One Davis High School student was killed and another critically injured in a traffic crash Wednesday morning on Oak Avenue, across the street from campus.

The culprit? Drunken driving. Senior J.C. Roeckl-Navazio’s drunken driving, to be exact. He was arrested at the scene and charged with vehicular manslaughter.

The accident killed senior Monica LeFlore and left Paul Mohr, another senior, in critical condition.

Thankfully, it wasn’t real.

So much can change over the course of two years.

Take BreAnda Northcutt.

The West Sacramento resident was a self-described workaholic with a successful career in media and communications. She had served as director of communications for Cal-EPA under former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger before taking a senior position with Cater Communications, and by her mid-30s was doing pretty much everything she wanted to be doing as a single career woman.

“She was so mean to them,” Northcutt recalled. “That’s when I knew I would care for (unwanted) children some day.”

A shivering Davis City Councilwoman Rochelle Swanson awaits her fate as Max Spatz, 10, throws a strike at the dunk tank target Thursday at Celebrate Davis!, a family festival sponsored by the Davis Chamber of Commerce that celebrates living, working, shopping, playing and learning in Davis.

Thousands of people flocked to Community Park to enjoy more than 100 vendor and food booths, a family fun zone, raffle prizes, live music and, of course, an aerial fireworks display.

This was the 10th annual event.

With a peck and a scratch, Sunshine, a white leghorn chicken with a bright-red comb jiggling on top her head, rustles and jabs through freshly laid bark in Ron and Gloria Purnell’s back yard.

Just a few feet away, Sunshine’s comrades follow suit — strolling out of their open coop door to the new bark.

With every step, each chicken’s head bobs and pivots in sync, with their feet in search of grubs. Their scaly legs and claws extend forward and briskly fling the bark a few feet behind them …

Davisite Patrick Widner cocks his head slightly and, without hesitation, brings a glass of water to his lips.

“Isn’t it nice to never really have to worry about the water you’re drinking?” he asks, as he gulps the last of it down.

You don’t often hear that question, but it’s not unusual considering the perspective Widner has as executive director of International Water and Health Alliances.

The local nonprofit, which Widner co-founded with retired Sacramento State microbiology professor Robert Metcalf, aims to decrease water-borne diseases that plague millions worldwide.

The noisy buzzing of the small planes’ motors are an annoyance to no one now, as the field is settled where only cows can hear the daily soaring of the club’s both amateur and professional aviators.

That’s good news, considering that not long ago the 40-year-old organization had contemplated disbanding if a suitable site for its activities could not be found.

John Eaton, president of the club and a main contributor to development of the new location, said he’s looking forward to returning to the group’s main objective: bringing the community together to have fun.

UC Davis is soliciting public comment on three designs for the proposed Music Recital Hall, which soon will rise on a vacant plot of land next to the existing Music Building.

Campus architect Clayton Halliday introduced the designs Thursday before an audience of faculty, students and community members in the Mondavi Center’s Vanderhoef Studio Theatre.

The designs — each submitted by a different architect/builder team …

As the Supreme Court weighs a case that could decide the future of affirmative action in college admissions, California offers one glimpse of a future without it.

California was one of the first states to abolish affirmative action, after voters approved Proposition 209 in 1996. Across the University of California system, Latinos fell to 12 percent of newly enrolled state residents in the mid-1990s from more than 15 percent, and blacks declined to 3 percent from 4 percent. At the most competitive campuses, at Berkeley and Los Angeles, the decline was much steeper.

Eventually, the numbers rebounded …

Longtime Davis resident Herbert Bauer — who came to Yolo County as its first public health officer, then went on to become widely regarded as “the conscience of the community” — died Tuesday at age 103.

Bauer was born in Austria. But as a young man of Jewish heritage, he left in haste as Austria was annexed by Germany in 1938. When Nazi troops came to the front door, Bauer slipped out a window in the back, eventually making his way to London. There he met his future wife Hanna, also from Austria. Together they started a private agency that helped people who were in danger in Europe find jobs as housekeepers or kitchen help in England; Bauer later estimated some 200 people were saved.