By Mark Gutglueck
The match-ups in the 2026 San Bernardino Municipal Election have a stark connection with personalities and issues extending back to 2018, which include items have been hashed through in that and every election since then.
Despite what many consider to be its foremost feature – John Valdivia’s effort at a political comeback – the entire affair has been remarkably quiet.
One of the recurrent issues that is being played up with greater emphasis than before is the persistent homelessness crisis.
Another element is the role the police department is continuing to play in San Bernardino politics.
Vying in this election are five candidates who were on the ballot in 2018 along with one member of the council that year who departed rather than seek reelection.
In a replay, of sorts, to what occurred in 2022, Mayor Helen Tran is running for reelection against five challengers, including former Mayor John Valdivia. In 2022, it was Valdivia who was the incumbent and Tran the challenger. The 2022 June Primary Election contest for San Bernardino mayor included former City Attorney James Penman, subsequent Seventh Ward Councilwoman Treasure Ortiz, former Fifth Ward Councilman Henry Nickel, Gabriel Jaramillo and Mohammad Khan.
Valdivia, who four years previously, in 2018, appeared to be a juggernaut who represented the future of San Bernardino politics when he had the leap from Third Ward councilman to mayor, had virtually self-destructed over the course of his first mayoral term, collecting massive political contributions which fattened his political war chest but simultaneously trading promises of city council action to benefit those donors, igniting a pay-to-play scandal that rivaled the depths of the graft-tainted dealings elsewhere in the county, including those in which the members of the county board of supervisors were enmeshed in, indeed a prodigious achievement in the annals of San Bernardino County’s historical political corruption. Continue reading →

Former San Bernardino County Superior Court Judge Phillip Morris has died.
Born in Bell in 1936, Morris was 90 when he passed away peacefully on Monday evening, May 11, 2026, shortly after suffering a fall at his Redlands home.
When he was six years old, he moved with his parents Emanuel and Wilma Morris and the rest of his from Bell in Los Angeles County, which was 17 miles from California’s West Coast on the Pacific Ocean, to Needles, which lies directly on California’s East Coast on the Colorado River. His father was a conductor on the Santa Fe Railroad. Needles, which is where the first railroad bridge across the Colorado River was built in 1883 and where the Red Rock Cantilever Railroad Bridge was constructed in 1890, was, like San Bernardino, Colton and Barstow, a railroad town. In the early 1900s, it was considered to be one of San Bernardino County’s major cities, and was the eighth of the county’s current 24 municipalities to incorporate in 1913.
Morris grew up in the remote desert city across the river from Arizona and was educated in its public schools. With his younger brother, Pat, and sister, Nancy, he swam, canoed, fished, and eventually water skied in the fast, swirling waters of the mighty Colorado River. He explored and hunted in the vast outback of the Eastern Mojave. At Needles High School, from which he graduated in 1953, he played every sport and quarterbacked the football team. Continue reading →

In a move that was as stunning in some quarters as it was expected and considered long-overdue in others, the Riverside County District Attorney’s Office withdrew murder charges against Rebecca Haro, whose seven-month-old son disappeared more than ten months ago under what remain for the public unknown and unexplicated circumstances.
The development comes nearly ten months following the presumed death of Emanuel Haro and over seven months after her husband, Jake Haro, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and assault on a child under the age of 8. Rebecca Haro made the plea this morning during a court appearance at the Riverside Hall of Justice in which she emotionally reacted at numerous points while the proceedings intended to record her cognizance of and consent to the action that was being taken in relationship to her were verbally highlighted by the Judge Jerry Lee, who was overseeing the case.
The proceedings this morning were originally scheduled as a preliminary hearing during which the prosecution team, consisting of Riverside County Assistant District Attorney Brandon Smith and Riverside County Deputy District Attorney [William] Robinson, had come prepared to present evidence providing enough support of the charges against her to convince Judge Lee to bind her over for trial. What was revealed during the hearing was that there had been substantial discussion and give and take between Smith, the lead prosecutor, and Haro’s defense attorney, Jeff Moore, that the primary count against Haro Penal Code Section 187: murder, which was not specified as either first degree or second degree in the original filing. What was laid out was that, instead, the other charge Haro originally faced – filing a false police report, California Penal Code § 148.5 – remained and the complaint against her amended to include child endangerment causing great bodily injury, involuntary manslaughter and accessory after the fact. Continue reading →

Shrey Parkih, a 14-year-old eighth grader at Day Creek Intermediate School in Rancho Cucamonga has won the Scripps National Spelling Bee.
Parkih rose to the pinnacle of 247 competitors who advanced from regional spelling bees across all 50 U.S. states, the District of Columbia, Guam, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Department of Defense Schools in Europe and Candada. In doing so, Parkih first lasted through the preliminary rounds as the field was narrowed to nine finalists before reducing to five after the 12th round, four after the 14th, and three after the 15th. The final two competitors were Parikh and Ishaan Gupta who matched each other all the way to the 18th round, at which point the two took part in a 90-second spell-off to determine the champion in which Parkih racked up an astounding 32 of 35 correctly spelled words of in a minute-and-a-half for the victory, besting Gupta, who correctly spelled 25 of 29 words.
The spell-off was introduced into the competition in 2022 to settle neck-and-neck finals rounds. Parkih now holds the record for the most words spelled correctly in the abbreviated span.
It was Shrey’s correct spelling of “bromocriptine” — a polypeptide alkaloid that mimics the activity of dopamine — in the spell-off that pushed him ahead of Gupta. Words in the round included “torrone,” a type of Italian nougat candy, as well as “cywyddau,” the plural of cywydd, a Welsh poetic form. Continue reading →

An area within the Angeles National Forest in the San Gabriel Mountains just east of the Los Angeles/San Bernardino County divide near Wrightwood is at the epicenter of an outbreak norovirus, similar to but apparently more intense than what is going on across much of the country.
Norovirus, caused by a stomach bug, is often referred to as the winter vomiting disease. Outbreaks are normally highest in the months from November to February, but can continue well into the spring.
Going back three decades, the lion’s share of norvovirus outbreaks, at least in the United States, have been dominated by one strain of the virus, labeled GII.4 by scientists, Last year, however, a variant GII.17 strain asserted itself, accounting for what is calculated three out of every four outbreaks in the United States in 2025.
Medical researches believe that either the virus mutated into what is now recognized as the GII.17 strain to make itself more transmissible or that withing the human population in certain areas of the globe there have been changes in their environment or lifestyles that have rendered them more susceptible to GII.17 than they were to GII.4. Continue reading →

The musicians of the Ontario Chaffey Community Show Band and the Patricia Borland Family will present a program entitled “Show Band Favorites” on Monday, June 15, 2026 at 7:30 p.m.
The concert will be held in Gardiner W. Spring Auditorium located on the campus of Chaffey High School at 1245 N. Euclid Ave. in Ontario.
The Woodwind Celebration Ensemble will present a pre-concert recital in the lobby at 7:00 p.m. Complimentary coffee and cookies will be served in the lobby prior to the concert. The performance is free to the public.
The concert will feature selections from the 40th Anniversary Season of the Show Band as well as other fan favorites. It will start with a traditional band composition entitled “Toccata for Band” and end with a medley titled “Big Fun In The Sun” from the first show of the 40th Anniversary Season, ‘Back to Our Roots,’ heard last September.
Also featured will be Show Band clarinetist Neil Vargas performing one of the most recognizable clarinet songs to hit the airwaves, “Stranger on the Shore.”
Show Band percussionist and vocalist Natasha Le will sing “Evermore” from Disney’s ‘Beauty and the Beast’ and “Memory” from the musical ‘Cats.’ Continue reading →

FBN20260004086
The following entity is doing business primarily in San Bernardino County as
ALLIED TOWING [and] ALLIED HEAVY DUTY TOWING 1335 W RIALTO AVE SAN BERNARDINO, CA 92410: ALLIED TOWING, LLC
Business Mailing Address: 1335 W RIALTO AVE SAN BERNARDINO, CA 92410
The business is conducted by: A LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY registered with the State of California under the number 201917010092
The registrant commenced to transact business under the fictitious business name or names listed above on: July 19, 2024.
By signing, I declare that all information in this statement is true and correct. A registrant who declares as true information which he or she knows to be false is guilty of a crime (B&P Code 179130). I am also aware that all information on this statement becomes Public Record upon filing.
/s/ JOSE RODARTE, Managing Member
Statement filed with the County Clerk of San Bernardino on: 5/04/2026
I hereby certify that this copy is a correct copy of the original statement on file in my office San Bernardino County Clerk By:/Deputy K9232
Notice-This fictitious name statement expires five years from the date it was filed in the office of the county clerk. A new fictitious business name statement must be filed before that time. The filing of this statement does not of itself authorize the use in this state of a fictitious business name in violation of the rights of another under federal, state, or common law (see Section 14400 et seq., Business and Professions Code).
Published in the San Bernardino County Sentinel on May 8, 15, 22 & 29, 2026.

FBN20260004034
The following entity is doing business primarily in San Bernardino County as
FOUND BY CARRIE 236 E. MAIN ST BARSTOW, CA 92311: CARRIE L O’NEAL
Business Mailing Address: 34124 M ST BARSTOW, CA 92311
The business is conducted by: AN INDIVIDUAL
The registrant commenced to transact business under the fictitious business name or names listed above on: April 30, 2026.
By signing, I declare that all information in this statement is true and correct. A registrant who declares as true information which he or she knows to be false is guilty of a crime (B&P Code 179130). I am also aware that all information on this statement becomes Public Record upon filing.
/s/ CARRIE O’NEAL, Owner
Statement filed with the County Clerk of San Bernardino on: 4/30/2026
I hereby certify that this copy is a correct copy of the original statement on file in my office San Bernardino County Clerk By:/Deputy K1587 in Hesperia
Notice-This fictitious name statement expires five years from the date it was filed in the office of the county clerk. A new fictitious business name statement must be filed before that time. The filing of this statement does not of itself authorize the use in this state of a fictitious business name in violation of the rights of another under federal, state, or common law (see Section 14400 et seq., Business and Professions Code).
Published in the San Bernardino County Sentinel on May 8, 15, 22 & 29, 2026.

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