#watsonville

$695,000/2 br/1 ba/1,621 sq ft

Watsonville, CA

Irene, circa 1997; Age-progression to age 40 (circa 2024)

Missing Since: 12/07/1997

Missing From: Watsonville, California

Classification: Endangered Missing

Sex: Female

Race: Hispanic

Date of Birth: 04/13/1984 (41)

Age: 13 years old

Height and Weight: 5'3, 133 pounds

Distinguishing Characteristics: Hispanic female. Brown hair, brown eyes. Irene may use the last name Chavarin.

Details of Disappearance:

Irene disappeared from Watsonville, California on December 7, 1997. She has never been heard from again. Few details are available in her case.

Pajaro Valley for Ethnic Studies and Justice: We are calling on our communities near and far to stand in solidarity with the Pajaro Valley community and the brave hunger strikers led by Omar Dieguez and CORA. Pledge to BOYCOTT DRISCOLL’S BERRIES until they stop spraying harmful and cancer-causing pesticides near our schools and homes!

Watsonville supplies strawberries to the world, but our community suffers from high childhood cancer rates and other disabilities and illnesses due to the unethical use of harmful pesticides in the places where we live, work, and go to school. Driscoll’s is the largest berry corporation in the world and has the capacity to transition its fields to organic.

By Todd Guild (pajaronian.com) -September 5, 2025

About 50 people gather in front of Driscoll’s headquarters on Westridge Drive in Watsonville to protest pesticide use in area agricultural fields. (Tarmo Hannula/The Pajaronian)

Watsonville activist Omar Dieguez and a group of community leaders announced a hunger strike and started the movement with a protest outside of Driscoll’s headquarters Tuesday in Watsonville. 

About 50 people were protesting the use of toxic pesticides near homes and schools in Watsonville and the Pajaro Valley. 

Dieguez announced that he began his fast on Sept. 1 and will continue for 30 days. He is being joined by several community leaders who will fast for various lengths of time.

Dieguez released a public statement to Driscoll’s and California Giant Berry owners, urging them to transition their fields near homes and schools to organic and stopping the use of toxic pesticides.

 “Enough is enough,” the statement reads. “For too long, you have poisoned our community with toxic pesticides that harm our farmworkers, our immigrant and Indigenous families, our youth, and all of Pajaro Valley. You are contaminating our water, our land, our oceans, and the very air we breathe. This must stop now.”

Dieguez says in the statement that, as a young boy growing up near the fields, he acquired acute asthma. 

“Many of my friends have suffered from cancers and other health problems that many of the same chemicals used in your berry fields are known to cause,” he says. 

Dieguez says that the companies have the resources and capabilities to end pesticide use immediately and transition to safer practices.

“Impacts from pesticides go on for decades,” Gabe Medina, Pajaro Valley Unified School District board member, told the crowd. He spoke of family members who were sprayed “directly” while working area fields, and of cancer and strokes that have affected his family.

“This is what pesticides do to us: They impact us physically and mentally,” Medina said. He demanded proper screening of students at schools for added protection and spoke strongly of area leaders coming forward and standing up for what is right “and challenging corporations that see us as disposable units in order for them to make profits.”

Adam Scow of Campaign for Organic and Regenerative Agriculture, a grassroots organization of residents of the Monterey Bay, stated: “Local activists are coming together to put their bodies on the line in support of the movement to stop toxic pesticides. Our region is actually a leader in organic agriculture with nearly 20 percent of the Pajaro Valley being organic. So we need more of it in the right places.”

The specific fields near Pajaro Valley homes and schools are illustrated on a map released by the Campaign for Organic & Regenerative Agriculture, available at the website link here: