Kendra Langford Shaw moved away from Sitka when she was eight years old, but Southeast Alaska has never left her imagination. This month, the Montana-based city councilmember published her first novel, The Pillager’s Guide to Arctic Pianos. Set in the fictional “Territory of the Arctic” the story follows a family as they search for a relative’s piano from over 200 years ago, while rising sea levels threaten their home as they know it.

“My parents moved up to Alaska in the early 80s… My dad was a music teacher, and one of his first jobs was delivering musical instruments to all these kind of bush schools across Southeast Alaska,” says Langford Shaw. “And one of the first short stories I wrote, I was just kind of playing around [with] ‘What would have happened if his plane had gone down, or like 1000s of these planes had gone down, and there were these instruments that were littered all over, and then people found them and were restoring them, and it became this like whole economic driver?'”

Langford Shaw began writing the story a decade ago when she was in graduate school. With the support of a research grant, she returned to Sitka for the first time since she was a kid to conduct research for the novel. Her eyes sparkle behind bold yellow glasses as she describes key differences she observed in Sitka on her return trip, and how that inspired the setting of her story. 

“So in the book, there’s these trees that I call the singing spruce, which I really patterned after a Sitka spruce, and they’re like 300 feet tall in the book, which is definitely the kid version of what trees are now, that most of them don’t actually grow that tall, but that was still very much in my mind,” says Langford Shaw. “Everything is so much bigger and more vibrant [as a kid] than when you see it as an adult, and so that’s still very much in my mind when I think about Sitka.”

Langford Shaw says she set the story in a fictional place in order to not overwrite Alaska Native histories. She says she wanted to imagine a world where Indigenous communities’ land autonomy was respected by settlers. She also hopes that Alaskans are able to see the resiliency and boldness that she admires from them reflected in the story. 

“I tried to put it into each of the characters [that] they’re taking chances, they’re doing things that are risky and challenging, and sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn’t work out as well as they want,” says Langford Shaw. “But they’re out engaging with the environment constantly, both because they have to and because they want to.” 

While the story deals with challenging themes, like what it means to define home and family in a changing environment, Langford Shaw was inspired by her own family’s ability to use humor to work through problems together. 

“If you’re not finding moments of making each other laugh in the midst of even really difficult things, that’s a huge loss,” says Langford Shaw. “I think it’s a better life if you can try and find those moments together.”

Langford-Shaw has been thrilled with the positive reception of her book so far. Last week she hosted a launch reading in her home of Billings, Montana, and will soon host readings across the lower 48 and Alaska, stopping in Sitka this July. 

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. 

More than 50 Sitkans attended a training hosted by the American Civil Liberties Union last Wednesday (5-13-26) on how to best support community members if detained by ICE. 

Lisa Sadleir-Hart is one of the organizers for the event. She says she and her fellow organizers wanted to educate Sitkans on what to do should ICE officers arrive on the island following the surge in Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity in Minnesota earlier this year. While there has only been one confirmed ICE arrest in Sitka at the time of reporting, Sadleir-Hart says that hasn’t eased the worries of community members she has spoken to. 

“Seeing what has happened elsewhere and thinking [that could] also happen here, and especially given the kind of division we’ve seen, not only in our nation, but it’s here in Sikka as well,” says Sadleir-Hart. “Maybe if you’re a person of color in Sitka, that might be something that would be more concerning than it was previously.”

The ACLU of Alaska has held several trainings throughout Southeast this year. The civil rights organization sent senior staff attorney Cindy Woods to Sitka to lead the local training and break down immigration law and its relation to ICE. While Woods says Alaska has not been hit as hard by ICE as many communities in the lower 48, increased ICE presence has made an impact on the state, most notably with a Soldotna family detained back in February. Woods says there’s been a 662% increase in the number of Alaskans detained by ICE in the first year of the Trump administration’s second term, from 13 detainees in 2024 to 99 in 2025.

“We have a small immigration bar, so we have few attorneys that practice immigration here in the state, and seeing that jump from 13 arrests to 99 is massive,” says Woods. “We could potentially be on track if arrests continue to increase proportionally for over 375 Alaskans to be arrested this year, and so that’s a huge, huge number.”

Woods also advised attendees on how to best support somebody being arrested by ICE and how to contact legal resources if someone feels their rights were violated. 

Attendee Rachel Worthey says it was infuriating to learn in the session how ICE has engaged in racial profiling of Americans and immigrants across the country (earlier this year the ACLU sued the Trump administration, arguing that federal agents violated citizens’ constitutional rights, and disproportionately targeted Somali and Latino communities). But she says she feels empowered with the new knowledge she’s gained and feels hopeful seeing the strong event turnout.

“I feel encouraged when I come to places like this and see other people who I know feel the same way I do and aren’t going to accept being pulled backwards,” says Worthey.

The ACLU also hosted two more trainings last week focused on developing safety plans for families should ICE detain them. Sadleir-Hart says if anybody is interested in learning more or getting safety planning resources to email her at 3akharts@duck.com

Sitka Police Chief Mike Hall says that shortly after 1:30 a.m. the 911 dispatch center received a crash alert from an Apple Watch, reporting a possible vehicle accident near Shotgun Alley. Shortly afterward, two separate neighbors called 911 to report the crash. 

Four police officers, a fire truck, and two ambulances arrived at the scene, alongside Hall, interim Fire Chief Brian McLaughlin, and nine emergency medical personnel from the fire hall. They found a vehicle turned onto its roof, with a 35-year old man trapped inside. Responders broke a window so the passenger could crawl out. The man suffered some scratches, but no life-threatening injuries.

The driver, a 19-year old man, allegedly fled the scene on foot before police arrived. Hall says that another officer found him down the road, covered in mud, and took him into custody. The driver and passenger were both transported to the hospital to ensure they did not suffer any internal injuries. They were released a few hours later. Police obtained a search warrant for the driver’s blood, and are currently awaiting lab results. The cause of the crash is still under investigation.

Sitka Police Chief Mike Hall says shortly before 10 p.m. police received a 911 call from a staff member at Mangiare Restaurant. A dishwasher at the restaurant invited a friend, 37-year-old Gilbert Sam Jr., who was allegedly not an employee at the restaurant, to help him wash dishes. Hall says the two ended up getting in a heated confrontation. 

“Mr. Sam pulled out a knife and stabbed him four times,” says Hall. “One to the neck, one to the arm, and two in the abdomen.” 

Hall says that he and three other police officers responded. Sitka Fire Department’s EMT Records Specialist, Gus Mork, says seven  first responders from the fire hall were dispatched to the scene. Hall says the victim was found conscious, but was struggling to breathe. Sam was taken into custody nearby and was charged with felony assault. 

“The victim is okay [and] was released from the hospital. Luckily, the knife did not hit any major components of the body, and [he] is going to make a full recovery,” says Hall.

Hall says Sam is currently in custody at the Sitka jail on a $15,000 bond and remains innocent until proven guilty. A court hearing in his case is set for May 26. 

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.

The Sitka Medical Center closed abruptly last Thursday (5-14-26), after the organization reported a “potential measles exposure.” While no other details were publicly disclosed, the health clinic and urgent care facility notified the Alaska Department of Health and sent a specimen to its lab for testing. The negative results mean there are no confirmed cases of the highly contagious virus in Sitka. 

The clinic and urgent care is operated by the Southeast Alaska Regional Health Consortium, or SEARHC. In an email to KCAW, SEARHC representative Matt Carle wrote “While we are relieved the results were negative, this situation served as a reminder of the value of preparedness, strong internal protocols and close coordination with public health partners.” Carle expressed appreciation for the understanding of patients and the larger community as the healthcare organization worked through its established safety protocols. KCAW reached out to officials from the Alaska Department of Health for confirmation. 

Read SEARHC’s full statement posted to social media here.

The United States Coast Guard will soon begin construction on a mooring project on Japonski Island in Sitka. When it’s finished, there will be room for a new addition to its local fleet – a fast response cutter.

Erin Hale is an environmental protection specialist with the Coast Guard. At the Japonski Island Boat House on May 13, she presented updated construction plans to Sitkans. She said they haven’t started building yet, even though an audience member thought they saw a truck full of construction materials heading that way. 

“So it sounds like we’re going to mobilize at the end of summer. So that big truck you saw shouldn’t have been us,” Hale said.

Hale said construction will likely begin in September, with plans to complete the project sometime in 2028. When it’s finished, the fast response cutter Douglas Denman, which is currently moored in Ketchikan, will make its way to Sitka. It will be staffed by around two dozen Coast Guard personnel.

That means more families coming to Sitka who will be in need of childcare and housing. Here’s assembly member JJ Carlson, who was in the audience, asked if the Coast Guard was planning on additional housing or childcare associated with the project.

“We have a couple projects in the works…to address our housing because we are a little bit deficient, even just to meet current needs,” Hale said.

While Hale said they won’t be providing childcare, they’re currently working on a separate project to refurbish 60 existing units of Coast Guard housing and add 20 new units. 

The new cutter will be homeported next to the 255- foot Kukui, which has been in Sitka since 2018. Community member John Stein asked how operations could change with more boats at the Coast Guard base. 

“With lots of boats in place, will there be lights and sirens and zooming up and down the channel and that kind of thing? Stein asked.

“It’s a little bit smaller and a little bit sleeker, but they generally don’t go zooming around up and down the channel,” Hale responded as the audience of about a dozen Sitkans laughed. “So we should be okay.”

The land next to the new dock will also look a bit different once the project has wrapped. A row of rose bushes will be removed and transplanted elsewhere, and a public swing set will be moved to the adjacent lot. The area will also include historical signage. 

Editor’s Note: John Stein is a member of KCAW’s board of directors.

Lab results are expected to return over the weekend for a potential measles exposure in Sitka. Measles is a highly contagious virus spread through coughing, sneezing and close contact. 

The Sitka Medical Center closed abruptly on Thursday (5-14-26) due to a “potential measles exposure.” As of mid-day Friday there is still no confirmed measles case in Sitka, according to the Alaska Department of Health. In an email to KCAW, spokesperson Mirna Estrada said the local health clinic and urgent care notified the department that they are testing a specimen in their laboratory today (5-15-26) for the virus. Estrada said they expect to have the results back tomorrow. She did not provide further details about the exposure.

The clinic is operated by the Southeast Alaska Regional Health Consortium, or SEARHC. In an email to KCAW, SEARHC representative Matt Carle said the organization is still working through its protocols related to Thursday’s incident, and is closely working with the state department, which oversees the testing and confirmation of potential measles cases.

As of noon Friday, Carle wrote there was no additional information regarding the status of the test results.

He said, in the meantime, SEARHC is focused on providing awareness and practical guidance for communities, to make sure patients understand what symptoms to watch for and what steps to take if they believe they had a possible measles exposure or are experiencing symptoms consistent with the virus. He said they would be sharing additional guidance on their social media channels.