Ximena Rodriguez’s daughter wasn’t feeling well. She had a fever and was complaining of a sharp pain in her stomach. It’s appendicitis, the doctors told Rodriguez when she brought 9-year-old Isabella to the hospital in June. They’d take out her appendix,

After singing her way through Drake High School in San Anselmo and making it through several elimination rounds on “American Idol,” Kelli Peterson moved to Hawaii to record and perform her own style of soul-reggae under the stage name Kelli

Five days a week, eight hours a day, Karen Chaney stands at a Walmart cash register, working a full-time job at 67 to make sure she can stay above water financially and keep her East Oakland house. “It’s hard,” Chaney said

Year after year, Patti Medina answered the phone at the Oakland unemployment office. She filled out forms for strangers laid off from work. Helping strangers was her job. She never figured she’d be the next person needing a stranger’s help. Until she

Life usually changes for the worse when you fall off a ladder. Not always. For Dora Castillo, who fell from a ladder in 2002, things didn’t get worse at all. Even though she broke her foot, and even though she got