A dog saved from a shelter a year ago was attacked by a bear in the yard of her new home in Gulf Breeze.

December may have been warmer than usual, but the first weeks of the year have been colder.

That means the Santa Rosa Cold Night Shelter at Ferris Hill Baptist Church in Milton has stayed busy.

When my children were small, we spent most of our free time taking them to parks. If you want to know about all the small hidden parks that were in the area 15 years ago and probably still are today, hit me up.

We even found the ones that offered little or no parking because they were intended mostly for kids in the homes around the park, whose parents could walk them over.

After several months of relative stability, Santa Rosa County is again facing staffing challenges, with three of its top employees resigning in the last few weeks.

James Cook, the interim head of Public Works, Chris Phillips, the head of Development Services, and Erica Grancagnolo, the associate director of the Economic Development agency have all resigned.

Nearly 200 people, many of them young teens, attended Wednesday’s Celebration of Life service for 13-year-old Sophia Fenner.

They sat quietly as photos of Sophia filled the twin screens in front of Gulf Breeze United Methodist Church.

When I started covering Navarre in the summer of 2020, I spent a lot of time on Concerned Citizens of Navarre’s Facebook page.

You can learn a lot about a community from pages like this. They help reunite lost pets, share stories of small kindnesses, give much appreciated updates about what’s going on in the community, as reported by individuals living there.

Friends of the family of a 13-year-old Woodlawn Beach student who died unexpectedly Monday are raising money to help her mom pay for services.

Sophia Fenner was born and raised in the Gulf Breeze area.

For Navarre Beach Fire Rescue, 2021 was a year filled with firsts, funding and heartwarming moments.

The department on Navarre Beach got its first drone to drop lifejackets, was awarded its first custom LandRover, trained Santa Rosa Sheriff’s Office deputies for the first time and received a Lifepak 15 cardiac monitor through CARES funding.

I grew up with the sound of typing, as my mother sat in the kitchen writing letters to far away friends and family members. She had a Smith-Corona, inked by a ribbon that needed to be replaced regularly, and it was electric.

Four months after a 36-year-old homeless man was found dead near the Navarre Beach Causeway, an autopsy determined that Jeremy Wheatman died of alcohol toxicity.