Carolyn Said

David Wentworth, an El Cerrito police sergeant, aimed a flashlight-size yellow device, shouted, “Bola, bola, bola,” and pressed a button. A loud bang sounded, and in a split second, a slender cord wrapped three times around Veronica Ceja, a police department worker. The occasion was a demonstration of BolaWrap, a high-tech restraint tool increasingly being used by law enforcement agencies in the Bay Area and elsewhere. The 2-pound handheld BolaWrap shoots a 7.5-foot Kevlar line with pronged hook…

After recently moving to San Francisco’s Mid-Market neighborhood, Tyren Caines was pleasantly surprised to find a new IKEA just down the street from his Trinity apartment complex. “With all the challenges, especially here on Market Street, I was shocked,” he said on Monday as he sought out a dining table before his mother and daughter arrive for Thanksgiving. “I mainly shop online, but online makes everything look better” than in reality, he said. “It’s great to see things in person before you…

Carolyn Flannery worked as an interior designer and antiques dealer in the Bay Area for decades. About eight years ago, she started volunteering with foster kids and soon learned how few resources they receive when they age out of the system. A social worker might help them get a place to live, but they were on their own to furnish it. That led to a lightbulb moment, as she witnessed waste in the design world when people discarded perfectly good furniture. Flannery started a nonprofit, Make It…

Oakland resident Jessie Norden was relieved when she got the email from her employer, Palo Alto’s VMWare, even though it said she was being laid off from her role as a senior product manager. “At least I know I have a job until Jan. 31,” she said. “And I was quite pleased with the amount of severance they were giving, 6.25 months.” Tech layoffs: Here are the job cuts impacting Bay Area workers Read more: Spotify to cut nearly one-fifth of global workforce She knew the writing was on the wall be…

California’s Employment Development Department has selected a new contractor to pay unemployment and other benefits starting Feb. 15. The new vendor, Money Network, replaces Bank of America, which drew criticism during the pandemic for sometimes blocking payments to legitimate recipients. Money Network, owned by tech-finance giant Fiserv, will operate similarly to Bank of America, putting recipients’ benefits on prepaid debit cards. But in a long-sought change, starting this spring, it will als…

Christy Camara decorated her home for the holidays this month, festooning a slender fir tree with ornaments made by her son, Wyland Gomes. There’s a red-and-green picture with his handprints from preschool. There’s his fourth-grade photo. Her refrigerator is similarly bedecked with Wyland’s artwork and little notes he wrote, some of them about his love for his mom. But Camara, who lives in Oceano (San Luis Obispo County), won’t be celebrating Christmas with her quiet, funny son with the goofy l…

After months of turmoil and downturns, the good times are rolling again on Wall Street. Heartened by news of future interest-rate cuts, investors this past week drove up stocks, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average notching an all-time high and the Standard & Poor’s 500 hitting its highest level since January 2022. The Dow is up about 12% for the year, while the S&P 500 is up 22.6% in 2023. Meanwhile, the tech-oriented Nasdaq Composite has risen more than 40% since Jan. 1. For the average perso…

San Francisco startup Envoy thought about skipping its holiday party this year. “It would have been easy to write off a holiday party as an extraneous expense that’s not necessary,” said Caitlin Kamm, head of people growth, referring to the need to conserve cash in a dicey economy. But the 250-person office-management platform company decided to host seasonal gatherings in the cities where employees are most concentrated — San Francisco; Seattle; Denver; New York; Austin, Texas — as well as to…

Danielle Mollette-Parks, who brought a spirit of invention, a keen visual sense and an empathetic warmth to her job as creative director at the San Francisco Chronicle, has died at age 51. The cause was metastatic breast cancer, said her husband, Tim Mollette-Parks, who was at her side when she died early Monday, Dec. 18, in their Oakland home. “She was the heart of our newsroom,” said Emilio Garcia-Ruiz, Chronicle editor in chief. “She made us more collaborative and more supportive. She was co…

Steve Powell had a problem — one common to many people with older relatives. His mother and father kept falling down. His divorced parents, who both wanted to age at home, lived separately near Powell’s Livermore home. They’d call him, and he’d go over and get them back on their feet. Once he wasn’t available. His mom had to call 911 and felt humiliated in her nightgown in front of four burly firefighters. His dad started falling more frequently, and became too weak for Powell to get him up u…