The photo posted on Facebook last week by a Shasta County flight school shows nine smiling students — all of whom appear to be Asian — posing around a small aircraft.
It was meant to celebrate the students, who had recently finished a training program at IASCO Flight Training Inc., on the grounds of the Redding Regional Airport.
But in the comments section, an official at a nearby town posted an altered image, with red arrows pointing to each of the students and the words: “China’s Peoples Liberation Army / Redding CA.”
Now, school officials say the Jan. 21 remarks by Anderson City Councilman Darin Hale — who claimed on social media that he was tracking IASCO aircraft and made vague claims of Chinese espionage — have put their students in danger at a time of heightened tensions over immigration.
“In the current climate, this type of language creates a tangible safety concern for individuals who live, work, and train in this community,” Miranda Vorhis, the school’s operations manager, wrote in a letter to the Anderson City Council last week.
She added: “When such rhetoric comes from an elected official, it does not remain abstract. It legitimizes suspicion, fuels misinformation, and encourages members of the public to view students and educators as targets rather than neighbors.”
Hale did not respond to a request for comment.
Hale, who works in the construction industry, was elected in 2024 to serve on the City Council in Anderson, a city of 11,300 people just south of Redding.
His social media account as are filled with pro-Trump commentary and screenshots of flight-tracking maps. His accounts also include posts touting conspiracy theories, such as the claim that the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, was an “inside job.”
In recent days, Hale has posted about IASCO Flight School numerous times on Facebook and X. He has claimed the school has nefarious ties to China’s military and that members of the public who have expressed concerns have been ridiculed.
“Now that I have been elected to be their voice I intend to use it. No matter the risk,” Hale wrote on X on Jan. 25.
The councilman wrote that he was suspicious of flights near critical local infrastructure, including the Shasta Dam and Whiskeytown Dam.
On his Facebook page, Hale wrote that he was not advocating for students to get hurt but that he believed the Chinese military was “in our backyard collecting information on us and our infrastructure.”
In an interview with The Times on Tuesday, Vorhis called Hale’s claims false and derogatory.
School staff, she said, undergo regular Transportation Security Administration training “to help us recognize potential threats” and “absolutely would” remove any student who raised safety concerns.
Vorhis said students fly over the Shasta Dam as part of their training, not for intelligence gathering. She noted that the massive dam is not exactly secret — it has free public tours, and people can both walk across it and fish near it.
Vorhis said Hale sends messages or tags the school in a social media post “every few months.” Last week, she said, school officials successfully petitioned Facebook to remove some of his comments.
“For the most part we’ve been able to just ignore it, but when he singled out individual students, we felt unsafe,” she said.
In a public response to Hale’s Facebook comment with the altered photo, the school account wrote: “If you wish to continue this discussion, I suggest educating yourself first. The students pictured above are not even Chinese.”
The school account added: “As for what intelligence you believe could be gathered flying Cessnas in Redding, California… That assumption speaks for itself.”
Hale responded with links to the right-wing news and opinion outlets Breitbart and Newsmax.
The school’s post says the pictured students are part of a class affiliated with the Hong Kong International Aviation Academy, which has a partnership with the Redding school.
Vorhis told The Times that the Hong Kong academy sends students from all over the world.
About half of IASCO’s roughly 100 students, she said, are from other countries. The school operates in Redding, she said, because it is one of the sunniest cities in the United States, allowing for more than 300 flying days per year.
In her letter to the Anderson City Council, Vorhis said international students are “authorized through established federal processes” and are subject to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and TSA oversight, including background checks and biometric collection.
Vorhis urged the Anderson City Council to “reflect carefully on the conduct and public communications” of its elected leaders.
Anderson City Manager Joey Forseth-Deshais told The Times that Hale’s social media comments were “made in his capacity as a private citizen” and were “not associated with the City of Anderson at all.”
He said he did not know if the City Council would discuss the comments or its social media policy in future meetings.
In recent years, Shasta County has been a hotbed for hard-right governance, election denialism and conspiracy theories.
In 2023, the Shasta County Board of Supervisors voted to dump the county’s Dominion voting machines, citing discredited allegations of voter fraud pushed by President Trump. Elected leaders tried unsuccessfully to require hand-counting of ballots for their more than 110,000 registered voters.
Even the Shasta Mosquito and Vector Control District board of trustees — on which Hale recently served as president — has been the subject of controversy.
In 2023, the county supervisors appointed right-wing political activist Jon Knight, who warned of mosquitoes becoming “flying syringes that will mass vaccinate the population,” to the vector control board.
Knight — a hydroponic gardening supply store owner who was pictured outside the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021— was chosen over a retired epidemiologist who was once the county’s public health director.
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