Claudia Sternbach landed in Santa Cruz County by chance in 1981, when she and her husband, Michael, were idealists searching for a way to make a life close to the water. Today, their Aptos home is worth 10 times what they paid, but people she has known for decades are leaving, unable to afford the soaring home prices. Her daughter can’t afford to live here. She wonders aloud what Santa Cruz is becoming and what will happen to adventure-seeking young people today.
Claudia Sternbach
Claudia Sternbach has lived in Santa Cruz for almost four decades and from 2022 to 2025 was a Lookout columnist. In 2023, she chronicled the sudden illness and then February 2024 death of her beloved husband of 40 years, Michael. She is the author of three memoirs, “Now Breathe” (Whiteaker Press), “Reading Lips” (Unbridled Books) and “Dear Goldie Hawn, Dear Leonard Cohen” (Paper Angel Press) and has also written columns for many newspapers, including the Santa Cruz Sentinel. She now lives in New York City.
Posted inOpinion from Community Voices
Fear was never part of the school day, but this is the country we live in now
Claudia Sternbach used to be a teaching assistant at Santa Cruz Montessori, and writes that she is horrified and furious at Tuesday’s school shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. Eighteen-year-old Salvador Ramos killed 21 people, 19 of them children. Sternbach has a grandson in second grade in Los Angeles and says that fear should not be part of the school day. She demands action from Republican lawmakers on gun violence.
