{"id":415772,"date":"2026-07-28T22:55:11","date_gmt":"2026-07-28T22:55:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/415772\/"},"modified":"2026-07-28T22:55:11","modified_gmt":"2026-07-28T22:55:11","slug":"cal-poly-to-honor-kristin-smart-with-new-memorial-grove-30-years-after-her-disappearance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/415772\/","title":{"rendered":"Cal Poly to honor Kristin Smart with new memorial grove 30 years after her disappearance"},"content":{"rendered":"

A new space memorializing Kristin Smart<\/a>, the Stockton native whose 1996 disappearance became one of California’s most infamous missing-person cases, is being created at Cal Poly.<\/p>\n

The university announced Tuesday that Kristin’s Grove will be built near Dexter Lawn on the San Luis Obispo campus.<\/p>\n

Cal Poly says the grove is designed as more than a traditional memorial, giving students and visitors a place to gather, reflect and connect while honoring Smart’s life and legacy.<\/p>\n

“By acknowledging the past and actively building a safer campus for the future, they have demonstrated the kind of compassionate leadership that truly honors Kristin’s life and dreams,” the Smart family said in a statement.<\/p>\n

Smart’s family worked closely with Cal Poly on the project, while students from the university’s College of Architecture and Environmental Design helped design the space.<\/p>\n

Smart was 19 and a freshman at Cal Poly when she disappeared over Memorial Day weekend in 1996 after attending an off-campus party. The Stockton native was last seen walking back toward campus with fellow student Paul Flores.<\/p>\n

Flores was convicted<\/a>\u00a0of first-degree murder in 2022. Smart’s remains have never been found, and investigators have continued searching even after his conviction.<\/p>\n

In May, the San Luis Obispo County Sheriff’s Office spent several days searching the Arroyo Grande home of Flores’ mother, Susan Flores, but no remains were recovered<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Cal Poly’s announcement of Kristin’s Grove comes three years after the university publicly apologized to Smart’s family<\/a>\u00a0for its handling of her disappearance. In 2023, Cal Poly President Jeffrey Armstrong acknowledged the school should have handled the case differently after Smart vanished.<\/p>\n

Construction is expected to be finished by the end of summer, with the grove opening to the public by the beginning of Cal Poly’s fall semester. A formal opening ceremony is expected later in the year.<\/p>\n

\n More from CBS News\n <\/p>\n

In:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A new space memorializing Kristin Smart, the Stockton native whose 1996 disappearance became one of California’s most infamous…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":415773,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[127842,121,123,122,483],"class_list":["post-415772","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sacramento","tag-kristin-smart","tag-sacramento","tag-sacramento-headlines","tag-sacramento-news","tag-stockton"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/415772","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=415772"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/415772\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/415773"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=415772"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=415772"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=415772"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}