Christopher Woitel
Christopher Woitel. Missing.

Hello Readers:

It’s a terrible thing when a family member goes missing. And the journey for Chistopher Woitel’s family, Julian Mark writes, is far from over.

In other news:

  • The Covid Tracker
  • A Break in at the T Mobile Store
  • And, neighborhood notes

Stay safe and have a wonderful weekend. Unless there is big news, I stopped sending out a Saturday daily newsletter so the next will be on Sunday.

— Lydia

Stories

Police respond to a burglary and a robbery on Mission Street, both within 12 hours

A burglary and a robbery occurred within a few hundreds of blocks of each other on Mission Street, and less than 12 hours apart.  

The T-Mobile store on 2651 Mission St. was broken into early Friday morning, employees and police officers confirmed Friday afternoon.

Neighborhood Notes: Happy Lunar New Year!

Today officially marks the first day of the year of the ox.

Police investigating the mysterious disappearance of Christopher Woitel — one month later

“Please tell Lara to check her messages.

It’s urgent,” Chris Woitel, a 50-year-old computer programmer living on Guerrero Street, wrote to his niece just after 3 p.m. on Jan. 9. 

Lara Haben, his sister, tried to call him back, but there was no answer.

Covid Tracker: 32,809 cases, 359 deaths

After steadily falling, average new cases have risen, albeit modestly, for the second day in a row. Is this the beginning of a new trend? 

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I’ve been a Mission resident since 1998 and a professor emeritus at Berkeley’s J-school since 2019. I got my start in newspapers at the Albuquerque Tribune in the city where I was born and raised. Like many local news outlets, The Tribune no longer exists. I left daily newspapers after working at The New York Times for the business, foreign and city desks. Lucky for all of us, it is still here.

As an old friend once pointed out, local has long been in my bones. My Master’s Project at Columbia, later published in New York Magazine, was on New York City’s experiment in community boards.

As founder and an editor at ML, I've been trying to figure out how to make my interest in local news sustainable. If Mission Local is a model, the answer might be that you - the readers - reward steady and smart content. As a thank you for that support we work every day to make our content even better.