During the pandemic years of shuttered pools and difficult-to-find swim lessons, the drowning rate of very young children increased significantly in the U.S., following decades of declines, according to a new federal report.
Drowning rates among children 1 to 4 were about 28% higher in 2021 and 2022, compared to 2019, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In 2022, 461 children ages 1 to 4 died in a drowning accident, which is the number one cause of death among babies and toddlers. Rates are not yet available for 2023 or 2024, so it’s unknown whether deaths have declined since then.
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But children ages 1 to 4 already had the highest rates of drowning, even before the pandemic. The recent increase is “highly concerning,” said Tessa Clemens, a health scientist in the CDC’s Division of Injury Prevention and lead author of the new report.
While the exact reason for the increase is unknown, the shutdown likely played a role, she said.
“Many public pools closed during the COVID-19 pandemic, which limited the availability of swim classes. Once pools reopened, many facilities faced shortages of trained swimming instructors and lifeguards,” said Clemons. For many families, swim lessons and safe swim areas remained difficult to come by.
In Los Angeles, lifeguard shortages have continued to be a problem. Last summer, some public pools cut their hours and swim lessons were canceled because lifeguards were so difficult to find. Pandemic shutdowns fueled the so-called “great resignation,” in which many college-aged lifeguards quit to return to school or seek work in other industries. Many never came back.
Experts say water safety should be top of mind for families, especially in Los Angeles County, home to about 250,000 swimming pools, 96% of which are attached to single-family homes, according to a 2016 analysis.
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The CDC recommends that families begin swim lessons early — even while their children are babies.
“It’s never too young to really have that exposure to water to get comfort with it,” said Dr. Debra Houry, the CDC’s chief medical officer. “What I would say though, is even at that age if they do know how to swim, it’s still really important to have close parental supervision.”
The CDC also recommends:
Building and revitalizing public pools to increase access to swimming for all people, including those with disabilities
Promoting affordable swimming and water safety lessons
Building fences at least 4 feet tall that fully enclose and separate the pool from the house
Not drinking alcohol before or during swimming, boating or other water activities.
Overall, more than 4,500 people of all ages died due to drowning each year from 2020 to 2022 — 500 more per year compared to 2019. That’s one person every two hours. Native Americans and Black Americans have long been at greatest risk, the result of decades of segregation at public and private pools. Those disparities grew even worse during the pandemic.
Almost 40 million adults (15.4%) in the United States do not know how to swim and over half (54.7%) have never taken a swimming lesson.
“It’s never too late to take that swim lesson, to get those water safety skills, particularly as we’re going into the summer,” said Houry. “It can save your life, it can save your family member’s life.”
This article is part of The Times’ early childhood education initiative, focusing on the learning and development of California children from birth to age 5. For more information about the initiative and its philanthropic funders, go to latimes.com/earlyed.
The owners of Erewhon have filed an environmental lawsuit against the city of Los Angeles, the latest attempt by the upscale supermarket chain to stop the planned demolition of Sportsmen’s Lodge hotel in Studio City to make way for a new apartment complex.
Erewhon operates a store next to the defunct hotel and previously joined with local residents, union officials and others in opposition to a 520-unit residential mixed use development planned to replace the inn that was known to generations of San Fernando Valley residents.
Plans for the new development took a leap forward last month when the City Council voted 13 to 1 to deny an appeal of the project filed by Erewon’s owners and others, clearing the way for Midwood Investment & Development to demolish the aged hotel at Ventura Boulevard and Coldwater Canyon Avenue.
Midwood is Erewhon’s landlord, having built in 2021 the Shops at Sportsmen’s Lodge, an outdoor mall where Erewhon is the anchor tenant among other stores, restaurants and an Equinox gym. The mall replaced a banquet facility that served as a local social center where couples got married and families shared big occasions such as bar mitzvahs.
The event center and a restaurant opened in 1946 and the hotel in 1962. The hotel permanently closed during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The landlord got city permission to knock down the 190-room hotel and build the Residences at Sportsmen’s Lodge, which would have 520 apartments, including 78 units of subsidized affordable housing. It would include ground-floor stores and restaurants intended to meld with the Shops at Sportsmen’s Lodge.
Prior to the recent City Council vote, Erewhon, the Studio City Residents Assn. and Unite Here Local 11, which represents hotel workers, sought to stop the project by appealing aspects of the city’s review and approval process.
Some opponents argued that the hotel should be preserved. It was one of the first to unionize in the San Fernando Valley and one of the first union hotels in Los Angeles. Others were concerned about the project’s 97-foot height, the construction noise and the environmental impact.
After the appeals were rejected, Erewhon’s parent company last week filed a lawsuit in Superior Court demanding that the project approvals be rescinded because the city allegedly failed to comply with the California Environmental Quality Act as well as other state and local laws. The environmental law in part is intended to increase the public’s awareness of the potential environmental effects of proposed developments and other projects.
The city violated the act by forgoing an exhaustive Environmental Impact Report, or EIR, in favor of a less rigorous assessment, the lawsuit said.
Proponents of the development say it would bring housing to this section of Studio City, which is being targeted for a flurry of new development. Across the river, private school Harvard-Westlake is planning to build an extensive athletic facility.
Representatives of Erewhon and Midwood didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
A 19-year-old was shot and killed by a motorcyclist early Saturday morning on the eastbound 10 Freeway in Covina.
The rider of a black Harley Davidson-style motorcycle fired multiple shots into the passenger side of a white Chevrolet Camaro, striking the car and killing the 19-year-old driver, according to a news release from the California Highway Patrol.
The driver was from Bloomington in San Bernardino County, the release said. He was identified by the medical examiner’s office as Alexander Espino.
Police responded to the attack at 2:16 a.m. A male passenger in the Camaro, who was unharmed, helped steer the car to the Via Verde Street offramp of the freeway and called 911, police said.
Espino was pronounced dead at the scene by the Los Angeles County Fire Department.
The CHP closed the freeway for the investigation into Espino’s death, reopening the route about 8 a.m. Saturday.
CHP investigators are determining what led to the shooting and searching for the suspect. Any witnesses or anyone with further information are encouraged to contact CHP investigator M. Prado at (626) 338-1164, the release said.
Eilon Presman was about 100 feet from the UCLA Palestinian solidarity encampment when he heard the screams: “Zionist! Zionist!”
The 20-year-old junior, who is Israeli, realized the activists were pointing at him.
“Human chain!” they cried.
A line of protesters linked arms and marched toward him, Presman said, blocking him from accessing the heart of UCLA’s campus. Other activists, he said, unfurled kaffiyeh scarves to block his view of the camp.
“Every step back that I took, they took a step forward,” Presman said. “I was just forced to walk away.”
Pro-Palestinian activists demonstrate in UCLA’s Bruin Plaza after arrests were made at the Westwood campus Monday.
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
It’s been a week since police swarmed the UCLA campus and tore down the pro-Palestinian camp, arresting more than 200 people. But the legacy of the encampment remains an issue of much debate, particularly among Jewish students, who make up nearly 8% of the university’s 32,000 undergraduates.
In the days leading up to April 30 — when pro-Israel counterprotesters attacked the camp with fists, bats and chemical spray, and police took hours to stop the violence — frustration had swelled among many Jews: Viralvideos showed activists restricting the passage of students they targeted as Zionists.
Some Jewish students said they felt intimidated as protesters scrawled graffiti — “Death 2 Zionism” and “Baby Killers” — on campus buildings and blocked access with wooden pallets, plywood, metal barricades and human walls.
The pro-Palestinian student movement includes various strains of activism, including calls for a cease-fire in Gaza, support for Hamas and demands that universities divest from firms doing business with Israel. But on campuses across the country, no word has become more charged than “Zionist.”
A pro-Israel activist peels a pro-Palestinian sticker off a sign on May 2 as a protest encampment was dispersed.
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
In its most basic definition, a Zionist is somebody who believes that the Jewish people have a right to statehood in their ancestral homeland as a place of refuge from centuries of persecution — in other words, that Israel, established as a Jewish state in the wake of the Holocaust, has a right to exist.
Using that definition, the Anti-Defamation League considers anti-Zionism a form of antisemitism. But protesters — including many Jews — draw a sharp distinction, arguing that it is Zionism that fuels Israel’s right-wing government and the assault on Gaza that they say amounts to genocide against Palestinians.
Some of the Jewish students who took part in the encampment played a role in excluding Zionists.
Members of Jewish Voice for Peace at UCLA, a small but rapidly growing group on campus, argue they had a moral responsibility to pressure university officials to divest from Israel.
UCLA facilities employees clean up and dismantle the pro-Palestinian encampment on campus May 2.
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
The camp and its checkpoints, they said, were not hostile to Jews. Restricting fellow students from entering was just a pragmatic move to protect protesters inside from physical, verbal or emotional abuse.
“We are committed to keeping each other safe,” said Agnes Lin, 22, a fourth-year art and art history student and member of Jewish Voice for Peace. Anyone who agreed to the UC Divest Coalition’s demands and community guidelines, she said, was welcome.
“What is not welcome is Zionism,” she added. “Or anyone who actively adheres to a very violent, genocidal political ideology that is actively endangering people in Gaza right now.”
In practice, students who supported the existence of Israel were kept out — even if they opposed Israel’s right-wing government and its bombardment of Gaza.
Senior Adam Thaw, 21, said activists blocked him and others from accessing a public walkway to Powell Library.
After telling him they were not letting anyone through, a male activist eyed his Star of David necklace: “If you’re here to espouse that this is antisemitism, then you can leave.”
Senior Adam Thaw is on UCLA’s student board of Hillel, the largest Jewish campus organization in the world.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
“Who are you to tell me where I can and cannot go?” said Thaw, who is on UCLA’s student board of Hillel, the largest Jewish campus organization in the world.
As complaints from Jewish students mounted, UCLA declared the encampment “unlawful.” In an April 30 statement, Chancellor Gene Block said most activists had been peaceful, but the tactics of some were “shocking and shameful.”
“Students on their way to class,” he said, “have been physically blocked from accessing parts of the campus.”
::
The campus was dark and hushed when Sabrina Ellis joined dozens of activists at 4 a.m. to set up the encampment on the lawn of Dickson Court.
After pitching tents and erecting barricades of wooden pallets and sheets of plywood, Ellis, a 21-year-old international student from Brazil, took shifts guarding the entrance.
Ellis didn’t call it a checkpoint. The goal was to exclude and physically block “agitators” — anyone who might be violent, record students or disagree with the cause.
“Our top priority isn’t people’s freedom of movement,” Ellis said. “It is keeping people in our encampments physically and emotionally safe.”
The longtime member of Jewish Voice for Peace — who wore a large Star of David over her T-shirt and a kaffiyeh wrapped around her shoulders — said the camp “was not profiling based on religion.”
But as activists blocked Zionist students from public campus space, they faced charges that they engaged in viewpoint discrimination.
Sabrina Ellis, a junior and a member of Jewish Voice for Peace at UCLA, was part of the pro-Palestinian encampment from the beginning.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
Before allowing anyone in, Ellis said, a protester read the demands of the encampment, which included calling for UC and UCLA to divest all funds from companies “complicit in the Israeli occupation,” boycott all connections with Israeli universities, sever ties with the Los Angeles Police Department and demand a permanent cease-fire.
Then, activists ran through their safety guidelines: Ask before taking a photo or video; wear a mask to limit the spread of COVID; do not post identifying information or photos; and no engagement with counterprotesters.
If students didn’t agree, “we would just kindly tell them that they’re not allowed to come in,” Ellis said.
Some Jewish students were shaken by the experience, arriving at Hillel upset and even crying.
“They were genuinely going about their day and couldn’t get access as protesters asked them, ‘Are you a Zionist?’ or looked at their necklace,” said Daniel Gold, executive director of Hillel at UCLA.
::
For pro-Palestinian activists who are Jewish, the camp was a peaceful space to promote justice, a welcoming interfaith community with therapist-led processing circles and candlelit prayer services.
Blue tarps and blankets were put down in the middle of the lawn for Islamic prayers and a Passover Seder and a Shabbat service.
On the first evening, about 100 activists, many Jewish, sat in a circle to pray, sing, drink grape juice and eat matzo ball soup, matzo crackers and watermelon.
“It was really beautiful,” said Lin, the art major. “We were trying to hold these spaces to show that Judaism goes beyond Zionism.”
An encampment of pro-Palestinian demonstrators at UCLA’s Dickson Plaza on April 29.
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
Other Jewish students were more wary as they navigated the camp.
Presman, who moved to the U.S. when he was 12 and identifies as a Zionist, was alarmed when he scanned the quad on the first day. He saw signs saying “Israelis are native 2 HELL,” he said, and banners and graffiti showing inverted red triangles, a symbol used in Hamas propaganda videos to indicate a military target.
“Do people know what that means?” he wondered.
Tucking his Star of David under his T-shirt, Presman said, he entered and approached activists, introducing himself as an Israeli citizen.
“Maybe we can find common ground,” he said, asking, “one human being to the other?”
Some students put their hands up, he said, blocking him as they walked away. Others treated the conversation as a joke. One protester, he said, told him that everything Hamas did was justified.
Presman said he had one good conversation: An activist who identified as anti-Zionist admitted not being 100% educated on what Zionism was, but agreed that Israel should exist. They came to the conclusion the activist was a Zionist.
Pro-Palestinian encampment participants reinforce the camp barriers at UCLA on May 1.
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
But most of Presman’s exchanges, he said, ended negatively when activists realized he was defending Zionism. He said he was called a “dirty Jew” and “white colonizer.”
Other students — even those who did not fully support the encampment — said they did not experience such slurs.
Rachel Burnett, a senior who described herself as a non-Zionist Jew, disagreed with the call for divestment and academic boycotts, especially of UCLA’s Nazarian Center, an educational center for the study of Israeli history, politics and culture.
Entering the camp after a classmate vouched for her, Burnett was disturbed by anti-Israeli signs and graffiti that named Abu Ubaida, the spokesperson for the military wing of Hamas. But she also bonded with protesters, including a woman in a hijab.
“Of course, some protesters deny Oct. 7 or condone violence as long as it can be put under the guise of decolonial resistance, which is obviously horrific,” Burnett said. “But that’s not the case of many students inside the encampment.”
Rachel Burnett, a senior who described herself as a non-Zionist Jew, disagreed with the call for divestment and academic boycotts, especially of UCLA’s Nazarian Center, an educational center for the study of Israeli history, politics and culture.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
Burnett contrasted what she saw as a peaceful, friendly mood inside the camp with the pro-Israel counterprotests where people held up benign slogans, such as “Bring the Hostages Home,” but engaged in hostile behavior.
As counterprotesters converged for a Sunday rally, she said, a pro-Israel activist spat on her and told she should have been slaughtered in the kibbutzim on Oct. 7.
Just as some pro-Palestinian activists demonized all Zionists as evil and pro-genocide — ignoring the wide range of viewpoints within the Zionist community — Burnett thought some pro-Israel counterprotesters were dehumanizing student activists in the encampment and spreading a “mass hysteria narrative.”
As the encampment expanded — and organizers set up entrance points near Royce Hall and Powell Library — some Jewish students took videos that swiftly went viral.
“It’s time to go,” a protester wearing a yellow safety vest and kaffiyeh told a student in one video as he guarded an entrance near Powell Library. “You don’t have a wristband.”
Seven people were injured, four critically, in a late night shooting in Long Beach on Saturday, police said.
The shooting took place near South Street and Paramount Boulevard around 11:15 Saturday night, according to a bulletin issued by the Long Beach Police Department.
At least two men were suspected of firing into the group, the department said in an update Sunday morning. All the victims were adult men.
Videos of the aftermath posted to social media show a heavy police presence outside the Prendido de Noche nightclub nearby.
“This police department is dedicated and focused on arresting any violent offender utilizing dangerous firearms to victimize our community,” Chief of Police Wally Hebeish said in a statement. “The Long Beach Police Department has been actively investigating this shooting since late last night, and we will continue working until we identify and arrest those involved in this unacceptable act of gun violence.”
The department believes the shooting was “gang related,” but so far, no suspects have been identified and no arrests have been made, police said.
Scores of emaciated brown pelicans, too weak to fly, have been found on Southern California beaches in the last month and taken to an Orange County rescue center, according to its director.
“We’re getting dozens of calls,” Debbie McGuire, executive director of the Wetlands and Wildlife Care Center in Huntington Beach, said on Saturday. “People are finding them in parking lots and their backyards.”
The rescued pelicans, she said, “are coming in at half their body weight. They are also very anemic.”
So far, she said, it’s unclear why the pelicans, which feed on anchovies, sardines and mackerel, are suffering from malnutrition.
McGuire said that she contacted scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration last week, who told her that there was “plenty of bait out there” for the birds to feed on.
“We don’t know the cause,” she said. “They are just all starving.”
Overwhelmed by the number of ailing birds, the wildlife center has been erecting pup tents to use as pens, she said.
In the last month, the center has taken in 89 brown pelicans, many of them quickly dying, McGuire said. More than 30 have survived, she said, as the center warmed them under heat lamps and gave them fluids.
She said the center sent tissue samples from the birds to labs for testing.
A similar spike in the stranding of brown pelicans up and down the California coast occurred in the spring of 2022. The cause has not been found.
The California brown pelican was listed as an endangered species decades ago after the spread of the chemical DDT caused the shells of their eggs to thin. The eggs became so fragile that nesting mothers crushed them.
After DDT was banned, the pelicans increased in number. The birds were removed from the endangered species list in 2009.
Wildlife officials say that anyone finding an ailing pelican should not touch or try to feed them. They urge people to instead call their local wildlife rehabilitation facilities. The Orange County center can be reached at (714) 374-5587.
A Los Angeles Police Department detective has been charged with hit-and-run exactly one year after she allegedly rear-ended another vehicle on the 5 Freeway while off-duty.
Prosecutors allege that the detective, Stephanie Carrillo, 47, crashed an unmarked LAPD vehicle into a civilian’s vehicle on May 3, 2023, damaging its rear. Both parties initially pulled over, but Carrillo allegedly got back in her vehicle and fled the crash scene, according to a statement from the L.A. County district attorney’s office.
Later that day, Carrillo filed a report at a California Highway Patrol station in Orange County stating that she had been in a hit-and-run, according to the statement.
“Irresponsible and unlawful behavior by law enforcement as allegedly exhibited by Officer Carrillo not only violates public trust but goes against the oath taken by law enforcement to keep the public safe,” said Dist. Atty. George Gascón. The CHP’s East Los Angeles station investigated the incident.
The LAPD said in a statement Friday that Carrillo has worked for the department for 24 years.
“The Los Angeles Police Department’s Internal Affairs Division initiated an administrative investigation into this allegation, and Carrillo was relieved of her police powers pending the resolution of the administrative investigation,” the statement said. “With the oversight of the Inspector General, the department will ensure administrative accountability in this matter.”
Carrillo’s arraignment on a single charge of misdemeanor hit-and-run is scheduled for May 22 at the Clara Shortridge Foltz Criminal Justice Center in L.A. She faces up to six months in jail, if convicted. It was not immediately clear from court records Friday evening if Carrillo had retained a lawyer.
The noise — unsettling and dissonant — has been a constant inside the barricaded pro-Palestinian encampment at UCLA.
Soon after protesters, most of them students at the Westwood campus, pitched tents on Dickson Court on April 25, pro-Israel counterdemonstrators showed up with megaphones. Some shouted racist, homophobic and anti-Islamic slurs, according to campers interviewed.
They set up a giant video screen near the camp that played and replayed videos of Hamas militants. They broadcast a running torrent of loud, disturbing sounds over a stereo — an eagle screeching, a child crying — and blasted a Hebrew rendition of the song “Baby Shark” on repeat, late at night, so that campers could not sleep.
They returned night after night.
A woman kneels in prayer before a line of CHP officers at a pro-Palestinian encampment at UCLA.
(Wally Skalij / Los Angeles)
Inside the encampment, pro-Palestinian protesters, who occupied scores of tents on the grassy expanse, said they tried to maintain a tranquil space during the daylight hours when they felt some sense of control. They led Islamic prayers, observed Shabbat and hosted grief circles that included breath work and trauma therapy.
“It’s still an emotional, heavy space, but it’s also a very open, welcoming and loving space,” said Marie, a 28-year-old graduate student who, like many protesters interviewed, declined to provide her full name because she feared for her safety, physically and online. “Unfortunately, we experience the harassment and the terrorizing at night, which can be really upsetting.”
On Tuesday night, Dickson Court exploded into savagery and chaos. A large, mostly male crowd of masked counterdemonstrators tried to break into the encampment, ripping down wood and metal barriers, spraying bear mace, igniting stink bombs and tossing fireworks near the camp perimeter — and in at least one case inside the camp.
They aimed their green lasers at camper’s faces, prompting shouts of, “Shield your eyes!”
“They attacked us from physical and psychological fronts,” said Mona, a third-year student who also declined to provide her last name. “The outside aggressors have been working hard to create a harsh environment and make us feel unsafe.”
A pro-Palestinian protester, second from right, is assaulted by pro-Israel counterdemonstrators at a UCLA encampment.
(Michael Blackshire / Los Angeles Times)
After Tuesday’s late-night melee — and a slow campus response that a spokesperson for Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office called “unacceptable” — the encampment remained. And the pro-Palestinian protesters, who are demanding divestment from Israel and an end to the country’s military actions in Gaza, were defiant.
Kaia Shah, 23, a postgraduate researcher who has acted as a spokesperson for the encampment, said demonstrators got notice Tuesday from a university liaison that the encampment was unlawful and that students who continued to occupy the space could face suspension or expulsion.
Nonetheless, she said, “We plan on staying here until we get UCLA to divest.”
Shah described the scene Tuesday night as “violent and terrifying chaos,” and said her throat burned from inhaling all the mace in the air. She and another female demonstrator said some of the counterprotesters threatened to sexually assault women inside the encampment.
Shah said that, at one point, she saw police cars — it was unclear from which agency — pull up, turn around in a circle and leave. “The cops came and left as we were getting violently attacked by the Zionists,” she said.
Dueling chants rang out.
Pro-Palestinian protesters at UCLA huddle behind a makeshift barricade under attack by pro-Israel counterdemonstrators.
(Michael Blackshire / Los Angeles Times)
From inside the camp, they shouted: “Free, free Palestine!” and “Hold the line for Palestine!”
Outside, some counterdemonstrators screamed: “Second Nakba!” referring to the mass displacement and dispossession of Palestinians during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. Others chanted: “USA! USA!”
As the violence unfolded, Citlali, a 25-year-old from Santa Ana who works for the organization Youth Organize! California and declined to provide her last name, said she frantically texted her younger brother, a student who was inside the encampment.
“Hey can you answer? Are you okay?? It’s okay to retreat,” she texted.
She said her brother was sprayed with bear mace and left the encampment Wednesday morning to wash up in his dorm room. “It’s gut-wrenching,” Citlali said. “I couldn’t sleep until 4 a.m. when he texted me that he was OK.”
After sunrise Wednesday, the UCLA chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine posted a list of their needs at the encampment: gas masks, skater helmets, shields, “super bright flashlights with strobe,” EpiPens, inhalers, hot lunches, gluten-free food.
Campus security teams, faculty members and California Highway Patrol officers guarded entrances to the encampment Wednesday morning.
Hannah Appel, an assistant professor of anthropology, stood at one entrance, where people dropped off medical supplies, face masks and water bottles. Only students with wrist bands indicating they were previously in the encampment and those who had someone on the inside vouching for them were allowed to enter, Appel said.
“Because of the escalated violence last night, we have to be very vigilant and careful about who can come in and out,” Appel said, before stepping aside to let a student squeeze through the barricades.
Vanessa Muros, an archaeology researcher at UCLA, showed up outside the encampment with finger cymbals, maracas and a tambourine. She said a call was sent out to students and faculty who participated in a band during a 2022 UC academic workers’ strike. The musicians were asked to help boost morale at the encampment.
“Apparently morale is low in there, and playing music or just making noise will help rally people together,” she said.
Pro-Palestinian protesters clash with pro-Israel counterdemonstrators at a UCLA encampment.
(Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)
Muros has worked at UCLA for 19 years and said she has never seen such mayhem on campus. “It’s upsetting, and I feel like the administration will blame the chaos on the students who have been peacefully protesting,” she said.
Renee Tajima-Peña, a senior faculty member, stood in a line outside Royce Hall to make a donation for the protesters: solar phone chargers, a poncho, some respirators.
“The story has been that all these students are irresponsible or causing problems,” she said. “I teach here and this encampment has been beautiful.”
Change has always come hard and fast to Little Tokyo. As one of the oldest neighborhoods in Los Angeles, it has shape-shifted over the last 140 years under the forces of urban renewal and gentrification, as well as the unjust wartime incarceration of its residents.
Recent years have seen continued evictions, closures and relocations among businesses that were once staples of the community. The forced relocation of Suehiro Cafe sparked a recent street protest calling attention to the demise of establishments that once were the anchors of this historic community.
Citing a need to save the identity of one of Los Angeles’ most culturally distinct neighborhoods, the National Trust for Historic Preservation announced Wednesday that Little Tokyo has been designated as one of America’s 11 most endangered historic places.
“We hope that by bringing attention to displacement and gentrification occurring in the neighborhood, Los Angeles’ Little Tokyo can get the support and policy protections needed, so that the community can thrive long into the future,” said Carol Quillen, president and CEO of the trust.
Little Tokyo joins, among other sites, the Texas home of country singer Cindy Walker, a lighthouse on the Hudson River, a sugar plantation on the U.S. Virgin Islands and one of the country’s first all-Black municipalities, Eatonville, Fla.
The designation of Little Tokyo, which comes as the downtown L.A. neighborhood is about to celebrate its 140th anniversary, is the result of efforts by Sustainable Little Tokyo, a broad coalition of local interests that includes the Japanese National Museum and the Little Tokyo Community Council.
Kristin Fukushima, managing director of the Little Tokyo Community Council, considers the trust’s decision “another step in a long journey looking at preservation as a tool for survival, securing our future and fighting off displacement.”
“It doesn’t come with guarantees or funding,” she said, “but it does provide us with a national platform to spotlight our neighborhood.”
Since 1988, the National Trust for Historic Preservation has published an annual list of sites — homes, neighborhoods, even highways — that are vulnerable to redevelopment and that “illustrate the complexities and challenges that have always been part of what it means to be American.” Many of these locales — often landmarks in ethnic communities — have been overlooked or ignored.
Last year’s list included Philadelphia’s Chinatown, which Fukushima said helped inspire Little Tokyo’s application.
In awarding this status, the trust looks for places of historical significance “that tell the whole American story,” Quillen said, and among other criteria, offer a solution — “a path toward enlivening the site so it becomes the center of activity that those preserving it want it to be.”
This year, said Quillen, the trust received 111 letters of intent from 40 states and territories; 28 were advanced to the next round and of those, 11 were selected.
In describing Little Tokyo’s application, Quillen specifically pointed to the vision that the Sustainable Little Tokyo coalition has for its future.
“Their initiatives are policy-directed,” she said, and include expanding the city’s legacy business program; giving the community a voice in new development projects; and preserving cultural heritage, while serving the present community.
“This is not a place to be frozen in amber but is instead looking to create a Little Tokyo that is vibrant and alive and serving communities in the present through this rich cultural heritage,” she said.
The Sustainable Little Tokyo coalition hopes the endangered status will draw attention to the fragile character of the neighborhood, which is home to 400 small businesses that are facing pressures related to development in the area. Fifty of them are considered “legacy businesses” — defined as at least 20 years old.
Between 2008 and 2023, at least 50 businesses 10 years or older have closed or relocated due to rising rent, according to the Little Tokyo Service Center, which has been fighting for more control over development that would provide more affordable housing, cultural centers and green spaces.
“We would have had more legacy businesses if we hadn’t lost so many over the years,” said Fukushima.
Suehiro Cafe’s First Street location is one of the most recent casualties — the restaurant is now operating at 4th and Main streets — but it is not alone. Little Tokyo Arts & Gifts has closed, as has the Family Mart convenience store. Anzen Hardware is moving to a building down the street. Little Tokyo Cosmetics was forced to leave on the eve of its fifth anniversary. The Shabu Shabu House — the first restaurant of its kind in the U.S. — also closed after 32 years.
“Little Tokyo is facing a number of existential threats that are causing changes to the neighborhood, including driving up rents and driving out small businesses,” said Kristen Hayashi, a curator for the Japanese American National Museum.
Hayashi cites among these threats not only the pressures of gentrification and the Regional Connector Project, but also the city’s plan to replace the former LAPD headquarters, Parker Center.
“We talk to some community members who have been doing this work for 50 years, and there is fatigue,” she said. “They ask, ‘What can we do about it?’ The gears are in motion. How can we stop these broader impacts that other communities have not been able to do anything about? But Little Tokyo’s history is rooted in a stubbornness that doesn’t allow us to give up.”
Hayashi argues that Little Tokyo’s importance to Los Angeles extends beyond its boundaries.
“Why should we care about Little Tokyo?” she asked. “In addition to being at the heart of the Japanese American community in Los Angeles, it reflects the diversity that has always characterized this city. It represents a time in the city’s history when housing covenants dictated where Japanese Americans could live, and this became their refuge from discrimination, a place that provided them a taste of home.”
While over the years its footprint has grown smaller, Hayashi is confident the community will endure.
“This community cares too much,” she said. “We’re trying to future-proof Little Tokyo, to preserve its history and make sure people don’t forget the roots of the place.”
California’s population rose last year for the first time since 2020, according to new state data.
The state’s population increased by 0.17% — or more than 67,000 people — between Jan. 1, 2023, and Jan. 1, 2024, when California was home to 39,128,162 people, according to new population estimates released Tuesday by the California Department of Finance.
“The brief period of California’s population decline is over,” H.D. Palmer, a department spokesman, said in a phone interview. “We’re back, and we’re returning to a rate of steady, stable growth.”
That resumption of growth, Palmer said, was driven by a number of factors: Deaths, which rose during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, have fallen nearly to pre-pandemic levels. Restrictive foreign immigration policies imposed during the Trump administration have been loosened under President Biden. Domestic migration patterns between states also have changed, boosting the state’s population.
In 2021, as the pandemic raged, more than 319,000 people died in California and fewer than 420,000 were born, the data show. Last year, about 281,000 died in the state, while nearly 399,000 were born.
And while California saw a net loss of nearly 3,900 people to international immigration in 2020 — when many countries’ borders were closed due to the pandemic — the state saw a net gain of more than 114,000 international immigrants last year, according to state data. That’s close to pre-pandemic levels. In 2019, California notched a net increase of about 119,000 international immigrants.
Shifting domestic migration trends — which were the subject of the much-ballyhooed “California exodus” during the pandemic, when remote workers moved to other states where they could live for a fraction of the cost of cities like Los Angeles or San Francisco — also played a key role.
In 2021, about 692,000 people left California for other states, while fewer than 337,000 moved into the Golden State from other states.
Last year, about 414,000 people moved here from other states, while more than 505,000 left for other states. That means California saw a net loss of about 264,500 fewer people to other states last year than in 2021, according to the new state data.
Los Angeles and Orange counties grew last year, though not by much; the former saw a population rise of just 0.05% — or nearly 4,800 people — while the latter notched up 0.31% — or nearly 9,800 people.
For both jurisdictions, that’s a reversal from 2022, when L.A. County saw a net loss of nearly 42,200 residents and Orange County lost about 17,000 residents. The city of Los Angeles saw its population rise 0.3% last year, the data show.
California also saw a net increase of about 116,000 housing units — including single-family homes, multi-family dwellings and accessory dwelling units, or ADUs — in 2023. Palmer described that growth as an “encouraging” sign amid the state’s housing crisis.
That rise, which is a relative drop in the bucket compared with the state’s more than 14.8 million housing units, was led by the city of Los Angeles, which saw a gain of more than 21,000 housing units, followed by an increase of about 5,700 units in San Diego, according to the state data.
While California’s resumption of population growth is a boon for boosters who reject the storyline of the state’s decline, there is no indication that the Golden State will be returning to the massive boom in residents it underwent generations ago.
“For the foreseeable future, we’re looking at steady, more predictable growth that’s slower than those go-go years of the 1970s and 1980s,” Palmer said. “Obviously, there are things that we can’t forecast that could have an impact on our population. For instance, another pandemic.”
Alexa Castelvecchi was glad when she and her roommates found their new apartment about a year ago, in a modern building in Hollywood with a big, sleek kitchen and oversized windows. It was nothing like the aging, rent-controlled apartment she once sublet in Venice, where she often had to cook using a toaster oven.
But with the end of her lease on the three-bedroom apartment fast approaching, she has found herself worrying about how much the already high monthly rent of nearly $4,000 might increase.
Little did she know that she has some of the strongest protections available. Unbeknownst to many tenants across the city, an obscure city rule requires some newly built rental properties to be put under the city’s rent stabilization ordinance, commonly referred to as rent control.
Developers have built more than 10,000 such units since 2007, city records show, adding a new crop of rent-controlled housing across the city.
The buildings offer a counterpoint to real estate industry claims that rent control limits new construction. But they also raise a question: do their tenants even know they live in rent-controlled units?
Castelvecchi said she had no idea that she lived in a building with rent caps until a Times reporter told her recently.
“Nobody said anything,” she said.
Generally, the city’s rent control law only applies to buildings built on or before Oct. 1, 1978 — a cutoff date many landlords and at least some renters are acutely aware of. Under the rules, landlords can set the rent whenever a unit becomes vacant, but face limits on how much they can raise rent on individual tenants annually, usually between 3% and 8%, depending on inflation.
Newer buildings typically do not have those protections, but they can depending on what was there before. Under a 2007 city ordinance, newly constructed apartments, townhomes and condos must be rent controlled if an older rent controlled property was demolished on site.
The data show that developers across the city frequently pursue these projects despite their buildings being subject to rent caps the moment a lease is signed.
The apartment building at 5800 Harold Way in Los Angeles, CA is under rent control.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
Leeor Maciborski, owner of ROM Residential, which currently owns Castelvecchi’s building, purchased that building after another investor built it. However, he said he’s developed five or six other properties in Los Angeles knowing they’d fall under the city’s rent stabilization ordinance.
The projects made financial sense because he could set the initial rent at market rate and was allowed at least a 3% increase each year, he said.
“If I could build something … and I can count on 3% to 4% annual increases, I am happy,” the developer said.
Tenant advocates, meanwhile, say that even if some new rent-controlled apartments are being built, replacing older rent controlled units for new ones is devastating. Not only are people evicted, but new construction demands a premium when the unit is initially rented.
“The only ones who make out with this trade off is the developers and the landlords who are pulling in more and more profits and income on the backs of those people they have displaced,” said Larry Gross, executive director with the tenants advocacy group Coalition for Economic Survival.
Since mid-2007, owners have removed more than 13,000 older rent-controlled units from the market , leading to concern the demolition is worsening the city’s affordability and homelessness crisis.
Over the same time frame, housing department data show 10,252 new units have been put under the city’s rent stabilization ordinance.
New buildings can be exempt from the rules if they open for rent more than five years after the old property was removed from the market, or if the developer dedicates a certain number of new units as income-restricted affordable housing — though units will revert to rent control once those income restrictions expire in coming decades, according to the housing department.
About 3,000 additional units fall into the latter, temporarily exempt category, although some are already income restricted.
In theory, newly constructed rent-controlled properties could increase the overall number of apartments with rent caps in the city, because developers often knock down a small building to build more units. For now, that hasn’t happened.
The real estate industry — as well as many housing economists — have long argued that far fewer developers would build if they are subject to rent caps, leading to even higher rents as supply shortages worsen. As a result, rent control ordinances across the country typically exempt new construction.
Until recently, state law in California outlawed rent caps on properties built after Feb. 1, 1995, and even earlier in some cities like Los Angeles, with the exemption for newly built properties that replaced older rent controlled units.
Then in 2020, a new law took effect and put statewide rent restrictions on buildings older than 15 years, though these caps are less strict than in places like Los Angeles, whose rules remain in place.
The state bill’s author, then-Assemblyman David Chiu (D-San Francisco), had proposed 10 years as a cut off, but it was extended another five years to lessen opposition. At the time, the California Apartment Assn. took credit for the change, saying it would “mitigate the bill’s impact on future development of rental housing.”
Fred Sutton, a senior vice president with the California Apartment Assn., said the fact that some developers build under the L.A. rules does not mean housing construction would not decline if rent caps were placed on all new buildings. As restrictions are added, fewer projects can be expected to turn a reasonable profit — even if some go forward, he said.
“Can people still figure out a way to do it?” Sutton said. “Yes, but you’re not going to get as many people as you need.”
Two developers told The Times they didn’t know about the rules before building. One said he’d do so again, while another wouldn’t because rent control gives him less flexibility to earn a profit.
Maciborski said he’d take a different tack. He’d be willing to build another rent-controlled building, but only if the project would expect a greater return than before, to buffer him from potential actions by the Los Angeles City Council that might undercut his revenue stream.
The pandemic pushed the council to freeze rent in controlled buildings for nearly four years. Only a few months ago did officials allow landlords to raise rent.
“I’d consider it,” Maciborski said of constructing another rent-controlled property. “But now knowing what potential tools the city council … has at their disposal, it’s definitely a little scarier.”
Renters who live in any rent-controlled buildings — old or new — should know about it. The Los Angeles Housing Department requires the landlord to alert tenants by posting notice at the property. But several residents who spoke to The Times at the newer buildings said they had no idea.
After learning about her building’s status, Castelvecchi checked her lease and noticed that rent control is mentioned in a section she had previously overlooked. And she found a sign in the building outlining the rules, which she hadn’t previously noticed.
It would have been better, she said, if she had simply been told verbally about the rules when she rented the apartment.
“It’s extremely unnerving that it wasn’t communicated by anyone I met,” she said. “When you have to read the fine print, it feels difficult to trust.”
Maciborski said that if a tenant asked, a leasing agent would tell them if a building was rent controlled, but when dealing with legal issues his company relies on putting it in writing.
“It’s verifiable,” he said, adding written notices can also give more detailed information than a leasing agent may have on hand.
Gross, the tenant advocate, said it’s a constant struggle to educate tenants of their rights, with many residents of older properties not understanding they have rent control protections. He believes the problem is even worse in newer buildings, because even if people understand rent control exists they often believe all new properties are exempt.
“There’s not enough education and outreach,” Gross said.
Monique Mendoza, who pays $3,800 a month to live in a townhome in Boyle Heights, said she also had no idea that her newer unit also falls under the city’s rent control protections. It would have given her some relief just to know, she said. She is constantly worrying about the cost of rent and probably couldn’t afford a big increase.
Even without a rent hike, she said, “for us, as a family, it’s not affordable.”
It’s a risky proposition to create a “best of list” for Bob Pool stories in the Los Angeles Times.
Not only are there too many to choose from — more than 4,000 — but there are few shortcuts for finding the true gems. That’s because Pool hated writing for Page 1. He favored economy over length. And the headlines rarely did justice to tales he could weave way inside the old Times Valley Edition, say, on a page next to GE refrigerator ads.
Readers could chuckle at one story Pool wrote for inside the Metro section in 1984, then notice that was one of three bylines he had on the page and that the real winner was at the bottom. In this case, the tale of a Canoga Park homeowner named Jeanette Kohane, whose discovery of chocolate cake smeared on her home (she assumed it was vandalism) led to police to a ring stealing food from the local school’s cafeteria.
Pool, who died Sunday, was a legend in The Times newsroom for three decades. Most of that time, he did not have a defined assignment. His beat was “the Bob Pool story,” a perfect slice of the Los Angeles human condition that many days made reading a newspaper chronicling wars, sleazy politicians, economic distress and environment degradation somewhat bearable.
He had an eye for stories you would want to read. He found people you wanted to know. He respected your time. And he knew how to make you smile (during his early days at the Thousand Oaks News-Chronicle, he knew how to get you interested in a municipal government piece: “Although they’re already up to their knees in sewage effluent, Las Virgenes Municipal Water District leaders agreed Monday night to consider expanding their sewer system to Topanga Canyon.”)
Bob had a desk in the newsroom, but he was most likely out in the field, discovering the unexpected, the surprising and the slightly absurd. In West L.A., he caught up with the head of the Early Typewriter Collectors Assn. — a man in possession of more than 70 machines. But Bob didn’t write it as a nostalgia piece. It turned out he produced the group’s newsletter on a Mac.
As Times columnist Steve Lopez wrote of Pool on his 2014 retirement: He his the ultimate reminder to reporters that “good things happen when you blow off news conferences, set fire to press releases, get out of the office and celebrate the daily drama on what might be the world’s greatest stage.”
Los Angeles Times reporter Bob Pool
(Jay L. Clendenin/Los Angeles Times)
Bob, meet Bob. And another Bob
Pool had a knack for orchestrating a story into something more magical. So in 1991, Pool had an idea when David Rensin and Bill Zehme published the “The Bob Book,” which he described as a paperback that aimed to explore the “name Bob backward and forward.”
He arranged to have Times photographer Bob Chamberlin take the pictures and editor Bob Welkos edited the story.
As for the name, Pool found merit.
There has never been a President named Bob or a King Bob or a Pope Bob, of course. But Rensin and Zehme have decided that men named Bob are men who get things done.
True, Bobs do “enjoy a solid sense of sameness.” But they are decent, dependable types who instinctively make the most of a bad situation, according to the book. Bobs are sensible, approachable, likable and reliable. Not to mention predictable.
Nobody named Bob could have ever written “The Bob Book,” said Rensin, 41, of Sherman Oaks. That’s because Bobs are too pragmatic and unpretentious. Bobs don’t wear berets or quote Nietzsche or hang out at Renaissance fairs, he said. “They don’t take themselves seriously.”
Pool used to tell colleagues he was grateful for being named “Bob.”
What would have happened if his parents named him Seth, he joked.
The bellman from Bell who became a bellwether in Bel-Air
Pool always preferred the little guy over the big name. That is why he was drawn to the story of Tony Marquez:
Once the packages went in the box, Tony Marquez’s award was in the bag.
That’s the short version of how a Los Angeles bellhop has won the title of best hotel worker in America.
Marquez is bell captain at the Hotel Bel-Air. It’s the sprawling hideaway in Stone Canyon north of Westwood where cottage-like suites can go for $3,000 a night — and celebrity guests can come with a truckload of luggage.
But schlepping heavy suitcases and trunks around the Bel-Air’s 12-acre grounds isn’t what earned Marquez a national hotel-rating service’s only individual five-star ranking.
Pool ended the 2004 piece with one of his more beloved kickers: “So says the bellman from Bell who became a bellwether in Bel-Air.”
Santa Pool
In 1990, Pool spent weeks undercover as a retail Santa Claus, reporting a series of stories that would become Times Christmas classics:
By last weekend, I’d spent three weeks portraying Santa in shopping centers and elsewhere around town. I figured I had the slow-gaited Santa walk down pat. Ditto the Santa talk — the patter about what children want for Christmas, the milk and cookies they plan to leave out for me and the importance of brushing teeth and going to bed on time.
“Santas always wonder about it, but I don’t think you should have any fears about being recognized,” said Jenny Zink, head of the Santa Division for Western Temporary Services, who has hired 3,500 St. Nicks across the country this month. Costumed Santas even go unrecognized by their own children, she said.
But Mrs. Claus was not a believer. “Rachel will know who you are,” she fretted. “You’ll destroy her.”
I was undeterred. To make the test complete, I arranged for several of my nieces and nephews from Valencia to also visit with Santa. Mrs. Claus threw up her hands when she heard that.
Pool closed another in the series this way: “At the end of my shift, I took my aching back home for a long, steaming shower. My beard went for a soak in a bath of lukewarm water and Woolite.”
The guest who never checked out
It’s no surprise Pool was drawn to Thelma Becker, who as he reported in 1988, checked into downtown L.A.’s Biltmore Hotel “on Jan. 7, 1940, and never checked out.”
These days, hotel staff members look after the 5-foot-tall Becker as if she was each one’s mother. She is a guest at the hotel’s annual employee Christmas party. She has her own mail box at the employee mail center.
She was invited into a heavily guarded ballroom for a peek at the silver table settings before the Duke and Duchess of York arrived for a recent formal dinner.
“She knows everything about the hotel,” said Evelyne Gibert, manager of the Biltmore’s pastry shop. “If we do the pastry wrong, she’s not afraid to let us know. She knows the ingredients I put in the pastry. She even knows my husband.”
Becker remembers employees’ birthdays with gifts or, in the case of Biltmore public relations director Victoria King, with a surprise party on Tuesday night at a Mexican restaurant.
“She gives me the funnies from her paper every Sunday,” said front desk clerk Teina Tahauri.
When USC President Carol Folt called off the 65,000-attendee “main stage” commencement amid pro-Palestinian protests and anger over the cancellation of pro-Palestinian student Asna Tabassum’s speaking slot, USC promised that more than two dozen satellite graduation ceremonies for individual colleges would continue as planned.
But on Sunday, two high-profile speakers scheduled to address graduates of the USC Rossier School of Education said they were dropping out in dismay at the university’s actions, including calling in the Los Angeles Police Department to arrest 93 pro-Palestinian protesters — many of them undergraduate students — last week.
“To speak at USC in this moment would betray not only our own values, but USC’s too,” novelist C Pam Zhang and UCLA professor and author Safiya U. Noble wrote to Folt, Provost Andrew T. Guzman and university leaders. “We are withdrawing as commencement speakers.”
The pair, who posted their announcement on the Literary Hub website and also sent a copy to USC officials on Sunday, have called on the dozens of remaining keynote speakers at satellite commencements to join them in a boycott.
“Asna’s removal, the administration’s refusal to engage in dialogue with student protestors, and the decision to invite LAPD forces onto campus, represent a violent and targeted refusal to allow true diversity of expression to flourish on campus,” the letter said.
“Our withdrawal is in no way a condemnation of USC’s graduating class, who deserve to be celebrated; nor do we condemn the countless USC faculty, staff, students, and administrators whose views are not represented by university leadership’s authoritarian decision-making,” it said.
Zhang, an award-winning author of “How Much of These Hills Is Gold” and “Land of Milk and Honey,” was scheduled to speak at the May 8 education school doctoral hooding ceremony.Noble, a 2021 MacArthur Foundation Fellow and UCLA professor who wrote “Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism,” was supposed to speak at the school’s May 10 master’s ceremony.
The pair’s refusal to participate in commencement ceremonies is the latest fallout from USC‘s controversial April 15 decision to uninvite Tabassum from its main stage.
The university said it made the decision after receiving threats in response to a link on Tabassum’s Instagram profile. The link said Zionism was “racist” and that Palestinian freedom would require “the complete abolishment of the state of Israel” so that “both Arabs and Jews can live together.” Pro-Israel groups have called the statements antisemitic. Tabassum has said she is not antisemitic.
Protesters are detained by LAPD officers who were trying to clear the USC campus during a demonstration against the war in Gaza on Wednesday.
(Wally Skalij / Los Angeles)
On-campus protests followed and four days later, the university canceled its “main stage” commencement address by “Crazy Rich Asians” director Jon M. Chu and rescinded invitations to honorary degree recipients — including tennis star Billie Jean King — to appear on stage.
Then, on Wednesday, police arrested dozens of people after pro-Palestinian demonstrators encamped in the center of campus and demanded that USC disclose and divest in any financial holdings connected to the manufacture of weaponry used in the Israel-Hamas war.
On Friday, USC said the main ceremony was canceled because new security screenings would make it impossible to process crowds in time. It also instituted new ticket limits.
Several high-profile speakers are still scheduled to appear at satellite commencement events. They include Colombian American singer-songwriter Kali Uchis, who will speak May 10 at the USC Thornton School of Music, as well as actor and activist Sean Penn, who will talk the next day to graduates of the Alfred E. Mann School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Science.
Henry Cervantes was a Fresno-born, 19-year-old son of Mexican farmworkers when the Navy told him in 1942 that he could not fight for his country.
An enlistment officer sent him home, saying the Navy didn’t take Mexicans, Filipinos or Black people. In an interview with the American Patriots of Latino Heritage, Cervantes said he directed a couple of choice epithets at the officer and declared, “I’ll prove you wrong,” before running out the door.
He found a spot instead in the Army and the Army Air Force, where he flew more than two dozen missions as part of the “Bloody 100th” Bomb Group. He later served as a test pilot and flight instructor, among other roles, before retiring as a lieutenant colonel in the Air Force in the mid-1960s.
Cervantes lived to see his 100th birthday before his death on April 7 at his home in Playa Vista. The centenarian is remembered by his friends as a man with “impeccable diction” and gentle spirit, but he was no shrinking violet.
Cervantes was born on Oct. 9, 1923, to a young Mexican couple, María Rincón and Pedro Cervantes. But his father left days after Cervantes was born, and his mother eventually married his stepfather, Ignacio Gutierrez, a Mexican farmhand.
When he was growing up during the Great Depression, his family was so poor they lived in a tent with a dirt floor, he said in an interview with the National WWII Museum. He couldn’t even afford shoes with intact soles. On one occasion, in fact, he was sent home from school with bleeding feet.
His family moved to Pittsburgh in 1934, but times were still tough. Cervantes resorted to stealing a quarter from a stash of tips collected by a nearby market, using the money to buy new shoes — which turned out to be two sizes larger than his feet; 77 years later, he reached out to Timescolumnist Steve Lopez, whose family owned the market, to repay the debt.
Henry Cervantes takes part in the 440-yard dash in GI shoes at the Santa Ana Army Air Base in California in 1943.
(Courtesy of Frederick Aguirre)
But racism and poverty did not stop Cervantes from ascending the ranks of the military. The Army drafted him six months after he was rejected by the Navy, and during basic training at the Presidio in Monterey, he took and passed a test for prospective pilots. He went on to fly B-17 Flying Fortress bombers as one of the few Latinos in his cohort.
“During his training, he was called a dirty Mexican,” said retired Judge Frederick Aguirre, who met Cervantes in 2002 at a veterans event and grew close to him through Aguirre’s work documenting the lives of Latino War War II veterans. He recalled that his friend had faced trouble earning the respect of his white subordinates, and there was “a lot of discrimination against dark-skinned Mexican persons” at the time.
Cervantes survived 26 missions during World War II as part of the 100th Bomb Group, which flew over the English Channel and Holland into German skies. Its combat missions were dramatized in the TV miniseries “Masters of the Air,” executive produced by Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks. Cervantes told the WWII Museum that he also flew humanitarian missions to bring food and supplies to Holland, but the bombers still had to survive attacks from German fighter planes — one of which rammed Cervantes’ B-17, which somehow made it back to base and successfully crash-landed.
From left, Tom Hanks, Henry Cervantes, John Luckadoo, Robert Wolff, James Rasmussen and Gary Goetzman attend the premiere of the Apple TV+ “Masters of the Air” miniseries at the Regency Village Theater on Jan. 10, 2024, in Los Angeles.
(Eric Charbonneau / Getty Images )
Cervantes also set records as a test pilot for the initial jets that were being integrated into military flight craft in 1945. By the time he retired in 1965, the Air Force had advanced from the B-17 to the B-58s, the first bombers to fly at twice the speed of sound.
Life didn’t stop moving for Cervantes, who detailed his life before and after the military in his memoir, “Piloto: Migrant Worker to Jet Pilot.” Cervantes went on to work for the Los Angeles office of Defense Contract Administration Services and for Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley, managing Hispanic affairs.
Among other hobbies, Cervantes, who had been a track-and-field athlete in high school, became an official for USA Track and Field and a officiant at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics. He would often volunteer his services to the L.A. Special Olympics.
Cervantes is survived by his sister, Jennie Gonzalez, several nieces and nephews, and his longtime partner and friend of more than 60 years, Nancy Kahn. The couple first dated in 1964 when they met in the Air Force, staying together for 10 years before they broke up. Cervantes remained single his whole life.
“He used to say he was married to the military,” Kahn said. When the two reconnected after the death of Kahn’s husband in 2014, she was 75 and he was 90.
Henry Cervantes is shown getting ready to fly his first mission out of England.
(Courtesy of Frederick Aguirre)
“We did everything together,” said Kahn of the last decade of their rekindled friendship. They took care of each other and enjoyed the mundane things after a long and exciting life. Hank, as Kahn calls him, was spry and agile even in his last decade.
But his health started to decline after he developed vascular dementia from a stroke five years ago. He was hospitalized after a second stroke in early March of this year and sent home on hospice care after he lost the ability to swallow.
Kahn said Cervantes died on the same date, April 7, as he’d escaped death 79 years previously when German pilots tried to ram his B-17 bomber out of the sky.
A memorial service for Cervantes will be held Monday at 1 p.m. at Holy Cross Chapel in Culver City.
Pro-Palestinian protests grew Thursday at California colleges and universities, including a new encampment at UCLA and demonstrations at UC Santa Barbara, a day after police in riot gear arrested 93 protesters at USC.
Fallout over the Israel-Hamas war grew Thursday as USC announced that it would cancel its main stage commencement ceremony after more than a week of national controversy over its decision to pull a pro-Palestinian valedictorian’s speaking slot from the May event that was expected to draw 65,000 attendees.
The university cited new safety measures, saying that the “time needed to process the large number of guests coming to campus will increase substantially.”
Dozens of smaller graduation ceremonies and celebrations at USC will continue under a new ticket policy and security checks.
At Cal Poly Humboldt in Arcata, the campus remained closed and classes shifted online, with pro-Palestinian students occupying multiple buildings since Monday night.
And at UC Berkeley, 50 tents remained up by Sproul Hall, the historic home of the campus’ free speech movement. On their fourth day of a “Free Palestine Camp,” students called for the university to divest its endowment from weapons manufacturers tied to Israel.
Tensions were high at USC, where the campus was rocked at the end of the semester by President Carol Folt’s decision to cancel the valedictorian’s speech and then a commencement address by film director Jon M. Chu, before calling off the main commencement altogether.
An encampment that launched before sunrise Wednesday morning at Alumni Park grew to about 200 protesters — students, faculty and outsiders — before the late-night arrests by the LAPD. By Thursday morning, the encampment had been cleared, with campus security picking up the remaining tents and signs.
On Thursday, the university fenced off the park — the site of the called-off commencement — to set up a brunch for 2024 graduates scheduled for Friday morning. There were no protesters and few signs of Wednesday’s unrest, besides chalk messages on nearby sidewalks in support of Palestinians.
The campus remains closed to the public through weekend, and professors have moved classes online.
“This is a series of poor decisions by USC, from banning the valedictorian to calling in police to arrest peaceful students,” said Luke, a USC sophomore who was arrested Wednesday night and released early Thursday morning. “I don’t know what this university thinks it’s doing, because none of it makes sense.”
Luke did not share his last name because he said he was worried about his safety and repercussions to his enrollment at USC, where campus safety officers on Wednesday told students that they could face discipline for violating rules over camping and use of amplified sound.
Amelia Jones, a professor at the Roski School of Art and Design who joined faculty in protesting on Wednesday, said there was a growing “lack of trust” at USC between the administration, faculty and students.
“They just massively escalated by calling in LAPD,” she said.
A Jewish community group condemned the USC protests, while a Muslim civil rights group condemned the arrests.
“While students have a right to protest, they do not have the right to intimidate or threaten Jewish students,” said a statement from USC’s Hillel. “Today’s events on campus included a protest action that again employed antisemitic chants including ‘there is only one solution, intifada revolution’ and ‘long live the intifada.’ These actions reflect a disturbing and quickly escalating situation nationally and on our own campus at USC.”
In another statement, the Los Angeles chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations spoke out against the arrests of peaceful protesters.
“It is deeply concerning that USC’s response to students demonstrating peacefully in solidarity with Palestine is forcible suppression of free speech and assembly,” said CAIR-LA legal director Amr Shabaik. “This mirrors a nationwide trend of colleges and universities attempting to censor pro-Palestine advocacy on campuses.”
At UCLA, about 100 students, faculty, staff and alumni occupied the Palestine Solidarity Encampment on Thursday with more than 20 tents surrounded by wooden pallets and protest signs.
The effort was organized by UC Divest Coalition, which was made up of several student groups.
Outside Royce Hall, students and others stood in line to check in before entering the encampment.
Participants said they had seen minimal police presence — mostly officers passing by in squad cars.
Marie Salem, 28, a graduate student studying public health, said the encampment is a community of people demanding a change from UC administrators.
“It’s about our community realizing that we no longer can go to a university that is complicit in genocide, and we no longer can go to a university that is invested in this genocide of the Gazans,” Salem said.
George Dutton, a professor of Asian language and cultures, said he and others wanted to observe the protest to ensure that students can safely practice their 1st Amendment rights.
Dutton said it was “deeply disturbing” to see a large police presence on campuses across America this past week as students protest the war in Gaza.
At UC Santa Barbara, hundreds occupied the student resources building Thursday for a daylong series of workshops, art projects and other actions to express solidarity with Palestinians, call for a cease-fire and demand an end to Israel-related investments.
A few tents were set up inside the building, but no encampment is planned, said Bisnupriya Ghosh, a professor of English and global studies and member of Academics for Justice in Palestine. She added that no police were present, and the event was proceeding peacefully.
“It’s centered around education about Israel-Palestine, as well as antisemitism, Islamophobia and other forms of racism and hate,” Ghosh said.
Times staff writers Melissa Gomez, Jenny Jarvie and Teresa Watanabe contributed to this report.
Workers at big retail and grocery stores in unincorporated L.A. County can retain a little more control over their schedules — and rely a little less on managers’ whims — starting next summer.
On Tuesday, the L.A. County Board of Supervisors voted to require that employers give those workers their schedules two weeks in advance, compensate them for last-minute schedule changes and space out their shifts by at least 10 hours.
The ordinance, which will go into effect July 2025, applies to any retailer and grocer in unincorporated L.A. County with 300 or more employees nationwide.
The county has estimated that the ordinance would affect about 200 businesses, many of them large chains, and up to 6,000 workers. Supervisor Holly Mitchell, who spearheaded the policy, said Tuesday’s vote would benefit both.
“It is a win for retailers committed to a work environment that gives them a competitive edge and for our retail workers who deserve the dignity of a predictable schedule so they can plan for childcare, school and other life obligations,” she said.
The policy closely mirrors the “fair work week” ordinance the City of Los Angeles passed in 2022.
Like the city’s version, the county’s policy requires that retailers provide “predictability pay” if they change a worker’s schedule last-minute and get employee’s approval before assigning them so-called “clopening” shifts — a closing shift followed immediately by an opening shift the next day. The ordinance also bars an employer from retaliating against an employee who reports violations.
Several business and trade groups argued that the policy needlessly complicates the delicate art of scheduling staff. The Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce said it would hamper businesses already struggling to compete against e-commerce companies, saddling them with fines in the tens of thousands of dollars. The California Grocers Association argued it would create needless bureaucracy, making eleventh-hour staffing changes “extremely challenging.”
Both groups said they wished the policy included a grace period for a store to solve “honest clerical mistakes” without getting penalized.
“Scheduling flexibility is one of the industry perks that many enjoy about working in grocery stores, yet this ordinance will make schedule changes, especially within a week of a shift, nearly impossible,” wrote Nate Rose, a spokesperson for the grocers association. “Taken together, its pay penalty requirements and the likely increase in needless lawsuits, will only lead to higher costs at the grocery store for Los Angeles shoppers.”
The county’s Department of Consumer and Business Affairs would be responsible for enforcing the policy. Each violation comes with a penalty of $500 to $1000.
Janna Shadduck-Hernández, project director at the UCLA Labor Center, said she believes the policy will bring stability to the lives of thousands of low-income workers. A 2018 study from the center found that the vast majority of retail workers, many of whom are people of color, get their schedules a week or less in advance.
“What this allows is people to organize their lives,” she said.
In recent years, major cities including Chicago, Seattle, Philadelphia and New York City, as well as the state of Oregon, have passed laws to protect the time of shift workers. Kristen Harknett, a professor of sociology at University of California, San Francisco who studied the impact of Seattle’s policy, said she found workers’ well-being improved as their schedules became more predictable.
“When you don’t know when — or how much — you’re going to work from one day or the next, it’s very disruptive,” she said. “It really just messes up your ability to plan.”
Harknett said the county’s version has the same components as the other jurisdictions, with one key difference: food service workers aren’t included.
“The carve-out for the restaurant and food industry is pretty unique,” she said. “Food service is pretty unstable and unpredictable, [and] those workers are not going to experience the enhanced protections that their counterparts in retail will.”
The county indicated in a report last May that it would look at providing “coverage for workers in several other vulnerable industries, particularly food service” in the future.
Amardeep Gill with the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy, an advocacy group that pushed for the county policy, said she hoped other industries would enact a similar ordinance for their own sectors.
“We’re hoping the work that we’ve done here really lays like a strong foundation where others can build upon this,” said Gill.
A woman who went missing during a hike near the Angeles National Forest was found dead on Monday, a day after she was reported missing.
Julia Li, 21,was last seen near Bailey Canyon Park in Sierra Madre at 4 p.m. Sunday, according to the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. Li’s mother reported her missing after they were separated during a hike and Li didn’t meet her at their car at the agreed-upon time, according to KTLA-TV.
Julia Li, 21, was last seen alive near Bailey Canyon Park in Sierra Madre on Sunday afternoon, authorities said.
(LAPD)
Early Monday morning, the Sheriff’s Department sent out an alert for Li, describing her as being 5 feet 2 and 110 pounds. Later that day, her body was found by the sheriff’s search and rescue personnel, the Sheriff’s Department said.
The L.A. County coroner’s office listed Li’s cause of death as blunt trauma. The Sheriff’s Department said foul play is not suspected at this time.
No one was hurt in the incident, and police arrested Ephraim Hunter, 29. A motive for the break-in remains unclear. L.A. County prosecutors are reviewing the case.
Here is what we know:
Security cameras are positioned outside Getty House, the official residence of L.A. Mayor Karen Bass.
(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
The break-in
On Sunday afternoon, officials offered sparse details about the incident, announcing only that an arrest had been made.
“This morning at about 6:40 a.m., an intruder broke into Getty House through a window. Mayor Bass and her family were not injured and are safe,” Zach Seidl, deputy mayor of communications, said in a statement.
Neither Bass nor the Los Angeles Police Department have provided additional details.
Two law enforcement sources who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the case with the media told The Times that Hunter made it to the second floor of the home, causing Bass to hide in a safe area designed to protect against intruders, akin to a panic room.
Hunter was arrested without incident, according to police, who said nothing had been stolen.
The suspect
Hunter, an L.A. resident, was booked on suspicion of burglary Sunday afternoon, police said. No charges have been filed.
In a phone interview Monday, a woman who identified herself as Hunter’s mother said he had been struggling with drug addiction and possibly suffering from hallucinations.
Josephine Duah said Hunter called her from jail Monday morning and claimed he was fleeing from someone “trying to shoot him.” Her son had no idea whose house he’d entered the previous day, she said.
“He didn’t know that at all,” Duah said. “He just was running. … He thought somebody was chasing him and he hopped some fences and he went in the house. … I’m wondering if, mentally, he was relieved if he saw police.”
Getty House
The imposing residence is located in Windsor Square, one of L.A.’s more tony neighborhoods.
One of the perks of being elected mayor is the right to live in the house, which has 14 rooms and seven bathrooms.
An exterior view of Getty House, the L.A. mayor’s official residence.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
The house, which was donated to the city by Getty Oil Co. in 1975, is fitted with expensive objects, including a $25,000 chandelier, The Times reported in 2005.
Built by Swedish immigrants in 1921, it has been home to oil tycoons and actors, including J. Paul Getty, the Barrymore family and Lee Strasberg.
Security
Security at the residences has been a topic of debate.
In 2020, it was the site of numerous protests over policing policies in the wake of George Floyd’s murder by Minneapolis police. Other protests at the mayor’s home have demanded that the city impose a blanket ban on evictions, cancel rents and take over hotels to house homeless people.
Officials did not disclose security arrangements at Getty House.
One LAPD source, not authorized to speak publicly about the case, said that in the wake of the break-in, a 24-hour security operation is now in place at Getty House, with police maintaining a visible presence in the area.
Bass on Monday declined to speak at length about the incident: “Let me just say first of all, I am fine. My family is fine. And we are going to do everything we can to keep Angelenos safe.”
Southern California’s rivers and creeks once teemed with large, silvery fish that arrived from the ocean and swam upstream to spawn. But today, these fish are seldom seen.
Southern California steelhead trout have been pushed to the brink of extinction as their river habitats have been altered by development and fragmented by barriers and dams.
Their numbers have been declining for decades, and last week California’s Fish and Game Commission voted to list Southern California steelhead trout as endangered.
Conservation advocates said they hope the designation will accelerate efforts to save the fish and the aquatic ecosystems on which they depend.
“Historically, tens of thousands of these fish swam in Southern California rivers and streams,” said Sandra Jacobson, director of the South Coast region for California Trout, an organization that advocated for the listing.
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“Their numbers have dipped dangerously low due to impacts from habitat loss, fragmentation and urbanization,” Jacobson said. “This landmark decision provides critically important protections for this iconic species.”
The distinct Southern California population is one of eight varieties of steelhead trout in the state. They live in coastal waters and rivers from southern San Luis Obispo County to around the U.S.-Mexico border.
Steelheads typically grow to 2 or 3 feet and sometimes larger.
An adult steelhead trout in San Luis Rey River in northern San Diego County.
(California Department of Fish and Game)
The fish migrate upstream when winter and spring rains send high flows coursing through rivers and creeks. They travel to spawning habitats as far as 30 miles inland — as long as they don’t encounter a barrier along the way.
Unlike salmon, which are part of the same family, steelheads often spawn multiple times before they die.
Southern California steelheads were once caught by Indigenous people. In the early 20th century, anglers found that the fish were abundant in the Ventura and other rivers.
But over the past century, the Los Angeles River and other waterways were lined with concrete. Coastal marshes were hemmed in by development, and barriers and dams fragmented streams.
The Southern California steelhead population was declared endangered by the federal government in 1997. Reviews by federal and state agencies have found that the population has continued to suffer since then.
“The negative trend toward extinction has not reversed,” Jacobson said.
In a 2020 study, researchers found that there had been only 177 documented sightings of Southern California steelhead in the previous 25 years.
California Trout submitted a petition in 2021 urging the state to list the steelhead population as endangered.
Small numbers of fish continue to return to the Santa Clara and Santa Ynez rivers, as well as Malibu Creek, Topanga Creek and other streams from Santa Barbara to San Diego County.
Jacobson and other conservationists have been advocating for accelerating plans to remove obsolete dams that block fish, including Matilija Dam in the Ventura River watershed and Rindge Dam in the Malibu Creek canyon. They’ve also been seeking to expedite the removal of barriers on Trabuco Creek and the Santa Margarita River.
Other efforts to help steelhead trout include removing non-native species, reducing water diversions and groundwater pumping to ensure sufficient flows in streams and restoring watersheds’ natural ecosystems, Jacobson said.
“Southern steelhead are crucial indicators of watershed health,” Jacobson said.
She said restoring the “aquatic highways” the fish use to reach their spawning habitats will also bring benefits for people, including safeguarding sources of clean drinking water.
“I am hopeful for steelhead recovery,” Jacobson said. California’s classification of the population as endangered, she said, will help advance a state conservation plan and add urgency to the work of removing barriers in rivers.
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The steelhead trout that remain in Southern California face other threats, including warmer waters and more intense droughts and wildfires as a result of climate change.
“These are populations that are experiencing the warmest conditions, really on the leading edge of climate change effects. And then you layer on top of that just how densely populated Southern California is,” said Andrew Rypel, a professor of fish ecology and director of UC Davis’ Center for Watershed Sciences. “All of these steelhead streams in Southern California are extremely impacted.”
He said that with so many factors weighing against the steelhead trout, the additional protections could make a significant difference.
“It’s like the most challenging fish conservation issue I can imagine,” Rypel said. “How do you manage a whole landscape for fish conservation in the middle of one of the biggest urban areas in the world? It’s very challenging.”
This population of steelhead, he said, is effectively “up against the clock.”
Removal of barriers to spawning areas is key, he said.
“It’s a really cool fish. It’s a Southern California fish, and it’s up to the people of that region to watch out for it and to ensure that future generations are going to be able to watch this cool fish and protect it — and by way of doing that, protect the ecosystem.”
A Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy was shot Monday on the 10 Freeway, authorities said.
The Sheriff’s Department confirmed to The Times that a deputy assigned to a motorcycle unit was shot on the freeway in West Covina but did not provide additional information, saying the investigation is ongoing.
The westbound lanes of the 10 Freeway were closed in West Covina near Barranca Street, NBC4 reported.
Sources told The Times the deputy was taken to a hospital with a gunshot wound to the back.
Nicole Nishida, a spokeswoman for the department, said the deputy was wearing a bullet-resistant vest and is in stable condition.
Authorities said they are looking into a person of interest in connection with the shooting. Deputies tracked a white van and now have a La Puente home surrounded, sources told The Times.
This is a breaking news story and will be updated with more information as it becomes available.
