Nurses — those indispensable healthcare workers in desperately short supply nationwide — are streaming into California, a striking contrast to the recent flight of thousands of frustrated residents to other parts of the country.

And in many ways, what’s drawing them to the state is not so different from why others are leaving, namely, the high cost of living and progressive policies.

California’s famously expensive lifestyle has driven away many residents in search of cheaper housing and lower taxes. But for highly sought nurses, that’s translated into the biggest salaries in the nation.

Registered nurses in California on average make more than $133,000 a year, 50% more than nationwide, according to federal labor data.

The top 10 U.S. metro areas for nurse pay are all in California, with the Bay Area leading the way with an average annual salary of almost $165,000 and nearby areas not far behind.

The state’s liberal policies, regulations, strong unions and generous healthcare systems — all frequent targets of conservatives at the national level — have also played a role in helping California combat a nursing shortage that plagues most of the nation, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic.

California is the only state to mandate minimum nurse staffing levels at hospitals. Experts say those nurse-to-patient ratios, for every hospital department, have helped reduce the increasingly heavy workloads that are driving many to quit or retire early.

Leo Perez has been a nurse at Pomona Valley Hospital Medical Center for 13 years, most recently in the ER department.

(Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times)

In critical care units and labor and delivery, state law requires at least one nurse for every two patients. It’s one nurse per four patients in pediatrics, and one to five for the general medical surgical floor.

“What a difference the mandate makes,” said Lynsey Kwon, a registered nurse who recently moved to California.

After graduating from a Virginia nursing school in 2019, she went to work at a public hospital in Lynchburg, Va. While the hospital’s internal policy was to have one nurse for every three stroke patients, the reality more often than not was that she cared for four patients and sometimes five at the same time, she said. COVID-19 made things worse.

Two years ago, Kwon, 27, moved back to her native California and took a job at Pomona Valley Hospital Medical Center.

Work at the 412-bed hospital, a trauma center serving parts of three counties, is often hectic. Yet Kwon says that in her two years there, she’s never taken on more patients than the state-mandated ratio.

She earned $25 an hour when she left Virginia in 2021. Today she makes almost twice that.

“I don’t know if I could work anywhere else,” said Kwon, who got into nursing because she was in and out of the hospital as a sick child and saw the difference a nurse could make.

Between 2020 and 2022, about 30,000 more registered nurses moved into California than out to other states, according to estimates by Joanne Spetz, director of the Philip R. Lee Institute for Health Policy Studies at UC San Francisco, which surveys the state’s nursing workforce and tracks licensing data.

Spetz said the nurses coming into the state tend to be younger and less experienced than those leaving. And by most accounts, California still has a shortage of registered nurses.

But the overwhelmingly positive inflow helped expand California’s registered nurse population to 388,463 last year, up 8.3% from 2019, according to a UC San Francisco research report. It probably would have been greater if California were part of a 41-state compact that makes license transferring easier.

The influx of nurses stands in sharp contrast to what has been an accelerated flight of Californians overall since the pandemic. Increased remote-work opportunities have fueled more moves to Nevada, Texas and other states where the cost of living is cheaper and the politics more conservative.

When it comes to nursing, however, other states are beginning to copy California, which began to implement the staffing policy nearly 20 years ago.

Oregon’s Legislature recently passed broad minimum nurse-patient ratios for hospitals, which will take effect in June. Massachusetts and New York approved similar requirements but limited them to critical units. Legislators in more than a dozen other states have introduced various nurse staffing requirements, despite often heavy lobbying against such laws by hospitals.

Jennifer Mensik Kennedy, a nursing professor in Eugene, Ore., and president of the American Nurses Assn., expects the Oregon staffing law to “absolutely help hospitals recruit nurses.”

Yet in light of the nationwide shortage, she noted that gains in one state might only exacerbate needs in others.

Nationwide there are some 5 million people with active registered nurse licenses; only about 70% are employed in nursing full time, Kennedy said.

With the pandemic, many more left the increasingly taxing work of bedside nursing, taking jobs at doctors’ offices or clinics or as case managers.

Older nurses in droves opted for early retirement. Nationally, the median age of nurses is now 46, a full six years lower than in 2020, said Maryann Alexander, head of nursing regulation at the National Council of State Boards of Nursing.

Nurse turnover nationally, although easing a bit since last year, remains rampant, at 22.5%, the American Nurses Assn says. It’s been especially high at nursing homes and acute-care hospitals.

Moreover, nurses — hailed as heroes early in the pandemic — now complain they often feel unappreciated, by patients and hospital administrators alike. Nurse walkouts are more common today, as Garfield Medical Center in Monterey Park saw last month over staffing, workplace conditions and pay.

“I was told you were easily replaceable,” said Jessica Sites, 46, who worked for more than 20 years as a labor and delivery nurse at a hospital in east-central Florida but quit last year. Sites said she was so overloaded that she usually went without lunch breaks. And the problem wasn’t just about clinical care.

“Majority of my day I felt my back was turned from patients because I had so many boxes I had to check,” Sites said, referring to administrative duties and paperwork.

Hospital groups argue that government nurse-staffing regulations aren’t necessary, saying many medical centers use a team-based approach that allows for greater nurse independence and flexibility to meet the ebbs and flows of patient cases. Mandated ratios, they say, would backfire and worsen the nursing shortage.

But Linda Aiken, director of the Center for Health Outcomes and Policy Research at the University of Pennsylvania, says the opposite happened in California.

When the state’s minimum nursing ratios took effect in January 2004, California had a dearth of nurses. In two years, she said, the shortage was over.

Aiken said studies suggest that California’s nurse-patients ratios also have helped improve health outcomes. Patients in California receive three hours more care per day than those in other states, she said.

But there have been some negative effects and problems as well.

As California hospitals hired more registered nurses, some offset the increased costs by cutting the number of nursing assistants who carry out tasks such as changing bedsheets and bathing patients, UCSF’s Spetz said. Hospital charity care also slowed.

Union leaders say stronger enforcement of the ratios is needed. And many California hospitals still struggle with being short-staffed, especially those in rural areas.

Kaweah Health Medical Center in Visalia, about 40 miles south of Fresno, has a nurse vacancy rate in double digits. Kaweah’s chief executive, Gary Herbst, says he’s tried to help boost the state’s nursing profession through partnerships with local colleges, resident programs and scholarships. “We really want to grow our own,” Herbst said.

He also sends his staff to the Midwest to recruit in the dead of winter. Even then, he noted, it’s hard to attract nurses to move to the more remote region in the Central Valley.

Still, on the whole California has an edge in recruiting nurses.

No other state comes close in pay, a reflection of the strong unionization of nurses, competition from Kaiser Permanente, as well as California’s high living costs. Nurses in New York make on average 30% less than their counterparts in California, and in Texas it’s almost 60% less, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data for May 2022.

And the state’s better working conditions are not only attracting new nurses to the state, but they are also helping to keep some from leaving.

Married nurses Leo and Marlene Perez, who worked side by side for five years at Pomona Valley Hospital Medical Center‘s ER unit, have been mulling over a move to Arizona, where they’d like to eventually retire.

Their daughter, also a nurse, already works in Tucson. But they’ve been reluctant to make the move.

Leo Perez, who is 49 and president of SEIU Local 121RN, said he’d be looking at a pay cut of about $33 an hour. Moreover, he doesn’t want to give up the benefits of California’s more favorable workplace climate for nurses.

“I don’t know if I could work in an acute-care setting without nursing ratios,” Perez said, noting that nurses at his daughter’s hospital in Arizona sometimes care for seven patients at a time. “She has horror stories.”

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Cops want to question a former handyman lover of slain Queens mom Orsolya Gaal who had intimate knowledge of her home — including where the family kept a spare key, The Post has learned.

The man, who has not yet been formally identified as a person of interest or suspect in the gruesome slaying, is believed to have had a romantic relationship with the 51-year-old married mother of two before the affair went south, law enforcement sources said.

It’s unclear when the relationship began and ended, but according to sources familiar with the case, the man knew where the family kept a spare key at their well-kept Forest Hills Tudor and would have been able to access the home without breaking in.

Gaal was stabbed nearly 60 times sometime in the week hours Saturday inside the front of the home, with her corpse then taken to the basement, sources and authorities have said. She was stashed in a black Bauer hockey bag similar to one belonging to her kids, and the pouch containing her body was dragged outside and dumped about a half-mile away, leaving behind a trail of blood, cops said.

Police believe the killer knew Gaal because there were no signs of a break-in, and considering the violent nature of the crime, they suspect the attack was personal and fueled by anger specifically toward her, sources said.

Police are looking to question a man who believe they had a past relationship with slain Queens mom Orsolya Gaal, according to sources.orsolya.gaal.9/Facebook

The man has not yet been named a suspect or person of interest in the fatal stabbing.Howard Klein/Facebook

But the grisly slaying did not appear to be pre-meditated, sources said.

“[Detectives] don’t think it was a planned murder,” a law enforcement source said.

“He left a blood trail for five blocks from the house,” the source said.

“It was like a trail of bread crumbs.

“If you want to kill somebody, you try to make it a little cleaner, be a little more prepared. He didn’t go with something to move her body. He took something from the house,” the source said.

Gaal’s husband, Howard Klein, and older son were away touring colleges during the attack.orsolya.gaal.9/Facebook

“I’m sure with that kind of blood, there’s lots of DNA there,” the source added. “The killer’s DNA has gotta be in that blood. It’s not a clean scene.”

Cops are also looking to speak with several men Gaal had been texting with before her death, sources said, as detectives plastered posters around the neighborhood offering a $3,500 reward in exchange for tips.

“UP TO $3,500 REWARD FOR INFORMATION REGARDING A HOMICIDE,” the poster states in bold red letters beside a photo of Gaal’s home and the number for Crime Stoppers.

Gaal went out with friends the night of her death and also spent 40 minutes alone in a local bar.orsolya.gaal.9/Facebook

Gaal’s body being removed from her house in a duffel bag.

“On Saturday, April 16th, 2022, at approximately 12:40am… An unknown perpetrator stabbed a 51-year-old Orsolya Gaal multiple times causing her death. The victim was found inside a duffel bag along Metropolitan Avenue in Queens,” the poster reads.

NYPD sources told The Post on Tuesday that detectives had asked the Queens District Attorney’s Office for a search warrant shortly after tracing the blood back to Gaal’s house Saturday morning.

But investigators weren’t given the warrant until early evening, costing them valuable time in gathering evidence, sources said.

The DA’s office did not immediately respond to a post request for comment.

On Tuesday afternoon, the family’s electrician, Arrjuna Jack, stopped by Gaal’s home, which is still wrapped in crime-scene tape, after he heard that she’d been killed on the news.

“I’m very started,” said Jack, 30, adding that he was frequently at the family’s home to do electrical work, as well as some power-washing and painting.

Police believe the person would have knowledge of Gaal’s home since it was not broken into.Kevin C. Downs for The New York Post

“I know her very well. Her husband’s very nice. Her two sons … are very nice as well. …It’s very sad.”

Jack called Gaal “very beautiful” and said that as far as he could tell, the family didn’t have any issues.

“She’s a very happy, jolly person all the time. … I see her jogging all the time,” Jack said.

“They’re a very beautiful, quiet family. Very happy all the time.”

On Friday evening, Gaal headed out with friends to see a show at Lincoln Center before returning to Queens around midnight and hitting a bar in her neighborhood, where she hung out alone for about 40 minutes, apparently waiting for someone, police sources said.

NYPD officers stand outside Gaal’s Forest Hills home where she was killed.Kevin C. Downs for The New York Post

Samson Cornejo, whose father owns 5 Burro Cafe on Austin Street, said Gaal was a regular at the watering hole but added he’s not sure if she was there late Friday.

“Her house is a 10-minute walk. … She comes here, y’know, she’s been here before. She used to come with some Russian ladies,” Cornejo told The Post on Tuesday.

“I saw the bag, where they found it, after I left that night. I drove by it after leaving here. I couldn’t believe when I heard. It smacked me when I saw her picture!”

Gaal’s 13-year-old son was home when cops went to the house Saturday morning after his mother’s body was discovered. The boy was upstairs at the time, and there is no indication he left the house at all overnight, sources said.

Gaal’s husband and 17-year-old son were out of state on a college tour at the time.

A tribute to Gaal outside her home in Forest Hills.Elder Ordonez / SplashNews.com

In May 2020, Gaal was briefly reported missing to police after her husband called 911 and said she’d gone for a walk around midnight and wasn’t home by the time he woke up the next morning.

About two months later, she posted an ominous message to a community Facebook page asking for information on how to buy pepper spray.

“Given the recent attack on a woman in Forest Park and the general uptick of crime and seedy characters in the neighborhood, I sought info here to get mace / pepper spray for my runs in the park,” the post states.

“Be safe out there!” she wrote.

Additional reporting by Tina Moore, Larry Celona, ​​Kevin Sheehan and Steven Vago

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SAN FRANCISCO (BCN) — One suspect is in custody and two others remain at large after a home invasion robbery and attack in San Francisco’s Mission District that sent a 24-year-old man to the hospital Wednesday afternoon, according to police.

The robbery was reported at about 3:45 pm at a home in the 1800 block of Mission Street, where the suspects forced their way inside and one assaulted the victim.

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The suspects took items and fled, but officers were able to locate and arrest one of them, a 42-year-old man whose name has not been released. The other two suspects, believed to be men in their 20s, have not been found, police said.

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The officers recovered the property belonging to the victim, who was treated at a hospital for injuries not considered life-threatening, according to police.

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MOUNTAIN VIEW (CBS SF) – A Mountain View community volunteer who works with teenagers was arrested for indecent acts on two teenagers and police said there may be more victims.

An investigation opened after a 17-year-old at the Gateway Neighborhood Center in Sunnyvale reported that the suspect requested inappropriate content from the teenager. While the detectives were interviewing the 17-year-old, they were informed by staff at the center of another incident that occurred last weekend between a 13-year-old and the suspect.

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Citing the suspect’s regular interactions with children, the detectives located the suspect, who lived in a motor home in the secure parking lot on Shoreline Blvd. and Crittenden Lane. Rafael Madrigal, also known as “Rafa”, was arrested at his home without incident, according to police.

“Our children are our weakest and it is our responsibility as a community to do everything we can to protect them,” said Lt. Armando Espitia of Mountain View Police in a statement. “This trust and this security cannot and must not be violated.”

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Rafael “Rafa” madrigal. (Mountain View Police Department)

Madrigal was detained in Santa Clara County Jail on suspicion of indecent and lascivious conduct with a mansion and molesting or molesting a minor. According to prison records, he is due to appear in court on Wednesday.

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Police said Madrigal worked with teenagers on a regular basis and there could be more casualties. Anyone with information about the case or a potential victim is encouraged to contact Detective Christine Powell by email at Christine.powell@mountainview.gov.

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