Pajaro Valley school board candidate has felony assault, child endangerment convictions – but can still run

A candidate for the Pajaro Valley Unified School District governing board has numerous convictions on his record, including felony assault and child endangerment, but those crimes don’t disqualify him from running in this November’s election. 

Curt Street Wilcox, 65, told Lookout that he’s running because he believes he’ll be an asset for the district. 

“I think our kids are our future,” he said Thursday. “And, just giving them hopefully a positive role model of trying to make things better for them.” 

Despite his convictions and decades of other criminal accusations filed against him in Santa Cruz, Monterey and Shasta counties, Wilcox met the requirements to file and run in the PVUSD school board race for Trustee Area V. Santa Cruz County Elections Clerk Tricia Webber told Lookout that candidates sign an oath under penalty of perjury stating that they live where they say they do, that they’re a registered voter in the county and that they’ve not committed disqualifying crimes. 

State code says anyone who has either been convicted of, or convicted of conspiracy to commit, felony bribery, embezzlement of public money, extortion or theft of public money or perjury, can’t be considered a candidate for, and isn’t eligible to be elected to, any state or local elective office.

Wilcox told Lookout that he recently moved back to Watsonville, where he said he was born and raised, and is looking to purchase a property. He said his father lives in Watsonville, and he used his father’s address in his candidacy paperwork “for the time being.”

He said he has many places that he bases himself out of. “My residential address, you know, it kind of varies,” he said. “But it’s pretty much been the Costanoan burial ground in the Elkhorn Slough.” 

Webber told Lookout that by signing his declaration of candidacy, Wilcox affirmed that he lives in the Trustee Area V of the district and has met all of the other requirements for the office. She said that the elections office isn’t the agency tasked with investigating whether each detail a potential candidate has signed under penalty of perjury is correct. 

“We’re not required to go and do a background check to see if that statement is true,” she said, adding that the Secretary of State training for elections officials says that “we’re not supposed to do background checks.” 

Webber said only after a complaint is made to the Watsonville City Attorney, Watsonville Police Department or the Santa Cruz County District Attorney would those offices investigate whether or not Wilcox committed fraud and is not qualified for office.

However, she said, that would have to take place in the courts and would take time to investigate and advance through the legal process. Webber added that as of Thursday morning, she hadn’t received any formal complaints about Wilcox’s listed residential address on his paperwork. Voters will still see his name on the ballot this fall. 

Webber said at this point, candidates’ names can be removed only if they have died, and her deadline to finalize ballots for print is next week. 

Wilcox’s criminal background

Wilcox has convictions including vandalism, resisting an officer, fleeing a police officer, felony assault and child endangerment, among others, over the past couple decades. Lookout asked how he felt about possible concerns from community members regarding his ability to serve as a member of a school board considering his convictions. 

“If they want to look at the facts of the case, that’s one thing; if they want to look at the convictions, that’s another,” he said.

Lookout did not find any convictions of felony bribery, embezzlement, extortion or theft of public money or perjury in his record. He told Lookout he hasn’t been convicted of any. 

Among Wilcox’s convictions is one for felony assault in 2017, in which the victim was his daughter-in-law. Brooke Wilcox, who is married to one of Wilcox’s three sons, Shaun, talked about her father-in-law’s impact on her family and how he attacked her with a Taser.

“This isn’t about revenge, and it isn’t about politics,” she said. “It’s about whether someone with a documented history of serious criminal and child-safety issues should be entrusted with the responsibility of making decisions about anyone’s children.” 

Brooke Wilcox, who moved with her family to Texas in 2021, in part to avoid her father-in-law, told Lookout that her family does not have contact with him. 

She described how in 2017, he attacked her with a Taser in front of her children. Brooke, her husband and children had been renovating a house on her father-in-law’s property. After fixing the home, she said he gave them an eviction notice and forced them to leave by turning off their power. Finally, they moved to Los Gatos to get away from him, she said.

After they had moved away, they went to his property to grab some of their belongings, on June 2, 2017. Brooke said he approached her with a Taser and she told him to get away. 

“He ran at me and Tased me,” she recalled. “He got me in the neck, in the side, in the head, in the face, in the stomach. He was holding it in my stomach to the point where I lost consciousness.”

Brooke’s daughter ran to find her father, who helped save Brooke. Brooke said she regained consciousness eventually and she and her family fought him as he tried to get into his truck to try to run over her. She said if it wasn’t for her daughter running to get Shaun, she thinks she would be dead.

A judge sentenced Wilcox to four years in prison.

“I have pretty bad [post-traumatic stress disorder] from everything that happened to me with him,” Brooke Wilcox said. 

More recently, in 2024, Curt Wilcox was convicted of fleeing a police officer stemming from an incident in 2021 in Watsonville. The Watsonville Police Department posted a video clip on Facebook of the damage to cars he caused, and Wilcox is seen in the background as officers arrest him. 

Wilcox denies that he had Tased Brooke, saying “the whole thing was a farce,” and added that the 2021 incident involving fleeing an officer was about “an assault by my boss.” 

He and Brooke also both told Lookout that he has long struggled with mental health challenges. 

Pajaro Valley Unified School District officials told Lookout they have no control over qualifications for candidates of school board races but said that candidate filing and eligibility requirements are managed by county election officials. 

“PVUSD maintains a neutral position in all local board elections,” they wrote in a statement. “As a courtesy, PVUSD extends invitations to all registered Board of Education candidates to attend an informational briefing to learn about district data and operations. In the case of Mr. Wilcox, he has not responded to our invitation.”

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