KCAW

The school year is nearly over, and that means students in Sitka High Schools Career and Technical Education program are more prepared for the workforce after semester of real-work experience in an expanding number of fields. CTE program coordinator Mike Vieira, instructor Margaret Galanin, and students Liz Esma and Brandy Pepper joined KCAW for the Morning Interview to discuss the program’s early childhood course, provided in partnership with the University of Alaska Anchorage. Listen here:

A Coast Guard helicopter crew is standing around a long table in Air Station Sitka’s hangar. They’re suited up in orange, and Lieutenant Commander Mick Klakring is reviewing their flight plan for the day.

Sitka High School junior Bristol Clifton is standing at one end of the table, taking it all in. It’s her first flight in an MH-60 Jayhawk helicopter, and Klakring says it’s about time.

“Bristol’s been around, gosh, for a couple months now, right?” Klakring says. “Took a bit of an internship upstairs and now we’re getting her airborne, which, sounds like it’s a little late in the game, but we’re gonna fix that.”

Clifton is a lifelong Sitkan and her interests reflect that fact. She loves the outdoors, and she’s planning to work as a fly-fishing guide this summer. She likes math and science. Her eyes light up when she tells me she’s also interning with the Sitka Sound Science Center’s hatchery program. 

But she’s really interested in aviation. In an interview weeks before today’s helicopter flight, I ask her if she gets nervous when she’s airborne, and she responds with a quick and comfortable, ‘no.’ She’s had a lot of exposure to flying. After all, you can’t take the bus to an away game when you live on an island.

“I do sports all year round, I do volleyball, basketball, and softball, so anytime we travel it’s flying, so I just feel like I fly all the time,” Clifton says. “I like going to different places in Alaska, and like seeing different communities and stuff. I think it’s really fun.”

So this semester, her teacher Mike Vieira set her up with an internship at the Coast Guard base through the school’s Career and Technical Education program. So for the past few months, Clifton has been at the air station twice a week. While she initially was interested in commercial aviation, she is eager to explore every path toward becoming a pilot. 

“My brother is a Marine, and my stepdad, he was also marine, so like I have family that’s been in the military before, so I’m just interested in learning more about that, or like what they do, to see if I would want to go into the Coast Guard,” Clifton says.

Back at the hangar, flight mechanic Cameron Rex shows Clifton where she’ll be sitting on their flight today, and reviews the safety protocol, including what to do in the event of an emergency, and how she may be able to help.

“If you see something we don’t, feel free to speak up. You know, maybe it’s an eagle coming our way. The eagles don’t really respect us, they don’t understand there’s other predators in the sky, or bigger things than them,” Rex says. “You’ll be part of the crew in that sense.”

“Crystal clear? Or clear enough?” he asks, and Clifton laughs and nods her head.

Then, they’re off, and for their first stop, they fly over some familiar territory — her house.

“Everything just looks so much different from up there, obviously,” she tells me the next day.

Over the next four hours, they flew to Hoonah, Gustavus, and landed at the Cape Spencer lighthouse. And her lack of fear was helpful, because, as the crew told her, it’s not unusual to get a touch of motion sickness on the first flight. 

“Compared to obviously flying in the big jets, like Alaska Airlines, it’s completely different, because it’s just so much smaller,” Clifton says.

“Luckily I didn’t get motion sickness, which I thought I was going to, and at the beginning, I was kind of, a little like, ‘whoa,’ because obviously it just feels different,” she adds “But then I got used to it, and I was fine.” 

Clifton says while the weather wasn’t great, she took everything in, and got a lot out of it. 

“You couldn’t really see the tops of the mountains so much, but you could still see all the ocean and like the muskegs and everything,” Clifton says. “Just to get to see everything from a new perspective, I think is really cool.”

So cool, she plans to go up in the Jayhawk again tomorrow.

I climb into the large police truck with Sitka Police Chief Mike Hall and we head out on patrol. We drive downtown and then hit the state highway to cover every inch of Sitka’s 14-miles of paved road.

“We have one patrol officer working today, and when I have one, I usually come out and also work patrol so we keep good coverage and give the service needed to the community,” Hall says.  

Hall says he’s looking out for anything out of the ordinary. Things like cars parked the wrong way, speeders, bicyclists on the sidewalk, or people peering in the windows of parked cars. 

The daily patrol here in Sitka is a bit quieter for Hall than his last decade-and-a-half working with the U.S. State Department in countries like Afghanistan, Jordan, Lebanon, and Ukraine. But, he says, this is what he needed.

“After the war in Ukraine, I just was really tired mentally, I was tired physically, the stress — I just had enough,” Hall says. “I had my third war zone in a row without a break, and I was just exhausted. I was tired. I wanted to find a place just to heal.” 

And it sounds like he’s found it. 

“Three or four weeks ago, I told my wife, ‘This is like the most relaxed I’ve been in 17 years, I love it,'” Hall says. “Nobody’s shooting at me. There’s no rockets falling out of the sky, and I get to look at the beautiful mountains and the eagles and the whales and the sea lions and the seals, and I get to walk through Totem Park, and get on the beach and look for stuff. It’s just fantastic. Haven’t been fishing yet, but it’s coming.”

Hall’s been on the job for about two months now. He was hired on as a lieutenant last year and completed his Alaska police certification before being sworn in to the top role in March. 

He’s inherited a police department that’s seen a tumultuous decade, marked by high department turnover, several lawsuits brought by former officers that were settled out of court, and public outcry after police euthanized six shelter animals by gunshot in 2024. 

But Hall says he sees a path forward for the department, and that starts with hiring the right people for the job. He wants to attract more locals to the department, and when hiring from outside, he’s looking for candidates who really want to live in Sitka and become part of the community. 

“I need to see good folks,” he says. “I need to see folks who love each other, [and] want to help each other out. That’s important to me, and I try to instill that to folks who apply here. This is what’s important in life. If you’re out here wanting to fight people, if you’re out here being a police officer because you want the excitement, you’re in it for the wrong reason. If you’re in it to help somebody, yeah, that’s where [it’s] at.”

He says in a town of just over 8,000, it would be easy to overpolice the community, but he doesn’t want to issue a ticket every time someone speeds a few miles over the limit or use jail as a catchall.

“Sometimes you can give a bit of grace, and that grace can go a long way in starting somebody on a new path,” he says. “That’s part of our community policing model.”

Or he says, they could also underpolice Sitka, which could lead to more crime and disorderly conduct. So, he says there has to be a balance.

“We’re trying to figure out what is the Sitka way to police? What is the best way to build trust?” he says. “We go to the same grocery stores, we go to the same restaurants, we fish in the same waters. How do we become part of the community? And I think that’s going to take a little bit while we build that team and figure out a good tempo of how Sitkans want to be policed.”

At the end of the day, Hall says he believes Sitka is small enough with enough good people to accomplish a lot. And although his life wasn’t very quiet before coming here, he thinks he can make a difference in a quiet place. 

The Sitka Homeless Coalition opened its Hítx’i Sáani neighborhood of tiny homes in December. The 12-unit community is dedicated to providing housing to unhoused Sitkans. The organization has now broken ground on a community services building, which will have a caretaker’s apartment, community areas, offices, showers, and washers/dryers, and is working to raise the remaining funds needed to complete the project. Kathy Ingallinera, board member and volunteer with Sitka Homeless Coalition, joined KCAW on the Morning Interview to discuss the fundraising campaign and an upcoming barbecue on June 27. Listen to the conversation here:

Virgin Voyages staff welcome about a dozen representatives from the City of Sitka, Sitka Tribe of Alaska, and local organizations as they board the 912-foot red and white cruise ship, the Brilliant Lady, on Thursday.

It’s the inaugural port call for not only the company’s newest “lady ship,” but for the adults-only cruise line as a whole, and is marked by shared champagne, speeches, and the exchange of plaques. 

“Virgin Voyages, as a company, is fairly young,” says Sitka Tourism Manager Judson Rusk. “And this is the first time they’ve ever entered the Alaskan market. This is the first ship in Alaska, and it’s the first time to Sitka, so this is a first on a lot of fronts.”

Virgin Voyages is a relatively new company — an extension of the multi-billion-dollar Virgin Group, founded by business magnate Richard Branson, and Bain Capital.  

Their first ship was built in 2021. The Brilliant Lady, in 2025. And they pride themselves on not being “your average cruise line.” 

Jill Stoneberg, the company’s senior director of sustainability, says for one, kids aren’t allowed. Second, she says they want to give back to the communities they visit by volunteering with local organizations, like Sitka Trail Works. Third, they want their guests to feel connected to the places they visit, so they’ve recently welcomed on board a full-time naturalist to educate about the wildlife and land in Alaska, and a heritage guide from Alaska Native Voices. 

“We recognize there are many different Indigenous groups, and they’re speaking from their experience through art, through storytelling, through dance,” she says. “And we’re just really pleased to be able to offer that authenticity to [the guests’] time on board.” 

Stoneberg wants to show the delegation a bit about what makes this cruise experience unique, and leads them to the dining room of one of the boat’s many restaurants to talk over eggs benedict and mimosas. Then, she leads them on a tour of the 17-deck vessel, which accommodates up to 2,762 passengers and 1,150 crew.  

She leads them through the casino, shopping center, night club, and adult arcade, and even shows them the ship’s tattoo parlor, Squid Ink.  

“We’re the first cruise line to offer a tattoo parlor on board,” Stoneberg says. “It’s actually very popular. If you want a tattoo, you have to sign up for it at the very beginning of the cruise.” 

Then, she takes them “behind the scenes” to the control room and waste room to walk them through some of the environmental measures the company takes as part of its decarbonization initiative. She says Virgin started off with efficient technologies because its fleet is so young. 

“We’re considered a hard-to-abate industry, meaning that it’s very difficult to transition completely to zero-carbon and low-carbon fuels to meet our energy demands,” she says. “But it’s something that the industry takes very seriously, and the goal is to be net zero carbon emissions by 2050.” 

Stoneberg says the company has started to use biofuels and Climeon technology — which converts low-temperature waste heat from the main engine into useful power — to run its fleet. And three of its four boats have shore power capabilities, which essentially means they can plug the ship into a local electric grid when in port. The fleet also makes 97% of its water on board through a desalinization process and doesn’t provide any single-use plastics to its guests, according to Stoneberg.

Virgin Voyages is the newest of about 25 cruise lines operating in Sitka this season, and its arrival comes at a time when the community of just over 8,000 is still grappling with the recent uptick. Cruise ship traffic has more than doubled since before the COVID-19 pandemic. But in 2025, Sitka voters overwhelmingly rejected a ballot measure that would have capped the number of visitors. 

Tribal Council Chair Yeidikook’áa Brady-Howard, who is welcomed up to receive a plaque and say a few words on behalf of the Tribe, says the relationship between the community and cruise companies is complex. 

“We are very much the continued stewards of the lands that we’ve inhabited since time immemoria,” she says. “And when we have basically a floating city coming into our own community, we always have concerns about the impact for us. But also we’re responsible for the economic well-being of our people as well, and so we’re always walking that line between hoping for the best in terms of the impact that something like this can have on our community, as well as understanding very much that we require the economic stimulation that these sorts of things bring.” 

As the tour wraps up, Stoneberg walks the guests to the entrance of the massive boat, plaques in hand. The delegation exits and makes its way back to town as Stoneberg and the crew wait for the Brilliant Lady’s nearly 3,000 passengers to wrap up their time in Sitka and load up again before they head onward to their next destination. Tomorrow, another boat will take its place with more of the roughly 600,000 passengers set to stop in Sitka this season.

Coming off of their first theatrical production and murder mystery fundraiser, Sitka’s latest theater group Bare Stage Collective is developing “At the Table”, a monthly event where Sitkans can come together in a relaxed environment to make friends and read plays. Bare Stage Collective’s founder and producer Rach Roach and collaborator Blaine Weiss join KCAW for the Morning Interview to discuss what Sitkans can expect from the play-reading series, Bare Stage Collective’s history, as well as the group’s future production plans.

Rural Alaska Community Action Program, or RurAL CAP, supports Alaska’s aging population by providing volunteer opportunities for people age 55 and older. Two key programs include the Senior Companion Program, which pairs up older adults aged 55 and over to help them maintain their independence, stay socially connected, and navigate daily life with dignity, and the Elder Mentor Program, which pairs older adults with children who may need extra support, whether that’s help in reading, building confidence, or having a steady, caring presence in their lives. The statewide nonprofit is currently recruiting volunteers in Southeast Alaska. Volunteers receive stipends, mileage reimbursement, and training. Ashley Snyder, a volunteer coordinator with RurAL CAP, joined KCAW on the Morning Interview to discuss the organization’s mission to improve the quality of life for low-income Alaskans.

On Wednesday and Thursday, this week, Sitkans gathered to learn more about their rights when interacting with immigration law enforcement. Cindy Woods, a senior staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in Alaska, joined KCAW for the Morning Interview to discuss importance of understanding immigrants’ rights in Alaska and share details about the events on immigrants rights and family safety planning in Sitka, hosted in partnership with Sitka Tribe of Alaska. Listen to the conversation here:

Learn more here

Sitka Community Land Trust’s executive director Randy Hughey is stepping down. When he retires next year, 14 houses and six apartments will stand in the neighborhood where the nonprofit first broke ground in 2019, testing out a model for affordable housing as one solution to Sitka’s housing crisis.

He spoke with KCAW’s Katherine Rose about his time, what they’re looking for in a new leader, and what the stakes are for the organization that is ready to build many more homes, as long as it can secure the land.

A dozen entrepreneurs will soon have a shot at $20,000 and all of the mentorship and resources that come with Spruce Root’s annual Path to Prosperity program. Spruce Root, a regional economic development organization that supports small businesses in Southeast, has been hosting the four-day entrepreneur camp for the past 12 years. Spruce Root’s Director of Events Izzy Haywood and 2025 competition winner Robert Miller joined KCAW for the Morning Interview to discuss the program. Listen to the conversation here:

Applications for the P2P business competition are open until May 31. Learn more here.