Published in the March 1 – 14, 2017 issue of Morgan Hill Life

By Robert Airoldi

Robert Airoldi

Coffee Guys co-owner Eric Hagedorn let us know Morgan Hill’s newest coffee shop will have a special five-hour fundraising event for El Toro Elementary School’s benefit between 1 and 6 p.m. March 8. Net proceeds between those hours will go to the general fund of the home and school club.

With his business partner Chris Williams, Hagedorn opened Coffee Guys. The guys started in their business endeavors five years ago with a pastry-coffee delivery service and then they opened a brick and mortar shop called Bagel Guys Bakery in San Jose’s Willow Glen area. The new Morgan Hill Coffee Guys shop is located on Third Street in the downtown garage and it is perfect for customers who want to use the Wi-Fi in the courtyard under the oak tree. They approached El Toro’s home and school club and suggested the fundraising event, Hagedorn said.

“Depending on how this goes, we’d like to do this kind of fundraising for more local schools,” he said. “We just thought we’d start with El Toro because it’s the closest to our store, so we thought it would be the best fit. They will be able to use the funds at their discretion.”

We encourage local people to stop in and buy coffee and a pastry and help promote El Toro. And if other home and school clubs want to take advantage of the same opportunity, each club’s president should contact Coffee Guys’s manager Henry at [email protected]

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On a personal note, I want to reflect on the South Valley’s good fortune in the recent storms we went through. Considering the danger to lives and the damage to property that our neighbors in San Jose faced in February, our rain-related inconveniences were trivial. About 50,000 residents from 14,000 households in the 10th largest city in America were forced to evacuate as the nearby Coyote Creek rose due the deluge of water released from Morgan Hill’s Anderson Dam.

Many homes in San Jose are now contaminated with fuel, oil and possibly sewage carried in the flood water. As of this writing, many San Jose residents still can’t return to their homes.

When a Coyote Creek canal levee broke and flooded U.S. 101 Feb 21, many drivers had to detour, taking alternate routes to their destinations and greatly increasing commute times. No doubt it was a chaotic situation. But we all muddled through the mud and rain — and everyone survived.

U.S. 101 was reopened at 4:30 a.m. Feb. 22, after the breach in the canal was repaired by the Santa Clara Valley Water District. One item the city may want to re-examine is its disaster plan that in the event of a catastrophic dam failure calls for people to evacuate via the freeway. That might be kind of difficult should it be extremely flooded.

One bright note, with all the rains and now with some sunshine, we’ll have an amazing wildflower season.

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Finally, join others and celebrate “Morgan Hill Eats for Immigrants: A Day of Community Support,” an annual celebration of our immigrant communities that is even more poignant this year. On March 4, show your community spirit by patronizing a local immigrant-owned restaurant, grocery store or other immigrant-owned business to demonstrate your support.