HALF MOON BAY, Calif. — When Joaquin Jimenez heard about gunshots on Highway 92, he immediately thought of the mushroom farm.

Jimenez is the vice mayor of this scenic beach town south of San Francisco, but his day job as farmworker program director for a local nonprofit brought him into daily contact with the less glamorous side of the community, as he donated food and blankets to those who harvest vegetables in the network of family farms up and down the coast. And in his years providing help for this predominantly immigrant workforce, he said, the California Terra Garden mushroom farm stood out.