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To place an obituary, please include the information from the obituary checklist below in an email to obits@pioneerpress.com. There is no option to place them through our website at this time. Feel free to contact our obituary desk at 651-228-5263 with any questions. General Information: Your full name, Address (City, State, Zip Code), Phone number, And an alternate phone number (if any) Obituary Specification: Name of Deceased, Obituary Text, A photo in a JPEG or PDF file is preferable, TIF and other files are accepted, we will contact you if there are any issues with the photo. Ad Run dates There is a discount for running more than one day, but this must be scheduled on the first run date to apply. If a photo is used, it must be used for both days for the discount to apply, contact us for more information. Policies: Verification of Death: In order to publish obituaries a name and phone number of funeral home/cremation society is required. We must contact the funeral home/cremation society handling the arrangements during their business hours to verify the death. If the body of the deceased has been donated to the University of Minnesota Anatomy Bequest Program, or a similar program, their phone number is required for verification. Please allow enough time to contact them especially during their limited weekend hours. A death certificate is also acceptable for this purpose but only one of these two options are necessary. Guestbook and Outside Websites: We are not allowed to reference other media sources with a guestbook or an obituary placed elsewhere when placing an obituary in print and online. We may place a website for a funeral home or a family email for contact instead; contact us with any questions regarding this matter. Obituary Process: Once your submission is completed, we will fax or email a proof for review prior to publication in the newspaper. This proof includes price and days the notice is scheduled to appear. Please review the proof carefully. We must be notified of errors or changes before the notice appears in the Pioneer Press based on each day’s deadlines. After publication, we will not be responsible for errors that may occur after final proofing. Online: Changes to an online obituary can be handled through the obituary desk. Call us with further questions. Payment Procedure: Pre-payment is required for all obituary notices prior to publication by the deadline specified below in our deadline schedule. Please call 651-228-5263 with your payment information after you have received the proof and approved its contents. Credit Card: Payment accepted by phone only due to PCI (Payment Card Industry) regulations EFT: Check by phone. Please provide your routing number and account number. Rates: The minimum charge is $162 for the first 12 lines. Every line after the first 12 is $12. If the ad is under 12 lines it will be charged the minimum rate of $162. Obituaries including more than 40 lines will receive a 7.5% discount per line. On a second run date, receive a 20% discount off both the first and second placement. Place three obituaries and the third placement will be free of charge. Each photo published is $125 per day. For example: 2 photos in the paper on 2 days would be 4 photo charges at $500. Deadlines: Please follow deadline times to ensure your obituary is published on the day requested. Hours Deadline (no exceptions) Ad Photos MEMORIAM (NON-OBITUARY) REQUEST Unlike an obituary, Memoriam submissions are remembrances of a loved one who has passed. The rates for a memoriam differ from obituaries. Please call or email us for more memoriam information Please call 651-228-5280 for more information. HOURS: Monday – Friday 8:00AM – 5:00PM (CLOSED WEEKENDS and HOLIDAYS) Please submit your memoriam ad to memoriams@pioneerpress.com or call 651-228-5280. By MARK KENNEDY, Associated Press Late-night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel is mourning the death of one of his oldest friends — his show’s bandleader, Cleto Escobedo III. Kimmel announced Escobedo’s death Tuesday on Instagram, saying “that we are heartbroken is an understatement.” Escobedo was 59. Escobedo and Kimmel met as children in Las Vegas, where they grew up across the street from each other. “We just met one day on the street, and there were a few kids on the street, and him and I just became really close friends, and we kind of had the same sense of humor. We just became pals, and we’ve been pals ever since,” Escobedo said in a 2022 interview for Texas Tech University’s Southwest Collection oral history archive, disclosing that he and Kimmel were huge fans of David Letterman as kids. Escobedo would grow up to become a professional musician, specializing in the saxophone, and touring with Earth, Wind and Fire’s Phillip Bailey and Paula Abdul. He recorded with Marc Anthony, Tom Scott and Take Six. When Kimmel got his own ABC late-night talk show in 2003, he lobbied for Escobedo to lead the house band on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” “Of course I wanted great musicians, but I wanted somebody I had chemistry with,” Kimmel told WABC in 2015. “And there’s nobody in my life I have better chemistry with than him.” In 2016, on Escobedo’s 50th birthday, Kimmel dedicated a segment to his friend, recalling pranks with a BB gun or mooning people from the back of his mom’s car. “Cleto had a bicycle with a sidecar attached to it. We called it the side hack. I would get in the sidecar and then Cleto would drive me directly into garbage cans and bushes,” Kimmel recalled. News of Escobedo’s death comes after Thursday’s episode of “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” was abruptly canceled. David Duchovny, Joe Keery and Madison Beer were set as the show’s guests. The date and cause of Escobedo’s death weren’t immediately known. Escobedo’s father is also a member of the Kimmel house band and plays tenor and alto saxophones. In January 2022, the father-son duo celebrated nearly two decades of performing on-screen together. “Jimmy asked me, ‘Who are we going to get in the band?’ I said, ‘Well, my normal guys,’ and he knew my guys because he had been coming to see us and stuff before he was famous, just to come support me and whatever. I’d invite him to gigs, and if he didn’t have anything to do he’d come check it out, so he knew my guys,” Escobedo recounted in the 2022 interview. “Then he just said, ‘Hey, man, what about your dad? Wouldn’t that be kind of cool?’ I was like, ‘That would be way cool.’” In the 2022 interview, Escobedo said the bandleader job had one major benefit: family time. “Touring and all that stuff is fun, but it’s more of a young man’s game. Touring, also, too, is not really conducive for family life. I’ve learned over the years, being on the road and watching how hard it is, leaving your kids for so long. Sometimes they’re babies; you come back and then they’re talking, it’s like, ‘What?’” he said. Escobedo is also survived by his wife Lori and their two children. “The fact that we got to work together every day is a dream neither of us could ever have imagined would come true. Cherish your friends and please keep Cleto’s wife, children and parents in your prayers,” Kimmel wrote.
