Sacramento graduation, vigil, mountain lions. What you may have missed this weekend

The Sacramento Bee published a range of stories over Memorial Day weekend. Here’s a roundup of what you may have missed:

• A Sacramento family and Vietnam veterans gathered to remember Manuel Gines, an Army Specialist Fourth Class who died at 21 during his second voluntary tour in Vietnam in 1968. His name is engraved on both the California Vietnam Veterans Memorial and the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, D.C., among 5,822 Californians who died or went missing in the war.

• More than 200 family, friends and community members gathered at North Laguna Creek Park Friday evening for a vigil mourning teens Ariyonna Orozco, 16, and Piper Conkling, 14, who were killed when their car crossed into the southbound lane on Scott Road and struck a tree near Rancho Murieta.

• Lassen County Sheriff John McGarva warned that mountain lions posed an imminent threat to public safety near Susanville, but state biologists and game wardens concluded the animals had moved on and posed no threat. California is home to roughly 4,200 mountain lions, which have been protected from sport hunting since a 1990 ballot initiative.

• California maternal death rates have returned to pre-COVID levels of 12 deaths per 100,000 live births by 2023, but Black maternal mortality remains four times higher at 47.9 deaths per 100,000 live births.

• Sacramento State celebrated its largest graduating class in school history with 9,178 students during the 2025-2026 academic year, an 11% increase over the previous year. Nearly 30% of the graduates are first-generation college students, and the university recorded its highest-ever spring enrollment at 31,477 students.