Pictured are Farmer Ed McGrew and his wife, Patty. Both were named Farmer of the Year for 2025 by the Imperial County Farm Bureau during its annual meeting held in October. Ed, who passed away in April, was a long-time advocate for the farming community along with his wife, who also has been a long-time community leader. Photo courtesy of the Farm Bureau.

Throughout his life, the late farmer Ed McGrew devoted himself to advocating for Imperial Valley agriculture and the overall economic vitality of the Valley, all with the support of his wife, Patty McGrew, who not only worked alongside her husband in such advocacy, but has been a leader in her own right.

When it comes to leaders whose efforts have supported agriculture, Tina Shields and Mike Pacheco, co-water managers for the Imperial Irrigation District, have devoted their work to protecting the Valley’s water and ensuring

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Jessica Humes, environmental compliance supervisor for the Imperial Irrigation District, is pictured at the Salton Sea at the site of a groundwater well, an environmental mitigation project in its early phases meant to tap into groundwater aquifers at the sea to provide a new source of water to support vegetation grown on exposed playa. Humes leads IID’s environmental mitigation efforts at the sea. Image provided by IID.

In Jessica Humes’ childhood, her parents once took her to visit the Salton Sea where she found a pumice rock that washed ashore. “The idea that rocks could float had me picking up rocks everywhere we went,” she said.

That day sparked an interest in the sciences that would lead her back to the Valley after university and into a career that would place her at the forefront of addressing environmental issues at the sea.

There are likely very few people

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Maribel Padilla, founder of the Brown Bag Coalition, places a cool cloth on the neck of a man who sought help from the Coalition during one of its water run stops to support the homeless in the city of Calexico, California, as temperatures on that day reached nearly 120 degrees. Photo by Darren Simon

On a sweltering afternoon as temperatures in Calexico, California topped 118 degrees, a group of homeless sought shelter under trees just off Third Street and Paulin Avenue in the city’s busy downtown a couple of blocks from the border.

They knew to be there around 5 p.m. That’s when a familiar white van from the Brown Bag Coalition (Coalition) would arrive to provide welcome relief – water and Gatorade, popsicles, washcloths dipped in cold water and other supplies.

When the van arrived, Brown Bag Coalition founder Maribel Padilla and her volunteer that day, Jose

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