A proposed 45-day moratorium on medical marijuana dispensaries in unincorporated Orange County failed by one vote Tuesday as the county prepares for the possibility of even more marijuana distribution if the drug is legalized by voters in November’s statewide election.
County supervisors expressed frustration at the county’s lack of rules and regulations governing medical marijuana dispensaries, and the prospect that the aggravation could be magnified if Prop. 19 – which would legalize marijuana in California – is approved by voters and the county doesn’t have a system already set up to oversee dispensaries.

“We are going to be inundated potentially in 120 days by folks who now cannot only do medical marijuana but any kind of marijuana and we’re going to say we have no rules,” said Supervisor Pat Bates, who voted for the temporary ban.
The county ordinance, which would have immediately banned new dispensaries and already existing dispensaries without the proper permits, needed to be approved by 4/5 of the board of supervisors.
Supervisors John Moorlach and Shawn Nelson voted against the emergency ordinance, arguing there wasn’t a crisis to warrant immediate adoption of the freeze on dispensaries.
Instead county staff was ordered to come up with an ordinance by Nov. 9 which would regulate medical marijuana cooperatives and plan ahead for the possible legalization of marijuana in the Nov. 2 election. Staff was also directed to plan for the potential tax ramifications of Prop. 19 which would allow cities and counties to tax marijuana.
County staff proposed the emergency ban in order to come up with a comprehensive strategy to deal with medical marijuana dispensaries as well as the possible fallout if marijuana becomes legal for people over the age of 21, said Orange County Public Works Director Jess Carbajal.
California voters legalized medical marijuana in 1996, making it the first medical marijuana state, but the law did not police dispensaries or set up a system to hand out the drugs.
In 2003, the state Legislature passed the Medical Marijuana Program Act, which set up an identification system for medical marijuana users that allowed qualified patients and their primary caregivers to obtain medical marijuana.
According to county staffers, an estimated 11 medical marijuana dispensaries are operating in unincorporated Orange County. None of the cooperatives is permitted under county land use permits, according to a county staff report. Only one applied for a permit, but quickly withdrew the application, Carbajal said.
But without rules in place, the county has little teeth to dictate what can and cannot be done about dispensaries, Carbajal said. County staffers are also concerned that by rejecting the ban could open the door for already existing dispensaries to be grandfathered in.
“It seems like no one starts with well the people voted for it, how do we accommodate it? It’s always the opposite,” Nelson said. “The people voted for it. Therefore how do we exert out will and stop it.”
While several Orange County cities have adopted their own laws when it comes to dispensaries, county CEO Tom Mauk admitted the county is behind the power curve in addressing the issue of regulating medical marijuana dispensaries.
The county’s lack of action has created an opportunity in unincorporated Orange County where cooperatives are setting up shop without strict rules and regulations, he said.
Still at issue, however, is how the inherent conflicts with federal law – which bans the use, possession and sale of marijuana – will be resolved.

One of three legal medical marijuana dispensaries in Palm Springs has grown to more than 1,300 members, despite being in business for less than three months, the collective’s president announced today.
“We started out with only six members, and I never could have imagined we would grow so quickly,” said Gary Cherlin, president of Desert Organic Solutions at 19486 Newhall St.
The dispensary boasts 1,380 members, with a goal to reach 3,000 by the end of the year, according to Cherlin.
“We have a large percentage of patients with cancer, HIV and multiple sclerosis, and I’ve been getting tremendous feedback from them in terms of just how necessary this facility is to their overall well being,” he said.
The nonprofit opened June 5 after receiving a permit from the Palm Springs City Council to operate legally in the city.
Membership is open to patients with a physician’s recommendation that the person qualifies under the Compassionate Use Act of 1996.
CannaHelp, 505 E. Industrial Place, opened in May, and Organic Solutions of the Desert, 560 Williams Road, is expected to open sometime next month.
In March 2009, the council voted to allow two collectives, or cooperatives, in compliance with state law to operate within the city’s three industrial zones. That ordinance was amended in June to allow a third dispensary to open.

The modern home builder has a bevy of options for building a sustainable, low-energy, non-toxic building. From hemp, to corn cobs, to old tires, to smart design, we’ve rounded up some of the best ideas in green design for the home.
These ideas aren’t mutually exclusive. Builders pull from a wide variety of sources to create the perfect house of recycled materials, self-sustaining systems, and attractive design. Now if we could only get people to stop building those McMansions…
Lend it to Europe to beat the US in yet another great sustainable technique. Pioneered in France, popular in the UK, and just now hitting the US, hemp houses look to be the all the rage in sustainable design.
Despite all the jokes (“We heard that we could have a really great neighborhood party if it ever caught on fire,”) the walls are made from a THC-free mixture of hemp stalks, lime, and water. Besides, these “hempcrete” houses boast fire-resistance, along with a long list of other benefits including no toxicity, low-skilled labor, suitability for a wide range of climates, a negative carbon footprint, mold resistance, termite resistance, and dry rot resistance. According to the builder, Hemp Technologies, it even makes for great sound-proofing material.
Former Asheville mayor Russ Martin and his wife, writer Karon Korp, just moved into the first hemp house in the US this year. They say it only cost them $130 per square foot. With average US square foot prices from $100 to $200, that might seem unimpressive, until you consider the fact that they spent only $100 to cool the 3,400 square foot house in July.
That cost also includes the sustainable details like recycled paper inside walls and doors, LED lighting, and dual flush toilets.

OAKLAND, California (AP) — As organized labor faces declining membership, one of the United States’ most storied unions is looking to a new growth industry: marijuana.
The Teamsters added nearly 40 new members earlier this month by organizing the country’s first group of unionized marijuana growers. Such an arrangement is likely only possible in California, which has the loosest U.S. medical marijuana laws.
But it’s still unclear how the Teamsters will safeguard the rights of members who do work that’s considered a federal crime.
“I didn’t have this planned out when I became a Teamster 34 years ago, to organize marijuana workers,” said Lou Marchetti, who acted as a liaison between the growers and Oakland-based Teamsters Local 70. “This is a whole new ballgame.”
The new members work as gardeners, trimmers and cloners for Marjyn Investments LLC, an Oakland business that contracts with medical marijuana patients to grow their pot for them.
Their newly negotiated two-year contract provides them with a pension, paid vacation and health insurance. Their current wages of $18 per hour will increase to $25.75 an hour within 15 months, according to the union.
Historically, the Teamsters are no strangers to entanglements with federal law enforcement, from the infiltration of the union by organized crime to the disappearance of union leader Jimmy Hoffa. If the federal government decided to crack down on Marjyn, Marchetti said the union was still figuring out how it might intervene.
Growing marijuana outdoors is not hard — the nickname “weed” is well-earned. Indoor growing operations require more know-how and more work. But the most labor-intensive part of the process comes at harvest time, when growers rely on small armies of trimmers to clip the plant’s resin-rich buds.
The work can be difficult and the hours long — and trimmers cannot count on federal labor regulations to protect them while doing work banned under federal law.
Michael Leong, assistant regional director for the Oakland office of the National Labor Relations Board, said he did not know of any case in which the federal government had been asked to mediate a dispute involving a business that was blatantly illegal under federal law.
He also said it wasn’t clear if the new Teamsters would count as farmworkers, which would put them outside the NLRB’s domain.
Michael Lee, general counsel for the California Agricultural Labor Relations Board, said the growers probably would qualify as agricultural workers. Any conflict between workers and the union would likely fall under his board’s jurisdiction, but contract disputes between workers and management would have to be decided in state court.
Even within the state, marijuana cultivation has remained in the shadows as retail dispensaries have flourished because California’s medical marijuana law provides no clear rules for growing the plant.
The Oakland City Council sought to change that dynamic in July by making the city the nation’s first to authorize industrial pot cultivation. More than 260 potential applicants have expressed interest in competing later this year for four permits for large-scale growing operations, said Arturo Sanchez, an assistant to the Oakland city administrator who will ultimately issue the permits.
Union membership will not be a requirement for receiving a permit, but labor standards are one of many factors that will be considered. The union organizing effort and contract negotiations went smoothly at Marjyn, which hopes to win one of the permits.
“There was no strife between employees and management at all,” said a Marjyn worker who would only identify himself as Rudy L. because he worried about his personal security if it became known that he grew marijuana for a living. He said he was not worried about getting arrested because he believed Marjyn was operating in compliance with state law, though the threat of a federal crackdown is never far from anyone’s mind.
About 100 workers in Oakland’s retail medical marijuana dispensaries joined the United Food and Commercial Workers in May. The Teamsters have never tried to organize dispensary workers, because retail has never been an industry in which they have been traditionally involved, Marchetti said.
The Teamsters have long vied with the United Farm Workers and other unions to represent agricultural workers. So far, no other unions have competed with the Teamsters for the membership of medical marijuana growers.
Marchetti said the union would not have gotten involved with the growers if it didn’t believe the business was legitimate under state law.
“The Teamsters would never organize an illegal business,” Marchetti said.

A smiling bouncer in a black skull and crossbones sweatshirt stood guard Sunday outside the door to a rented room where marijuana wafted through the air and reggae music pulsated.
But only those with medical marijuana authorization forms gained entrance to an event billed as the state’s first cannabis farmers market.
“These are farmers growing agricultural medicine, so it seemed like a no-brainer,” said Jeremy Miller, organizer and owner of Sacred Plant Medicine. “It’s a place where people can network with other patients in similar situations.”
Miller brought in just six vendors for the “dry run,” unsure of how many people would attend the event on South Tacoma Way. Its success means he may be able to make it a monthly affair from here on out.
It was held at the Conquering Lion, a gathering place and music venue expected to open soon.
The walls and floor were painted black. Two banners for Sacred Heart Medicine were draped on the wall. A table with brochures and stacks of the magazine “West Coast Cannabis” welcomed visitors.
Vendors preferred different terms – farmers, caregivers, providers. Half declined to give their names, but were happy to explain their products and how they could help people with various aches and pains.
A steady stream of patients filtered in and out, spending time at each booth before deciding which marijuana products appealed most. Some stayed for hours, socializing with friends or sharing a joint.
“Something like this lets people come get what they need in a safe environment,” said Justin Kravis, whose Kravi Crops booth attracted many.
His offerings were plentiful. He had about 6 ounces of different marijuana strains marked in clear jars. There was White Widow and Pandora’s Box and Moonwreck.
Next to a scale and plastic baggies were brownies, Rice Krispies treats and chocolate chip cookies. Two hours after the market opened, he had only two $20 clone plants left. (A clone plant is a way to reproduce the same strain of marijuana.)
It is illegal to sell marijuana, and state-authorized providers are allowed to grow cannabis for only one patient at a time. That’s why the farmers donated their products to the patients and patients in turn donated money to the farmers.
“For those few minutes, (the farmer is) that one person’s caregiver,” explained one man who declined to give his name.
On the opposite side of the room, Kathy Parkins had set up her “Cannaceuticals” booth and was busy educating patients about the effects of eating marijuana rather than smoking it.
She offered snickerdoodles, chocolate fudge, triple chocolate cake, and fish and oyster stew mix for $5. Her hashish lollipops quickly sold out, but there were plenty of spiced tea bags and canisters of marijuana lotion.
“This is a central location for all people who have cannabis products but don’t have a store front,” said Parkins, 54.
She said she has been cooking for medical marijuana patients for nine years, is working on a cookbook and even gives talks at cancer institutions.
Although everyone seemed to relish the mellow vibe inside the market, at least one vendor admitted that he had been nervous bringing in his products.
“I was kind of paranoid coming down here,” said Greg, who offered a smile but no last name. “You’ve gotta worry. It’s still marijuana.”
Many of the patients there to shop appeared to be in their 20s. But several others said they were in their 50s or 60s. Some used canes to walk, and at least one man came in a wheelchair.
Ric Smith said he began using medical marijuana after first being diagnosed with HIV. In addition, he uses pot to treat leukemia, kidney failure and help with a recent stroke.
He’s fond of saying, “Munchies save lives.” Marijuana “helped me to eat,” Smith said. “With all the operations and procedures and side effects, I had no appetite. Munchies saved my life.”

Lexington, KY – The Hemp Revolution, a documentary film about the multi-faceted hemp plant, will be shown at 6:45 p.m. on Monday, September 27th, in the downtown Lexington Public Library.
After the screening, Kentucky State Senator Joey Pendleton, D-Hopkinsville, along with Craig Lee, a member of the Kentucky Commission on Industrial Hemp, and Republican gubernatorial candidate, Phil Moffett, will address issues regarding industrial hemp’s potential for Kentucky farms and businesses.
Another Kentucky gubernatorial candidate, Gatewood Galbraith, a long time advocate of industrial hemp, appears in the film, which features many scientists, farmers, economists and other professionals and activists expressing observations and views. The sponsor of the showing, The Good Foods Market, offers the documentary as part of a monthly film series dedicated to issues of health, the environment and human rights.
Produced in 1996, The Hemp Revolution takes a broad view of the plant, which has two distinct profiles: industrial hemp and marijuana. Industrial hemp is not a drug crop because of its extremely low THC content, whereas the marijuana varieties have THC at levels which put them on the drug schedule. The Good Foods Market and the scheduled speakers all make it clear that they are only advocating industrial hemp, and the film concerns itself in large part with industrial hemp.
Sen. Pendleton has represented the state’s third district, comprised of Christian, Logan and Todd Counties, since 1992. The district economy is largely driven by agriculture, much of it very diversified. Pendleton says some big farms want to bring even more diversity into the area’s agricultural portfolio with the cultivation of industrial hemp. Among those cited by Pendleton as holding a keen interest in hemp is Phillip Garnett of the 20,000 acre Garnett Farms.
“Eighty-five percent of hemp raised in Canada is exported to the U.S.,” says Pendleton. He questions why American farmers can’t be serving that market. “We’re looking at what I think would be a four or five hundred million dollar industry (for Kentucky.) We raised it (hemp) during the war years (World War II) in Western Kentucky. It’s proven that we can raise it and raise it well.” He points out that bio-fuel programs have been criticized for diverting food crops to fuel production, as with corn for ethanol. “Hemp produces twice as much ethanol as corn per acre,” he said. He also sees the potential to draw more manufacturing jobs and corporate offices to Kentucky with the presence of industrial hemp crops in the state.
Since the early 1990s, Craig Lee has been active organizing, lobbying, speaking, and educating for the reintroduction of industrial hemp into Kentucky agriculture. He will bring his stories and some products to add to a hemp product display table that the Good Foods Market will set up. Terri Fann, Good Foods board member, says that a display table of hemp products will include car parts, plastic, food, building materials, oil (both fuel and food), clothing and paper products.
Phil Moffett, recently added as a speaker to the event, is making industrial hemp a major issue in his gubernatorial campaign. He will speak about his perspectives on hemp.
The presentation will run until 9 p.m. and will include an open discussion.

When it comes to legalizing pot, there’s no stemming the inevitable. Whatever happens this November with California’s Proposition 19, which essentially would decriminalize the drug, marijuana will end up being legit.
Whether you like it or not.
Jerry Brown and Barack Obama are against it – improbably, given their histories. Financier George Soros and Men’s Wearhouse thread peddler George Zimmer are for it. Libertarians, a colleague reminded me, “are just Republicans who smoke pot.”
But politics often are irrelevant when cultural tectonic plates are shifting.
Walk into the chic, slickly modern shop at Eighth and Mission, past the doorwoman. Eugene, a personal shopper consultant, waves at you from behind the counter. The white oak cabinetry looks as comfy and rich as caramel.
Merchandise is stored in apothecary jars with scripted labels. Data about the day’s best offerings scroll across high-tech LED displays.
Inside the stylishly lit custom display cases, you’d expect Prada, Cartier or Hermes. But it’s just clumps of pot – medical marijuana, in this case, cosseted up like exotic eggs.
This is SPARC (San Francisco Patient and Resource Center), a nonprofit, community-minded medical marijuana dispensary. But in the reflection of the slightly smoked windows, with a design that mimics the cannabis gene, you can also see weed’s upscale commercial future.
“Venture capitalists are certainly reaching out, trying to figure out what the world will look like in six months,” SPARC lawyer and consultant David Owen told me. “I have no doubt if and when recreational cannabis becomes legal that business will attract people with money.”
Pot derivatives could be the new plastics. Everyone ends up loaded.
“I had to take a cash (cultivation) business and make it legitimate after George Bush left office,” says SPARC co-owner and longtime grower Erich Pearson, who also runs an Oakland group that pairs local pot dispensaries with “socially conscious” investors.
The earth is moving in rural areas as well. “Serious people trying to start a niche market as brokers” approached Kathleen Archer, a TV producer who spent a year outside Healdsburg growing product for medical outlets. One was a woman who had worked 20 years for Brooks Bros. clothiers.
Nothing says unavoidable like a trend that has become truly trendy.
Down in Soquel, outside Santa Cruz, a dispensary is offering pot-infused ice cream. Crème de Canna. Really. There are now ganja yoga classes with joints to help limber up your joints before class.
And any modern trend needs a social media component. Seshroulette is a new, anonymous, live video-chatting service that allows you to talk with a stream of other stoned people. PriceofWeed.com is a website that crowdsources the going prices of pot in cities everywhere and charts them on a Google map.
This is a fun trip. But if California is first to have a crime-free sativa tea party all its own, “We’ll have to go back to the drawing board,” says SPARC’s Peterson. That recalculation includes billions in potential tax revenues to a strangling state budget.
Ironically, the people who will get most hosed by legal pot are the poor who really need it for serious pain and suffering, not for recreational gelato. Those down-and-outers will still be taxed on what they pay for.
What’s the ’60s saying? Pot will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no pot.

SANTA CRUZ – By his count, Don Ivey, 56, should have been dead six times by now.
The artisan and former competitive in-line skater survived both a stabbing and a scuba diving accident as a young man. Fifteen years ago, he was diagnosed with AIDS and hepatitis C. Five years ago, he crashed a motorcycle, landing facedown, partially paralyzed, in an ocean bay.
Recently, just 30 days removed from his second emergency room visit for internal bleeding and vomiting blood, Ivey walked up a terraced marijuana garden that is a medicinal and spiritual refuge for the sick, injured and dying.
Rising above rows of English lavender and shielded by a crescent-shaped ridge in the Santa Cruz Mountains, the pot garden for the Wo/Men’s Alliance for Medical Marijuana is an icon in the history of the California marijuana movement.
The garden survives despite a 2002 raid – and seizure of the crop – by heavily armed federal agents. It thrives amid an aura of death, as members reap the harvest while grieving for those who succumb to terminal illnesses.
“Love grows here,” Ivey said, plucking unwanted yellowish leaves from the pot plants and stuffing them into his paralyzed hand, permanently balled into a fist. “This is not a pot club. This is a group of people who are doing it for each other, for real compassion.”
Organized as a cannabis-growing commune, WAMM planted its garden three years before California voters approved Proposition 215, the 1996 law that legalized marijuana for medical use. Its members, including cancer, AIDS and other seriously ill patients, sow, harvest and share the crop.
Founders Mike Corral, 60, and his wife, Valerie, 58, started growing marijuana to relieve seizures Valerie began to suffer after a car accident. They thought their simple garden – and its authentic marijuana-growing collective – would become the model for medical cultivation and distribution.
Instead, medical marijuana in California has boomed with pseudo-retail “collectives” peddling designer cannabis strains and handling millions of dollars in transactions. A $1 billion dispensary trade serves a vast range of marijuana users – and ailments generally far less serious than the life-altering challenges at WAMM.
“I think we were naive to think that this wouldn’t happen. This is America. Capitalism reigns supreme,” Mike Corral said. “We’re a socialist organization trying to exist in a capitalist world.”

Death a constant presence

California voters are poised to vote on a November initiative to legalize marijuana for recreational use. But WAMM members say they will continue to operate as always, no matter the outcome.
The group’s 225 members hold meetings to distribute their marijuana based on medical need and ability to pay. In a “design for dying” program, they organize bedside vigils and assistance for those in their final days of life.
Since its inception, 223 members have died from illnesses or medical conditions whose symptoms they had alleviated with marijuana.
High above the garden, a surfboard, urns, quartz rocks and Buddhist figures mark buried ashes of 17 members. Others are commemorated on painted rocks nearby – or in hundreds of photographs that fill walls of the collective’s offices in downtown Santa Cruz.
“Death is a daily part of life in WAMM,” said Sheri Paris, a former UC Santa Cruz creative writing professor and WAMM member now disabled with a brain condition.
“People who talk about this as a pretext to get high should look at the pictures on the wall,” she said, puffing on a marijuana cigarette in the WAMM office, a regimen she says quells her seizures. “The government would have you think that people are coming here for hangnails. If they’re faking it, they’re faking it to the point of dying.”
WAMM’s medical adviser, Santa Cruz physician Dr. Arnold Leff, is a former deputy director of the White House office of drug abuse under President Richard Nixon. He began treating HIV and AIDS patients in 1985, and soon recommended marijuana to ease their anxiety, nausea and pain from nerve damage.
He says marijuana isn’t an appropriate remedy for everyone. But he said: “You take terminally ill people and you put them in this environment and the bottom line is they feel better and live longer.”
Up in the garden, Don Ivey penned his name on a nursery tag for a flowering marijuana plant he put in the ground months ago with a shovel he can cradle with but one arm.
“It has given my life purpose,” he said. “If you don’t have purpose, you start listening to that communication between your ears that it is all gloom and doom and you’re going to die. Now I look forward to every day I’m alive. And I’ve always wanted to be a pot grower.”

DEA raid leads to standoff

Law enforcement authorities weren’t eager to accept WAMM’s marijuana garden.
Shortly before the Corrals established the collective, Santa Cruz County deputies arrested the couple for illegal cultivation over five plants they were growing for Valerie’s seizures. She filed California’s first known “medical necessity” defense for marijuana. The district attorney ultimately refused to prosecute.
But on Sept. 5, 2002, a decade after 77 percent of voters in liberal Santa Cruz County approved a local medical marijuana initiative and nearly six years after Californians approved Proposition 215, dozens of DEA agents swooped in on the WAMM site.
In the widely publicized incident, agents rousted sleeping medical marijuana patients from houses and detained and handcuffed Mike and Valerie Corral at gunpoint. With chain saws, they cut down 167 harvest-ready plants and packed up the crop.
Korean War veteran and former Santa Cruz clothing manufacturer Harold “Hal” Margolin, then 70, went to the scene. The heart patient, who used the marijuana for pain after back surgery left him nearly crippled, remembers weeping.
“They had come with a heavy hand to show us that we were not going to be able to do this. And they were teaching us a lesson,” he said.
DEA agents, enforcing federal laws against marijuana cultivation, ordered Margolin and other WAMM members to retreat. They did – but then chained and padlocked a gate at the entrance to the property, trapping the authorities inside.
A tense standoff played out before a swarm of media. WAMM followers refused to allow the government convoy and U-Hauls of seized pot to leave until receiving word on the fate of Mike and Valerie Corral. From a San Jose federal detention facility, Valerie Corral told the WAMM members to let the agents leave.
Federal prosecutors filed no charges. But the raid stirred a political fury and newfound sympathy for the medical marijuana movement.
“I thought the DEA was out of its mind,” said former state Assemblyman John Vasconcellos, who a year later authored state legislation implementing guidelines to allow marijuana cultivation and distribution under Proposition 215. “We had wars going on and violent crime. And they were raiding people in pain.”
The city and county of Santa Cruz joined a WAMM lawsuit to protect its right to cultivate marijuana. In 2004, U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel issued an injunction barring federal incursions on the WAMM site.
Late last year, Attorney General Eric Holder announced the U.S. Justice Department would no longer target legal medical marijuana operations in states permitting medicinal use. This January, WAMM settled its lawsuit against the government with an agreement to refile the case if it is targeted again.

Diverse range of patients

In the eight years since the raid, Margolin, now 78, had a heart attack – his second – and was diagnosed with leukemia. His injured back gradually moved him from “a cane to a walker to a wheelchair.”
He took frequent, daily puffs of marijuana, calculating just enough, he said, to reduce his pain without feeling overly impaired. As his health deteriorated, he began cultivating pot at home to supply other collective members.
“The first year, they said, ‘Don’t bother.’ It wasn’t any good,” he said. “The second year, the pot was pretty damn good. I learned how to do it. I talked to the plants – every day.”
At one recent WAMM members meeting, patients including a blind woman with a guide dog and several people in wheelchairs showed up to get their medicine – dried marijuana packed in plastic bags and placed in manila envelopes.
Seth Prettol, 30, a Modesto resident and San Jose State University engineering student paralyzed in a fall from a rope swing near Yosemite, made it to the meeting after a long absence. He used to work in the garden, grinding marijuana leaves in his wheelchair for use in skin creams said to have anti-inflammatory properties and liquid elixirs touted as an alternative to smoking.
He was cheered as he rolled into the room. But he was tense with muscle spasms. Danny Rodriques, 61, an AIDS patient and former San Francisco barkeep, massaged Prettol’s shoulders.
The members discussed a “WAMMfest” community festival to raise money for the group, which operates on an annual budget of $165,000.
Mike Corral gave the weekly garden report. “The garden is beautiful,” he said.

WAMM now ‘my family’

The next Thursday morning, former auto detailer Jose Valencia, 46, a lymphoma patient, and ex-Amador County paramedic Pete Herzog, 50, who has Lyme disease, rose early to cut weeds and brush from the mountain grave sites of WAMM members.
Below, amid wafting marijuana smoke, others readied for shifts in the garden in a work room brimming with freshly painted memorial stones.
One rock was for Maria Lucinda “Lucy” Garcia, a former Santa Cruz hairdresser and make-up artist who came to WAMM dying from ovarian cancer. She became a fixture in the garden but was uncomfortable about the pot she smoked to alleviate her nausea.
“She never smoked in front of her daughter,” Valerie Corral said. “She was very clear in delineating the lines.”
When Garcia died, WAMM members dressed her in a long red gown. Valerie Corral did her hair and nails. At Garcia’s request, Corral adopted her daughter, Shana Conti, now 19.
Now, Hal Margolin says his moment is near. His leukemia has advanced to a terminal stage.
He is in an acute care unit at Santa Cruz’s Dominican Hospital for a broken hip. He’s being visited by his wife and children and deluged with cards from WAMM members preparing to help him upon his release from the hospital.
“My family is called WAMM,” Margolin said. “I don’t know if it will go down in history or not. But if it does, the story will be that we did it the right way.”