Ever feel like your best friend’s feelings are a cryptic message waiting to be decoded? You laugh together, share secrets, and have an undeniable connection, but lately, things feel…different. Are those lingering hugs a friendly embrace or something more? Do their compliments feel personal, or just part of your BFF routine? The line between friendship and romance can get blurry, leaving you wondering, “Does my BFF like me?”
You’re not alone! Countless people have been left spirally in a confusing cycle of mixed signals and friend zone fears. Since best friends are usually affectionate anyway, it’s not always easy to notice the slight shift in your friend’s behavior when they start feeling more than just platonic best friend love.
By the end of this quiz, you’ll have a clearer picture of whether your best friend might be harboring deeper feelings. Remember, this quiz is just a starting point. True understanding comes from open communication and honest conversations with your friend. So, are you ready to unlock the secrets of your best friend’s heart? Take the quiz and find out what the future holds – friendship or romance?
A lifeguard found the body of a woman on the sand in Manhattan Beach on Friday morning, three hours after her boyfriend reported her missing.
The woman was identified by the Los Angeles County medical examiner’s office as Jennifer Hanie, 31, according to City News Service. The cause of death has not been determined.
Manhattan Beach police said the woman’s boyfriend and friends searched for Hanie before reporting her missing early Friday morning. “The reporting party stated he last saw his girlfriend near the water line,” the police said.
County lifeguards and the U.S. Coast Guard helped search for the woman on the beach and in the water.
Police are continuing to investigate. Anyone with information should call Manhattan Beach Police Detective Sgt. Taylor Klosowski at (310) 802-5123.
I was leaving a friend’s housewarming party on a street of nice single-family homes in Los Angeles a few years back when my curiosity got the best of me. I pulled up Zillow on my phone, entered her address and blinked at the property’s purchase price. I suppose I could have just asked her. In Los Angeles, talking about the cost of real estate is common, and I’ve often heard people comparing their refinance interest rates or saying how much they had to pay over the asking price. But by pursuing the information privately, I could digest my feelings about not being in a position to afford a house of equal value because I came from a different family of origin, because I was unmarried, because our writing careers had unfolded differently.
This emotional aspect of homeownership isn’t discussed in articles that make the choice between buying and renting seem as low impact as choosing whether to eat carbs. Of course, it’s a financial investment and should theoretically be approached without sentiment. But it’s also one of the most loaded tenets of the American dream. When a belief or ideal has been drilled into your subconscious, detaching your values and self-identity from the fantasy can be difficult. This is true, even for people like me who were raised outside the mainstream.
When I was a child, my mother and some friends bought 100 acres of land in Maine, creating an intentional community as part of the Back to the Land movement in the 1970s. Four families, including my own, designed and built properties — with our own hands — as well as the organic gardens, compost bins and wood piles that supported our chosen way of life. Everything was purposeful, such as our home being heated by solar energy and wood we mostly cut from our land. We ate our vegetarian, home-grown meals together under our skylights and at regular neighborhood potlucks. At the time, I felt like an outsider at school. Most families in our village had lobstered for generations and did not understand our preferences. But even then, I sensed I was being raised thoughtfully and well.
All of this introduced me to the idea that owning a home was a conscious commitment to creating a small oasis of mindful, environmentally friendly, community-oriented living, as well as an act of stewardship — my parents own 30 acres of woodland that our family will never develop. And while I rebelled at 15 by moving to Massachusetts to start college early, I internalized these values and have been looking for my own version ever since.
Perhaps it was this unusual upbringing that made me always love peeping in other people’s windows, to see how they lived by comparison. On runs through my neighborhood, I have spied scenes of a boy practicing piano or my neighbors watching “Jeopardy” by the light of their Christmas tree. As a child, I drew elaborate underground squirrel-houses with bunk beds and roller rinks. As an author, when I’m creating a new character I go to their hometown’s Zillow page and seek their living situation, scouring photos for my scene-setting. In my forthcoming novel, the main character, Mari, is a ghostwriter who sleuths intel about her client by looking up her home on Zillow. But I don’t need an excuse to peruse the site. Even though I’m not in the market to buy, I love to get lost in the fantasy of other houses, other lives.
This tendency to look up residences in my neighborhood, for sale or not, morphed into looking up homes to which I am invited. Like many things in life, you only have to do it a few times for it to become a habit, whether it feels good or not. When I looked up a former mentor’s new home, the elegant, high-ceilinged rooms, alluring yard and swimming pool gave me all the feelings we can have about an old friend whose career has skyrocketed when ours has not yet hit the same heights.
Perhaps I should stop. Or perhaps it’s a healthy way of getting a handle on how I compare myself to others and assess where I am in my own life, and what my level of success or acquisition says about me. Perhaps, just as it fuels my writing, it helps me envision the many possible future stories of my own life.
Finally, in 2017, I compromised on my desire for a home and bought an investment property in Joshua Tree. Many of my friends also own places there, so in that way I was becoming part of a community as I had long sought. But owning a house that I would live in had become such a potent signifier, and even though I’m well aware that being able to buy property anywhere is a luxury many others will never have, this still felt like a concession. I knew vacationers would frequent it more than I would.
The day I decided to buy the home, I peered up at the sky through one of the perfectly placed windows and nearly wept because the space was that beautiful. The Los Angeles real estate market — and the rental market — had beaten me down, and I had given up thinking I had a right to anything as nice as this property. Except I did, and I do. We all have this right. And now, sometimes, I pull up the Zillow listing for my house and smile at this little corner of the world where I fulfilled a dream and took the first step into my own version of stewardship.
At a Nochebuena celebration hosted by Filipino American Archie Cubarrubia and his Cuban partner, T.J. Morales, in their North Hollywood home, karaoke is a must for everyone. That includes an 89-year-old Cuban immigrant who had never performed such an act in his life.
Frank Navarro, who came from Miami to visit his 45-year-old daughter, did not know what to do as the melody of Edith Piaf’s “La Vie en Rose” played over the television. When Cubarrubia, 44, handed Navarro a glowing microphone, Navarro put his arms down and shushed the room.
“You have to sing. This is karaoke,” Marie, Cubarrubia and Morales’ friend, told her father as the melody to his favorite song played. Frank simply grinned and covered his forehead.
But after Marie started singing, Frank and his 74-year-old Cuban wife, Maria, were off and running. They laughed and belted out the song as they embraced each other underneath the picture frame of a mascot of Jollibee, a fast-food chain beloved by Filipino Americans.
The whole room of about a dozen people joined in to sing along.
“This is amazing to me,” Frank said after his performance.
Marie, left, Maria and Frank Navarro pull numbers for a white elephant gift exchange from Archie Cubarrubia, right, during a Nochebuena celebration.
(Dania Maxwell / Los Angeles Times)
Because of the centuries of Spanish colonization, which brought Catholicism to the Philippines, Filipinos share many cultural customs with Latinos. Nochebuena is no exception. In both communities, families and friends bond over a shared meal, exchanging gifts and playing games. Filipinos and Cubans, specifically, also share the tradition of eating lechón, or roast pork, on Christmas Eve.
There are some differences — Karaoke is much more prominent in Filipino Nochebuena, for instance. Cubarrubia and Morales’ celebration featured a wide array of dishes, such as Filipino sour and savory soup of sinigang as well as Cuban picadillo and ham croquettes.
Still, for a Filipino-Cuban couple such as Cubarrubia, a deputy director at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and Morales, a 39-year-old who handles corporate partnerships at Live Nation, Nochebuena is another reminder of how close both communities are, even as their roots are far apart geographically.
“Whenever we go to each other’s families, it is actually just like being part of our own home cultures,” said Cubarrubia, who met Morales through Match.com in 2008. They have been married and have celebrated Nochebuena together for 10 years.
1
2
3
4
1.North Hollywood, – December 24: T.J. Morales unveils his white elephant gift during a Nochebuena celebration at he and his husband’s home. Nochebuena is celebrated across Filipinos and Latinos alike.2.A crowd of friends serve their dinners during a Nochebuena celebration on Christmas Eve at their friend’s home.3.Damian White, left, and Todd Sokolove, right, chat during a Nochebuena celebration.4.Maria Navarro serves her dinner during a Nochebuena celebration on Christmas Eve at her daughter’s friend’s home.(Dania Maxwell/Los Angeles Times)
Anthony Christian Ocampo, a sociologist who grew up in Northeast L.A., saw firsthand the cultural similarities between Filipinos and Latinos, such as having large multigenerational families and strong connections to their ancestral homelands.
“By no means do I want to romanticize colonialism in any way, shape or form, but the truth is the shared history of Spanish colonialism has played a major role in why Filipinos and Latinos feel connected,” Ocampo said.
In interviewing Filipino Americans for his book exploring these similarities, “The Latinos of Asia,” he learned that many were often mistaken for Latinos in their schools, workplaces, and on the street. Latino immigrants would often speak Spanish to them, he said.
“Many of us are Catholic, we have the same last names, there are many words in Tagalog that are similar to ones in Spanish,” Ocampo said. Basura, for instance, means garbage in Tagalog and Spanish. “This is the influence of Spanish colonialism, and this is what bonds us with Latinos and their culture, even if we are technically not checking the same box on a form.”
Nadal has called on people to think critically about Nochebuena, given its origin from the Spanish colonization. Still, he understands why the celebration matters to the Filipino diaspora.
“It’s an opportunity for people to share their love and to share their gifts and to be kind, which is very much aligned with Filipino culture,” he said. “It just becomes this huge celebration of love.
Eric Medina, 51, grew up celebrating Nochebuena with his Filipino family. Married to a Salvadoran American woman, he now celebrates it with her side of the family with pupusas or panes con pavo (turkey sandwiches). He always makes sure to bring a Filipino dish. It’s often biko, which is sticky rice cake with coconut milk and brown sugar.
The couple spends Christmas Day with his side of the family, watching the Lakers and eating traditional Filipino dishes like pancit, a stir fry noodle dish, and crispy spring rolls known as lumpia. There’s also Jollibee fried chicken.
“It’s kind of hard to explain. I felt really comfortable amongst Latinos. By happenstance, I ended up marrying a Latina,” said Medina, who met his wife at a nonprofit where they both worked.
For Filipino-Latino couples, Nochebuena is also an opportunity for them to learn more about each other’s cultures.
Nico Blitz, a 30-year-old Filipino DJ and producer, and Jackie Ramirez, a 25-year-old Mexican radio host for Real 92.3, have spent Nochebuena together for four years, alternating each year between Blitz’s family in the San Francisco Bay Area and Ramirez’s in East Los Angeles.
At Blitz’s family’s Nochebuena, Ramirez learned how to karaoke, singing a 2000s R&B song with what she called a bit of “liquid courage” — Hennessy, the cognac of choice for many Filipinos.
At Ramirez’s family’s Nochebuena, Blitz learned how to play Loteria, a Mexican take on Bingo. He also tried pozole for the first time.
“When I had pozole for the first time, I said, ‘Oh my god, where have I been my entire life,’ ” said Blitz, who lives in North Hollywood and hosts “Mexipino Podcast” with Ramirez. “I got three servings to myself, and they said, ‘Keep going if you want.’”
There were some awkward moments — Ramirez’s uncle would randomly bring up Filipino comedian Jo Koy and Blitz’s father would talk about the Aztec calendar — but once the two families got to know each other, they realized they share a lot in common. Both families have big gatherings on Christmas Eve, where dozens come together, often in pajamas, to exchange gifts and play games.
“It honestly just feels like a copy and paste,” Blitz said of the two celebrations.
Back at Cubarrubia and Morales’ house, with his right hand on Cubarrubia’s right shoulder, Morales gives a toast with a glass of Kylie Minogue-branded wine.
The crowd cheers as Christian Pino, a 30-year-old medical resident who was born in Cuba and moved to L.A. just six months ago from Philadelphia, perfectly flips a flan out of a pot and onto a plate.
“That’s the real flan!” Marie Navarro tells her dad as she sniffs the dish.
Damian White, a 44-year-old friend of Morales’, serves tiki glasses with Don Papa rum from the Philippines and Bacardi Gold.
“Bacardi is a Cuban company,” Pino tells the room. “Don’t forget.”
And when the karaoke rolls around, Cubarrubia and Morales break out dancing as they sing Olivia Newton-John’s “Xanadu.” Marie follows along, sashaying in front of a Christmas tree as her parents look on.
“We got the karaoke,” Cubarrubia says. “But the dancing part, the Cuban Americans have down pat.”
The Kaiser Family Foundation recently reported that the annual cost of family health insurance jumped to nearly $24,000 this year, the greatest increase in a decade. While insurance executives and employers may cite a plethora of reasons, one of the chief culprits is lack of oversight over the Wild West of healthcare prices.
My friend encountered a dramatic example of this last year after her 4-year-old daughter had the misfortune of suffering the same injury twice in the same day.
The girl’s parents were getting her ready for school one morning when, as her hand was pulled through a shirt sleeve, she experienced severe pain. They took her to the children’s emergency department down the road from their home in the Bay Area, where she was diagnosed with “nursemaid’s elbow” or, more technically, a “radial head subluxation.” Common in young children, whose ligaments are looser than adults’, the partial dislocation is straightforward to diagnose and treat. A simple maneuver of the elbow put it back in place in seconds.
After coming home from school that afternoon, my friend’s daughter was playing with her babysitter when her elbow got out of place again. They went back to the same emergency department and went through the same steps with another doctor.
My friend, who is fortunate enough to have good insurance and the means to pay her share, knew the bills wouldn’t be cheap. What she wasn’t expecting was such a stark illustration of the arbitrary nature of medical billing.
While the bill for the first visit was $3,561, the second was $6,056. Same child, same hospital, same insurance, same diagnosis, same procedure, same day — and yet the price was different by not just a few dollars or even a few hundred dollars, but nearly double.
How do we make sense of this? How can a patient be charged such wildly different prices for the same treatment on the same day?
Emergency room billing consists of hospital fees and professional services fees. The hospital fees include a “facility fee” that is part of every emergency room visit and coded at one of five levels. Level 1 is the simplest — someone needing a prescription, for example — while Level 5 is the most complicated, for problems such as heart attacks and strokes that require significant hospital resources. And of course there can be additional hospital fees for X-rays, medications and the like, which weren’t necessary in the case of my friend’s daughter.
The professional services fees are for the emergency physician and other providers such as radiologists. In this case, there were no fees for professionals other than the emergency room doctor.
But the itemized charges showed the two visits were billed completely differently. The first was charged a Level 1 facility fee and a Level 3 professional fee. And the bill tacked on additional fees, including hospital and professional charges for taking care of the patient’s injured joint.
The second visit, meanwhile, was charged a Level 2 facility fee and a Level 4 professional fee, both higher than that morning. But in contrast to the earlier visit, no other charges appeared.
Why was the same injury coded as more complex and expensive to treat the second time than the first? Why did the coding and billing company decide to charge for additional services for the first visit but not the second?
I know both of the physicians who treated my daughter’s friend; they work in the same group, use the same billing and coding company, and charge the same rates. So the different doctors don’t explain the discrepancy. In my practice, even treating physicians have no access to information about how billing for our services is determined.
My friend and I contacted the hospital’s billing department repeatedly, but they proved unable to provide any rational explanation.
Unfortunately, this isn’t new. About a decade ago, I published a series of studies showing how arbitrary medical billing can be. Hospitals charged fees ranging from $10 to $10,169 for a cholesterol test; $1,529 to $182,995 for an appendicitis hospitalization without complications; and $3,296 to $37,227 for a normal vaginal birth.
Only uninsured patients are asked to pay these sticker prices. But despite the “discounts” granted to insured patients through their insurance companies, these charges end up sneaking into higher premiums and other costs. Medical bills are responsible for about 59% of U.S. bankruptcies.
There are few certainties in life, but one of them is that we will all need healthcare at some point. And another, at least for those of us living in America, is that we have no idea what it will cost or why. This would never be tolerated in any other industry.
What can we do about it? Here’s where we could benefit from a government agency like the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which helps regulate banks and other financial entities that perpetrate what have been called “injustices against everyday Americans.” We need someone to regulate the injustices inflicted on Americans every day at the hands of the healthcare system too. Recent efforts by the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice to police healthcare mergers and address other anticompetitive behavior in the industry could also help.
More government regulation and oversight won’t address the more fundamental problem that we keep trying to treat healthcare as a market good, which it clearly isn’t. But it could help ensure that treating a minor injury one afternoon doesn’t cost twice as much as it did that morning.
Renee Y. Hsia is a professor of emergency medicine and health policy at UC San Francisco as well as a Soros fellow and a Public Voices fellow at the OpEd Project.
A female LAPD officer who accused former assistant chief Alfred “Al” Labrada of unlawfully tracking her has filed a legal claim alleging department leadership failed to shield her from backlash, both inside the department and on social media.
The officer, Dawn Silva, said in a government claim filed Tuesday that her decision to report Labrada unleashed a torrent of abuse from his defenders, who she claims have continued to contact her privately since an Oct. 7 press conference in which Labrada publicly dismissed the allegations.
Silva, a senior officer with the department’s training division, said in the claim that she went on medical leave on Sept. 18 “[d]ue to the significant pressure and anxiety that [she] was facing from the persistent rumors.”
Silva’s claim says she has been “harassed and discriminated against based on her sex and gender and has been retaliated against” for reporting the alleged misconduct.
Some of the harassment has come from fellow LAPD officers, the claim says, noting that some comments were receieved from LAPD-adjacent accounts on Instagram. One such account, called @defendthelapd, posted a story characterizing Labrada as a “sacrificial lamb,” while accusing the officer who filed the police report against him of “lying and pulling a #metoo…because she’s scorned.”
After news of the allegations broke, Labrada was demoted to the rank of commander and has been sent to a disciplinary panel, where he faces possible termination. He has been on leave since early October.
Silva said Labrada has “continuously and on an ongoing basis” emailed and texted her, “despite assurances” from the department that the he had been given two “stay away” orders. Such orders are an administrative tool regularly used to separate department employees who are involved in interpersonal or romantic disputes; repeated violations can result in an officer’s termination.
In a statement Tuesday, Labrada’s attorney, Jeremy Tissot, said he had not yet reviewed the claim, but he stood by his comments at a news conference in October where he defended his client. Tissot pointed out that prosecutors in San Bernardino County declined to file any charges against Labrada.
“Mr. Labrada has never engaged in any stalking, harassment, abuse or other illegal actions, in my opinion,” Tissot wrote in a statement.
At the news conference in October, Labrada said the case had caused him “significant emotional and physical distress.” He accused department leadership — singling out Chief Michel Moore on several occasions — for making details about the case public that he said should have been protected by state privacy laws. Labrada argued that he was being treated differently from other department officials facing allegations of misconduct, echoing a double standard argument made in several other recent lawsuits against the LAPD.
Tissot also scolded news outlets for their repeated characterization of the allegations against Labrada as “stalking,” a label that he said carries a dark connotation. Tissot said the allegations against Labrada do not meet the state’s legal definition of stalking. The attorney added that he was limited in what he could say because of the department’s pending disciplinary case against his client.
An LAPD spokeswoman declined to comment on Tuesday, saying the department generally doesn’t discuss ongoing litigation.
Silva’s attorney, Matthew McNicholas, accused the department Tuesday of mishandling the case against his client.
“It’s entirely inappropriate for an assistant chief in LAPD to place what is in effect an electronic dog collar on a simple police officer that he was in a romantic relationship with,” said McNicholas, adding that Silva began receiving text messages from colleagues shortly after she reported Labrada to internal affairs. “How does that happen? She didn’t tell anybody else in the department. Her mother didn’t tell anyone else in the department. So it is her belief, it is our belief that it was leaked.”
Silva said she discovered a tracking device called an AirTag on Sept. 3 during a getaway with friends at a hotel in Palm Springs, when he emailed her a copy of their domestic partnership separation agreement, according to the police report. The timing of the message made her suspect that Labrada knew her whereabouts, and she then asked a friend to help her inspect her car, according to the report.
The search turned up an AirTag in a black Pelican case that was attached to the undercarriage, behind the rear passenger wheel, her claim said. A friend of hers “scanned” the device, which revealed that it was registered to Labrada’s city-owned cellphone, according to her claim.
Several investigators from internal affairs showed up at her home to interview her the day after she filed a report with Ontario police, she said. But, when they rechecked the AirTag, Labrada’s information had been wiped, leading Silva to believe that someone had tipped him off.
She said her relationship with Labrada dates back to October 2017, when he was a captain in Hollenbeck Division. in May 2021, they filed paperwork to become domestic partners. Silva maintains that she ended their relationship last July “due to its continually toxic nature.”
Silva was granted a temporary restraining order against Labrada on Nov. 16; in her application for the order, she described the emotional anguish that the ongoing abuse had caused her and said she feared for her safety, She also detailed Labrada’s ongoing efforts to contact her, including through friends and family members, according to the document.
Times staff writer Richard Winton contributed to this report.
If the key to a long life — along with good genes and lots of luck — is to keep moving, Pete Teti is on the right trail.
He started Thanksgiving Day as he has begun most every other day for more than 20 years — with a hike in Griffith Park. Teti, three days away from his 100th birthday, met up with his usual cohort of friends near the Griffith Observatory and began the climb toward Mt. Hollywood, a roughly two-mile round trip.
He stopped briefly to take a seat on a park bench that has his name engraved on it — he’s a bit of a legend in these parts — and played his harmonica for a few minutes. Then he was back up and moving.
Pete Teti, middle, turns 100 years old on Sunday. Pete is hiking with his buddies Kori Bernards, left, and her dog Lucca, and Annette Sikand, right, in Griffith Park early in the morning on Thursday in Los Angeles. Teti is mentally sharp and physically fit, an inspiration to friends.
(Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times)
Los Angeles stretched out beneath us, skyscraper to sea, in the silver, cloud-filtered light of a newborn day. In a city of strivers ricocheting around in congested isolation, the park is an island of repose, a place where lives intersect and time slows. Teti exchanged smiles, waves and greetings of “good morning” and “happy Thanksgiving” with fellow travelers he’s come to know.
“They leave all their problems down there in the city,” Teti said, moving with the ease of a man half his age.
“He’s got a lot of swagger,” said his friend and walking mate Annette Sikand, who took note of Teti’s erect posture and steady gait.
Teti, wearing a charcoal colored newsboy cap, paused at a turnout in the trail and blew into his harmonica again, the Hollywood sign clinging to the mountain at his back. Then the World War II vet, who served in Europe, Africa and the Pacific with the U.S. Army, decided to keep advancing up a steeper portion of the incline.
“I thought we were … ready to go down again, but no,” said Teti’s friend Jay Miller, who is 20 years younger than Teti. “No, you have to keep going up.”
Pete Teti, who turns 100 on Sunday, takes regular hikes in Griffith Park.
(Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times)
Tom McGovern met Teti several years ago, when McGovern accompanied the late Councilman Tom LaBonge on daily hikes, and the men bonded under the hypnotic spell of the park. The senior member of the walking club may have slowed a bit over time, McGovern said, but not much.
“His pace, for his age, is remarkable. No doubt about it,” said McGovern. “For any age, his pace is good.”
Along the dusty trail we bumped into Mozhi Jabberi, who said she was walking once or twice a week until she met Teti recently. Inspired by him, she decided to hike more frequently.
“I want people to know he started his serious hiking at the age of 79,” said Jabberi, 52.
Nancy Kristol and her husband, Mark, were heading up the trail with Rocco, one of the many dogs who seem to enjoy being serenaded by the harmonica-playing hiker. The Kristols met Teti during the pandemic, Nancy said, and she enjoys her encounters with a man so “in tune with his environment and the love of his mountain.”
“It’s very special to have met him up here,” she said, “when there’s all this chaos down there and all this insanity that we’ve all experienced. To meet him up here was just a gift, and we appreciate him every day.”
He follows no secret diet, Teti told me. He eats what he feels like eating — including a pastry at Figaro Bistro, if the mood strikes him, or a burger from In-N-Out. But all things in moderation, he said. He began hiking when he had trouble tying his shoes one day and decided to slim down, and the park is conveniently located not far from his home in Silver Lake.
But there are a couple of things about Teti’s lifestyle that belong in any textbook on aging well. He does not live in isolation, and his physical activity is matched — actually, it’s surpassed — by his intellectual curiosity.
Teti worked for half a century as a teacher in Los Angeles, mostly in the arts, but late in life, he has reinvented himself in pursuit of new interests. Many people, as they age, resist change. Teti embraces it.
“He’s made two violins, he does engraving, he’s a painter, he’s currently creating animation, he’s constantly learning about physics, geometry, fractiles,” said Jay Miller.
The day before our hike, I visited Teti at his home, where he built a stained-glass gazebo in the front yard and laid tiles in the back patio. His studio is stuffed with books, computers and his most recent abstract paintings. He works in one corner of the house while his equally artistic wife, Rose Marie, 89, works in a room that serves as an ever-growing museum of her vibrantly colored paintings and whimsical home-made chandeliers.
Pete Teti holds the harmonica he plays while hiking. He is a hiker, artist, teacher and WWII veteran as he approaches his 100th birthday.
(Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times)
Teti — who took up the harmonica just a few years ago — told me his curiosity dates back to his childhood in southern Italy.
“I was nosey, and from school, I would stop at the cabinetmaker’s and stand by the door and sometimes he invited me in and put a tool in my hand,” Teti said. “And then I’d go to the blacksmith, and he invited me in to make a horseshoe, and I was excited.”
His family moved to Pennsylvania in the 1930s, and Teti settled in Los Angeles after serving in World War II and earning a master’s in art at USC. When school ended, his lifelong course in continuing education began. Teti showed me the bank of screens and keyboards in his workshop, where he’s teaching himself to convert sounds, shapes and colors into computer-driven art and animation.
A lot of it was beyond my comprehension, but Teti bubbled with childlike enthusiasm. Sometimes, he said, it’s impossible for him to get a good night’s sleep. His imagination keeps waking him up.
“It’s pretty incredible that a 100-year-old guy knows how to use this software,” said Les Camacho, a sound engineer who is half Teti’s age and helped him with the computer setup.
Not long ago, Teti called Camacho midday and said hey, let’s go get a burger.
“On the way back from In-N-Out we were listening to KLOS and all of a sudden AC/DC’s ‘Highway to Hell’ comes on, so I wanted to change it, and he said, ‘No, no, leave it, I like that,’” said Camacho, 47. “He was head-banging in my car.”
There’s such unbridled optimism and positivity about him, Teti’s friends say, he’s something of a pied piper in the park, where he’s been known to dance a jig while playing his harmonica.
“In a city so big and sometimes so lonely and troubled, he’s a constant light to those who get to be around him,” said Kori Bernards, another hiker.
Pete Teti, second from right, hikes with his buddies in Griffith Park early on Thanksgiving morning.
(Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times)
A man of 100 might be inclined toward disillusionment at the state of the world, given domestic fracturing, the devastation in Ukraine, the war in the Middle East and the acceleration of climate change. But when I asked him about this, Teti told me he remembers the dirt floors of his childhood home, the Great Depression, the millions of lives lost in World War II and so much more.
“It’s a cycle,” he said. “It seems like I’ve lived from the Renaissance to modern times, and I look back and say what’s happening now is nothing new. It’s happened throughout history. So I tell my friends this is a low cycle right now. … But I trust in younger people who come into the world without the prejudice of adults. I trust young people to change things.”
So how did Teti intend, on Sunday, to celebrate 100?
You guessed it. The plan was to meet pals near the bench with the L.A. Parks Foundation dedication that reads: “Pete Teti. Harmonica man, avid Griffith Park hiker, artist, teacher and WWII veteran.”
And then Teti would lead the walk up the trail and into the next century.
Eric Darnell Wright Jr. remembers his father driving down Muriel Avenue in Compton for Thanksgiving dinner.
It was there that his now 86-year old grandmother, Katie Wright, would prepare large meals for all her kin, including her son Eric Lynn Wright — better known as the late N.W.A rapper Eazy-E.
“It wasn’t no entertainment,” Eric Darnell Wright, the rapper’s son who goes by Lil Eazy-E, recalled. Only family existed in these moments. “It was just kind of like the hip-hop world was out of it.”
Erica Wright, the artist’s oldest daughter, never really cared for the rapper Eazy-E. “I cared about Eric,” she said of her father.
The siblings said they were heartbroken they weren’t able to spend enough of those moments with their dad, who died in 1995 at the age of 31.
Decades after Wright and N.W.A helped put the city on the map with the chart-topping single “Boyz N the Hood,” Eazy-E was celebratedWednesday with an honor befitting someone who loved to cruise down the avenues of his famous and sometimes infamous hometown.
Compton officially renamed Towne Center Drive as “Eazy Street.”
“It’s about time,” a man in the crowd yelled as officials raised the lime green sign for the public to see.
Family, friends and community leaders pose with the new Eazy St. sign during Wednesday’s ceremony.
(Michael Blackshire/Los Angeles Times)
The happy disruption and ceremony featuring lowriders, musical performances and original gangsters in a Best Buy parking lot perfectly encapsulated Wright’s rugged personality, his loved ones said on stage.
Eazy-E’s graphic lyrics from old albums blared from the stage where former N.W.A member DJ Yella exchanged greetings with Wright’s loved ones. Members of Bone Thugs-N-Harmony showed up for the event to pay respects to Wright, who appeared on their track “Foe tha Love of $” the year he died.
Black hats embroidered with “Compton” in bold white letters poked above the hundreds of attendees who danced in the crowd.
1
2
3
4
1.An attendee at Wednesday’s ceremony shows his N.W.A tattoo.2.Another attendee wears a ‘We Want Eazy’ chain.3.A woman named Bee shows her Eazy-E tattoo while wearing an N.W.A T-shirt.4.MC Benyad, a member of the group Blood of Abraham that recorded for Eazy-E’s Ruthless Records label, signs N.W.A’s second album for a fan.(Michael Blackshire/Los Angeles Times)
With fellow N.W.A members Dr. Dre, Ice Cube, DJ Yella, MC Ren and Arabian Prince, Wright brought notoriety to Compton with the group’s West Coast rap albums.
Before the fame, Wright was a high school dropout who dealt drugs for a living.
Two album releases — N.W.A’s “Straight Outta Compton” and Wright’s solo project “Eazy-Duz-It” — were considered the opening of a new era for hip-hop, a genre and industry that had primarily been lyrically defined and commercially dominated by East Coast acts until that point.
Both albums were released under Wright’s label, Ruthless Records, which he co-founded with manager Jerry Heller.
With iconic music videos showing Eazy-E and his group parading through the streets, Wright, a Compton native, quickly rose to the status of American pop culture icon.
Alonzo Williams — one of Wright’s earliest collaborators — owned Compton’s Eve After Dark nightclub, which helped launch acts including Dr. Dre and Eazy-E. He now heads the Compton Entertainment Chamber of Commerce that organized the event and spearheaded the naming of Eazy Street.
“Always putting in work,” a member of the crowd yelled in recognition of Williams during the event.
Wright went to Williams for advice when setting up Ruthless Records. Williams introduced Wright to a graphic designer and later Heller.
DJ Yella, who performed with Eazy-E in N.W.A, speaks to friends and fans during a ceremony honoring the late rapper.
(Michael Blackshire/Los Angeles Times)
“Eazy was one of the realest cats that I ran into back in the day,” Williams said after a cruise down Eazy Street. “I got a lot of respect for him because no matter how much money he made he stayed true to himself.”
Even after Wright found fame, Williams said, the rapper would often visit him at his garage, where N.W.A. recorded their first songs.
Actually, Wright never wanted to be a rapper, Williams added. But he fell into a character — a crazy 5-foot-4 trash talker — that he created and enjoyed acting out while out on the streets.
Williams remembers asking how long Wright intended to “play the role.”
“As long as they’re buying tickets,” Wright replied, according to Williams.
“The character on stage was one thing, but I knew the man,” Williams said. “He was a fun-loving father.”
“I’m glad to be a part of his entrance into the music game. I’m glad to be part of his legacy,” Williams added.
Gerald “Bop” Payton echoed the sentiment in the parking lot with recording artist Rondevu — who was on the first Ruthless Records album with Eazy-E before he became famous for “Boyz N the Hood,”
Payton, a childhood friend who first met Wright at the age of 10, claimed there are five versions of “Boyz N the Hood,” He’s on one, though it has never been released, he said.
Payton said he was there to witness Eazy-E’s meteoric rise to the top of hip-hop and was at the side of Wright’s hospital bed in 1995. The artist died just days after he announced he had been diagnosed with AIDS.
Kathie Wright and Eric Darnell Wright Jr., children of Eazy-E, listen as friends and family give speeches honoring the late rapper.
(Michael Blackshire/Los Angeles Times)
Wright’s parents, Katie and Richard Wright, were working class, Payton recalled. And the prominent rapper was one of the only children in the neighborhood with both parents at home during a time when Los Angeles and places like Compton were wracked with sky-high murder rates wrought by gang wars.
Payton’s own father, a lieutenant in the Compton Police Department, was one of seven officers living on their block, “so we had to keep everything on the down low.”
Payton said memories of his friend’s first car, first job and mischievous adventures hang in his head like they happened yesterday.
“He used to hate [that] I could finish his sentences,” Payton said. “We always knew what each other was thinking. I might not have thought he was right, but nothing could come between us.”
He and Wright drove around in a Chevrolet El Caminoin the 1980s, and took turns playing the role of driver and chauffeur, opening doors and pretending to ask for autographs in order impress young girls in the neighborhood.
The reason Wright was first interested in records “had nothing to do with making money,” Payton said. He was trying to impress a girl.
Early on, Payton said he didn’t think Wright had a future behind the mic. That caused some tension.
“I just couldn’t believe anybody was going to like it. And he didn’t take that well,” Payton recalled.
Looking back at everything his friend accomplished, he added: “This is just another big ‘I told you so’ from him to me.”
They had gathered at Schemengees Bar & Grille to play cornhole, as they did every Wednesday. They laughed, they talked, they drank, they sent beanbags sailing.
Their latest meeting began as a festive outing for nine friends, many of them alumni of the Governor Baxter School for the Deaf in Falmouth, Maine. But when the evening ended, half of them were dead. The rest were left reeling.
“The Deaf community is so close, it’s a scarring time,” said Jimmy Fitts, who lost four friends in the shooting. “We’re stressed and feeling the weight of this — our whole community.”
Survivors of that terrible evening reached out to 41-year-old Fitts, who lives in North Carolina, shortly after the mass shooting. He awoke Thursday morning to a flurry of horrified texts. On video calls, he could see the terror on his friends’ faces as they recounted the assault.
Chris Dyndiuk was facing the door as the shooter entered wearing a tan hoodie and wielding an assault rifle.
“Before he could do anything, the shooter just started,” Fitts, who also is deaf, told The Times via video phone.
One of the men felt a bullet go by his head. Another felt one graze his arm. Dyndiuk told Fitts he and others in the group managed to escape when the gunman stopped shooting to reload.
“They all feel so shaken up by the fact that they were so near death,” Fitts said.
A memorial for the victims in the mass shooting in Lewiston who were deaf: Steve Vozzella, Joshua Seal, Bryan MacFarlane and William Brackett.
(Alexandra Petri / Los Angeles Times)
Among the victims was Joshua Seal, 36, the director of interpreting services for the Pine Tree Society, a nonprofit that supports Maine residents with disabilities; Bryan MacFarlane, 41, who had only recently moved back to Maine over the summer; Steve Vozzella, 45, who had been married only for a year; and William Brackett, 48, whose family described him as “a friend to many especially in the Deaf community he loved so much.”
In total, 18 people were killed in the shooting, which unfolded first at a bowling alley and then at the bar. Thirteen others were injured, including two deaf people.
The person authorities believe carried out the massacre, Robert Card, was found dead of a suspected self-inflicted gunshot wound on Friday, ending a manhunt that forced a swath of the state to shelter in place. Before the massacre, the 40-year-old appeared to be dealing with hearing loss. His sister-in-law Katie Card told news outlets that he had recently been fitted for high-powered hearing aids.
Since that time, she told NBC News, he said he began hearing voices. They said “horrible” things about him, she recounted, and his mental health spiraled.
“He was picking up voices that he had never heard,” she said. “His mind was twisting them around. He was humiliated by the things that he thought were being said.”
A “Maine Deaf Community Support” Facebook page was created the day after the shooting. By Friday, it had drawn more than 1,000 members. The page’s main photo — created by a CODA, the child of a deaf adult — featured an image of the state of Maine in black, with a red heart and the American Sign Language sign for “I love you.”
In posts on the page, people expressed frustration that they had been unable to see interpreters during coverage of early news conferences. They asked that interpreters from other states be brought in for funerals “so our interpreting community can grieve.”
On Friday, at an afternoon news conference, Maine Public Safety Commissioner Mike Sauschuck insisted that “for the consideration of the four deaf victims and their family, we are requesting that the ASL interpreter is in all frames for language access here in Maine and the U.S.”
“They are grieving and have a right to know the latest info in ASL,” he added.
That information came quickly through “The Daily Moth,” a website that delivers news in video using American Sign Language. In an email interview, host Alex Abenchuchan said he learned via text messages that there were multiple deaf victims in the shooting. He then connected with people in Maine and the family members of the victims, mainly using Facebook, he said.
Abenchuchan said it’s important to the Deaf community “to get the information they need in their first language, in the language that we are comfortable with and communicate with daily.”
His video about the four deaf victims had garnered more than 15,000 views by Saturday.
Although Abenchuchan, who is deaf, has done news recaps of mass shootings since starting “The Daily Moth” in 2015, he said “this is the first time that there were multiple deaf victims.”
“It is really heartbreaking for all of us to see that four deaf individuals were taken away in a senseless shooting,” he said in the email. “I think it’s important for people to know that being deaf is not just a disability — it is a sense of identity because we have a language and a culture. We are all connected with each other in some way.
“This tragedy has sent grief throughout the Deaf community in the U.S. and there is an outpouring of support for deaf people in Maine / the New England region.”
On Friday, Fitts was struggling to cope with the news. He and MacFarlane grew up together and both graduated from the Baxter School for the Deaf in 2000. They played ice hockey and would travel around participating in different leagues.
“He was such a good friend of mine and we all were so close,” Fitts said Friday.
“It’s hard to wrap our heads around what we even need right now. I haven’t slept in 24 hours myself. I have just stayed awake, staying on the phone talking with people, crying. It’s been impossible to shut my eyes and rest for even a second.”
Karen Turcotte, a mother of two deaf sons, is grappling with the fact that her son was supposed to be there with the group that night. He missed the outing only because his son had a soccer banquet.
The men who gathered Wednesday at the bar grew up together, she said, and all but one attended Baxter. Turcotte said she would often travel with the kids through high school to away games where they would play other deaf schools in soccer and basketball.
Brackett, one of the four deaf men who died in the shooting, graduated before her sons, she said, but they worked together on a pit crew for a race car driver in Oxford, Maine, for about four years.
“This Deaf community was very close,” Turcotte said.
About 100 people gathered for a Zoom vigil on Friday night, organized by the Maine Deaf Community Support Facebook page.
“There are no words or signs to express the feelings that we are all experiencing,” Terry Morrell, director of Maine’s Division for the Deaf, Hard of Hearing and Late Deafened, signed. “It’s so hard for any of us to come up with words that explain what we’re going through, and the most that we can do is to support each other and ourselves.
“When I say this loss is big, I mean immeasurable. It’s a huge loss for Maine.”
Attendees detailed the pain they’d experienced over the past days. One woman, a friend of Brackett‘s, described crying and not being able to work. Another friend of the victims said he has not been able to sleep since the shooting.
They also shared memories of their loved ones. Vozzella’s niece said he had moved to Maine to start a life with his wife and daughter. He was active in the Deaf community there, she said, and “cornhole was really, really special for him.”
Another mourner described MacFarlane — who loved to fish and hunt — as having supported him throughout his life and said he was “heartbroken” that he’s gone. Another person talked about Brackett’s sense of humor and painted him as a “very understanding person.”
One father detailed his pain for Seal’s wife and four children.
“Any kid needs their parent,” he said. He described Seal as “a wonderful man and a wonderful dad and a wonderful husband.”
As the vigil neared its end, a man shared a song:
“If I had seven minutes in heaven, I’d spend them all with you,” he signed, as another vigil-goer interpreted for hearing participants.
Afterward, he held out his thumb, index and little fingers, signing a message to his community and beyond: “I love you.”
Times staff writer Jeong Park contributed to this report.
Los Angeles is home to the second-largest Jewish community in America, with more than 500,000 members. And for the last few weeks, it’s been reeling.
Since the ambush by Hamas militants left more than 1,400 Israelis dead and saw the kidnapping of at least 200 others, Israel has sealed off the Gaza Strip from vital resources and launched a barrage of airstrikes.
Jewish Angelenos are largely supportive of Israel, which declared war on Hamas, the local authority in Gaza, following the deadly Oct. 7 attack. Many also disagree with the military assault on Gaza, and are heartbroken over the mounting Palestinian death toll, which has exceeded 7,000, including nearly 3,000 children, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza. About 1.4 million Palestinians have been displaced, and Gaza’s healthcare system is teetering on the brink of collapse as water, fuel and vital medicines are running out, according to the World Health Organization.
The world is watching as Israel mounts an all-out invasion of Gaza.
The war is creating dual tragedies across the Israel-Gaza boundary. And in L.A.’s Jewish community — whose members hail from different backgrounds, ideologies, cultures and religious sects — people are coming together in unique ways.
Amid the anguish and anger, the confusion and conflicts, some have found a new kind of resolve and a newfound community.
Music as a healer
The crowd held its breath at Sinai Temple as Nilli Salem played an extended note on the shofar, an instrument typically made from a ram’s horn and used in important Jewish rituals.
“I really believe that artists are the healers of our time,” Chloe Pourmorady said outside the Westwood synagogue, where about 100 people gathered for a night of solidarity weeks after the initial attack on Israel.
Music is “something beyond words that connects people and brings comfort,” Pourmorady said.
Cantor Marcus Feldman, left, Chloe Pourmorady and Nilli Salem perform at a concert to support Israel at Westwood’s Sinai Temple.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
For many Jews in Los Angeles, there are few degrees of separation between the U.S. and Israel. The extent of death and warfare in the region, considered the Holy Land for Jews, Muslims and Christians alike, has been staggering — and has hit close to home.
Pourmorady had initially planned a musical gathering for friends, but felt compelled to invite the public so the community could dance, sing and cry together.
“Music is being used as a tool for comfort, healing and prayer during this time of great sadness and anguish,” said Cantor Marcus Feldman, who oversees the musical department at Sinai Temple and who sang at the event, which included performances in both Hebrew and English.
Mikey Pauker shared his frustration and anger during the Sinai Temple gathering.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
Emotions overtook many that night. Mikey Pauker’s voice broke before he started singing. He told the congregation that in the last few weeks, he’d been called a white supremacist for supporting Israel.
Azar Elihu, a former temple member, said the pain is universal, and she grieves for both sides.
“Even I feel for the Palestinians. I cried so much for the little boy that was killed in Chicago,” she said, referring to 6-year-old Wadea Al-Fayoume, a Muslim boy who was stabbed dozens of times in a deadly attack carried out by his family’s landlord.
But after the musical performance, Elihu said, “This felt like something of a healing.”
How do you talk to your children?
Nicole Guzik, a senior rabbi at Sinai Temple, said that in the weeks following the declaration of war, many in their Jewish community had drawn closer together, checking on one other. They ask: “Are you sleeping? Are you eating? Did you cry today?”
But they are also filled with outrage — and fear — as both antisemitic and anti-Muslim rhetoric abound online and in person.
While some in Israel have called for a full attack on Gaza, including a ground invasion, Sinai Temple congregants say they worry about innocent lives lost.
‘I also don’t want them to be afraid to go to school. I don’t want my daughter to be afraid to wear the Jewish star.’
— Amanda Kogan, of Sinai Temple’s board of directors
“I think what gets lost is that there isn’t a single Jew or Israeli who wants to see a single hair hurt on the head of any innocent civilian,” said Jason Cosgrove, who grew up in the synagogue and said he now finds himself explaining the war in Israel to his 7-year-old daughter and wondering when he will have to discuss antisemitism with her.
“I’m sparing her all of the gory details,” said Cosgrove, who finds himself taking breaks from the news when he can, but who also feels compelled to stay up to date on what’s happening. “I think you obviously can’t bury your head at a time like this.”
Amanda Kogan, who’s on the board of directors at Sinai Temple, also finds herself in the difficult position of trying to explain the war to her children. Her teenage daughter recently attended an event that involved a bus trip in Los Angeles, and the group was accompanied by an armed guard.
“I also don’t want them to be afraid to go to school,” Kogan said. “I don’t want my daughter to be afraid to wear the Jewish star.”
“War is not fair to the innocent people. It’s terrible,” she added. “We’re trying to explain all of this as best we can in a very balanced manner. And no matter what, it’s all horrific.”
Sinai Temple boasts roughly 5,000 members and includes a private Jewish day school with about 600 students, a recreation center and a mental health center that offers counseling to the community.
Duvid Swirsky joins other musicians and cantors in a meditation circle before performing at the Sinai Temple benefit.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
Members say their support for Israel is unwavering, and have gathered supplies, including headlamps, tents, blankets and phone chargers to be sent in care packages, which also include notes from children.
But grief hangs heavily over the community.
“As you walk through the halls here, it feels like a house of mourning,” said Senior Rabbi Erez Sherman.
Sherman and Guzik, husband and wife, became senior rabbis about two weeks after the attack on Israel as they worked to console their congregants.
Working for peace
Estee Chandler was a child living in Israel during the 1973 Yom Kippur War, fought between Israel and a coalition of Arab states led by Syria and Egypt. At the time, she worried every time her parents left their house at night. She would sometimes hear air raid sirens go off and hide with the rest of her family in the unfinished basement of their apartment building.
“Even back then, we had those places to go in. Now, Israelis have safe rooms in their homes,” the 50-year-old said. “[But] Palestinians who are being bombed — they have nothing. They don’t have those rooms to run into. They have no way to protect their children.”
When Chandler awoke to the news that Israel had declared war with Hamas, she started reaching out to friends and family living overseas. Then, she reached out to her colleagues at Jewish Voice for Peace, whose Los Angeles chapter she founded nearly 13 years ago.
“My heart sank thinking about what we were surely going to start seeing in the hours, days and weeks to come, and unfortunately, that has all borne out,” she said.
“I don’t understand how people’s hearts can bleed … for only one-half of the people who are bleeding,” says Estee Chandler, who lived through the 1973 Yom Kippur War and has loved ones in Israel — and friends whose loved ones in Gaza have been killed by Israeli airstrikes.
(Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times)
Jewish Voice for Peace and another Jewish organization, IfNotNow, have staged protests outside the White House and the homes of other politicians, demanding a cease-fire. Hundreds have been arrested while protesting at the U.S. Capitol in Washington.
While working for former President Obama’s 2008 campaign, Chandler said she saw “the intersection between the Israeli lobby and the Democratic Party politics.” She was upset by “a lot of horribly racist things” that were happening and tried to educate herself as much as possible about Israel.
Chandler later discovered Jewish Voice for Peace, which was supporting a movement at UC Berkeley to divest from weapons manufacturers providing arms to Israel. The group contacted Chandler and asked whether she would be interested in starting an L.A. chapter.
The daughter of an Israeli father, Chandler has relatives and friends in Israel and some fighting in the Israel Defense Forces, Israel’s national military. She also has friends whose family members were killed in Gaza by the Israeli airstrikes.
“My concern for my family’s safety and my friends’ safety doesn’t stop at any border,” she said. “It’s not a choice that has to be made. I don’t understand how people’s hearts can bleed in the same situation for only one-half of the people who are bleeding.”
One of Chandler’s friends is L.A. resident Hedab Tarifi, a Palestinian advocate and member of the Los Angeles Council of Religious Leaders. Tarifi has lost 69 family members in the bombings in Gaza.
‘I wake up in the middle of the night, and I can’t breathe. … I have to swallow my pain and my anger, and remind myself that they don’t have a voice while they’re being bombed and massacred.’
— Hedab Tarifi, a Palestinian advocate and member of the Los Angeles Council of Religious Leaders
“I have a roller coaster of emotions,” said Tarifi, who was born in Gaza and moved to L.A. in the mid-1990s.
“I wake up in the middle of the night, and I can’t breathe. I want to cry, but I can’t cry. I’m mad, and at the same time, because I have to be their voice, I have to swallow my pain and my anger, and remind myself that they don’t have a voice while they’re being bombed and massacred,” she said. “I need to pull myself together and be their voice.”
Chandler and other Jewish Voice for Peace supporters want a cease-fire. They have been protesting in Los Angeles and recently attended a county supervisors meeting where a resolution condemning Hamas and supporting Israel was unanimously adopted after tense public comments.
She has been disheartened by media portrayals of the war as simply a battle between Israel and Hamas, noting that the events of Oct. 7 “didn’t come in a vacuum.”
“You can’t say that anything that happened there is unprovoked. You have people who have been living under siege for 75 years, people who’ve been living in a state of constant ethnic cleansing.”
While her support of Palestinian rights may seem unconventional in light of her heritage, Chandler said she wouldn’t be deterred — even if friends and family have opposing views.
“My family loves me anyway,” she said.
‘Never again’
When Mor Haim finally turned on the TV on Oct. 7 — breaking her usual observance of Shabbat — she watched as Hamas trucks bulldozed through a neighborhood in Sderot, an Israeli city near Gaza where she lived until the age of 7. She immediately recognized the street where her cousin lived.
‘I’m scared to talk on the phone in public, [worried that] someone will recognize my accent and say, “Hey, she’s Jewish.” ’
— Mor Haim
“Life was sucked out of me at that second,” said Haim, 31. Luckily, none of her family was killed, but the grief has been no less soul-crushing. The brother of her cousin’s wife went on a run the morning of the ambush, and was killed. Many childhood friends were slain. A friend’s father died shielding his children.
“Even though I’m far away, I feel as if I’m physically there,” said Haim, a dual Israeli American citizen who lives in Woodland Hills.
Since that night, Haim said, she’s had panic attacks and has been unable to sleep well.
She said she tries to go about her daily life for the sake of her four young children. She’s found solace baking challah with friends and family or just sitting in silence with others who share her pain.
For Mor Haim, who lived near Gaza in Sderot, Israel, as a child, the Hamas attack hit too close to home.
But the images from that day are seared in her mind, and she is afraid.
“I’m scared for my safety. I’m scared for my children’s safety,” she said. “I’m scared to talk on the phone in public, [worried that] someone will recognize my accent and say, ‘Hey, she’s Jewish.’”
“We’ve kind of been in hiding,” she said.
Haim wants people to understand why the attack on Israel — carried out on the holiday of Simchat Torah, a day meant for rejoicing — cannot be ignored.
She said no one wants innocent people to die — “not our people and not their people in Gaza.”
But Jewish people can’t stand idly by, and Israelis must fight to defend their country, their people, she said.
“We said ‘never again’ when we went through the Holocaust. And this is the never again,” she said. “It feels like we’re screaming our life out and nobody’s hearing us.”
MARKUS Anderson has been described as the second most important man in Meghan Markle’s life after Prince Harry.
He and Meghan have been close for years. Here’s everything you need to know about the SoHo House director.
1
Meghan pictured at the Invictus Games in Toronto with longtime friend Markus AndersonCredit: EPA
Who is Markus Anderson and what’s his background?
Markus Anderson is the global membership director at the swanky members club group Soho House.
He started working for the company as a waiter but quickly moved up through the ranks, turning his hand to practically every position at the company on his way up the ladder.
The stylish chap is the right-hand man to company CEO Nick Jones and personally crafts the guest lists to some of the biggest celebrity parties – including an annual Oscars bash.
It’s not known how Markus Anderson is in contact with Prince Harry.
Although Harry has frequently visited the exclusive members’ club where Markus works on a number of occasions.
In Harry and Megan’s official engagement interview with BBC, they both hinted that they had been set up by a friend.
Markus reportedly arranged for the pair to meet secretly at the company’s properties in Toronto, London and Somerset during their courtship.
They reportedly spent “a secret weekend away at Soho Farmhouse” and attended a Halloween party together in Toronto’s Soho House in 2017.
“He [Prince Harry] asked Markus if he could set up, not a date, but an opportunity for them to meet and that happened in one of the private rooms of Soho House,” Katie Nicholls, a royal commentator said.
“There were about seven or eight of them altogether and it was a perfect opportunity for Harry and Meghan to come together in a really informal environment and actually talk.”
Markus was by Meghan’s side at her first public appearance with Harry at the Invictus Games in 2017.
Following the death of four Pepperdine seniors who were struck by a driver in Malibu, grieving family and friends began to share memories of the young women in social media posts and at a vigil Thursday morning.
The four seniors — Niamh Rolston, Peyton Stewart, Asha Weir and Deslyn Williams — were sisters in the Alpha Phi sorority. Shortly before 9 p.m. Tuesday, a car slammed into three parked vehicles and hit the four women, who investigators believe were standing near the parked vehicles when they were struck, according to the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.
Fraser Michael Bohm, 22, was arrested on suspicion of vehicular manslaughter with gross negligence, said sheriff’s Sgt. Maria Navarro, watch commander at the Malibu/Lost Hills station.
Residents and local business owners, including Chris Wizner, founder of marketing agency Vivid Candi, said they want a solution to the speeding and consequential accidents in their community.
Wizner said he and others are planning to attend the Malibu City Council meeting on Monday to demand action as well as post signs from their homes with the message that drivers should slow down and another that says “Speeders cause murders.”
At the vigil, faculty expressed their sympathies through prayer to the grieving students, friends and family in attendance. The social media profiles of the slain women were also inundated with comments from mourners who expressed shock, sadness and anger at the crash that took their lives.
Morning classes at Seaver College, the liberal arts college attended by the four women, were canceled so that students could attend the prayer and reflection service and mourn their fellow classmates.
School officials also announced that all four victims, who were set to graduate this academic year, would receive their degrees posthumously.
“Each departed student brought a unique gift and spirit to the University,” said Pepperdine President Jim Gash, “and we deeply grieve the unfulfilled hopes and aspirations of our precious community members.”
Here’s what we know so far about the victims based on online profiles, interviews with friends and social media posts:
Niamh Rolston
Rolston was a business major in the class of 2024, according to LinkedIn. Her sorority wrote on Instagram that she loved “reading, binging netflix tv shows, and yoga.”
Nikki Strawn, 31, said she hadn’t seen Rolston in years but the two kept up with each other on Instagram.
Strawn was Rolston’s former gymnastics coach at Gymnastics Olympica USA Inc. in 2014 when Rolston was a teenager.
“That’s what makes it so sad, you know, she was so determined and so motivated and she was always a role model to all the other girls,” Strawn said. “So it’s so sad that was cut short from her.”
Strawn describes her friend as a very motivated gymnast who set her mind to anything she did and was a very “happy-go-lucky girl.”
“She was a little bit shy when you first met her, but as soon as she opened up, she was very silly and always put a smile to your face,” she said.
Peyton Stewart
Stewart was also a business major and wrote on LinkedIn that she was interested in a career in finance. In February, she told the school paper, the Pepperdine University Graphic, that she enjoyed following fashion and exercise trends on social media.
“Skincare is a huge thing for me because it’s part of my day where I can just relax,” Stewart told the paper.
“i’ll never forget your smile and your sweet hugs whenever i saw you,” Rianna Dizon, a Pepperdine classmate, wrote on Instagram.
Asha Weir
Weir was an English major. She wrote on LinkedIn that she was interested in fashion and music.
“She loves travel and adventure and to go to school beside the ocean has been a dream for her,” her high school, Perkiomen Valley in suburban Philadelphia, wrote in a Facebook post in 2020 as she prepared for college.
“She had the biggest heart and was sweet to her core. She was pure and kind. She was selfless and brought joy to others,” Vivid Candi, the marketing agency where Weir worked, wrote in an Instagram post.
Vivid Candi’s founder and chief executive, Wizner, described Weir as a superstar and one of the most memorable people he has ever worked with.
They two met when Wizner was president and chairman of the Malibu Pacific Palisades Chamber of Commerce. When he stepped down over a year ago he fought for Weir to join him on his team at Vivid Candi.
About a month ago, Wizner said Weir left the company in good standing to focus on her senior year.
“My wife loves her too, she touched my wife’s soul in the most positive way,” he said.
“If you get the big picture, she is the sweetest girl in the entire universe that did not deserve this,” Wizner said.
Deslyn Williams
Williams grew up in the state of Georgia, according to the Pepperdine University Graphic. She was vice president of the school’s Pre-Veterinary Club.
“Her empathy and compassion for the animals and people that she served was an example for us all,” the club wrote on Instagram.
“You were the life of the party. You always had the best outfits for the occasion and were the best photographer. Your laughter was contagious,” wrote Fiona Moriarty, a friend of Williams’, on Instagram.
Times staff writers Grace Toohey and Jeremy Childs contributed to this report.
