What makes you think it's AI-generated? My parents have been reading the monitor for decades. The paper always struck me as trustworthy and even-keeled. This is exactly the sort of article they've been publishing in "home forum" for as long as I can remember.
Probably the handful of dashes (not even em dashes!) and the sentences "It was never just about the candy. It was about being together." Superficially these look like the AI markers people are always calling out, but only superficially.