside people all the way through to sober living and help them plan next steps so that they can reintegrate and live healthy, wonderful, beautiful lives with limitless potential,” Chez said.

Barrett accepted the invitation three years ago. He’s still at every Tuesday dinner – but now, serving guests, some he remembers from his days living at the riverbed.

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“For a long time, I was lost. I didn’t have a purpose. You know, I was just trying to fill this hole inside that couldn’t be filled, this emptiness,” Barrett said. “And I found my purpose. My purpose is to help others pull them out from where I was.”

Chez said they’ve walked 107 people through recovery since January 2023.

“We see this over and over, that there are plans and purposes that people have not yet stepped into, but they needed an assist, and they also don’t want to do it alone,” she said. “There’s so much fear, and so we’re there to help mitigate that fear. We tell them, ‘We’re never going to leave you.’”

We See You San Diego’s work caught the attention of the Lucky Duck Foundation, a privately funded group that looks for immediate solutions to the homelessness crisis.

“Not one kid ever raised their hand and said, ‘When I grow up, I want to be homeless. I want to live on the streets,’” said Lucky Duck CEO Drew Moser.

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“There’s far too many people suffering on the streets,” Moser continued. “Sometimes government can get tunnel vision on ‘We need more housing,’ and I think a lot of people can agree housing is an ideal outcome, but if all we do is focus on housing, we say that’s kind of like telling passengers on a sinking ship, ‘Hang on, we’ll build you some lifeboats sometime in the next five to 10 years,’ because that’s how long it takes to add housing, unfortunately, and it’s really challenging to scale economically. We’re focused on the here and the now.”

In September, the Lucky Duck Foundation – long backed by late Padres owner Peter Seidler and basketball legend Bill Walton – awarded We See You San Diego its annual “Fr. Joe Hustler of the Year Award” in honor of Fr. Joe Carroll.

That award comes with $250,000 to help We See You San Diego expand. It’s part of Lucky Duck’s newly unveiled $3 million commitment to several initiatives aimed at combatting homelessness.

But the award comes with a challenge: it’s contingent on a match from local governments, like San Diego County or any of its 18 cities.

“We’re encouraging government to do its part to help expand a program that’s proven, that’s tangible, that’s immediate, that has a lot of value and that’s saved a lot of lives,” Moser said. “The bang for the buck is significant, especially compared to some of the existing strategies that they’re employing.”

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On Sept. 26, Lucky Duck sent a letter to the San Diego County Board of Supervisors outlining the ask and noting that there are only 78 detox beds in the entire county that accept Medi-Cal. The county board said it received the letter and was in the process of reviewing the request.

Chez said the funding could make a world of difference.

“The only thing I see is faces. I see the faces whose lives could be transformed with that money,” Chez said. 

Her message to local government is simple. 

“Let’s save lives together,” Chez said. “It would be an honor.”

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How to buy 2025 San Diego Padres MLB playoff tickets, Padres postseason scenarios

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How to buy 2025 San Diego Padres MLB playoff tickets, Padres postseason scenarios


With one week remaining in the regular season, San Diego Padres fans are hoping 2025 is the year the team finally wins a World Series.

After an 85-plus win season, the Padres clinched a spot in the National League Playoffs for the fourth time in the last six seasons.

With Padres fans hopeful for another deep postseason run, the time is now to secure playoff tickets. Check back as San Diego’s playoff scenarios, and ticket prices continue to update during the final week of the MLB season.

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San Diego Padres 2025 MLB playoff tickets

Padres postseason tickets are available for every scenario. If you purchase a ticket and San Diego doesn’t play in that round, tickets will be refunded. See below for all the potential Padres playoff scenarios.

San Diego Padres 2025 MLB playoff scenarios

The Padres have already clinched a playoff spot, but could still end the season as the No. 3, No. 4 or No. 5 seed. If San Diego overtakes Los Angeles for the NL West crown and the No. 3 seed, they will earn homefield for at least the Wild Card round. If the team ends as the No. 5 seed, they will play the No. 4 seed and be the road team in the best-of-3 Wild Card series and beyond.

San Diego Padres 2025 Wild Card Tickets

The Padres’ most likely scenario is to finish as the No. 5 seed and play on the road for the Wild Card round, but if they rise to the No. 3 or No. 4 seed in the National League, they will host all three potential games in a Wild Card series. Here are the ticketing options for each Wild Card home game:

San Diego Padres 2025 NLDS Tickets

Should the Padres win their Wild Card matchup, they would advance to the National League Divisional Series. If the With San Diego entering as the lower seed, they would host Game 3 and a hypothetical Game 4 as long as the series doesn’t end in a sweep.

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San Diego Padres NLCS Tickets

If the Padres advance to the National League Championship Series, it becomes a best-of-seven game series with the winner heading to the World Series. If the Padres are the favorite, they will host Games 1, 2, 5 and 7. In the more likely scenario that the Padres are the lower seed, they will start the series on the road and would host Games 3, 4 and 6.

San Diego Padres World Series tickets

Should the Padres make the World Series, homefield advantage goes to the team with the better regular-season record. While that’s not a likely scenario given the team’s current record, it’s not out of the question. If the Padres did have the better regular-season record, they would host Games 1, 2 and hypothetical Games 5 and 7. If not, they would host Games 3, 4 and then Game 6 should the series require it.

*= if necessary

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Helen Woodward’s kid-focused Humane Education Campus opens

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Helen Woodward’s kid-focused Humane Education Campus opens


This spring, Helen Woodward Animal Center Education Center opened the doors on its new Sharron Lee MacDonald Humane Education Campus, named for MacDonald, a Rancho Santa Fe philanthropist. The $7.5 million project in Rancho Santa Fe features classrooms, animal enclosures and playgrounds, a special place for the more than 13,000 children that visit the center each year to learn and foster a forever love for animals.

The new center, which encompasses two buildings totaling 10,500 square feet with 20,000 square feet of accompanying outdoor space is the new home for Critter Camps, interactive exposure with animal ambassadors, educational programs with schools and Scouts and even birthday parties.

Haylee Blake, the center’s associate director of education, said what she loves most about the new facility is “just having a really intentional space for the kids”.  From the floor to ceiling, whimsical wooden tree sprouting in the corner of the lobby to the playful classroom spaces and many opportunities to get up close and personal with an animal, she said they wanted to create a space that was inspirational, fun and engaging, a place to spark curiosity and empathy for animals and the natural world.

Humane education has always been a focus for Helen Woodward, teaching compassion and care for all animals.  Blake said the new center will continue to be a place for kids to encounter animals, learn about science and debunk myths about certain animals that they may be fearful of.

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When kids are able to interact hands-on with an animal, learn its name and personality, they might become interested in learning more and about how to protect it—even the less cuddly animals like insects and snakes: “They all matter when it comes to a good, healthy ecosystem,” Blake said. “We believe strongly that having live animal presentations is important….It creates a personalized experience.”

It took a long time for this dream campus to come to life.

In 1972, Helen Woodward, a native Californian and Del Mar resident for 40 years, bought a 12-acre farm in Rancho Santa Fe that was covered with weeds, a little house and a falling-down barn to establish what was then known as the San Dieguito Animal Care and Education Center. Many of the center’s structures were built after her death in 1983 and the center was renamed in her honor in 1986.

The Ocean Room at Helen Woodward Education Center’s Sharron Lee MacDonald Humane Education Campus. (Courtesy HWAC)

For many years, the old house on the property was used for the children’s education programs. When construction on the new and improved adoptions center started in 2018, the education program moved into trailers under the covered riding pavilion. Their old stomping grounds became the temporary “Adoptions Village,” and the center’s therapeutic riding program moved to an arena on the back of the property.

Planning for the new humane education campus started at the end of 2019 and was slowed by the pandemic. After breaking ground in the fall of 2023, construction took a little longer than expected to get going, after months of moving dirt around to lift the property out of the flood plain. During the year-long construction, the educational programming didn’t miss a beat. As soon as they snipped the ribbon at an opening ceremony in May, summer camps started rolling in the next week.

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While funding for the project came mainly from MacDonald, the Jack and Marilyn McManama Charitable Trust, the Selander Foundation and the LaureL Foundation, donors contributed to the project in a variety of ways, from pitching in $5,000 to pledging $25,000. Throughout the new center, donors and supporters are recognized with names on features of the building or on colorful, animal-shaped donor plaques.

One of Blake’s favorite donor features is the concrete dog on the playground, which was auctioned off at their annual Spring Fling fundraiser. The winning bidder, the Viterbis, were able to get the dog painted to look like their beloved dog Lou—the climbing feature that sits sweetly on the playground even has a dog tag with his name on it.

Making it even more special, Lou was a Helen Woodward alumni: “Now he has been immortalized and will provide a lot of fun for kids,” Blake said.

The education center now has six classrooms for programming, all meant to be very fun and immersive spaces, themed around different animal habitats including the Desert Room, the Jungle and Woodland Room ( a larger room that can be split in two), Ocean Room, Tundra Room and Pets Room.

Graphic artist Brise Birdsong created all of the art in the rooms digitally—about 220 different are animals are depicted all  of them native to the habitat featured, including the polar bear in the Tundra Room and the California mule deer in the Woodland Room, based on the Sierra Nevada Mountains. The Pets Room features more domestic animals in a park and home environment—dogs and cats, a bearded dragon and goldfish. Birdsong painted one dog in memory of her dog Pepper who passed away at the end of the project.

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As the focus of the classrooms was on making them easy to clean, there are a lot of hard surfaces which Blake can create a lot of echoing, not conducive to instruction or lots of excited talking. The acoustic panels were incorporated into the design—in the Pets Room they are clouds and in the Ocean Room it’s as if you’re submerged underwater with a whale swimming overhead. The constellation painted on the ceiling panels in the Desert Room is based on the actual constellations in the night sky on the day the center was founded on August 8, 1972.

Inside, all of animal ambassadors, from the bunnies to the birds to the lizards and snakes, all have new safe and spacious enclosures with lots of enrichment. New outside enclosures currently house chickens, goats and the newest arrival, an adorably fuzzy baby doll harlequin sheep yet to be named. One enclosure is currently vacant with plans for possibly a mini cow or alpacas—Blake said it’s all about finding animals with the right temperament for the educational programming.

Outside, two animal enrichment patios include bleacher seating with enclosures to keep larger animals like horses during an outdoor presentation.

The center’s outdoor space also features two new playgrounds, which they never had before beyond some bean bags, hula hoops, balls and donated playhouses.  Now the younger kids ages 2-5 have a woodsy, nature-themed playground with logs for kids to climb on and through, with animals scattered throughout including a raccoon, bear, the beloved dog Lou and an eagle perched up high.

The playground for ages 5-12 on the other side of the center has a pollinator theme—the play structure is topped by a monarch butterfly and one of the climbing obstacles mimics a giant spider web. There’s a giant beehive and bee to climb, and a pretty hummingbird slide.

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Each playground is connected to a large room specifically designed to host birthday parties, craft activities or camp lunches, each outfitted with two long tables.

The new building also includes offices for the staff and spaces for instructors and volunteers to work and collaborate, with room to grow.

Future phases of work at Helen Woodward Animal Center could include remodeling of the center’s equine hospital and the Club Pet boarding facility. Plans are still up the air for the old covered pavilion, it may revert back to therapeutic riding program or converted to parking.

To learn more about the education campus offerings or more at Helen Woodward, visit animalcenter.org

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Crusaders Soccer Club highlights captains for program’s 40 top teams

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Crusaders Soccer Club highlights captains for program’s 40 top teams


Overview: Crusaders Soccer Club

Director of Coaching Victor Melendez noted, “Between our competitive and recreational teams, we have nearly 1,500 players wearing Crusaders uniforms. Of those players, 483 are on one of our 40 competitive teams, and 12 of those teams are now playing at a national level.”

On Sept. 2, the Crusaders Soccer Club held our annual Competitive Team Captains ceremony in the sanctuary of the Mission Trails Church.

The sanctuary was packed with the families of the players as they received their official team captain arm bands for the 2025/26 season.

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Assistant Director of Coaching for the soccer club’s Competitive Program, Seth Tunick, was the master of ceremonies and coordinated this special event.

Tunick commented, “Each of our 40 competitive teams has two captains. This is a significant reward for these players. These players continually show dedication to the game of soccer and their team, while maintaining a positive attitude and, of course, demonstrating their leadership qualities. These young men and women are now responsible for demonstrating these abilities throughout the season for their team and the club.”

Director of Coaching Victor Melendez noted, “Between our competitive and recreational teams, we have nearly 1,500 players wearing Crusaders uniforms. Of those players, 483 are on one of our 40 competitive teams, and 12 of those teams are now playing at a national level.”

The first games of the 2025/26 were played Sept. 6-7. Among the competitive and recreational divisions, there were 64 games that weekend.

Nearly 1,000 recreational players on 88 teams also played the first of their 11 Saturday games that weekend. The slate continues through Nov. 16.

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“Because of the advanced level of play of our recreational division, our competitive coaches will be scouting our recreational teams, looking for the next group of competitive-level players for future teams,” said Director of Coaching for the Recreational Program, Modesto Gardiniello.

He also wished “to sincerely thank all our volunteer recreational team coaches and coordinators, who ensure the complicated puzzle of assembling teams and ensuring everything goes smoothly throughout the 11-week season. Come out and watch a game. Our teams will be playing. Stop by just about any grass field on a Saturday in the Navajo area and enjoy a soccer game.”




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