Updated 12:16 p.m. -- The parents of missing California teenager Sierra LaMar said they are not giving up hope of finding their daughter, even as police booked a 21-year-old man late Monday for her murder and kidnapping.

"Our search still is not going to end," Sierra's mother Marlene LaMar said at a press conference Tuesday. "As a mother, I’m hopeful because her body has not been found."

Antolin Garcia-Torres, from Morgan Hill, was booked into jail Monday evening after being taken into custody at a Safeway in Morgan Hill, according to the Santa Clara County Sheriff's Office.

Santa Clara County Sheriff Laurie Smith said the suspect had been under surveillance since the investigators received the lab reports of his DNA found on LaMar's discarded clothes.

"We were hoping that he would lead us to where Sierra was,” Smith said Tuesday, adding that the decision to book Garcia-Torres came out of concern for public safety.

"We wanted to make sure that this doesn’t happen again,” she said.

LaMar, 15, also from Morgan Hill, has been missing for more than two months.

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Garcia-Torres' arrest Monday marked the first time detectives have said what the community has feared since LaMar vanished on her way to school on March 16: That they think LaMar was murdered.

While LaMar's body has not been found, the sheriff said there is strong evidence pointing to homicide. Smith said investigators have not found any blood, and she refused to say any more on the nature of the physical evidence found on LaMar's clothes and in the suspect's vehicle.

"These are very very difficult cases, to prosecute a homicide when you haven’t found the victim,” she said.

Smith also said there is no indication LaMar had run away from home and no information indicating the victim knew Garcia-Torres.

"It’s my belief this was purely random," she added.

Search for missing teen Sierra LaMar intensifies in California

Garcia-Torres' record shows a prior conviction for interfering with an officer, which qualifies as a misdemeanor, and a felony arrest for assault for which he was not prosecuted, the sheriff said.

Interviews with the suspect haven't yet revealed anything "substantive" about LaMar's whereabouts, Smith said.

Facebook.com/help.find.sierra

Police suspect Sierra LaMar -- seen in images posted on Facebook.com/help.find.sierra -- has been murdered.

LaMar's mother pleaded with Garcia-Torres to cooperate with the investigators.

“Please, please give the information that you have to lead us to Sierra,” she said. "I would like you to come forward and say where she is and end this nightmare.”

Volunteers, officials searched
Volunteers and sheriff's officials have continuously searched the fields, open spaces and reservoirs near Morgan Hill since her disappearance, The Associated Press reported.

A Facebook page was set up to try to help find her. Both the sheriff and the LaMar family acknowledged the community's support throughout the investigation.

"We still need your support," Sierra's father Steve LaMar said Tuesday. "We need to bring Sierra home.”

The KlaasKids Foundation, founded by Marc Klaas, whose 12-year-old daughter Polly was kidnapped from her Petaluma home and murdered in 1993, has been organizing volunteer searches on Wednesdays and Saturdays, the AP added. 

Investigators found Sierra's handbag with clothing and a cellphone along the side of the road near her home on March 17, the day after Sierra's mother reported her missing. 

Earlier this month, investigators located a red Volkswagen Jetta they said may have been connected to Sierra's abduction given that surveillance cameras and witnesses put the car near the area where authorities believe she disappeared. 

Sheriff's officials have released few details about leads in the case, including what, if any, evidence they found in the car.

The Associated Press and msnbc.com's Becky Bratu contributed to this report.

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Laguna Niguel Patch

Bales of marijuana found floating off the California coast are offloaded onto a dock.

Harbor Patrol officers found nearly 8,000 pounds worth of marijuana floating off the coast of Orange County, Calif., on Sunday, according to reports.

The marijuana found south of Los Angeles was packed in around 160 bales and had an estimated street value of $3.6 million, border patrol agents told CBS Los Angeles.

"Shortly before noon on Sunday, May 20, maritime law enforcement authorities received a tip about suspicious bales floating in the water off the coast of Orange County, near Dana Point," border patrol agent supervisor Michael Jimenez said in a statement.

The haul reportedly totaled 7,263 pounds.

Marijuana grows openly in California towns, not just for medicinal purposes

Coast guard petty officer Seth Johnson told the Orange County Register that the bales were first reported by a boater who saw them floating around 15 miles offshore.

Three Harbor Patrol ships and a Coast Guard cutter were sent to recover the marijuana from the water.

The incident was out of the ordinary, Jimenez told the Register.

Report: Marijuana use grows, cocaine falls among men arrested in 10 US cities

"At other events, they've dumped the bales to get rid of weight if they're being chased," he said. "Generally in these cases we're aware they're being dumped. What's more unusual is that the bales were floating with no boat in sight."

No suspects or vessel have been identified in connection to an ongoing investigation, the Register reported.

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Volunteers work under the 16-inch guns at the stern of the USS Iowa in Richmond, California, on Thursday.

LOS ANGELES - The USS Iowa, which ferried the late President Franklin D. Roosevelt across the perilous Atlantic waters to a historic meeting with Winston Churchill and Josef Stalin in the dark days of World War Two, is to become a floating museum.

The battleship saw combat in the Pacific, survived a devastating explosion in a gun turret, and even a snub from the city of San Francisco. At the end of its final voyage, the storied warship will have a permanent mooring in San Pedro, Los Angeles.

The Los Angeles Harbor Commission voted unanimously on Thursday to create a permanent home for the ship at the city's port, where it will open as a floating museum.

AP, file

A cloud of gunfire smoke hangs over the USS Iowa during exercises on Oct. 17, 1952.

The vessel, which saw service with the U.S. Navy over six tumultuous decades, will become the only battleship museum on the U.S. West Coast when it opens on July 7.

"There's no more ships like this in existence in the active navies anywhere in the world," said Robert Kent, president of the Pacific Battleship Center.

"They've either been sunk, scrapped or turned into museums, and the Iowa is the last battleship to find a home," he added.

'Your ship is coming in'
It is expected to attract 400,000 visitors a year and could revitalize the city’s port area, jubilant local officials told the Los Angeles Daily News.

"This will help transform our waterfront in making it a world-class destination," Los Angeles City Councilman Joe Buscaino told commissioners, adding that the area will soon see interconnected network of promenades, open spaces and shops.

We're all so excited," Katherine Gray, vice president of the San Pedro Convention and Visitors Bureau, told the Daily News. "You really feel the swell of support and excitement. ... San Pedro, your ship is coming in."

The 887-foot Iowa-class warship was commissioned in 1943.

That same year it took Roosevelt across the Atlantic on his way to a meeting in the Iranian capital Tehran with British Prime Minister Churchill and Soviet strongman Stalin, the first conference of the "Big Three" Allied leaders of the war.

The hulking warship, which towers 175 feet above the water line, was equipped with a special bathtub for Roosevelt -- who was partially paralyzed following a bout with polio -- which remains on board to this day.

Later in the war, it pounded beachheads in the Pacific with its 16-inch guns ahead of Allied landings, and took part in the Japanese surrender in Tokyo Bay in 1945. During the Korean War in the 1950s, it conducted gun strikes and bombardments.

Robert Galbraith / Reuters

Curator David Way sits at the bow of the U.S. battleship USS Iowa in Richmond, California, on Thursday.

In 1989, off the coast of Puerto Rico, an explosion within a gun turret on board the ship killed 47 sailors.

The Iowa was decommissioned in 1990 and was later kept in a naval center in Rhode Island before it was towed through the Panama Canal to Northern California.

'Don't ask, don't tell'
Historic groups in Northern California had sought to find a permanent home there for the ship, but they faced a number of setbacks. Among them was a vote in 2005 by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors to reject a resolution to move the Iowa to the city as a floating museum.

The San Francisco Chronicle reported at the time that some city supervisors had voted against the resolution out of opposition to the U.S. military's then-policy of "don't ask, don't tell," which barred gays and lesbians from openly serving in the armed forces.

Several members of the board who took part in the 2005 vote could not be reached for comment.

The Iowa, which once powered through the waves at a top speed of 33 knots or 40 miles per hour, will have to be towed to Los Angeles from Richmond, in North California, where it has been undergoing a $7 million restoration.

The funds included $3 million from the state of Iowa, where residents have taken a keen interest in the ship, Kent said.

It is set to leave Richmond on Sunday, pass under the Golden Gate Bridge and arrive off the coast of Los Angeles on May 24.

While the Iowa will be the only battleship museum on the West Coast, San Diego, also in southern California, has the USS Midway Museum to showcase that historic aircraft carrier.

The Midway attracts about a million visitors a year, and the Pacific Battleship Center, the group responsible for bringing the USS Iowa to Los Angeles, hopes to one day approach those numbers. Initially, they expect up to 500,000 visitors a year.

Reuters contributed to this report.

A group called Save California is urging parents to keep their children out of school on May 22, which California lawmakers declared Harvey Milk Day in 2009.

Harvey Milk, whose birthday was May 22, was a San Francisco supervisor who was fatally shot in 1978. Schools are encouraged to teach students about the openly gay lawmaker and his fight for civil rights.

Save California has produced radio advertisements, warning parents it’s a dangerous lesson plan. One advertisement declares: "Parents, your boys and girls are being targeted for immoral indoctrination at school on Harvey Milk Day."

Glendon Hyde, of the Harvey Milk Democratic Club, says the ads are "pure, fear-based manipulation."

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Santa Barbara Harbor Patrol

A search and rescue team save William, a 7-year-old Arabian show horse, after he swam nearly three miles into the ocean.

As the sun set over Loon Point near Santa Barbara on Tuesday evening, waves crashed onto the sand, apparently spooking an Arabian show horse named William.

William, a 7-year-old grey stallion, had been part of a photo shoot with other horses. Frightened, he bolted into the surf.

He started to swim. And swim. And swim until he was nearly three miles offshore, headed for oil rigs.

On land, a team of four from the Santa Barbara Harbor Patrol, Carpenteria-Summerland Fire Water Rescue, and California State Parks set out to find the horse, whose official name is Air of Temptation. His owner, Mindy Peters, told Huffington Post that he had never been swimming in his life.

"Horses can swim, but not well,” she told HuffPo. Peters was driving when she learned about her sea horse and immediately bee-lined to the beach. She said William is worth about $100,000 to $150,000.

Ryan Kelly, a Santa Barbara Harbor Patrol Officer, was the first on site, heading out with a small motorboat. Overhead, a helicopter searched as well.

As the sun set further, the team worried they were losing light. But after a half hour search, they saw a nose and part of a face peaking above the water.

“It was a real needle-in-a-haystack kind of find,” Kelly told msnbc.com. “He looked like every other bird that was just sitting on the water.”

William was drifting with the current but still heading out to sea. When he saw the search and rescue team, he appeared startled but also exhausted.

They corralled the horse and used boathook to grab his reins. They made a makeshift harness to slip under his saddle and tie to the side of the rescue boat. They wanted to keep him buoyant so he wouldn’t sink and drown from exhaustion.  

The return took two hours, because the horse moved at about a mile an hour. It was also occasionally scary for the rescue team.

“Some of the grunts and noises he was making along the way -- we weren’t sure how he was doing,” Kelly said. “We weren’t sure if he had other problems. He was making noise, thrashing around and other times he’d be completely still.”

One of the firefighters held his head above water and reassured him, Kelly said.

“It’s going to be all right,” the firefighter said, according to Kelly, petting the horse's head.  

Once they hit the beach, the rescue team handed William off to a crew on paddle boats.

Waiting for William was a veterinarian who guided him to a trailer. William is now recuperating.

Peters, who has owned William for a little over a year, told HuffPo that her family was “scared to death we were going to lose him, that he was going to drown.”

“He is absolutely part of our family,” she said.

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Construction at a portion of Santa Clara Valley Medical Center has stopped in San Jose, Calif., because crews have unearthed pine boxes filled with the bodies of those whose families couldn't afford their proper burials, NBC Bay Area has learned.

The pine boxes date back to between 1875 and 1935, and were discovered in February when construction crews were doing seismic survey work, Santa Clara County counsel Michael Rossi said Tuesday.

For more, visit NBCBayArea.com.

He said the county had no idea there was a cemetery on the property.

"It’s a potter’s field or a pauper’s graveyard. Between 1875 and 1935 at Valley Medical Center, people who died indigent, whose families couldn’t be found were buried at this site," Rossi said.

There are as many as 1,445 bodies on the site. The county filed a petition with the court to get permission to remove at least 100 of the pine coffins to make room for construction.

The county is looking into hiring an archaeologist who specializes in this type of find, Rossi said.

If anything identifiable is found, Rossi said they would publish the information in the newspaper to give families time to claim the remains.

After that, the county will ask the court's permission to dispose of the bodies in accordance to law.

A county map from 1932 shows the cemetery, but by 1958 there was no indication it existed. By 1966, there was an employee parking lot on top of the cemetery.

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Updated at 4:55 p.m. ET: California Gov. Jerry Brown on Monday asked state employees to work a four-day, 38-hour week as part of a package of massive spending cuts needed to help the state close an unexpected $15.7 billion budget deficit.

In addition to the unusual four-day workweek — part of a mandated reduction in salaries and benefits to state workers of 5 percent — Brown's proposed budget, which would take effect July 1, also would slash $1.2 billion from the state's Medi-Cal program and more than $2 billion from education.

Brown also urged voters to pass an initiative to raise taxes that he is supporting on the November ballot.

"I am a buoyant optimist," Brown said at a news conference, "but this is the best I can do" about the deficit, which is about $7 billion greater than Brown predicted when he proposed his initial budget in January.

He blamed tax collections that hadn't come in as high as had been expected and billions of dollars in state cuts that have been blocked by lawsuits and federal requirements.

"The budget has lots of funds ... and restraints and rules," Brown said. "It's a pretzel palace of incredible complexity, and that's why it isn't straightforward how you balance the budget."

The tax plan Brown is pushing in November would raise the state sales tax to 7.5 percent from 7.25 percent, which is projected to increase sales tax receipts by about 3.5 percent.

The plan would also raise the income tax on residents earning between $250,000 and $300,000 a year to 10.3 percent from 9.71 percent and to 11.3 percent on people with annual incomes between $350,000 and $500,000 — a 17.7 percent increase over the current rate.

Read the full revised budget (.pdf)

Brown said that if voters don't approve the new taxes in November, cuts to social services, state workers' pay and other spending would be larger. Under that scenario, he said, cuts to education would total $6 billion, and services for people with developmental disabilities would be reduced by $50 million.

"I can't convey how difficult it is to make the cuts we are facing," Assemblyman Roger Dickinson, D-Sacramento, said in an interview with NBC station KCRA of Sacramento, adding that it was inevitable that California would have to raise taxes.

"This is a very, very serious situation that can't be solved simply by cuts," Dickinson said. "We've cut the state general fund budget by about 20 percent over the last three years, so it's not a matter of continuing to cut. We're beyond being into the bone at this point."

Jon Streeter, president of the State Bar of California, said the proposals would gut the state's court system.

"The situation is dire and getting worse," Streeter said. "The entire civil justice system as we know it is in peril."

It isn't clear how the proposed cuts would affect municipalities and social services. A spokesman for Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said city officials were still reviewing the proposals Monday afternoon.

On Saturday, Brown released a YouTube video criticizing previous legislative fixes as "gimmicky."

"We're still recovering from the worst recession since the 1930s," Brown said in the video. "Tax receipts are coming in lower than expected, and the federal government and the courts have blocked us from making billions in necessary budget reductions. This means that we will have to go much further and make cuts far greater than I asked for at the beginning of the year."

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North Coast Marine Mammal Center

Crews were able to untangle a gray whale that had gotten caught in crab pots in Humboldt Bay in California.

A second gray whale entangled in fishing gear along the California coast has been freed.

The latest whale was spotted Tuesday afternoon in Humboldt Bay — south of Eureka, Calif. — with crab pots hanging from its tail fluke.

The U.S. Coast Guard, along with members from Humboldt State University Marine Mammal Stranding Network and the North Coast Marine Mammal Center, spent hours chasing down the animal so they could untangle it.

They were successful in their joint effort Wednesday morning. The rescuers said the young small whale was actually tangled with a buoy and a fishing line as well as the crab pots.

The rescuers said they think the whale only suffered minor injuries. The teams are staying out in the water to make sure it safely gets back into the wild. 

Last month, a 40-ton gray whale was found tangled in fishing line attached to three buoys off the coast of Orange County.

A rescue attempt in Southern California was unsuccessful, until the whale was spotted by a fisherman more than a week later up near Bodega Bay. 

A crab fisherman and his crew used 12-foot bamboo poles with hooks to remove the lines. 

They had no idea of the the whale's plight and only learned that they had rescued an infamous creature after returning to dock and someone asked him about an extra buoy on the boat.

This story originally appeared on NBCBayArea.com. 

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Evan Christian Smith is networking as only an Internet-savvy son with a desperate mission can — to find his father, missing film executive Gavin Smith, who disappeared one week ago seemingly without a trace. 

"plz Help find my Dad. 6'6 220 pounds. Muscular. blond/grey hair. Black mercedes with a surf rack," reads a recent Tweet by the younger Smith, who is a student at University of Southern California.  

The Twitter account and website dedicated to getting out the word and calling for tips have generated an outpouring of interest, support, prayers and retweets, but so far — like the investigation by the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department — haven't turned up substantial leads in the case. 

Smith, 57, 6-foot-6, 210 pounds — a one-time basketball star at UCLA — was last seen leaving a friend's home in the residential LA suburb of Oak Park on the night of May 1, just a few miles from his home.

Colleagues became alarmed with Smith failed to show up at work. His wife reported him missing by 6 p.m. that evening, according to the San Jose Mercury News. 

His car, a black 2000 Mercedes 420E with padded storage racks on the roof and tinted windows, also remains missing.

The Sheriff's Department issued a missing persons alert on Saturday.

"We really don’t have a whole lot more," said Ray Leyva, a commander in the Sheriff’s Department. "We are still asking the public’s help to find the vehicle and or him."

Investigators are also keeping an eye on the social media posts, Leyva said.

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Smith has worked for 20th Century Fox's movie distribution department for nearly 18 years, according to the company, which put out a statement on his disappearance.

"We are extremely worried about our friend and colleague Gavin Smith and are actively doing what we can to assist the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department in their search for him," the company said.

Family members said the missing man apparently had not used his credit cards since his disappearance and they were unable to contact his cell phone, which seems to be off, Reuters reported.

Follow Kari Huus on Facebook

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