For me, the end of summer in Santa Clarita wasn't marked by Labor Day, but by the Our Lady of Perpetual Help Church Annual BBQ. My grandpa always volunteered to help empty trash cans. My grandma baked for the cake walk. I volunteered at the goldfish booth, trying to impart fish care advice ("They really need a 10-gallon tank, minimum!"), but knowing those little goldfish were not long for this world. The best part of the whole weekend, though, was the food. Lumpia, tacos, sausage and pepper sandwiches, churros, pit barbecue beef...it was the most satisfying meal of the whole summer. It's a simple feeling, true, but one that's not easy to secure. Judging from the news, not everyone is finding satisfaction in Santa Clarita.

Major Adjustments Needed
There's a whole genre of TikTok videos serving vicarious satisfaction in the form of seeing others get chiropractic work. A resetting of the shoulders or the crackle of a neck adjustment can look so sublime. Dr. Nicholas Vanderhyde, a Santa Clarita chiropractor, allegedly made a far more sinister sort of video in his office. Using a camera hidden in the office's restroom, he may have captured images and video of both employees and patients. The images were obviously sensitive in nature. The most troubling part is that minors may have been filmed by Vanderhyde's camera.
The hidden camera was discovered in May, and lawsuits are now underway and involve many former patients. There is a concept called legal satisfaction, usually referring to fully paying a debt or meeting an obligation. Under these circumstances, it's hard to decide what could fully make things right for the potential victims. There's the violation of trust and privacy, the creep factor and concerns over what may have happened to the recordings. The only good news is that the camera wasn't particularly well hidden, so it is suspected to have been filming for just three days before being discovered.

A Winning Olympian
On the 592-name long roster for the 2024 Paris Olympic Games, only one athlete's hometown was listed as Santa Clarita: swimmer Abbey Weitzeil. She won two medals in the 2016 Olympics and two more in the 2020 Olympics. She didn't wait long to start winning more in Paris, earning a silver medal for the 4x100-m freestyle relay on the very first day of the games. People may say there's something funny in the water in Santa Clarita, but for Weitzeil, that seemed to work out just fine. (That was my attempt at the kind of cutesy Olympics coverage lead-in they use before rolling a feature on an athlete.).
Winning medals at three separate Olympics is the kind of satisfaction most of us can only dream of, and the inevitable question is what comes next. For starters, her wedding. In an interview with USA Today, she explained that she's been planning it for two years, so getting married in September, less than two months after the games, wouldn't be unduly stressful. And if she has one more Olympics in her plans, Weitzeil would be competing in her literal home state for 2028. We'll have to see what more she has planned.

What Makes You Happy?
Every two years, the City of Santa Clarita commissions a survey to find out what's going on in the minds of Santa Claritans. In this iteration of the survey, by True North Research, respondents said public safety, overdevelopment, traffic congestion, and homelessness were the biggest issues. When the researchers delved deeper into what groups were most and least satisfied with life overall, they found that gender, ethnicity, age, home ownership and community of residence all might play a role. So if you know a female Asian-American in her 40s who's renting in Canyon Country, send her a nice text, because those are all the categories least likely to rate quality of life as "excellent."
When asked how to improve Santa Clarita, 7 percent replied "everything is fine" and 14 percent replied "can't think of anything specific." These answers sound the same, but the last one hints at a feeling that something could be fixed, but the respondent simply couldn't articulate it. We can feel dissatisfied for vague, unnamed reasons, to be sure. But the opposite is also true. The survey didn't ask why people heart SCV, but I bet many would say they do, even if we can't always think of anything specific.
This column is intended as satire and a (sometimes successful) attempt at humor. Suggestions and catty comments intended for the author can be e-mailed to iheartscv@insidescv.com.