An investigator with the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner has been charged with stealing a gold necklace and rare coins from two dead people while on the job.
The Los Angeles County district attorney’s office announced Wednesday that Adrian Muñoz, 34, has been charged with one felony count of grand theft and one misdemeanor count of petty theft. Muñoz had been with the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner since 2018, according to the county’s salary database.
Prosecutors said Muñoz stole a gold crucifix necklace off the body of a warehouse worker who died of a heart attack on the job this January. After the family reported the theft, investigators searched Muñoz’s desk and found antique coins along with a receipt that belonged to a man whose death he had investigated in November of last year.
Kristopher Gay, the deputy district attorney handling the case, said an investigation is still ongoing and it’s possible more alleged thefts could come to light.
“He’s been involved in many cases,” he said at a news conference announcing the charge. “How many potential victims there could be I can’t say.”
Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Odey Ukpo said he was “very disappointed” and had suspended Muñoz Tuesday.
“We rely on the trust of the community,” he said. “Certainly, this will have shaken that trust.”
The suspension comes roughly 11months after the family of one of the victims, Miguel Solorio, said they first asked the medical examiner’s office about the loss of the necklace.
Solorio had been a roughly 10-year employee of Hylands, working in a warehouse where homeopathic products were loaded, unloaded, managed and shipped.
An employee of Hylands, who asked for anonymity to talk about their employer citing fear of retribution, told The Times that Muñoz had been called to take care of Solorio’s body. According to the employee, a security camera at the warehouse caught Muñoz removing the necklace from the body, placing it in a glove and then slipping it into his medical bag. The footage also showed Muñoz taking cash from the front pocket of the man’s pants and, again, slipping it into a glove in his medical bag.
Rosalba Solorio, Miguel’s daughter-in-law, who also worked at Hylands, said a representative of the district attorney’s office had called the family to tell them that Muñoz had been arrested.
“We’re happy the investigation didn’t just fall through the cracks,” she said. “They actually did something about it and hopefully we’ll see justice for my father-in-law.”
She said her father-in-law had worn the distinctive gold necklace for a few decades.
“Everybody knew he had it — he was recognized for it,” she said of the cross, which she said had more sentimental value than monetary value.
She said losing Solorio had broken her husband and mother-in-law.
“Finding out what happened with the chain was insult to injury,” she said. “Somebody who should be helping the family did this, and it’s just unexplainable.”
Solorio said her father-in-law often carried cash with him as well. When the family inquired as to what happened to the necklace and the cash, they were told that nothing was found on the body. She said they were later told the necklace was available, but when her husband and mother-in-law went to retrieve it at the medical examiner’s office, the necklace they were handed was not Solorio’s.
She said the necklace has still not been returned to them.
If your uncle isn’t buzzing off 12 Miller Lites and your father isn’t going full dad mode with his jokes, then you’re doing Thanksgiving wrong. We’ve collected some of the most insane, wholesome, cringeworthy, and chaotic Thanksgiving jokes for you and yours to enjoy around the dinner table.
After years of traveling abroad for work, I found myself grounded last year, brought home to Southern California not out of nostalgia but out of necessity. My sister and I made the life-altering decision to purchase a single-story house for our ailing, octogenarian parents after recognizing that they could no longer care for each other. My father had multiple physical ailments, while my mother was gradually slipping away due to Alzheimer’s.
My brother moved in, and my sister, a nurse, visits from the Bay Area one week a month. Since my father died earlier this year, my siblings and I have taken turns caring for my mother, meticulously coordinating our schedules to also accommodate work and personal commitments. We went from being successful professionals in our fields to becoming round-the-clock caregivers in our late 50s.
My siblings and I are just a few of the estimated 38 million unpaid caregivers in the United States. We are part of a larger American and global cohort affected by the dramatic aging of the population, the inadequate patchwork of public and private services, and modern migration patterns driven by caregiving.
Like many people in our situation, we found that our parents, once the pillars of our family, suddenly relied on us for their very existence. We feel critically ill-equipped for a huge responsibility that is taking an immense toll on our mental and emotional well-being. Despite being in the company of countless others facing similar challenges in our generation, we have an overwhelming sense of aloneness. Caregivers often grapple with a loss of identity, strained relationships and scarcity of time to rest and recreate
Over the past century, global life expectancy has doubled. Every day, some 10,000 baby boomers turn 65, and by 2040, the number of Americans 85 and older will have doubled in less than two decades. But disparities persist along demographic and economic lines: White Americans tend to live longer than people of color, women outlive men, and the richest percentile of men enjoys 15 more years of life on average than the poorest.
Women, who live longer but have faced historical economic disenfranchisement, often end up on the brink of poverty in their later years; for many, their children are their last hope. My mother would have faced a grim fate if not for me and my siblings.
Children, particularly daughters, often bear the brunt of elder care, child care and other domestic responsibilities within families and worldwide. Many are forced to leave their careers to manage these overwhelming responsibilities.
Bureau of Labor Statistics data indicate particularly high demand for one category of caregivers: home health and personal care aides. Many elderly people and their families would prefer that they age at home, driving demand for people who can care for them there. These jobs are expected to become available at an average rate of more than 700,000 a year to meet the unprecedented growth of the senior population. The American Immigration Council has predicted that by 2031, it will be the country’s largest occupation.
Unfortunately, while the demand is growing, the workforce is shrinking. More than 600,000 such workers are expected to leave their positions this decade for various reasons. The field suffers from high turnover due to low wages, high stress and frequent physical injury compared with other occupations. Gov. Gavin Newsom recently vetoed a bill to apply workplace safety standards to household workers.
Immigrants fill a disproportionate share of these jobs, accounting for 36.5% of those providing home care services as of 2019. My family and culture are part of this global pattern. Caregiving is part of our national identity as Filipinos.
Caregivers are among the Philippines’ top exports to the United States and beyond. As of 2019, nearly 200,000 Filipino nurses were working abroad. Other developing regions exporting caregivers include Central and South America, South Asia, and East and West Africa.
The reasons for such migration elude many Americans. Terms like “chain migration” depict immigrants as a burden. In reality, they play a pivotal role in sustaining our extended families. Our reliance on migration for caregiving is both intimate and vital but also poorly understood and ultimately unsustainable in its current form.
The global economics of caregiving are, as my family has discovered, challenging. We explored the possibility of petitioning for my niece, a trained caregiver, to come to the U.S. to help. As part of that process, the U.S. Department of Labor reviewed our job description and set the prevailing wage at $14 an hour. While we’re hurtling toward a future with lots more home healthcare jobs, they’re not currently good jobs.
Case in point: While we would have been required only to pay California’s minimum wage of $15.50 an hour, the living wage for a single adult in San Bernardino County has been estimated at $18.86. For someone like my mother requiring round-the-clock care, $18.86 an hour amounts to $165,000 a year, a burden few can bear.
Social Security, Medicaid, long-term care insurance and other available means of assistance remain woefully insufficient. Long-term care insurance is typically expensive and inadequate. The average monthly Social Security check is about $1,700. Medicaid can cover nursing home care if one qualifies, but my mother and many others don’t. And in California, nursing homes cost more than $9,000 a month on average, while assisted living facilities typically cost $5,000 to $7,000 monthly.
The 2018 RAISE (Recognize, Assist, Include, Support and Engage) Family Caregivers Act directed the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to develop a national strategy to provide training and resources, financial and workplace support, and respite for caregivers. But it didn’t address the unmet demand for home health aides.
My siblings and I have discovered that despite making significant life changes and financial investments, conducting thorough research, and accessing public and private support for caregivers, we still lack the resources we need to provide my mother with the dignity, loving care and safety she deserves after 81 years on this planet, over 40 of them as a nurse. Placing her in a facility, especially after she lost her husband of 59 years, doesn’t seem like an option in our culture. Hiring home health and personal care aides looks like our only choice.
How can we meet the growing demand for these workers? To start, immigration policies should be reformed. The State Department’s cap on visas for workers deemed unskilled, including healthcare aides, is far too low. A special expedited visa could be established for foreign home health aides, including the undocumented health workers already here. The government could extend the guest worker visa program for agricultural workers to include them.
Additionally, home health aides need living wages to support themselves and their families. And unpaid family caregivers need financial and respite support to navigate the long, exhausting and costly challenges they often face. Only government subsidies are likely to make that possible.
To help all Americans age with grace, we have to recognize and support the vital contributions of the immigrants, families and other caretakers who can literally save our lives.
Gemma Bulos is a social entrepreneur, educator and Public Voices Fellow on Advancing the Rights of Women and Girls with the OpEd Project and Equality Now.
My closest brush with motherhood was an intense 24 hours fostering an orphaned baby owl monkey in the Peruvian Amazon in 2009. According to Charles Darwin, my maternal drive should have transformed me into an intuitively wise and selfless nurse. But the truth was I felt quite traumatized—fretful, exhausted, and for the sake of my defiled and defecated hair alone (the baby was happiest when clinging to my head), uninclined to repeat the ordeal ever again. I was 39 at the time and wrestling with whether I should be having children myself. My night with the owl monkey reinforced my suspicion that I was not cut out for motherhood.
Females have long been equated with motherhood, as if no other role existed. But my research about motherhood in the animal kingdom taught me that maternal instinct is a long-standing myth, created by men, that reduces females to identikit automatons and belittles the complexities of motherhood.
Firstly, maternal instinct assumes caring for young is the sole responsibility of the female. In the owl monkey’s case, his mother would have suckled him every few hours. But after each feeding she would have driven him away, quite unsentimentally, by biting his tail, leaving his father to take on the heavy job of carrying him 90% of the time.
The commitment to childcare demonstrated by owl monkey fathers is admittedly not the norm amongst mammals (only one in ten species exhibit direct male care) but once females are liberated from the physiological responsibilities of pregnancy and lactation, dads become much more devoted. Amongst birds, biparental care is the overwhelming majority with 90% of avian couples sharing the load. Slide back along the evolutionary scale and paternal care becomes not only more common, but customary. Amongst fish, it’s single dads that do all the nursing in almost two thirds of species, with moms doing little more than dumping eggs and disappearing. Some, like the male seahorse even give birth.
It’s a similar story with amphibians, which display a range of parental care strategies from single dads to single moms to co-parenting. Flashy little poison frogs, for example, make for surprisingly dedicated parents transporting tadpoles to a safe water source on their back like a wriggling knapsack. This marathon is mostly performed by males but can be females or even both. Lauren O’Connell, assistant professor of biology at Stanford recognized this variability offered a unique opportunity to examine the neural circuitry controlling parental care. She discovered it is identical across the sexes.
The same story is true in mammals. Catherine Dulac Higgins, professor of molecular and cellular biology at Harvard, uncovered the same switch for parenting in the brains of mice. So, it’s not that one sex is programmed to provide care, both males and females retain the neural architecture to drive this urge. Dulac has yet to discover the trigger for this parental instinct, but she assumes it will be a complex mixture of internal and external cues.
The impulse to parent may be hard-wired, but the bespoke actions it elicits go way beyond mere instinct. “We are so simplistic in the way we see things as being either male-specific or female-specific” Higgins told me. “If you look around, whether it’s in humans or in any animal, not all behave the same. Not all females are equally maternal. There is enormous variability.”
The pioneering scientist Jeanne Altmann was the first to provide evidence. Her 40-year baboon study has revealed these working moms spend 70% of each day making a living by walking several kilometres a day in search of food. When a female gives birth, there is no down time to recover. Though exhausted from the effort, she must keep up with her troop, carrying her infant while walking on her remaining three limbs. If the infant is not carried in the correct position, it cannot suckle and can quickly dehydrate and die.
Mastering this technique can be especially challenging for first time moms, which are often puzzled by their infant’s distress. Altmann remembers one young mother whose struggle to nurse had fatal consequences. “Vee’s first infant, Vicky, was not able to get on the nipple during her first day of life; her mother carried her upside down, even dragging her and bumping her on the ground for much of the day.” Although Vee, like most first-timers picked up the ropes within a few days, it was too late. Vicky died within a month. Such deaths are not unusual. Amongst primates, mortality rates for first born infants are up to 60% higher than for subsequent siblings.
But not all baboon mothers are born equal. Males may duke it out for their alpha position, but females also inhabit a rigid female aristocracy, worthy of British nobility. Status is inherited and laced with privilege.
Daughters born into baboon nobility have the advantage of their mother’s social connections—a network of protective benevolence. This support system means mothers don’t have to be the be-all and end-all for their kids, which is especially helpful for first-timers surfing a brutal maternal learning curve. Altmann found that daughters surrounded by high-ranking kin give birth at an earlier age to offspring more likely to survive, giving them a lifetime reproductive advantage over mothers in the lower ranks.
This social privilege has a massive impact on a baboon’s mothering style. Noble-born mothers have what Altmann described as a “laissez-faire” approach. They let their infants roam far and wide and exhibit tough love early on when it comes to weaning. This hands-off approach makes for self-sufficient and socially integrated juveniles, which gives them a higher chance of survival as adults.
Low-ranking females are put upon by just about everybody. Without the social standing to protect them and their baby, they compensate with what Altmann describes as “restrictive” parenting, keeping their infant constantly within arm’s length. Their young develop independence more slowly and place more demand on the mother’s critical resources.
Faced with non-stop potential threats their anxiety increases. This stress, detected in hormones excreted in the mother’s faeces, lowers their immune response and makes them more vulnerable to disease. It can also manifest as depression and even infant abuse. Humans are not the only primates to suffer from post-natal depression. In olive baboons low ranking mothers rank exhibited higher levels of abusive behaviour during the postpartum period. In wild populations of macaques, 5-10% of mothers have been observed biting, throwing or crushing their infants to the ground. Some have been known to perish as a result. Those that don’t, are psychologically scarred and more likely to mistreat their own young, ensuring that this abusive behaviour ricochets down the generations.
Although it might appear that low-ranking baboons are doomed by birth. Altmann’s team discovered that if they are able to forge strategic friendships with other baboons, both male and female, they can gain much needed assistance when running the brutal Darwinian gauntlet.
“We showed that those females who have more friends do live longer and their kids survive better.” Altmann told me.
Baboon moms have another destiny-cheating tactic: They can manipulate the sex of their offspring. Altmann discovered that low-ranking females had more sons than daughters. This plays to their advantage. While daughters remain shackled to their mother’s social status, a son can rise to the top and breed with a high-ranking female. In contrast, high-bred female baboons produce more daughters.
When Altmann exposed the female baboon’s trick, many found it hard to believe such a calculating, albeit unconscious move was possible. But sex-manipulation is utilized by mothers from fig wasps to kakapos. How baboons do it isn’t clear. But in other mammals, like coypu and red deer, their method is selective abortion.
These animal moms teach us that motherhood is much more than a one-size-fits-all knee-jerk response to nurture, but a multifarious life-or-death business with a treacherous learning curve.
Subject is now playing in New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago
On a recent early morning flight to Atlanta, I sat in the middle seat next to a jovial, middle-aged Michiganian. As both of us were in a chatty mood, we struck up a discussion about movies we wanted to watch on our plane ride. The topic of documentaries quickly came up, as my newfound pal said she absolutely adored documentaries. At this point, the conversation had the potential to cross into the danger zone. Even though I am a documentary filmmaker and run a doc-focused nonprofit, the stakes are still high for me when a conversation veers in that direction.
“I love true-crime documentaries the most!” she says. “Especially The Staircase. It’s the one about that man who thought he got away with killing his wife by saying she fell down the stairs.” She smirks. “And he did it to another woman too.”
She looks to me for affirmation. I am stunned. Clearly, she does not recognize me from the documentary—the daughter of the man she’s just inaccurately described. Panicked, I scan my brain for how to respond.
What my newfound pal failed to realize in the moment was that people featured in documentaries are real people with experiences that can impact them far into the future, even after the cameras are turned off and the documentary has been distributed out into the world. It can take a lot of time, bravery, self-care, and support for people to recover from the events covered by a documentary, or in some cases, from the experience of being in the documentary itself.
My own transformation from a fearful young woman to a confident filmmaker with agency over my own story has taken 20 years, and is ongoing. It took time to realize that I was a traumatized victim of the true-crime genre, not from a specific perpetrator, but from the documentary medium itself. When looking deeper into true-crime documentaries, podcasts, and based-on-true-life fictional stories, a whole host of ethical questions arise. How can there truly be consent from participants of true-crime stories when the stakes are so high, and they are often under extreme duress? How can there be care for the mental health of everyone involved, for both participants and filmmakers? What trauma will be left lingering for generations to come? Who profits from true-crime stories, and how is that profit divided?
How could I even begin to answer all of these questions, just starting out at 22 years old, fresh from my mom’s death and my dad’s wrongful conviction of her murder? The original eight episodes of Jean-Xavier de Lestrade’s documentary The Staircase were floating around somewhere on pay TV, and I was battling severe PTSD. Looking back, I imagine I would have responded to my friend on the plane straight from pure trauma. “Oh, I don’t know,” I might have said, before trailing off, quietly crying and shaking, and then running to the airplane bathroom to sob once we reached cruising altitude.
Fast forward eight years, with my dad being exonerated and released from prison three days after I turned 30, and two new episodes of de Lestrade’s The Staircase added to the series, I would have had more confidence in my response. “I think you have it all wrong!” And then I would promptly and angrily have corrected everything she had presented as true. Our conversation would stop in its tracks.
Add seven more years, and I would luckily have been through decades of EMDR trauma therapy, which had helped soften the blow of the new evolution of The Staircase. Just before my 37th birthday, de Lestrade sold the ten-episode documentary (with three of the episodes newly added) to Netflix. The Staircase was streaming in over 200 countries, and there were talks of an HBO Max dramatized version with high-profile actors. My family was furious at how our story had been commoditized and sold.
By this time, I had been approached by many strangers, some who even followed me around a friend’s wedding, begging me to tell them how they knew me, but couldn’t quite place from where. I brought my deep sadness, anger, and fear from these experiences into my therapy sessions, and I came up with the patent answer: “That documentary is about my family, and it’s a very sad story that I don’t want to talk about.” The goal was to set up a polite boundary and walk away, which is hard to do on a long-haul flight.
But now, having toured the globe for just under two years with our new documentary Subject (produced in association with TIME Studios), which explores the life-altering experience of sharing one’s life on screen and unpacks the vital issues around the ethics and responsibility inherent in documentary filmmaking, I had the courage to say: “Well my film explores the ethics around that film. Can you imagine getting consent from his poor children to be in the movie? They were so young.”
To which my in-flight pal responded: “Oh yes, how terrible. I hadn’t thought about that. When can I see your movie?” Her demeanor shifted from a true-crime aficionado with the glow of murder in her eyes to an empathetic mother, still not realizing she was sitting next to one of those poor children.
The ethical quandaries surrounding documentaries led me to Camilla Hall and Jennifer Tiexiera, the co-directors of our film Subject. They too were questioning where the documentary industry was headed and how each story’s participants were being treated. We met for the first time five days before Netflix released The Staircase, and out of curiosity and a drive to find a better way, we began filming Subject. Knowing we wanted to hear about experiences from varying types of films, we reached out to the participants of some of our favorite documentaries: Hoop Dreams, The Square, Capturing the Friedmans, and The Wolfpack.
Camilla and Jennifer gave us the space to safely take a lens into our past; to bring to light necessary changes in the way we make, fund, distribute, and consume documentaries. We explored the idea of conscious consumption, turning the focus onto the audiences of these stories. Many of us are beginning to be conscious about where our clothes and our food come from, so perhaps we can also be mindful of the digital content we consume. In Q&As for Subject screenings, we are constantly asked: What is all the consumption of true-crime doing to us? Do we as an audience consider how much care was taken with the people in these films?
It was these questions that helped form the Documentary Participants Empowerment Alliance (DPEA), an organization focused on bringing vital resources—such as legal, mental health, and advocacy—to documentary participants, the nonprofit’s aim is to create a world where a DPEA stamp on a film means the audience can trust that the film’s participants were treated ethically and with care. So, when my new Michiganian pal watches documentaries in the future, she will be informed by our film, Subject, and guided by a DPEA stamp in the ending credits—and will understand that people in documentaries are real people who are deserving of respect and care.
“My father only comes across as a predator and manipulative,” Lisa Marie wrote in a 2022 email to Coppola, 52, which was obtained by Variety on Thursday, November 2. “As his daughter, I don’t read this and see any of my father in this character. I don’t read this and see my mother’s perspective of my father. I read this and see your shockingly vengeful and contemptuous perspective and I don’t understand why?”
In a second email, Lisa Marie told the director that she would “be forced to be in a position where I will have to openly say how I feel about the film and go against you, my mother and this film publicly” if Coppola went ahead with the project. The messages were sent four months before Lisa Marie died in January after suffering a fatal cardiac arrest at the age of 54, according to the outlet.
Priscilla — which is written, directed and produced by Coppola and stars Cailee Spaeny and Jacob Elordi— tells the story of Elvis and Priscilla Presley’s romance, which began when they were 24 and 14, respectively. The film pulls inspiration from Priscilla’s own 1985 memoir,Elvis and Me, recounting the twosome’s — at times tumultuous — relationship from her young perspective.
Baz Lurhmann’s Oscar-nominated Elvis Presley biopic took the world by storm — but now it’s time for Priscilla Presley to shine. After Elvis dominated the 2022 awards season, Priscilla — which is written, directed and produced by Sofia Coppola — takes a different approach to Elvis and Priscilla’s love story. Premiering in November, the film […]
The movie was an official selection of this year’s Venice Film Festival earlier this year, garnering critical praise and earning Spaeny, 25, a best actress prize.
When it comes to how Priscilla, 85, feels about the film, she told audiences in Venice that Coppola “did an amazing job” and “really put everything out for her that I could.” Lisa Marie, however, shared in her emails that she feared her mother “isn’t seeing the nuance here or realizing the way in which Elvis will be perceived when this movie comes out.”
“I feel protective over my mother who has spent her whole life elevating my father’s legacy,” she wrote. “I am worried she doesn’t understand the intentions behind this film or the outcome it will have.”
Lisa Marie praised Baz Luhrmann’s 2022 Elvis biopic, which she called “a break from suffering and a ray of light that hit us last year” that made 15-year-old twins Harper and Finley Lockwood “so proud and honored to be his granddaughters.” (Lisa Marie shared Harper and Finley with ex-husband Michael Lockwood. She was also mom to daughter Riley and son Benjamin, whom she shared with ex Danny Keough.)
“It made them feel blessed for a moment and less cursed in life,” she said. “It made us all so proud because it was a true depiction of who he really was.”
Lisa Marie noted that Harper was sent a trade announcement about Priscilla going into production — and that her family was going to “have to endure another hit” in their lives from a “movie about her grandfather that is going to try to make him look really, really bad but it’s not true.”
“I had to explain that her beloved grandmother is supporting it,” she continued. “These two little girls have been through so much in the past 7 years, enduring my divorce and horrific custody battle and then losing their brother. We’ve all been drowning.”
A24 Films
She added that she did not understand Coppola’s “need to attempt to take my father down on the heels of such an incredible film” by ” using the excuse” of telling her mother’s story from Coppola’s “very dark and jaded reality.”
Coppola, for her part, revealed how she responded to Lisa Marie’s claims through a statement to Variety from her rep on Thursday. “I hope that when you see the final film you will feel differently and understand I’m taking great care in honoring your mother, while also presenting your father with sensitivity and complexity,” she wrote, per the outlet.
While Lisa Marie noted in her emails that Coppola should “understand” how she feels due to her own famous family — she is the daughter of legendary director Francis Ford Coppola — Sofia previously shared that her connection to the material is actually what inspired make Priscilla in the first place.
Elvis Presley was a music icon through the years, and his family became just as legendary. The “Jailhouse Rock” crooner, who rose to fame in 1950s, died in August 1977 at the age of 42. His only daughter, Lisa Marie Presley, had been the one to discover his passing before calling his ex-girlfriend Linda Thompson. […]
“I was struck by how much I connected with it emotionally. I thought it was just going to be a fun adventure, and I was surprised by how relatable her story was,” she told The Hollywood Reporter in August. “And I always like themes about finding one’s identity and teenage girls growing into adulthood.”
Sofia added that coming of age in the shadow of a public figure felt relatable to her own experience. “I know from my family what it’s like to be inside a show business family. I know that growing up, people are looking at you in a different way.” she said.
A pregnant model was found dead inside her refrigerator at her downtown L.A. apartment last month, her arms and legs bound, according to an autopsy report from the L.A. County Medical Examiner’s Department.
Maleesa Mooney, 31, was found dead Sept. 12 in her apartment in the 200 block of South Figueroa Street, authorities said. The medical examiner’s department ruled that she had died by “homicidal violence” inflicted by others. Her family confirmed that she was two months pregnant at the time of her death.
According to the autopsy report, Mooney was last seen on video surveillance at her apartment complex on Sept. 6. Six days later, her mother requested a welfare check and police entered the apartment using a property management’s key. Police have yet to announce suspects or motive in the crime.
Police discovered Mooney wedged inside the refrigerator with blood beneath her body; her wrists and ankles were bound and the bindings were tied behind her back with electrical cords and clothing. More clothing was found around her neck and face and her mouth had been gagged, according to the report.
Mooney had blunt-force trauma injuries to her head, neck and torso, as well as her arms, wrists and ankles, according to the report. Trace amounts of alcohol and cocaine were found in Mooney’s system, although the medical examiner wrote in the report that it’s “uncertain” if the substances played a part in her death due to her extensive injuries.
“Based on the circumstances of how Ms. Mooney was found, these injuries suggest she was likely involved in violent physical altercation prior to her death,” the examiner wrote.
In an interview with The Times, Jordan Pauline, 24, Mooney’s sister, said she last spoke with her sister on Aug. 23, her birthday. Mooney had recently come back from a trip to Miami and had just moved into a new apartment. She was planning to get the rest of her belongings from her mother’s house, and when her family didn’t hear from her, they got concerned and asked police to do a wellness check.
According to Pauline, police knocked on Mooney’s door and left a card when they didn’t get a response. Mooney’s family went to her apartment a few days later but were told by the building managers that they weren’t allowed in. They called the police, who discovered Mooney’s apartment flooded and the air conditioning blasting. Pauline said her family had to wait downstairs for hours until police told them they had found a body but couldn’t identify who it was.
“From her head to her toes, they did something monstrous to my sister,” said Pauline, a Los Angeles resident. “We had to have a closed casket — the mortuary had to bring in special people to put her together and do her makeup. We’re going to continue to have a closed casket because she has a big open gash in her head and half of her face, you can’t even make her out.
“We waited four days until they identified her from fingerprints,” Pauline said. “There’s a lot of negligence with the police as well. The whole point is to go in and check on the person and they didn’t.”
The Los Angeles Police Department didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Mooney had FaceTimed their cousin on Sept. 6 and most likely died that same day or the next, according to Pauline, who has been in contact with family members. Mooney had gone out with friends to a bar in Santa Monica on Sept. 6 and hung out with them at her apartment until 3 or 4 a.m. They never heard from her again.
Mooney’s phone and laptop had also been stolen, as well as a designer purse from her apartment, according to Pauline, who said that whoever killed her sister most likely knew her phone passcode and was sending her family “vague” texts. She didn’t elaborate on the text messages. They also found out that someone had put Mooney’s cellphone up for sale for $100.
Pauline described her sister as a “bubbly, very soft-like, very girly girl.” Mooney worked as a Realtor for Nest Seekers, a Beverly Hills agency, for nearly two years. Mooney also modeled part time and was starting to take it more seriously before her death.
“Overall she was an amazing cook, a loving, nurturing, kind person,” Pauline said. “Really the life of the party and an all-around good person. It sucks that she was robbed of all of her potential in this life and she can’t even have her kids and husband that she’s always wanted. She always wanted to have a family and be a mother and this is heartbreaking, that this is the end result, especially in this manner.”
Mooney’s family has started a GoFundMe page to raise money for legal fees and to start a foundation in Mooney’s honor. Pauline said she’s hoping there will be justice for her sister and for 32-year-old Nichole Coats, another model who two days before was also found dead in her apartment a few blocks away from Mooney.
“Let’s find these people — whoever did it — so it doesn’t happen to another young girl,” Pauline said. “We’re all humans living our human experiences. I wouldn’t wish this on anyone, for them to have to go through this pain.”
David A. Lehrer, a longtime leader in Los Angeles’ Jewish community and attorney who helped draft the state’s hate crime laws, has died. He was 75.
He collapsed Wednesday at his Los Feliz home and could not be revived, his family said in a statement.
Lehrer worked for almost 30 years in the West Coast office of the Anti-Defamation League, joining the ADL in 1975 as a civil rights attorney and later being promoted to regional director.
He also led legislative efforts to outlaw tax-subsidized discrimination at private social clubs, including the Jonathan Club, and confronted neo-Nazi and other extremist groups in the West.
Lehrer, a lifelong resident of Los Feliz, was an active longtime member of Temple Israel of Hollywood “and will be greatly missed by all who knew, worked with and loved him,” his family said.
Lehrer was a first-generation Angeleno, born to parents who fled Europe to escape antisemitism.
His mother, Gertrude “Trudy” Lehrer, escaped Vienna in 1938 just after Kristallnacht, or “the Night of Broken Glass,” when Nazis burned synagogues, destroyed Jewish businesses and homes and killed Jewish people in Germany and Austria.
“Had she not gotten the visa for the United States, undoubtedly she would have perished in Austria and [in] the concentration camp,” Lehrer said in a tribute video for his mother’s 100th birthday.
Lehrer died a year after his mother, who was a week shy of her 103rd birthday when she died in the same home, his family said.
He was born Oct. 12, 1948, to Trudy and Irving Abraham Lehrer. He decided he wanted to be an attorney around 13, when he read “My Life in Court,” a 1961 memoir by trial attorney Louis Nizer.
“He never changed his mind — he just wanted to be a lawyer,” his younger brother, Michael, said Friday.
After graduating from UCLA School of Law in 1973, Lehrer joined a private firm where, a few years into it, he realized he was unhappy, his brother said.
“He realized, ‘Why am I spending my time working to defend people and things I don’t really care about?’” Michael said.
As an attorney at ADL, Lehrer appealed to the California Coastal Commission in 1985 to decline the request of the Jonathan Club — which leased 58,000 square feet of public land for its beachfront location — to improve its Santa Monica property unless the club enforced a nondiscrimination policy.
After a three-year legal battle, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the state court’s decision, which had agreed the coastal panel was within its purview to demand the club enforce such a policy. The decision affected other wealthy social clubs around Los Angeles with a history of accepting only white Christian men.
“It’s a part of the process of eliminating this last vestige of institutional bigotry, the country club and the downtown club, that are small enclaves of discrimination,” Lehrer told The Times in 1988.
Longtime Times columnist Al Martinez wrote during the case that he’d known Lehrer many years and observed his fervent dedication to civil rights.
“He can identify an antisemite in a room full of liberals while blindfolded, picking the racist out by only his vibrations, like a tiger shark selects its next meal,” Martinez wrote in 1985.
In 1998, Lehrer was one of the first Jewish leaders to work with Muslim leaders and developed a code of ethics with them in 1998 to promote civil debate.
After 27 years with the ADL, Lehrer was fired in 2001, a controversial move by the organization’s New York leadership — with whom Lehrer had political and personal disagreements — that was decried by many faith leaders in L.A., The Times reported. (He, privately and recently, made up with the man who fired him, his family said.)
“Probably he is paying the price for the more balanced view he took toward Muslims,” Aslam Abdullah, vice president of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, said at the time.
Lehrer bounced back quickly, working with community activist Joe Hicks to form Community Advocates, a nonprofit focused on race and human relations. The organization published articles, led programs and helped develop educational curricula aimed at promoting tolerance, his family said in a statement.
In 2017, Lehrer was alarmed by the rhetoric of President Trump and his travel ban on Muslim-majority countries, and also disappointed that the Jewish community wasn’t raising its voice against the Trump administration’s outrageous policies, said former county Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, who knew Lehrer for 50 years.
Lehrer, Yaroslavsky and other prominent Jewish leaders launched Jews United for Democracy and Justice, an organization focused on protecting the country’s constitutional democracy.
The group produced “America at a Crossroads,” a weekly online discussion hosting prominent experts and L.A. journalists.
On Thursday, attorney and longtime activist Janice Kamenir-Reznik, his co-host, opened the show in honor of Lehrer.
Kamenir-Reznik said more than 1,000 viewers emailed her after hearing of Lehrer’s death, noting that many told her that although they’d never met him, they felt as if they’d lost a beloved friend.
“David was a magnificent tapestry of the most positive human characteristics,” Kamenir-Reznik said. “He was soft yet tough, bold yet humble, always ready to speak truth to power, to call out injustice and false information, and he was wise beyond measure.”
Lehrer was aware of the enormous threats to the U.S. Constitution and democracy — but unwilling to yield to despair about the future, she said.
Before every program, he asked moderators and guests to try to end each program with at least a drop of hope and optimism.
“Because he couldn’t bear leaving you, our audience, depressed and hopeless,” Kamenir-Reznik said.
In addition to his brother, Lehrer is survived by his wife, Ariella; his children Eli, Jonah, Rachel and Leah; a sister, Shelah; and nine grandchildren.
It sounded like they (gosh, who even were “they”??) were charging down the hallway right outside my door.
What was happening?!
Were we under attack??
Months ago my family and I traveled to Israel with religious leaders from my church. That night my heart began to pound in my ears and I held my breath as I slowly turned in the blackened room to see if the girls in the bed next to mine were awake with the fear I was experiencing.
I Felt Ok?
Mouths hanging slightly open and covers tucked up under their chins, my two daughters were sound asleep while our hotel in Israel was clearly under attack.
Or so it sounded.
Cade and I had to be separated each night for two weeks as we traveled around Jordan, Israel and the borders of neighboring countries.
No hotel had a room big enough for 5, so boys slept in one room and girls in the other.
I felt responsible.
Frozen.
Confused.
And ok?
I wouldn’t say I felt peace, but I did feel calm as the noise rose and fell for a few hours.
I didn’t dare step out of our room to peer down the hallways at Cade’s room. What if they were out there and three girls, alone but together would become an obvious target.
My texts wouldn’t go through to Cade and then a loud explosion ripped through the air and I glued my eyes to the ceiling while I silently prayed.
Standing Guard
The next morning our entire tour group began to share stories.
Unanswered phone calls to the front desk where workers had abandoned guests, all of whom were from another country and didn’t speak the language or know how to seek help.
Cade had a front row seat to all of it.
Slipping a camera carefully between the curtains to capture images and video here and there.
He waited up all night. Ready, listening, and standing guard at windows and hallways to watch over those, including his family who hid away in their rooms.
Little did I know, this was a fight on the road outside. A barricade and late night surprise attack that ended in an explosion, gun fight and armored vehicles.
One Fearful Night
I’ll never know if anyone was lost that night, but I hurt knowing that my one fearful night pales in comparison to what they are enduring now.
That night another man, a leader in our church also walked the halls, watched, prayed and stood ready to protect those in his care.
I do not understand the things happening in the world, but I understand this:
In the midst of danger there were men I could trust, listen to and who stood between me and them. Looking to truth, and those who lead with it may not have kept the danger from ever happening, but it does give you a source to look to for guidance, peace and yes, even protection.
Peacemakers Needed
Never in the history of the world have we needed those who are able to stand upon watchtowers and walk through abandoned halls more.
My heart has been absolutely destroyed to watch a place I just wandered, discovered, and loved be turned to war. It’s not right. It’s not fair, but it is not “them”, it is all of us. We need prayers. We need Christ. And we need each other.
If you are confused, lying there tonight, staring up at a ceiling in wonder about what is going on “out there”, may I offer you the peace I held onto?
Christ walks our halls. He stands at the windows. He goes individually to those inside and outside His dwelling place because we are all His.
Search peacemakers needed by @russellmnelson and may we all gather in prayer for those who are enduring much more than one night😭. #peacemakersneeded
Los Angeles police detectives found and reunited a Boyle Heights teen with her family after she had been missing for nearly two weeks, the girl’s sister confirmed Friday afternoon.
Michelle Giselle Lopez, 15, disappeared on Oct. 12 after being dropped off for class at Downtown Magnets High School.
Hollenbeck Division detectives, whose area includes Los Angeles’ Eastside, called Lopez’s mother on Wednesday evening and reunited the mother with her daughter at the station, according to the girl’s sister, Nataly Jaqueline Arias, 27.
“It’s been a crazy last few days and we were finally able to sleep yesterday,” Arias said. “We finally feel like she’s safe and resting.”
Since the reunion, the family has spent the last couple of days at the home of a relative outside of Los Angeles County and avoiding media contact, Arias said.
“We want to try our best to make her feel like her old self,” Arias said of Michelle. “She’s starting to eat again and talk and feel more and more like that.”
Arias said Michelle hasn’t shared what happened since she went missing on Oct. 12. On that day, Michelle’s mother arrived on campus to pick up her son, Carlos, and Michelle at 3 p.m. but never met up with her daughter. The mother filed a missing person report that day.
Arias also said that detectives have provided no details on what may have occurred.
An LAPD spokesperson only confirmed that Michelle had been found and returned to family members, but said no other information about the search was available.
Police Cmdr. Lillian L. Carranza, of the Central Division, tweeted that Hollenbeck investigators “exhausted every lead until the [missing] person was located and safely returned to the family.”
Arias said that her sister was likely “going to need a lot of therapy” and that the family was working to “give her everything she needs.”
Early in the week, Arias expressed frustration with the lack of progress in the case.
She thanked members of the public and media for “pressuring the authorities to finally follow every lead.”
“Without that support, I don’t know how much attention this story would have got,” Arias said.
The family created a GoFundMe account earlier this week that Arias previously said would be used to hire a private investigator. The account raised more than $5,300 and was disabled.
The family said the money would now be used to provide Michelle with “therapy and any resources she may need to overcome this ordeal.”
To maximize your savings and help to ensure your child has the funds they need when they go off to college or university, you’ll need to deposit yearly contributions—and do it before the ball drops on New Year’s Eve. An RESP can stay open for as long as 35 years, so why the urgency? You need to meet the RESP contribution deadline in order to receive the maximum amount of grant money from the government, which could be as much as $500 a year. Consider it a “holiday gift” for their future.
Why contribute to an RESP every year
One of the best ways for you to save for your child’s higher education is to open and contribute to an RESP. That’s because the benefits are twofold. First, a government program called the Canada Education Savings Grant (CESG) will match 20% of the annual contributions, up to $500 in a given year, to a lifetime maximum of $7,200. Children from families considered to be low-income or middle-income can get an additional 10% or 20% of the first $500 contributed to their RESP. There’s also the Canada Learning Bond (CLB), which can provide up to another $2,000 to low-income families: $500 in the first year the child is eligible to receive it, and $100 per year until the child reaches age 15.
Second, your child’s RESP will grow tax-deferred. The gains that the investments make over time won’t be taxed until your child enrolls in a recognized post-secondary program and withdraws the funds, and as long as the money is used for their tuition, living and educational expenses.
What if you don’t contribute $2,500 this year?
That’s OK. The CESG gives you a chance to catch up on contributions in future years. This savings grant is available until the end of the calendar year that your child turns 17. But be aware that you can only catch up one year at a time, for a maximum grant of $1,000 in a given year. An Embark Education Savings Expert can help you calculate how much to contribute when you need to play catch-up, and how much you will receive from the government.
What is the maximum RESP contribution?
An RESP has a lifetime contribution limit of $50,000 per child. You can get up to $500 from the CESG in a given year—to get the full $500, the RESP contribution for the year must be at least $2,500. Contributing more than $2,500 in any year won’t get you a bigger grant, but it will give your savings more time to grow. To get the CESG maximum of $7,200, you’ll need to contribute $36,000 to the RESP.
Make a plan for RESP contributions
It can be hard to free up $2,500, especially leading up to the holiday season. That’s why many families break down their yearly goal into a more manageable monthly savings target. Putting aside $208 each month feels a bit more manageable. To get you to that monthly goal without feeling as much of a pinch in your household budget—which for many families is tighter than ever these days—try these savings tips:
Ask grandparents, other relatives and family friends to consider contributing in lieu of gifts for birthdays and holidays.
If you’re able, re-route some or all of the monthly government child-tax benefit you receive into the RESP.
When your child is old enough to start earning a bit of money (by babysitting, for example), encourage them to put some of that money into their RESP. (This is a great opportunity to teach them about compound growth.)
Set up a monthly or biweekly pre-authorized contribution plan to help yourself save automatically.
To get a better idea of how your savings, combined with the CESG, could grow over the years, check out this savings calculator from Embark.
Just think: If $2,500 is put in an RESP each year for 14 years, plus another $1,000 in the 15th year, your child will be able to get the full $7,200 from the CESG. For example, if you opened an RESP today for a two-year-old and contributed $2,500 each year to receive the maximum annual CESG contribution of $500, your savings could grow to about $59,000 by 2039. (All calculation assumptions, including assuming an average rate of return of 3%, can be found on the Embark savings calculator.)
Several Los Angeles police officers broke with department policy in the arrest of Keenan Anderson, whose death after a traffic stop in January reignited debates about the suitability of police for dealing with people in distress, the Police Commission ruled.
Although not unanimous, the commission Tuesday found that officers deviated from LAPD policy on multiple occasions when they restrained and shocked the 31-year-old teacher and father with a Taser while trying to take him into custody.
The civilian oversight panel generally agreed with the conclusions of LAPD Chief Michel Moore and an internal department review board, which itself was split on several policy questions.
Moore and police commissioners concluded that one of the officers continued to use a stun gun on Anderson, a Black man, even after he no longer posed an immediate threat. Moore and the commission also ruled that, whether inadvertently or not, two of the officers did not have cause to hold Anderson down by the neck. Under the department’s policy, such contact to a person’s neck is considered deadly force.
Anderson’s case garnered international attention, in part because he was a cousin of Patrisse Cullors, a co-founder of the Black Lives Matter Global Network. Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass strongly condemned the incident, which happened weeks after she took office and sparked calls for changes to police policies related to traffic enforcement and the use of stun guns.
It also added kindling to a fiery debate about how police interact with people in crisis, after a string of high-profile deadly encounters in recent years.
Veteran civil rights attorney Carl Douglas, who filed a wrongful death lawsuit on behalf of Anderson’s family, called Tuesday’s ruling a rare but welcome decision from an oversight body he said too often signs off on police misbehavior. The finding was “one small step toward justice,” he said.
“However, we are mindful that this fight is not over. The city is going to be defended vigorously by the city attorney as they do in virtually every case,” Douglas said Wednesday, pointing out that the city has already filed motions denying any responsibility for Anderson’s death. “We are heartened that the commission saw the decision to Taser Mr. Anderson as an abomination. They don’t call it an abomination, but I can.”
What the body camera footage captured was the lack of training for officers on when Taser use is appropriate, Douglas said, adding that officers often misinterpret a person squirming as a form of resistance that justifies the device’s use.
Douglas joined about two dozen activists and members of Anderson’s family who held a press conference before Tuesday’s Police Commission meeting, demanding the officers involved be held accountable. Afterward, the group appealed directly to the commissioners in what became an emotionally-charged meeting.
The commission’s ruling was denounced by the Los Angeles Police Protective League, which represents the city’s rank-and-file officers.
“We strongly disagree with these politically influenced findings, each responding officer acted responsibly in dealing with Mr. Anderson who was high on cocaine and ran into traffic after fleeing a car accident he caused,” the League’s board of directors said in a statement to The Times Wednesday.
“The coroner confirmed he was not tased(SIC) but rather drive-stunned when he refused to follow simple directions while in the middle of a busy street, the board wrote. “Mr. Anderson and Mr. Anderson alone was responsible for what occurred.”
The encounter that ended with Anderson’s death began sometime before 3:30 p.m. on Jan. 3, when Joshua Coombs, a motorcyle officer assigned to the West Traffic Division, responded to what the LAPD referred to at the time as a “felony hit-and-run” car crash at Venice and Lincoln boulevards.
Coombs encountered Anderson darting on foot through traffic in apparent distress and ordered Anderson to sit on a nearby street corner. Anderson complied for some time, but then took off running, yelling that he was fearful for his safety.
Coombs followed after him, as did officers Jaime Fuentes and Rasheen Ford, who had seen the incident unfold as they drove past in their department squad car. The officers eventually caught up to Anderson and pinned him to the ground, as he resisted their efforts to put him on his stomach and handcuff him. They were eventually joined by two other officers, Christopher Walters and Stephen Feldman.
The commission reviewed the case during a closed-door session of its regular meeting, which was was briefly interrupted when president Erroll Southers ordered the room cleared because of disruptions in the audience.
Much of the criticism of the police response centered on Fuentes discharging his Taser six times in the span of 42 seconds. But Moore ruled, and the commission agreed, that officer Fuentes’ first four deployments of the stun gun were within policy.
However, a department force review board faulted Fuentes for his final two Taser uses, delivered as other officers used their body weight and arm holds to control Anderson. Fuentes, a patrol officer in Pacific Division, told internal investigators that he used the so-called drive stun function, in which the device is pressed directly against someone’s skin rather than fired from a distance, to prevent the incident from escalating further. Fuentes said he continued shocking Anderson because he wouldn’t stop resisting.
The ruling wasn’t unanimous. The majority of the board said that, although Anderson was still pulling away from the officers, he didn’t present a threat to them and appeared instead to be starting to comply with their commands.
The majority noted that Fuentes admitted in his department interview to using the drive-stun mode for pain compliance, against department policy, and said it would have preferred that he had reassessed the situation and switched “to a different force option after the third TASER deployment.”
Several board members argued that the first four stuns were in compliance because the officers believed they could still be harmed due to Anderson’s continued resistance.
Moore wrote in his report that, in making his decision, he considered that “Anderson was violently resisting the officers’ attempts to take him into custody.”
“I noted the use of the TASER to be effective in assisting officers to take control of Anderson,” Moore wrote. “As it pertains to TASER activation five and six, I opined the officers had sufficient control of Anderson and that his level of resistance, while still ongoing, did not justify the use of a TASER as a reasonable force option.”
During the final activation, Fuentes told investigators that he saw Anderson tense up, which he interpreted as an attempt to prevent officers from handcuffing him.
Anderson was taken to an area hospital, where he later died.
Last month, the department announced it would soon start testing out a new generation of Tasers with greater range that would preclude officers from having to use higher levels of force against uncooperative people. The eventual switch to the next-generation Taser 10 model comes on the heels of changes in the department’s Taser policy, including barring officers from using the drive stun function.
The officers’ tactical decisions were scrutinized almost from the onset. Anderson’s family, some elected officials and police watchdogs decried what they saw as an overly aggressive response by police against someone who was disoriented and needed care after being involved in a traffic collision.
Several policing experts who reviewed video for The Times of the Jan. 3 incident — from cameras worn by officers — previously said the amount of force used by the officers seemed excessive given Anderson’s actions and that their tactics appeared haphazard.
An autopsy by the L.A. County coroner’s office later identified an enlarged heart and cocaine use as the causes of death, and did not rule it a homicide. Whether his death was natural, an accident or a homicide remains undetermined, according to the coroner’s website. Anderson’s family has disputed the report’s findings, contending that it deflected blame from the police.
During their investigation, detectives from the LAPD’s force investigations division slowed down footage of the encounter and counted nine times in which officers Fuentes and Ford made contact with Anderson’s neck during the struggle. Both officers denied applying pressure or otherwise restricting Anderson’s ability to breathe.
At one point in a video of the encounter, Anderson is lying on the pavement and struggling with officers when he yelled out, “They are trying to kill me. Kilo tried to kill me.” After being told to stop struggling, video showed Ford’s right hand on the side of Anderson’s jaw, with his thumb apparently near Anderson’s neck, the report says.
With a 3 to 2 vote, commissioners also found fault with officers for failing to put Anderson “in a recovery position as soon as practical.”
After days of mounting public pressure, Moore took the rare step of releasing additional footage from the encounter, which showed a distraught Anderson crying out for help as multiple officers held him down. Eventually, he washandcuffed and hobbled at his ankles before paramedics take him away. He later died at a hospital.
Anderson’s death also galvanized a push for removing police from responding to minor traffic collisions, as well as to stop them from pulling over motorists for traffic violations, arguing that communities of color have historically borne the brunt of such enforcement. Instead, they said, such tasks could be handled by unarmed civilians.
Melina Abdullah, co-founder of Black Lives Matter Los Angeles and a professor at Cal State L.A., said she was heartened by the commission’s ruling, even if it was a somewhat hollow “victory” since it wouldn’t bring Anderson back.
“Justice for Keenan Anderson would mean that he were there to raise his child, that he was there to continue to be a model for his brothers, that he was there to be a model teacher,” said Abdullah. “But justice in his name looks like accountability, making sure that the cops who killed him are held accountable.”
Galia Mizrahi walked past rows of freshly dug graves, preparing to bury two loved ones killed when Hamas attacked southern Israel.
The 55-year-old had left her home in Tarzana less than two weeks earlier for the country of her birth, her heart “aching to be here for [her] family” as Israel plunged into war.
Not only were her 48-year-old cousin and his 20-year-old daughter killed in their kibbutz on Oct. 7 — four other family members are among the more than 220 people kidnapped and being held hostage in Gaza.
“In the presence of so much loss, all you can do is latch onto the hope that those who were taken will be returned,” Mizrahi said in a Zoom interview on Monday, still wearing her funeral black from earlier that day.
Mizrahi’s relatives in Israel, pictured in July. Within months, following a Hamas attack, two people in the photo would be dead, four kidnapped and another family left homeless after their house was burned down.
(Galia Mizrahi)
The kidnappings have reverberated around the world, including in the homes of Californians like Mizrahi. Some have visited a Shabbat dinner table in Beverly Hills with seats kept empty for the hostages or shared their stories from the steps of the State Capitol in Sacramento. Others have flown to Israel to support their families.
Sometimes, there are signs of hope. Nurit Cooper, 79, whose son lives in San Diego, was freed Monday evening. Cooper’s husband, Amiram, is still being held captive.
The news that Cooper and three other hostages were released has heartened Ryan Pessah, a Sacramento resident.
His cousin, his cousin’s girlfriend and his cousin’s sons, ages 12 and 16, were kidnapped.
“I remain optimistic,” Pessah said. “There’s no other choice.”
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Mizrahi was at a Shabbat dinner in Beverly Hills on Oct. 6 when she first learned of the code red alerts warning of an impending missile attack in southern Israel. Her aunt and uncle and two cousins, along with their wives and children, live in the Kfar Aza kibbutz, near the border with Gaza.
Within 15 minutes, Mizrahi received a text message from her family, saying there had been an attack. She cut the dinner short and headed home to wait for updates.
One cousin described hearing the alert and heading to a safe room in her house with her husband and children. Then, she told Mizrahi, her husband spotted someone coming down on a paraglider, machine gun in hand. The family got in their car and fled to a relative’s home.
Four houses down, Mizrahi’s other cousin, Nadav Goldstein Almog, had gone into their safe room with his wife; two daughters, ages 17 and 20; and two sons, 9 and 11. An Ironman athlete, Goldstein Almog was recovering from a hit-and-run cycling accident. He was still on crutches, and Mizrahi believes that’s why he couldn’t flee.
Gal and Tal Goldstein Almog were among those kidnapped and taken to Gaza.
(Galia Mizrahi)
“The logical solution for him was to go into the safe room and keep his family safe,” Mizrahi said.
Days passed with no word about Goldstein Almog and his family. Other relatives later heard from the Israel Defense Forces that four bodies had been found in the safe room. Government officials were unable to confirm the identities, Mizrahi said.
On Oct. 11, Mizrahi’s father died in an Israeli hospital of causes unrelated to the war. After landing in the country two days later, she learned that only two bodies, not four, had been found in her cousin’s house. That left four relatives unaccounted for.
That weekend, Mizrahi’s family received preliminary confirmation that the bodies were those of Goldstein Almog and his daughter, Yam, an active-duty member of the military who had gone home for the weekend.
Investigators were able to determine their identities, Mizrahi said, through the crutches and metal plate in Goldstein Almog’s hip and Yam’s distinctive tattoo of two butterflies. No one knew where the other family members were.
“At the time, missing meant two things: Either they’re kidnapped and taken to the Gaza Strip, or they’re just unrecognizable,” Mizrahi said. “A few days go by without us knowing what missing means.”
Relatives held off on a funeral, unsure whether the four were still alive or whether they might have to bury them too. Then, on Oct. 19, authorities told the family they had information confirming that the four had been kidnapped and taken to Gaza.
Their condition remains unknown to the family.
The days Mizrahi has spent in Israel have felt like years, she said. “I’m so sorry for your loss” has become the new hello as she walks the streets.
“I feel like what I’ve squeezed into these 10, 12 days is someone else’s lifetime of sorrow,” she said.
::
For Pessah, the details of his Israeli family members’ kidnappings unfolded one devastating, surreal text message at a time.
On Oct. 7, he was driving his wife and two young children from their home in Sacramento to the Bay Area to visit his uncle.
It was Saturday — Shabbat, the Jewish day of rest — a day he does not use his phone. His wife uses hers, though. As they drove, her phone began flashing with news alerts.
Yair Yaakov, standing in back in a family photo, is the cousin of Ryan Pessah of Sacramento. Yaakov is believed to be a hostage in Gaza, as are Yaakov’s girlfriend and two sons, 12 and 16.
(Provided by Ryan Pessah)
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu just declared war, she read aloud, stunned.
Then, a text message from Pessah’s mother in San Diego: “Yair and his family are missing.”
Nobody could reach Pessah’s cousin Yair Yaakov or his girlfriend, Meirav Tal, who were at Yaakov’s home in Nir Oz, a kibbutz in southern Israel two miles from Gaza.
Yaakov’s sons also were nowhere to be found.
On Sunday, Pessah’s mother — who is Yaakov’s aunt — texted a video.
It shows the inside of Yaakov’s house filled with smoke. His girlfriend, her eyes wide with terror and her clothing covered with dust from a grenade blast, grasps the hand of a militant, pleading as she is pulled and shoved. Yaakov sits on the floor, at gunpoint, as an intruder speaks to him.
Hamas militants filmed the video and texted it to Yaakov’s siblings, Pessah said.
“The moment I see Yair, I’m just shaking, crying. Just completely,” Pessah said. “He was taken because he’s Israeli. Because he’s Jewish. What is going to happen? How will we get him back? Just — why?”
::
Yaakov, 59, a slender, bald man, is the ultimate cool guy, who smells of cigarette smoke when he wraps his arms around you, Pessah said. “‘Let’s enjoy life.’ He embodied that,” Pessah said. “He’s a great hugger, always smiling and laughing.”
On the day of the siege, Yaakov and Tal were at his home, hiding in a bomb shelter, which are common in Israeli houses.
Meirav Tal was kidnapped by Hamas militants from Nir Oz, a kibbutz in southern Israel, with boyfriend Yair Yaakov, according to his family.
(Provided by Ryan Pessah)
Hamas militants burst in, using a grenade to open the door to the shelter, and pulled the couple out, Pessah said.
Yaakov’s daughter and her boyfriend hid in a shelter in another home in the kibbutz. The attackers exploded a grenade in there too, but it jammed the door shut. They were found days later — grief-stricken but safe, Pessah said.
Yaakov’s sons were staying nearby at their mother’s house, but she was not there during the attack, Pessah said. In a phone call, she heard the boys pleading with the militants, telling them they were too young to be taken. Then the line went silent.
There has been no other communication from Yaakov, his girlfriend, his sons or the abductors.
Pessah, a 35-year-old political lobbyist, has become a de facto spokesman for his family in Israel, which includes most of his mother’s 11 siblings.
He has done media interviews. He spoke during a rally this week on the steps of the California Capitol. He told a state legislator to “check in with [their] Jewish community; they do not feel safe.”
Still, Pessah said, he feels helpless half a world away.
He said he feels scared, even here in California, where Jewish schools and synagogues and other institutions have increased security. It’s been frustrating, he said, seeing some people at pro-Palestinian rallies here in the U.S. appear sympathetic toward Hamas without condemning the killings and kidnappings of Israeli civilians.
“These are terrorists, period,” Pessah said of Hamas.
Pessah said he knows that if Israel launches a ground invasion of Gaza, there are likely to be “a high number of casualties on both sides.” He hopes that if the Israel Defense Forces do invade, they know in advance where the hostages are being kept.
For now, he hopes that Yaakov and his girlfriend and sons are together. He hopes they’re safe.
“It’s this unimaginable nightmare,” Pessah said. “I keep telling myself, ‘You’re not dreaming. You’re not going to wake up. This is reality.’”
::
On Monday afternoon, a military procession escorted two coffins holding Goldstein Almog and his daughter, Yam. They were being buried at the Shefayim kibbutz in central Israel, Mizrahi said, because it was too dangerous in the south.
The hope, she said, is to transfer them back to their kibbutz once the community is rebuilt.
Israeli soldiers take part in Monday’s funeral for Sgt. Yam Goldstein and her father, Nadav Goldstein Almog. Relatives of Mizrahi’s, they were killed Oct. 7.
(Ariel Schalit / Associated Press)
Around 500 people attended the funeral, including Yam’s military friends, who spoke highly of her dedication.
“Twenty-year-olds giving eulogy to other 20-year-olds is something I haven’t seen,” Mizrahi said. “They’re all so young, and they’ve all experienced so much loss.”
The four missing relatives were not forgotten during the three-and-a-half-hour service. It was held on the birthday of Goldstein Almog’s wife, Chen. The couple were high school sweethearts.
Inbar Goldstein, Goldstein Almog’s sister, read the crowd a poem she’d written.
“Our duty is not to forget,” she said. “Not to forget who was taken beyond the fence, not to forget those who are waiting to come home.”
After the attack, Yam’s aunt got the same butterfly tattoo as her niece. She added six hearts beside it, two of them blackened in.
The other four will remain empty, Mizrahi said, “until we know what happened to them.”
A man approached a West Hills home Saturday night and appeared to set a displayed U.S. flag on fire, sparking a small blaze and suspicion that the suspect was motivated by hate.
The incident was caught on a home surveillance system. Officials are investigating it as a possible hate crime and arson, according to Los Angeles Police Officer Drake Madison. Madison said it wasn’t clear what prompted the hate crime investigation, but noted that the report mentioned the American flag and Jewish symbols outside the home.
The case was still under investigation as of Monday morning, without any suspects identified or arrested, Madison said.
“I’m scared, I’m really scared,” said Hadas, a mother of four, who lives in the home. She requested that her full name not be published out of concern for her safety and that of her family.
She said a portion of her garage and roof were damaged in the small fire before someone driving by stopped at the sight of the flames and put out the fire with a hose.
Hadas said no one in her family was home at the time of the fire and no one was injured.
“Thank God for that,” Hadas said.
She said she was headed home with her children Saturday evening when she got a notification from their surveillance system that someone was in their front yard.
She couldn’t immediately see anyone in the surveillance camera’s shot, but noticed what appeared to be flames in the front yard. She called 911 and had her daughter call a neighbor.
Before firefighters or her neighbor arrived, the passerby had responded to the flames, she said. Later, police officers came by.
The fire started about 8 p.m. Saturday, Madison said.
Hadas doesn’t know why someone would set the flag on fire, but said she worries it may have to do with their Jewish faith, noting her family has a large mezuza — an enclosed scroll with Hebrew scripture that many Jews place on doorposts — outside their front door.
Antisemitic incidents were already on the rise in the U.S. before the Israel-Hamas war broke out earlier this month — which has since prompted fears about increased violence against both Jewish and Palestinian people. Officials say it’s still too soon to say for certain if anti-Jewish or anti-Muslim crimes have increased since the war.
Hadas also noted that their house was the only one on in the neighborhood displaying a U.S. flag — something her neighbors are now determined to change.
“All the neighbors ordered one,” Hadas said. “All of us are going to put [out] an American flag.”
To get a sense of how progressive ideals don’t always reflect actual practice, try burying a dead relative in Southern California. You’ll find that even in this land where people talk about sustainability, saying farewell in an environmentally responsible manner is, for most people, nearly impossible.
I came to grips with that reality in August, when my mother died from an unexpected illness. Making the final arrangements was my job, and I valued the experience as much as one can while gripped by grief.
My mother, a nurse and devout Lutheran, spent her life caring for the world around her and the people whom Jesus called “the least of these brothers and sisters.” I felt strongly that her remains should be handled in a way that reflected her values and, to some extent, mine.
As funeral director and poet Thomas Lynch wrote, “By getting the dead where they need to go, the living get where they need to be.”
And where are the living? On a planet in serious peril, where resource- and land-intensive burial practices reflect the overconsumption that put us in this mess. So, in the days just before my mom’s death, and with the clock ticking fast, I explored “green burial” options in Southern California that minimize environmental impacts.
That involved ditching the local (and very expensive) mortuary giant Forest Lawn — where seemingly everyone in Glendale, my mom’s hometown, goes to spend eternity — and calling smaller funeral homes that advertise eco-friendly options.
I settled on a small business in Hollywood that partners with a natural burial cemetery — where the land is minimally disturbed and traditional embalming isn’t allowed — and even offers an intriguing “human composting” option. Crucially, prices for the most common services are listed prominently on the funeral home’s website (note to other mortuaries: Please do this).
But the eco-friendly options had serious drawbacks. The natural burial cemetery is near Joshua Tree (gorgeous, but 120 miles away), and human composting — a process that accelerates decomposition and, within a month, turns a body into nutrient-dense soil — isn’t yet legal in California and would have required shipping my dead mother to Washington state.
Burial options that require two-hour flights or three-hour car drives don’t strike me as green. Even in this era of heightened environmental consciousness, the most accessible disposal options are not the sustainable ones. Our final choice: local cremation.
Still, the future for handling the dead in an environmentally sound way isn’t totally dim. Last year, California passed a law to allow human composting starting in 2027. And, although there are only two fully natural burial grounds certified by the Green Burial Council in all of California (none of them near Los Angeles), more “traditional” cemeteries are offering some environmentally friendly options.
Sarah Chavez, executive director of the L.A.-based advocacy group the Order of the Good Death, told me these cemeteries and California lawmakers are responding to an increasing demand for burials that not only conserve resources, but are also more meaningful to the people seeking them.
She said the $20-billion U.S. funeral industry has commodified death in a way that has made people scared of their dead loved ones, convinced that only trained, very expensive professionals must take over the moment a relative dies.
I told Chavez my family resisted this routine, even if we didn’t get a green burial. The funeral home accommodated our request to sit with my mom for several hours before it sent workers to pick her up. In that time, the few of us there had a mini-funeral.
We alternated between tears, laughter and prayers, all while my mom was there with us. Her body was not hazardous waste to be swiftly disposed of.
Chavez said our experience reflects a grassroots change in death services. Her group supports families taking a more active role in burials. She said many people entering the funeral industry now are women who recognize the need for change, which I noticed in making my arrangements as well.
From this desire for more control, we’ll get more green burial options in the future. Just not in time for my mom.
A Los Angeles County judge made the rare decision to reject a negotiated plea agreement Friday that would have allowed a sheriff’s deputy to avoid jail time on assault charges stemming from the 2021 shooting death of a suicidal man outside his family’s East L.A. home.
Judge Michael Pastor refused to accept the deal — which would have seen Deputy Remin Pineda receive probation and give up his right to be a cop in California — after hearing emotional pleas from the family of 34-year-old David Ordaz Jr., who was shot to death by four deputies while holding a knife and asking police to kill him in March 2021.
“I am furious that our system allows Pineda to walk around like nothing happened. What about David?” asked his oldest sister, Hilda Pedroza, during a series of tearful victim impact statements delivered in court Friday. “David doesn’t get to walk like he does. If the tables were turned, David would be put in jail in a second.”
Pineda was charged with assault with a firearm and assault under color of authority last year. Prosecutors determined they didn’t have enough evidence to charge two other deputies who shot Ordaz Jr., and said a third acted in lawful self-defense. But Pineda’s use of force was excessive, according to L.A. County Deputy Dist. Atty. Guy Shirley, who said the deputy continued shooting even after Ordaz Jr. was on the ground and fired at least one round after he dropped the knife.
Steven Alvarado, an attorney representing Pineda, declined to comment after the hearing. The Sheriff’s Department did not respond to a request for comment on the status of the other deputies involved in Ordaz Jr.’s death. Pineda is due back in court in December.
“We continue to believe that the charges are substantiated by the evidence and are prepared to move forward with a preliminary hearing and trial,” said Venusse Navid, a spokeswoman for the district attorney’s office. “Beyond that, it would be inappropriate to comment as the matter is pending litigation.”
Pedroza said the district attorney’s office did not consult the family before reaching a deal with Pineda, and only informed her of the terms two weeks ago. Most of her family believed Friday’s hearing was a formality but they wanted to make sure a judge and prosecutors heard their pain.
“I thought it’s not going to make a difference. There’s no point. They already made up their minds,” Pedroza said outside the courthouse. “I was really shocked. I did not think this was going to be possible. The first words out of my mouth were ‘Thank God! Thank God!’ ”
After Pastor’s ruling, nearly two dozen of Ordaz Jr.’s loved ones could be seen crying and hugging in a third-floor hallway of the downtown courthouse, many of them wearing pins emblazoned with Ordaz Jr.’s face.
Pineda was one of several deputies who responded to a 2021 call for help after Ordaz Jr. armed himself with a blade and told his sister he was suicidal at his family’s home in March 2021.
When deputies confronted Ordaz Jr., he was holding a 12-inch kitchen knife and told deputies he wanted them to shoot him, according to body camera footage taken at the scene.
“That’s not what we want to do, man,” Pineda said, according to court records.
Ordaz Jr. was standing about 10 feet from the deputies, who repeatedly said they didn’t want to hurt him and ordered him to drop the knife, according to the video. As his family begged him to let go of the weapon, Ordaz Jr. asked the deputies to summon a helicopter and a news chopper, the footage shows.
Eventually, deputies fired beanbag rounds in an effort to subdue him. When Ordaz Jr. took several steps forward, they fired their service weapons, killing him with a barrage of at least a dozen bullets. The gunfire continued as Ordaz Jr. collapsed and his relatives screamed out, according to the video.
Pineda kept firing after the other deputies stopped shooting, even as Ordaz Jr. “continued to lie on the ground on the right side of his body,” according to a 13-page memo explaining the district attorney’s office’s filing decisions in the case.
Another deputy told him to stop, but Pineda fired another round even while Ordaz Jr. was on the ground, disarmed. Shirley said Pineda fired eight times in total.
Ordaz Jr. left behind three children. His partner, Jasmine Moreno, said Friday that he had been struggling with anxiety and depression at the time of the shooting. One of his sisters told 911 dispatchers she also feared he had used methamphetamine on the day of the shooting. An autopsy found several types of narcotics in his bloodstream, records show.
The victim’s father, David Ordaz, said the incident has destroyed his family and left him incapable of ever trusting law enforcement.
“If I have to call the police again, what am I to expect … for them to come and help me or for them to come and kill me or my family?” he asked through a Spanish interpreter.
Pedroza said she believes her brother would still be alive today if she hadn’t called the sheriff’s department.
“I know that my error was calling my local sheriff’s station and this will be something I have to live with for the rest of my life. That will be my torment,” she said. “I’m scared to be out in the world. I’m scared to drive and be stopped by deputies. I’m scared to walk on the sidewalk where David was killed. My heart is broken. I feel like I don’t belong in this world. I have lost my place in it.”
Keke Wyatt is opening up about being a mother of 11 children — that’s right, 11 children. As The Shade Room previously reported, Wyatt welcomed her youngest child, Ke’Zyah Jean Darring, in May 2022.
Keke Wyatt Shares How She Gets Her “One-On-One Time” With Each Of Her 11 Children
The 41-year-old R&B singer spoke exclusively with US Weekly for an interview published Friday. During the conversation, Wyatt explained that juggling life and responsibilities as a mother of 11 is “not hard at all.”
Contrary to popular belief, Wyatt has seamlessly curated a schedule for spending valued time with all of her children.
“It actually is not hard at all,” the singer told the outlet. “So if I have to go to the store, I’ll take one with me, and that’s our time. Or if I’m going to the studio to record, I’ll take one, whoever’s asking to go. I just do it like that, and I get my one-on-one time in.”
The Singer Opens Up About Her Youngest Son & His Impact On Her Older Children
During the interview, Wyatt also spoke about caring for her youngest child, Ke’Zyah Jean. As The Shade Room previously reported, the 1-year-old was diagnosed with a rare genetic disorder called Trisomy 13 before his birth.
According to the Cleveland Clinic, the condition affects how one’s “face, brain, and heart develop, along with several other internal organs.”
Wyatt explained that her family is “very grateful” for the toddler and loves him “just the way he is.” Additionally, the singer shared gratitude and praise for her older children’s outlook toward their youngest sibling.
“We are very grateful, and we love him just the way he is. We don’t want him any other way,” Wyatt explained to US Weekly. “It’s so beautiful to sit back and watch how they just love on him. And it’s almost as if there’s nothing different about him to them. I feel very honored that the Lord showed me how to raise children to be those types of people.”
Keke Wyatt Shared Her Present Thoughts On Continuing To Expand Her Family
According to US Weekly, Wyatt shares her four eldest children with her ex-husband, Rahmat Morton, four children with ex-husband Michael Jamar Ford, and her three youngest children with her current husband, Zackariah Darring.
When asked for her thoughts on continuing to expand her family, Wyatt remains open.
“I thought it was complete at 10, and here’s 11. So I don’t know,” the 41-year-old admitted. “I can say yes and then look up, and now we got 12. I don’t know, I’ll just say that.”
As The Shade Room reported, Wyatt echoed similar sentiments when asked the same question on an episode of TV One’s ‘Uncensored’ aired last year. Check out her thoughts below!
When I was newly engaged in 1986, my grandfather sent a Christmas gift of cash. I knew just what to do with it. There was a strapless, red sequined dress with a chiffon ruffled skirt in the window of a Santa Monica boutique that I’d been eyeing for weeks.
After working my way up from receptionist after film school, I became the west coast production manager for a commercial and music video company on the legendary Sunset Boulevard. For a girl from Ohio, I was living the dream. This dress was my destiny. It was sexy and sparkly and sophisticated–everything I always wanted to be.
Unfortunately, my salary barely covered my rent-controlled apartment by the beach and the big-shouldered suits that camouflaged my figure at work. No way could I afford such Madonna-inspired splendor. But thanks to my grandfather, I could swing it for Christmas.
Leslie Lehr pictured on a lifeguard stand (L) and with her ex-husband (R). Leslie Lehr
My grandfather, A. L. Levine, was a big art collector. The Picasso and Botero in his Palm Beach cottage were destined for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, for the Atrium that now bears his name. And this dress was art!
I decided to splurge on it and surprise my fiancé before a big New Year’s Eve party. I curled my long hair and layered on lipstick. I was so excited that my hands shook as I zipped up my dress. I felt like a balloon filled to bursting. “Ready?” I called.
When I tiptoed into the living room and twirled around, my fiancé shook his head. “I hate sequins,” he said. I blinked in confusion. I loved sequins. I planned to wear them to get an Oscar one day. How could he not understand this was the real me?
I kept the dress on, but the bubble had burst. We’d met at work in Hollywood, so he saw plenty of sequins. He thought they were tacky. But I didn’t feel tacky; I just didn’t feel as beautiful as before.
At the party, when my fiancé went off to chat with some friends, other men approached. They disagreed with my fiancé; my dress was a hit. I tried to enjoy their compliments, but they didn’t count. I had pledged my heart.
If only I’d paid more attention. When I left to work freelance and started getting screen credits, my husband was proud. He still had more money, though, and that mattered more. When my first novel won an award, he took a job out of the country and couldn’t join me to collect it. He liked me best in my bathroom. He took photos of me baking Christmas cookies with our daughters. Or, rather, decorating them; I used Slice N Bake dough. For another book, I was interviewed on the CNN morning news. He didn’t wake the girls to watch. And somehow, he forgot to record it. I buried the dress deeper and deeper in the closet.
A decade later, my sister asked me to wear the dress to take pictures for her photography class at USC. My husband was happy to help. I dug out the dress and my sister got an A. We sent a copy to my grandfather, who loved it. By now, it was a period piece from the 1980’s. But I never wore that dress again in public. I hung the picture in the hallway and admired it through the glass.
Later, I turned a bedroom into my office. I stored my red dress in the closet with extra supplies. One night, when my husband was home between freelance film jobs, I was on a roll. I kept writing past six, which was when he usually expected dinner.
Then I heard him shouting for me from the kitchen. I turned off the computer and ran in, ready to take over. He turned around from the sink and punched me. “It was an accident,” he said. He didn’t see me standing there. He was an ex-Marine. Had he meant to hit me, I’d be “out cold.”
That was true, I thought, as I lay on the floor where I fell. That’s where the girls found me.
I hid in my office for a few days until the bruising went down, where I came across my dress again in the storage closet. My swollen lip matched the dress for a week. My husband never hit me again, but the party was over.
Five years after that incident, we finally divorced. I should have seen it coming–seen the bright color like a stop sign, a cautionary tale. It’s still my favorite dress–the shiny sequins and the fluffy skirt–and I can still zip it up. There are no tags now to tell who made it, but if there were, I would thank the designer.
But its exuberant appearance is not the only reason why I love the dress. Instead, I keep the dress close as inspiration; every once in a while, I try it on and twirl. The very sight of it makes me smile.
When I look at it now, this dress is more than a red stop sign. This dress reminds me of that girl who wanted so much out of life–and now she’s got it. It reminds me of who I wanted to be, and who I am.
Leslie Lehr is the prize-winning author of the pop culture memoir, A Boob’s Life: How America’s Obsession Shaped Me — and You, exploring the challenge of women today in navigating a new path between sexy and sacred. She is the Novel Consultant for Truby’s Writers Studio, a judge for the WFWA debut novel contest, and a member of PEN, the Authors Guild, WGA, Women In Film, the ACLU, and The Women’s Leadership Council of LA.
All views expressed in this article are the author’s own.
Do you have a unique experience or personal story to share? Email the My Turn team at myturn@newsweek.com.
Whether your dog sleeps curled up at the foot of your bed, or your cat sleeps resting peacefully at the top of your pillow, one thing can be guaranteed — a bed without a pet is not a bed at all.
At APA!, we dream of a day that every shelter pet is invited into a home — foster or adoptive, with the opportunity to jump into a bed and snuggle up with a human who cares for them. Until then, we’ll be here to give them the love and care they need and deserve until they find a family to call their very own. And right now, our friends at Factory Mattress are supporting our mission to provide resources to the pets in our care!
Now through September, Factory Mattress is donating 5% of all mattress proceeds in the Greater Austin Area to Austin Pets Alive! — that’s some cozy support! “Factory Mattress wanted to work with APA! because we’re an Austin family business and strive to give back to the community as often as we can. Our family wouldn’t be complete without our pets, so we wanted to support APA! to help others add furry friends to their families,” says Stephen Frey, Factory Mattress’ President.
Factory Mattress has a long history of supporting local nonprofits.This philanthropic business has supported missions such as SAFE Alliance and has participated in The Statesman Season For Caring for 10 years! We’re honored to be included in this family owned and operated business’ giving program.
Our organization depends on the support of our community. Our programs are successful because of individuals and businesses who believe in what we do, who believe that every pet deserves a chance at life so when a business like Factory Mattress asks to fundraise on our behalf, we are nothing but grateful!
“Our corporate partners are critical to our lifesaving mission, allowing us to keep Austin the largest No Kill city in the country. Businesses and their employees who support APA! can feel good knowing their donations are used across our innovative programs that help to save Central Texas’ most vulnerable cats and dogs, ” says APA!’s Sr. Corporate Relations Officer, Tara McKenney.
This fundraiser supports pets like Ruthie and Rio. Ruthie has spent over a year in the shelter. She started her journey with APA! as a tiny puppy fighting parvovirus. After surviving parvo, she was adopted and was returned to the shelter after living with her family for 4 years. The beginning of September will mark Rio’s 1 year of waiting for a family. This young kitty came to our organization in need of medical support; she was found with a broken jaw. She’s had breaks from the shelter by going into foster homes, then being returned. Wouldn’t it be great if these two pets could get tucked into a bed (whether pet or human) knowing they’ve made it home?
Thank you to our friends at Factory Mattress for joining our lifesaving journey by generously offering this fundraising opportunity!
HUNTSVILLE, Ala., September 25, 2023 (Newswire.com)
– Get ready for an unforgettable LEGO experience as BrickUniverse, the ultimate LEGO fan event, is coming to the Von Braun Center in Huntsville on November 18th and 19th, 2023. This event promises to be a thrilling adventure for LEGO enthusiasts of all ages.
BrickUniverse is known for its limited number of tickets, and this year is no exception. With the event just around the corner, tickets are currently available for purchase online at Eventbrite for $14.99.
Event Highlights:
Building Zones: Attendees will have the opportunity to let their creativity run wild in dedicated building zones where they can construct the LEGO creations of their dreams. From towering skyscrapers to intricate vehicles, there are no limits to what you can build.
Brick Market: Explore a bustling brick market, where you’ll find an impressive array of LEGO sets, accessories, and collectibles. Whether you’re a seasoned builder or just starting out, there’s something for everyone at the Brick Market.
Professional Artists: Be inspired by the incredible talent of professional LEGO artists from around the country as they showcase their awe-inspiring creations. These artists will demonstrate the endless possibilities of LEGO as an art form.
Event organizer York Beights shared his excitement about bringing BrickUniverse to Huntsville: “We are thrilled to bring BrickUniverse to Huntsville for the first time. LEGO has a special place in the hearts of people of all ages, and this event is a celebration of that passion. It’s not just an event; it’s an opportunity for families and fans to come together, get creative, and be inspired by the endless possibilities of LEGO.”
Event Details:
Date: November 18-19, 2023
Location: Von Braun Center, Huntsville, AL
Show Hours:
Saturday, November 18, 2023
VIP Admission: 9:00 AM – 12:30 PM (Last few VIP tickets available!)
General Admission: 10:00 AM – 12:30 PM or 1:30 PM – 4:00 PM
Sunday, November 19, 2023
VIP Admission: 9:00 AM – 12:30 PM
General Admission: 10:00 AM – 12:30 PM or 1:30 PM – 4:00 PM
Don’t miss out on this incredible LEGO adventure. Get your tickets at Eventbrite and be part of the BrickUniverse experience in Huntsville. This is an event you won’t want to miss!
