ANNA CABALLERO
First female mayor of Salinas and State Senator representing District 12
Born to a family of copper miners from Arizona, Caballero is a graduate of UCLA Law School and UC San Diego. She started her legal career representing farmworkers as an attorney for California Rural Legal Assistance. Intent on representing working families at a price they could afford, Caballero and two colleagues formed the law firm of Caballero, Matcham, and McCarthy, with offices in Salinas and Hollister.
Prior to her election to the Assembly, Caballero established Partners for Peace, a non-profit organization dedicated to youth violence prevention.
Caballero is not only the first female mayor elected in the 126-year history of the City of Salinas but also the first Latina elected to represent the 28th Assembly District in 2006. In 2011, she was hired by Governor Edmund G. Brown to serve as a member of his cabinet where she served as the Secretary of the Business Consumer Services and Housing Agency.
Anna Caballero is married to Attorney Juan Uranga and has three adult children and six grandchildren. Her family is incredibly important to her, and Senator Caballero shared memories of campaigning door to door with her children. She also reflected on how critical it was to have her husband’s support and a sense of structure in the home. She credits Juan for being so supportive.
Caballero now represents Senate District 12, which includes the rural communities of Los Banos, Gonzales, Greenfield, King City, and Soledad as well as Salinas.
ISABEL MEADOWS
Ohlone ethnologist and the last fluent speaker of the Rumsen Ohlone language
Isabel Meadows was born in Carmel Valley in July of 1846 to James Meadows and Maria Loretta Onesimo. Meadows’s father was serving aboard a whaler in 1837 when he deserted the ship in Monterey. Meadows’s mother was Maria Loretta Onesimo, one of the last Rumsen Ohlone. The Ohlone lost most of their population between 1780 and 1850 because of an abysmal birth rate, high infant mortality rate, diseases, and social upheaval associated with European immigration into California.
When Isabel was older, she worked closely with Smithsonian ethnologist J. P. Harrington and shared her knowledge of her tribe’s culture and languages in the Monterey, Carmel, and Big Sur regions of California. She spent more than five years documenting the Ohlone culture and language. Her work is considered fundamental in the study of Ohlone languages, especially Rumsen.
Meadows died in 1939 in Washington DC and is buried in Carmel.
JULIE PACKARD
Executive Director and Founder of Monterey Bay Aquarium
Julie E. Packard is the daughter of the late Hewlett-Packard Co. founder David Packard and his wife, Lucile. She grew up in Los Altos with both parents instilling a sense of service in their children. At the age of twenty-one, Julia took her place on the Packard Foundation board.
Packard graduated from the University of California Santa Cruz with a bachelor’s degree in biology in 1974 and a Master of Arts in 1978.
She proposed the idea of a research aquarium to her father and The Monterey Bay Aquarium was born. She has held the Executive Director position since its opening in 1984.
As part of her pioneering work at the aquarium, Packard was instrumental in the creation of the sustainable seafood advisory list, Seafood Watch. The program has become a leader in the global sustainable seafood movement.
In 2014, Packard donated $1 million dollars to University of California, Santa Cruz to establish the “Dean’s Fund for Diversity in the Sciences”, which funds programs to support underrepresented minority students in science and math.
She speaks at conferences and symposia related to ocean conservation and writes online about current issues. She is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and is a recipient of the Audubon Medal.
JULIA PLATT
Marine biology academic and first female mayor of Pacific Grove
Platt was born in 1857 in San Francisco to Ellen Loomis Barlow and George King Platt. Her father died nine days after her birth and her mother raised her in Burlington, Vermont. Platt received her undergraduate degree from the University of Vermont and then attended a variety of universities because many would not confer graduate degrees on women. She finally received her doctorate from The University of Freiberg in Freiburg, Germany.
As a biology researcher, she investigated embryogenesis, in particular the head development, from studying sharks and salamanders. Her most notable contribution to the field was her demonstration that neural crest cells formed the jaw cartilage and tooth dentine in mudpuppy embryos. Her research conclusions were not accepted by her contemporaries. It took fifty years for her work to be acknowledged.
In 1899, Platt moved to California to work at the Hopkins Marine Station Marine Biology Laboratory in Pacific Grove. After Stanford University refused to give her a position on the faculty, Platt turned towards activism.
She promoted and worked on the development of park areas, founded the Women’s Civic Club, and even used an axe to chop down a fence blocking public access to Lover’s Point Beach. In 1931, at the age of 74, she became mayor of Pacific Grove.
One of Platt’s greatest contributions was bringing a lawsuit against the canneries in Monterey. The waste from the canneries and heavy fishing in Monterey fouled the ocean and air, drove away tourism, and ravaged sardine and other marine species. Platt had the support of the hotel owners in Monterey and Pacific Grove and won the case. Platt then focused on reclaiming the shoreline from the state. She enlisted the support of the scientists at Hopkins Marine Station and wrote a law that granted Pacific Grove management rights of the shoreline. The law established a protected marine area, the first in California. It is believed that her pioneering work was crucial to the recovery of the sea otter population.
Platt never married but did adopt a son. She died in Pacific Grove at the age of seventy-eight.
BEVERLY CLEARLY
Author
Beverly Cleary was born in McMinnville, Oregon, and, until she was old enough to attend school, lived on a farm in Yamhill, a town so small it had no library. Cleary spent much of her childhood surrounded by books—first at a makeshift library her mother created in a lodge room upstairs over a bank. Later, after the family moved to Portland, she was able to enjoy the public library there.
Beverly struggled with reading after moving to Portland and was placed in her grammar school’s low reading circle. That experience gave her sympathy for the problems of struggling readers. She quickly overcame her issues with reading, and a librarian planted the dream of being a writer in young Beverly. She resolved to someday write the books she wanted to read. By the time she became a published author, she had moved to Monterey County.
Cleary’s books earned her many prestigious awards, including the 1984 John Newbery Medal for Dear Mr. Henshaw, the touching story of a lonely Pacific Grove boy, Leigh Botts, who corresponds with a children’s book author. Additionally, Ramona and Her Father and Ramona Quimby, Age 8 were named 1978 and 1982 Newbery Honor Books, respectively.
Beverly Cleary lived to be 104, passing away in 2021 in Carmel Valley – her home for over sixty years.
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