Crushed art studio, Ponzi scheme sentencing. Sacramento stories you may have missed

The Sacramento Bee covered a range of stories from May 17 through May 22, 2026, spanning local tragedy, housing disputes, politics and crime.

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Here’s a quick run down of some of The Bee’s coverage this past week:

• A heritage oak tree fell on 80-year-old Sacramento-area artist Stan Padilla’s Colfax studio during high winds Sunday, destroying it. A GoFundMe organized by Rocky Zapata had raised $2,700 by Tuesday to help Padilla rebuild, as community members rallied around the longtime cultural activist.

• Placer Citizens for Neighborhood Rights and USA Properties Fund reached a settlement allowing the 132-unit Hope Way Apartments to move forward in Penryn. The agreement bars USA Properties from pursuing additional units for at least four years and sets conditions, including a potential 23-unit cap or a traffic study, for any future expansion.

• With 61 candidates on the June 2 primary ballot and no clear frontrunner, low-profile California gubernatorial hopefuls like LivingforGod AndCountry DeMott, Barack D. Obama Shaw and Thunder Parley are betting they can break through.

• PETA sent San Francisco 49ers tight end George Kittle an “unsportsmanlike conduct” rebuke after he posted about killing a spider in his bathroom using a rehab slant board. The animal rights group offered to send Kittle a humane bug catcher and urged him to adopt a “live and let live” approach.

• Sacramento City Council is weighing whether to adopt a version of San Francisco’s “Vacant to Vibrant” program, which has filled 32 storefronts with rent-free pop-ups since October 2023, with a dozen signing long-term leases.

• Redding fraudster Matthew Piercey was sentenced Thursday to 30 years in federal prison for a $35 million Ponzi scheme that ran from 2016 to 2020. Piercey, who infamously tried to flee FBI agents by driving a submersible into Lake Shasta, was also ordered to pay $25 million in restitution.