Autism is neither a disease nor a sickness. But for the increasing population of those diagnosed — one in 31 children is the current count in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — it’s quite real. What might surprise you is that when it comes to learning about and managing autism, the Capital Region is very much in the forefront.

This isn’t just any park. The McKinley Park rose garden is the setting for countless al fresco weddings, confirmations, quinceañeras and private soirees. It also provided a stunning backdrop for the scene in Sacramento native and filmmaker Greta Gerwig’s “Lady Bird,” in which the two young lovers own up to their emotions.

Since being hired in January of 2024, Heidt not only took the helm of an organization with an annual budget of $5.5 million, a 20-member board of directors and a fulltime staff of 10 plus “five contractors who have very specialized skills” — but also began what he calls “an apology tour.”

“When I’m in Sacramento,” she says, “people stop me on the street wondering about the impact something will have on their lives. I respond to every inquiry, but that doesn’t mean I’m able to go down every rabbit hole.” She smiles. “I always stand firm on what my constituents want. They first put me here and have put me back here every two years.”

While many of us believe that Sacramento’s light rail trains were innovative when they began tooting their way throughout the Capital Region in the 1980s, the current system is actually the reboot of a suburban trolley that slid, wended and awoke its way through the area many decades before. 

David Oorbeck and Tsutomu Kanaya, owners of Dru & Tsutomu Designs, say that some artist friends of theirs told them about Sacramento — that it was affordable and contained consumers “as attracted to creativity as in the Bay Area.”

One of the Capital Region’s more forward-looking, fashionable restaurants, Midtown Sacramento’s Beast + Bounty, announced today it will permanently close its doors as of January 1.

“I’ve been here more than half my life,” says Sac City President Albert Garcia. “I love the history of this college. It gives everything we do here a richer context. Don’t forget, for many years, as far as colleges in the area, we were it. Just as we began by being part of a high school campus.”

For years, Joe Genshlea has been known as one of the best trial lawyers in California. Regularly lionized as such by his peers — including his being voted into the state’s Trial Lawyers Hall of Fame in a ceremony presided over by California Supreme Court Associate Justice Ming W. Chin — Genshlea’s reputation could give you the impression he’s a fiery, hellfire-and-brimstone orator.

Folsom-based, then-Chaplain Jacob Cohen was on vacation 7 miles from the World Trade Center towers when they were brought down. After the attack, he ministered to first responders, many of whom had lost friends and colleagues. 

As she was simultaneously running Sutter Street Taqueria (which she founded), serving as mayor on the Folsom City Council and running for the 4th district supervisor seat she won outright in the March 2024 primary, Rosario Rodriguez was being treated for Stage 1 breast cancer, which had been diagnosed in November 2023. 

The prisoners made makeshift knives, or shivs, and used stolen razors during their siege. One prison guard died, and two were injured.

For Patrick and Bobbin Mulvaney, the long-married couple whose restaurant Mulvaney’s B&L is on the top of almost everyone’s fine-dining list in the Capital Region, two words seem to coexist as a single mission statement: nourish and nurture.

Dennis Mangers, who says, “I’ve had eight careers in 83 years,” is known for unimpeachable credibility.

You wouldn’t know that a tragic love story led to the railroad that connected the East and West coasts for the first time.

Gary Gerould, aka The G-Man, has spent more than six decades as a sports journalist and play-by-play announcer. His greatest gift may be that you don’t have to care that much about the sports he’s covered (basketball, auto racing, sumo wrestling and football come immediately to mind) to be familiar with his name, his distinctively even-keeled voice and his remarkable unflappability.

The Auburn Dam could well be the most talked about water storage and flood control facility in the country that simply doesn’t exist — no matter how much it’s been argued about, advocated for and against, legislatively proposed and architecturally rendered.

More than two dozen 1950s and ‘60s vintage cars were parked in a semi-circle in front of the Sacramento History Museum’s entrance, heralding attendees to enter a world they had likely encountered over the past several decades but may have feared or simply misunderstood. 

All sagas have to begin somewhere. For Angelo Tsakopoulos, it was nighttime when he heard people crying on the upper deck of the ship that brought him, at 15, and hundreds of other immigrants to the United States in 1951. 

Learning of this interview with local media legend Kitty O’Neal, who has been anchoring news at KFBK for an astounding 37 years, a fan of hers gushes, “Wow! I watch her on the radio all the time!” 

Maybe Stockton should rebrand itself Upper Tinseltown. This port city, less than an hour’s drive from the capital — and the setting for a number of Hollywood films over the years — is on a mission to make itself a presence in the next “Fantastic Four” movie, due to be released in 2025

Oates rarely does “the least” he can do. He is chairman of the board of the Buzz Oates Group — a $3 billion commercial real estate investment, management and development firm founded by his late father. 

As a team, the Solons had more stops and starts in the area than light rail at rush hour. There were iterations of the club in 1903 and 1905, from 1909 to 1914, from 1918 to 1960, and finally, from 1974 to 1976.

If you’re ever on Jeopardy and you’re asked to name an American company that not only helped the country and its allies win a war (the Big One) and, a bit more than two decades later, helped send it to the moon — before getting mired in a sludge of litigation — remember one of this region’s more complicated and often controversial sagas: Aerojet.

Sandy Smoley was once ubiquitous in local and state government, in the arts, in charity, in civic beautification and ultimately, as an in-demand public affairs and health care consultant for The Smoley Group. We check in with the local icon to see what she’s up to now.

Prof. Michael Hunter Schwartz recounts stories about some big names that passed through McGeorge School of Law.

Marcy Friedman is one of the greater Sacramento region’s best-known and most personally beloved philanthropists, as well as a genuine influencer.

Gregg Lukenbill has a lifelong, nearly unconditional love for the city he helped build. Get to know the former Sacramento Kings owner and his new project to revive a legendary bar.

Pawn shop owner owner Warren Anapolsky has an extensive network of authenticators, including experts in art, first-edition books and bling. He’s also an expert himself. 

Over the past 30 years, Randall Selland has opened multiple restaurants of different styles, all with an inclusive, folksy flair. 

The TeleStepper was created in Nevada City just six years ago. Since then, the innovative teleprompter has been used by Oprah Winfrey, Hillary Rodham Clinton and more.

The former sheriff reflects on 31 years in law enforcement and his current radio talk show.

There is much magic to discover at the California State Library, whether you visit for research or pleasure. The institution’s keepers take us on a tour of some of its treasures.

Award-winning Gold Country Media keeps pressing on in a digital-dominated world.

Opening a cherished safe thought to contain untold historic riches about the origins of University of the Pacific, President Christopher Callahan wondered what he’d find.

A two-word motto, which is more like a mantra, guides the career and personal code of Kevin Rooney, chief deputy district attorney for San Joaquin County: “Do justice.”

In April, Sonya Bradley, a veteran of Visit Sacramento’s public relations and marketing communications department for more than two decades, was named the bureau’s first chief of diversity, equity & inclusion. 

Frasinetti Winery is the oldest family-owned wine producer in the Sacramento Valley, withstanding the Prohibition and both World Wars. 

The region’s health care facilities are beginning what may be a lengthy convalescence when it comes to jobs.

The Sacramento landmark wasn’t always a golden gate to the city. 

From its official opening in 1885, the Crocker Art Museum (then known as the E.B. Crocker Gallery) has had a split personality.

Tatyana Bak was 29 years old, an émigré from the city of Odessa in what was then the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, when in 1989 she helped open a medical clinic that eventually evolved into Elica Health Centers.

The Sacramento Municipal Utility District, which has served the community for nearly 75 years, also became a social services organization in 2018. 

While chronologically a relic, the Sacramento Memorial Auditorium is anything but a fossil.

Whether we knew him as Michael, Mike or Ziggy, hundreds of us had a tendency to preface a reference to Michael Ziegler with two words: “my friend.”