A man was arrested early Wednesday morning after allegedly attempting to break into a Studio City home and reportedly threatening the Jewish occupants — an incident authorities say is being investigated as a possible hate crime.
The home invasion was reported around 5 a.m. in the 3000 block of Laurel Canyon Boulevard, according to the Los Angeles Police Department.
The suspect, identified only as a man in his 30s, is accused of entering the home’s backyard and trying to kick in a door; he was held at bay by an occupant who then contacted the police.
KTTV-TV Channel 11 reported that the person who called police said the suspect had “threatened to kill them because they were Israeli,” and that the home’s occupants were Jewish.
Footage captured by the television station showed the suspect yelling, “Free Palestine” several times after being placed into the back of an LAPD vehicle.
In additional footage taken by a neighbor, the man can be heard yelling incoherent responses to police and stating that he was not armed.
LAPD officials said the incident is being investigated as a possible hate crime. In a statement, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass called it a “vile act of hate.”
“In the wake of the terror and violence inflicted over the previous weeks, this is one of the worst fears of Jewish families across our country — hatred spilling across the threshold, destroying the sense of safety and sanctuary in a home,” Bass said. “We remain steadfast in support of the Jewish people. The people of Los Angeles will not cower to hate.”
Bass said the LAPD would continue to conduct increased patrols and called on officials “to take action to ensure the person responsible for this heinous act is held fully accountable.”
The driver accused of killing four Pepperdine students in a Malibu crashlast week was charged with murder, with prosecutors saying he was speeding at 104 mph before the fatal collision.
Fraser Michael Bohm, 22, faces four counts of malice murder and four counts of gross vehicular manslaughter, L.A. County Dist. Atty. George Gascón said during a Wednesday news conference, adding that the charges stem from Bohm’s “complete disregard for the life of others.”
“When you are driving at 104 mph in [a] 45-mph [zone], the only conclusion is you have a complete disregard for life,” Gascón said.
The four people killed — Niamh Rolston, Peyton Stewart, Asha Weir and Deslyn Williams — were sisters in the Alpha Phi sorority and seniors at Pepperdine University. Authorities believe they were standing near several parked vehicles in the 21600 block of Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu when Bohm’s speeding BMW barreled into the cars and then struck the women shortly before 9 p.m. Oct. 17.
Bohm was arrested on suspicion of vehicular manslaughter with gross negligence following the crash, Los Angeles County sheriff’s Sgt. Maria Navarro said. But he was released hours later. In a news release at the time, the Sheriff’s Department said he was “released to allow detectives time to gather the evidence needed to secure the strongest criminal filing and conviction.”
Bohm was re-arrested Tuesday night and booked on suspicion of four counts of murder. In the intervening days between arrests, investigators collected additional evidence — including toxicology results, search warrants and speed analyses — before submitting the case to the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office on Monday.
Investigators determined that Bohm was not under the influence of drugs or alcohol at the time of the crash, but the onboard computer of his car shows he was traveling at 104 mph before he lost control in the deadly collision, according to law enforcement sources not authorized to discuss the case publicly. It was that data, along with statements by Bohm that he was familiar with the stretch of PCH and that he was aware of the posted 45-mph speed limit, that led to the charges against him, sources say.
Oh my gourd. Are those blazing jack-o’-lanterns on the road or did 5,000 pumpkins go up in flames on the 5 Freeway?
It’s the latter.
Only days before Halloween, a truckload of gourds sizzled on the side of the freeway near the Smokey Bear Road exit in Lebec around 2 a.m. Wednesday after a truck carrying them caught fire, according to authorities. The California Highway Patrol said nobody was injured.
The pumpkins were on their way south from Van Groningen & Sons farm in Manteca to a buyer in Los Angeles when the blaze broke out.
When the company’s president, Ryan Van Groningen, heard about the loss of gourds, he said he was concerned only about the driver of the truck.
“Pumpkins can be replaced but human lives can’t,” he said.
Halloween enthusiasts who have yet to buy a pumpkin for carving need not worry: Van Groningen said his farm has a scary amount of pumpkins to replace those lost in the fire.
“In the overall scheme of things there is definitely plenty more to go,” he said.
Video taken at the scene shows firefighters from the Los Angeles County Fire Department battling the flames amid the charred Halloween gourds.
The pumpkins spilled out of the back of the truck onto the road, blocking the exit. Authorities shut down a lane of the southbound 5 Freeway due to the fire.
It was not immediately clear what caused the blaze, but the firefighters seemed to be enjoying themselves, with one first responder smiling and carrying two pumpkins, one in each hand, away from the scene, video showed.
The political fight over whether workers on strike should be allowed to collect unemployment benefits is reigniting in Washington.
U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff, a California Democrat who is running for Senate, is planning to introduce legislation on Tuesday that would provide unemployment benefits nationwide to workers on strike. Most states don’t allow striking workers to collect unemployment with the exception of New York and New Jersey. Eligibility requirements and the amount of weekly unemployment pay also varies by state.
Under the Empowering Striking Workers Act of 2023, workers would be able to collect unemployment pay after two weeks on strike, according to a draft of the bill viewed by The Times. Workers would also be eligible for unemployment benefits starting on the date a lockout begins, when the employer hired permanent replacement workers or if the worker becomes unemployed after a strike or lock-out ends, whichever is earlier.
Democratic U.S. Reps. Donald Norcross of New Jersey and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York also are sponsoring the bill. Labor unions SAG-AFTRA, the Writers Guild of America, the Teamsters and the AFL-CIO are supporting the legislation as well, according to Schiff’s office.
But with Republicans controlling the House of Representatives, the odds that the bill will pass are slim. Businesses have strongly opposed the idea because they said it would lead to higher employer taxes. Employers pay state and federal payroll taxes to fund the unemployment insurance program.
The expected introduction of a federal bill comes after California Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed state legislation in September to provide unemployment for striking workers. Newsom said he did so because of financial concerns, a move highly criticized by labor leaders.
California borrowed billions of dollars from the federal government to cover unemployment benefits, and the state’s unemployment fund debt was projected to be nearly $20 billion by the end of the year. California’s unemployment pay is $450 a week for a maximum of 26 weeks. Business fought the bill because they said they would pay additional taxes annually to repay California’s loan from the federal government.
The WGA and SAG-AFTRA lobbied for the expanded benefits, saying that they would help workers pay their bills. While members rely on side jobs and strike funds to stay afloat, that income dwindles the longer a strike goes on. The 148-day Hollywood writers strike ended after WGA members ratified a new contract. Actors and crew members represented by SAG-AFTRA have been on strike for more than 100 days.
Democrats have expressed support for labor unions ahead of the 2024 elections. Labor unions including the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, the Communication Workers of America and the Amalgamated Transit Union have endorsed Schiff for Senate, while other unions have endorsed his main Democratic rivals in the race.
During an October debate in Los Angeles, Schiff, along with California Democratic Senate candidates Barbara Lee and Katie Porter, disagreed with Newsom’s decision to veto the bill to provide striking workers unemployment benefits. He mentioned during that event he was working on federal legislation.
“When they go and strike for better work and better wages for themselves and others, they need to have unemployment compensation, because they’re striking for all workers,” Schiff said at the debate.
When Norelis Vargas heard about housekeeping work at a hotel near Los Angeles International Airport, she did not hesitate to sign up.
Vargas, 39, who migrated from Venezuela and entered the U.S. about three months ago seeking asylum, had been living with her husband and four children for months at Union Rescue Mission, a homeless shelter on Skid Row, and needed the income. But when she arrived at Four Points by Sheraton on Oct. 6, Vargas said she was surprised to find a group of hotel employees picketing.
“I thought, it’s good they are fighting for their rights,” Vargas said. But she said she felt uncomfortable. “The people outside, it was their job, and I was the one replacing them.”
Vargas is among those from Skid Row’s migrant population who have been recruited in recent weeks to work at unionized hotels in Santa Monica and near Los Angeles International Airport where workers have gone on strike. In addition to the Four Points by Sheraton hotel, migrants were hired at the Le Meridien Delfina Santa Monica and the Holiday Inn LAX, according to interviews with migrants employed as temporary workers and organizers with Unite Here Local 11.
Now Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. George Gascón is launching an investigation into working conditions for migrants hired at hotels based on information brought to him by Unite Here Local 11, which represents workers involved in the largest U.S. hotel strike. Gascón said he is concerned about potential wage theft and violations of child labor law.
“We are going to make sure this is investigated thoroughly. It will be a fair and impartial investigation,” Gascón said at a news conference Monday in front of Le Meridien Delfina.
“If there are violations of the law, there will be severe consequences for this. We want to make sure that our community understands there will be no tolerance for the exploitation of refugees,” Gascón said, citing reporting by The Times on the issue.
Gascón recently claimed the endorsement of the powerful Los Angeles County Federation of Labor in announcing his reelection campaign.
Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. George Gascón announced at a Monday news conference that he is launching an investigation into working conditions for migrants hired at hotels.
(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)
At Monday’s news conference, state Sen. Maria Elena Durazo (D-Los Angeles) expressed outrage over the allegations against the hotels and staffing agencies.
“It makes me furious,” said Durazo, who represents Central and East L.A., and once served as president of Unite Here Local 11.
The hotel’s actions are “indefensible,” said Angelica Salas, executive director of the advocacy organization Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights Los Angeles. “Staffing agencies, companies taking advantage of the desperation of the individual to try to begin their life, and then not pay them their proper earnings, not give them a full accounting of their hours worked — we see this every day here in L.A.”
Since more than 15,000 workers began intermittent strikes at about 60 Southern California hotels in early July, employers have been replacing those union members with managers and temporary workers recruited through apps, such as Instawork, staffing agencies and by other means.
For the record:
4:33 p.m. Oct. 23, 2023An earlier verison of this story misspelled Hannah Petersen’s last name as Peterson.
Unite Here organizer Hannah Petersen, who has been working with the migrants, said some hired at Le Meridien Delfina were among hundreds of migrants Texas Gov. Greg Abbott shipped on buses to L.A. this year as a political stunt meant to harness anti-immigrant sentiment and deride “sanctuary” cities across the country. Frank Wolf, a pastor at Echo Park United Methodist Church, is among those who have greeted migrants arriving on buses from Texas.
“They were exhausted and they were tired and they were scared when they came to Los Angeles,” he said at the news conference. “It’s heart-wrenching to find out that some of these very workers that we welcomed on those buses are being exploited.”
Refugees and asylum seekers are legally allowed to seek work in the U.S. Federal labor law allows employers to hirereplacement workers during unfair labor practice strikes and economic strikes, but unions typically condemn the use of so-called scab labor.
Kurt Petersen, co-president of Unite Here Local 11, said employers who hired migrants “had stooped to a new low” by tapping a vulnerable group of workers to undermine employees striking for a living wage.
“I can’t believe they are forcing these people, who are so desperate, to cross the picket line,” Petersen said. “Instead of addressing L.A.’s housing crisis, the hotel industry prefers to exploit the unhoused as strikebreakers to avoid paying their own workers enough to afford housing themselves.”
Owners and operators of the three hotels did not respond to requests for comment. Real estate investment group Pebblebrook Hotel Trust owns Le Meridien Delfina Santa Monica, and Capital Insight owns Four Points LAX. Highgate Hotels operates both hotels. The Holiday Inn LAX is owned by a subsidiary of Chinese firm Esong Group and is operated by Aimbridge Hospitality.
Eleven people living at the Skid Row shelter confirmed they had been hired at hotels where employees were protesting outside. Most had migrated from Venezuela or Colombia. Many did not provide their names, fearing repercussions.
They described heavy cleaning loads and long hours. Some said they were given no prior information on how much they would be paid hourly, although others said they were told on their first day that they would be paid $19 an hour. Migrant workers said they were not told and did not know the name of the agency that recruited them.
Venezuelan migrant Sebastian Atencio, 34, showed up at Le Méridien Delfina Santa Monica on Sept. 26 during a recent wave of strikes. Atencio said he was given a heavy workload and forced to work without breaks. He was hired to wash dishes at another hotel — but they also asked him to clean bathrooms during the same shift, which he said he felt was unsanitary.
One migrant worker, a 17-year-old student at Belmont High School who requested anonymity, said he skipped two days of school to clean rooms at the Holiday InnLAX.
He and his mother, who secured work as a housekeeper at the Holiday Inn, received payment via banking app Zelle from an agency called Arya Staffing Services Inc. Aimbridge Hospitality did not respond to questions about whether staffing agencies it used had secured appropriate permits to employ minors.
A review of an Oct. 13 pay stub for a worker hired at the Four Points by Sheraton shows that person obtained hotel work through staffing agency AV Professional Services.
Alinne Espinoza, who is listed as the registered agent for both staffing agencies, said her business is properly licensed and operates legally.
“Our company works with many different types of people that come from our local community,” she said in an email. “We work hard on a daily basis to incorporate as many people as possible into the labor market under competent, dignified and just conditions.”
Unite Here Local 11 organizer Hannah Petersen speaks with workers outside the Union Rescue Mission on Skid Row.
(Suhauna Hussain / Los Angeles Times)
Outside the Skid Row shelter on a recent evening, Petersen introduced herself in Spanish to a group of migrants who had been hired at striking hotels. Several pushed strollers. Young children crowded around their parents, one sucking a green lollipop.
“My name is Hannah,” she said to the group. “The union is out there fighting for the rights of immigrant workers.”
Many migrants living at the shelter had told her they wanted permanent jobs, she explained, and so that day she and other organizers would be gathering information to help them create their resumes.
Some of the shelter’s residents approached the organizers, who were armed with clipboards, and fielded questions about the migrants’ work experience, scribbling their answers down. Other migrants, concerned that the organizers were working for immigration authorities, left.
Petersen, the daughter of the union’s co-president, said she first encountered homeless migrant workers Sept. 27 when she was protesting alongside Unite Here Local 11 members at Le Meridien Delfina.
Hotel housekeepers, front desk workers, cooks and other employees are seeking new contracts with higher wages and improved benefits and working conditions. The union members say they don’t earn enough to afford housing near their jobs.
But hotel operators say the union is overreaching in its demands for raises and employer support of housing initiatives unrelated to hotel operations, including a measure set for the 2024 ballot that would require hotels in Los Angeles to rent vacant rooms to homeless people. American Hotel & Lodging Assn. Chief Executive Chip Rogers called it a “dangerous demand,” citing a September poll the industry group commissioned in which 72% of respondents said they would be reluctant to book a hotel room in Los Angeles “if hotels there are forced to house homeless people next to paying guests.”
Petersen said it is hypocritical for hotels to oppose homelessness measures while employing unhoused people as replacement workers during the strike.
Keith Grossman, an attorney representing a group of more than 40 Southern California hotel owners and operators in negotiations with Unite Here Local 11, said in an email that hotels “did not knowingly use unhoused individuals, if they even did so.”
“I do wonder how a hotel is supposed to know whether a person is homeless if they list an address and show up bathed and clean and sober?” he said. “This appears to be another red herring generated by Local 11.”
Unite Here Local 11 has previously criticized hotels’ strike-time use of Instawork, an app that matches businesses with short-term, seasonal workers in hospitality.
In July, the union filed an unfair labor practice complaint with the National Labor Relations Board against Instawork and hotel management company Aimbridge. In one allegation, the union said the company violated federal labor law by disqualifying workers hired through the app from future work when they miss a single shift, even if they do so to participate in legally protected activity, such as respecting a strike.
Vargas, the worker hired at the Four Points hotel, was among a handful of people remaining that evening outside Union Rescue Mission. The rest had dispersed, distrustful and worried that union organizers were sent by immigration authorities. Vargas said she hoped the other residents would come around.
“I’m going to be the one who finds good work so they know it’s not a lie,” Vargas said.
The legacy of Los Angeles’ most famous mountain lion continues Sunday at Griffith Park with the eighth annual P-22 Day.
Wildlife supporters will unite at Shane’s Inspiration playground from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. to enjoy live music, food trucks, muralists and native-plant giveaways.
Organized by the National Wildlife Federation’s #SaveLACougars campaign, the free, family-friendly festival hopes to honor the famed mountain lion who amassed a celebrity-worthy following and kick-started campaigns to save wildlife throughout Southern California.
Beth Pratt, a regional executive director in California for the National Wildlife Federation, has celebrated the renowned puma at the park since 2016.
At the start of Sunday’s festivities, she took to the hills where P-22 once roamed.
Pratt recalled more than 13,000 people attending last year’s celebration for L.A.’s most famous cat. But this is the first time P-22 Day has been held since the cougar’s death, so this year’s crowd might be the biggest yet.
“The loss is still really raw for a lot of people,” Pratt said. “During the other seven [festivals] he was here snapping and listening to the music we were playing.”
Not literally, joked Pratt, who sports a tattoo of the cougar’s face on her arm.
But wildlife supporters could bank on the big cat coming down from the mountaintop to amaze onlookers who were lucky enough to catch a glimpse of him over the years.
P-22 first captured the world’s attention in 2012, when a motion-sensing camera caught an image of his hindquarters and tail in Griffith Park.
He survived a parasitic infection and a cramped range in Griffith Park, but officials with the National Park Service and the state’s wildlife department captured P-22 after he started to show increasing “signs of distress,” including three attacks on dogsin a month and several near-miss encounters with people walking in Los Feliz and Silver Lake.
Thought to be about 12 years old at the time of his death, the mountain lion was “compassionately euthanized” in December 2022. He was suffering from a number of health issues at the time as well as from internal injuries that officials believed occurred after he was hit by a car.
The cougar’s popularity only grew through the years after his picture was first seen in The Times and in other news coverage over the years.
By order of the Los Angeles City Council, every Oct. 22 is celebrated as “P-22 Day.”
Pratt hopes P-22’s legacy is the link that connects Southern California to all wildlife.
“We want to do more,” she said.
Thankfully, Pratt finds partners in nearly 70 other organizations planning to educate the public on P-22 Day.
“That is P-22’s legacy,” Pratt exclaimed, “showing people in a real way — off the scientific paper — how they can make a difference in the lives of amazing predators.”
There are plenty more events planned throughout Los Angeles during Urban Wildlife Week, but the hike retracing P-22’s journey is among the toughest, according to Pratt.
“The whole reason they do it is to show how hard it is for a person to do it, much less a mountain lion,” Pratt explained.
“It goes to show,” she said, “there’s a lot more we can do to make it a little easier for them.”
Los Angeles Rams wide receiver Demarcus Robinson was robbed of his luxury jewelry at gunpoint early Friday morning outside a Los Angeles hotel, according to media reports.
Robinson, 29, was leaving a hotel when two armed men approached and demanded his jewelry, law enforcement sources told TMZ.
The thieves reportedly made off with $100,000 worth of Robinson’s belongings — including a luxury watch.
The Los Angeles Police Department did not immediately respond to an inquiry for additional information on the robbery.
For Cindy Montañez, the seeds of her drive to fight for her community were planted before she was even born.
Her grandfather, a miner in the Mexican state of Zacatecas, died before she could meet him — an early death caused by his line of work. Her immigrant parents settled in the northeastern San Fernando Valley, where factories spewed chemicals and companies dumped waste with little care for the Latinos who lived nearby.
“My dad told us, ‘Whatever you do, you’ve gotta fight against the people who oppress our people and the exploitation of the land, because the two go together,’” Montañez said in an interview earlier this year.
She took that advice to heart by blazing trails in both politics and environmental activism. After serving in the California Assembly, Montañez used her connections and iron will to bring hundreds of millions of dollars to the San Fernando Valley and other underserved communities to clean up polluted areas and beautify neighborhoods.
The San Fernando City Council member died Saturday morning after a long battle with cancer, according to a family spokesperson. She was 49.
At UCLA in 1993, Montañez and a teenage sister were among those who went on a 14-day hunger strike that helped to establish a Chicano Studies department. She became the youngest San Fernando council member at 25, then the youngest woman elected to the California State Assembly at 28.
After leaving Sacramento, Montañez became an assistant general manager at the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, playing a crucial role in pushing the agency to use cleaner energy and create better water-capture methods. Shy by nature but at ease in any crowd, she became CEO of TreePeople in 2016, making her one of the few Latinas in charge of a large, U.S.-based environmental nonprofit.
Mark Gold, director of water scarcity solutions for the Natural Resources Defense Council, first met Montañez while she was in the Assembly. He credits her for “marrying environmental justice with conservation” by getting politicians and wealthy funders to care about environmental justice in inner cities and getting working-class people into the open spaces that Montañez so loved to explore.
“The work she did was nothing short of extraordinary,” said Gold, who helped Montañez get appointed to the UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability’s board of advisors.
“Cindy had a lot of courage, and she demonstrated that courage again and again,” said United Farm Workers co-founder Dolores Huerta, who first met Montañez at the UCLA hunger strike, which sparked a personal and professional friendship that lasted decades. “People followed her. She was never about promoting herself. She was about doing the work.”
Richard Alarcon, a former L.A. councilmember and San Fernando Valley-area state Assembly member and senator, first met Montañez after he read about how she and a sister chained themselves to a tree in an attempt to save it from being cut down. Soon after, he hired her as an intern.
“She contributed to women’s empowerment, she contributed to the environmental movement, and she never wavered to her commitment to grassroots mobilization,” Alarcon said. “She and I had many discussions about trying to create a bridge between the greater environmental movement to recognize the challenges that poor and minority communities had in taking on environmental issues. And she built it.”
Cindy Montañez in 2014 in Panorama City
(Mel Melcon/Los Angeles Times)
In a written statement, L.A. Mayor Karen Bass called Montañez “a relentless trailblazer who led with conviction and a vision of a better Los Angeles for all.”
“I saw her tenacity up close many times,” Bass wrote. “She was by my side when we fought together in Sacramento, making difficult decisions to help our state, and she advised me when I served in Congress on a range of issues impacting our city. Throughout it all, one thing was always clear — Assemblywoman Montañez’s heart and soul were always dedicated to the people of Los Angeles.”
The fourth of six children, Montañez grew up in a household where healthy living was emphasized as way to survive the tough, toxic environment they lived in. For years, the family would get up every morning at 5 a.m. to run together. They also would drive to the Central Valley on weekends to pick crops, then sell them back home. At 12, Montañez began to spend her summers volunteering anywhere and everywhere: street and park cleanups, Special Olympics, in juvenile hall, at hospitals, even to help with Pope John Paul II’s 1987 visit to Los Angeles.
She entered UCLA as a mathematics major and quickly joined the school’s vibrant Chicano activist scene.
“Education is important to me,” she told the Associated Press nine days into the hunger strike. “That’s why I’m starving myself for it.”
The connections she made during that time propelled her toward politics. She began working for Alarcon, the first Latino to represent the San Fernando Valley in Sacramento. His mentorship helped Montañez win a seat on the San Fernando city council in 1999, then achieve her Assembly milestone three years later.
“This victory is a victory for our community, not for me,” Montañez told a jubilant crowd at a primary night election party in 2002, on her way to winning the Assembly seat. “The northeast Valley is going to continue to be a beautiful place to live and work because we’re going to continue to work together. Se los digo de todo corazon (I tell you this from the heart).”
In the Assembly, Montañez made national headlines for authoring the so-called Car Buyers Bill of Rights, a consumer protection bill that was among the first of its kind in the nation. But in the environmental movement she had long embraced, there were few people who looked like her or cared for places like her hometown.
“The L.A. River was getting all the attention,” Montañez told The Times earlier this year. “So I [said], ‘Hey, here I am in Sacramento, voting [to protect] preserves in Santa Monica. We gotta do something for our [San Fernando Valley] communities.”
“She developed the concept that the beach starts in Pacoima,” said Steve Veres, a former UCLA classmate who worked for her as an Assembly staffer and is now a trustee on the Los Angeles Community College District board. “She used all the relationships that she had made in her life to make things happen for not just her community, but others.”
Then-San Fernando mayor Cindy Montañez, in a 2002 photo
(Myung Chun/Los Angeles Times)
Montañez made sure that state funds were allocated to build parks in working class neighborhoods. And she planned to accomplish more — she told the media that she wanted to run for the L.A. City Council and eventually Congress. But two other rising San Fernando Valley politicians truncated her political career.
In an interview a few months before her death, Montañez said she had no regrets about the abrupt end to her political rise.
“Oh my gosh, I can’t tell you how happy I am,” she said. “How proud I am of the team we put together to truly move people and educate folks and have fun. In politics, it’s all fighting.”
She used her Rolodex as TreePeople CEO to convince the Assembly last year to pass a $150-million bill to help schools combat climate change with more trees, shade structures and gardens. Her cheerful presence at community tree-planting events became a regular part of Valley life.
“Every tree that we plant,” she told The Times, “I think about the tree that may help somebody.”
In the weeks leading up to her death, former colleagues and political heirs publicly honored her. The California Legislature declared her birthday, Jan. 19, to be Cindy Montañez Day. The San Fernando and L.A. city councils renamed as Cindy Montañez Natural Park the area around the Pacoima Wash, which Montañez had long advocated remaking as a green space. Last week, the Los Angeles Unified School District voted to rename Gridley Street Elementary in San Fernando in honor of Montañez.
Assemblymember Luz Rivas didn’t meet Montañez until after getting elected to Montañez’s former seat, but was already familiar with her legacy.
“She inspired people to run or serve in their community, because she was like a lot of us are,” Rivas said. “She was standing up as an environmentalist and owning that identity at times when young Latinos didn’t see themselves as environmentalists. She pushed what that definition is.”
The two began to speak more regularly when Montañez rejoined the San Fernando City Council in 2020. Rivas said she would continue to look to her as an inspiration.
“[She] and I are the exact same age,” Rivas said. “So it hits me: Am I doing what I want to do? Am I doing enough?”
Montañez is survived by her parents, Margarita and Manuel Montañez, along with siblings Ezequiel, Maribel, Miguel, Robert and Norma.
When Jackie Lacey sought a second term as Los Angeles’ top prosecutor in 2016, she wound up running unopposed.
The man who ousted her from office, George Gascón, has a much steeper hill to climb to win reelection next year.
During his first term in office, Gascón has frequently been at odds with his own prosecutors and law enforcement, who say his policies aimed at reducing mass incarceration and racially disparate outcomes in the criminal justice system have led to spikes in violence. Data show the violent crime rate is trending down, but some experts have cautioned against making connections between short-term shifts in the crime rate and a prosecutor’s policies.
Gascón’s positions have motivated one of the largest primary fields in the history of the office, with a mix of former federal prosecutors, county judges and deputy district attorneys taking a run at the self-described “godfather of progressive prosecutors” in 2024.
Gascón, who announced his own reelection campaign and claimed the endorsement of L.A.’s powerful Federation of Labor last week, still figures to be well-funded and has largely retained the support of the burgeoning L.A. progressive bloc that vaulted him into office in 2020.
But in a sign of the divide in the race, Gascón declined to attend the first debate last week. Hosted by police unions that spent millions against the progressive candidate in 2020, contenders at the forum spent two hours making the case that Gascón is unfit for office and needs to be replaced.
Here are the contenders vying for Gascón’s office next March, listed in the order they announced their candidacy:
Wildlife advocates are hailing the passage of Assembly Bill 1322, which expands a moratorium on rat poison, as a win for mountain lions, coyotes and other animals that live in and around urban areas across California.
The new law, also known as the California Ecosystems Protections Act of 2023, will place a moratorium on diphacinone, a first-generation anticoagulant rat poison, developed before 1970. The law will take effect Jan. 1.
Mountain lions, coyotes and other animals are often the unintended victims of the poison when they eat smaller animals, like squirrels, possum or raccoons that have consumed the rat poison. Diphacinone is often used to kill rats, squirrels and other rodents.
The new legislation is an expansion of a similar bill passed in 2020, which placed a moratorium on second-generation rodenticides, those developed after 1970.
Los Angeles’ beloved mountain lion P-22, which was euthanized last year after suffering a number of health issues and injuries after the animal was hit by a car, was exposed to rat poison in 2014 and was suffering from mange, a parasitic infection. The mountain lion’s illness spurred action in the California Legislature that led to the first moratorium on rat poison in 2020.
Despite the 2020 legislation, the Center for Biological Diversity said that “wildlife continues to be exposed to rodenticide and suffer from illnesses and death due to unintended poisoning.”
Diphacinone has been prevalent for so long because “it kills, not just rodents, but larger animals up the food chain,” said Tony Tucci co-founder of Citizens for Los Angeles Wildlife, a Los Angeles-based nonprofit that works to restore the habitat of wildlife.
“This bill not only had strong support in the state Legislature, it also had support from local municipalities like Los Angeles County, and we are thrilled that policymakers are understanding that poisoning the predators of rodents through secondary exposure is counterproductive, killing nature’s predators in the wild will ultimately result in more rodents,” Tucci said.
Los Angeles County approved a motion earlier this year asking the state of California to ban first-generation anticoagulant rodenticides.
Rat poisoning products are readily available on the consumer market as ready-to-bait stations that contain that contain rodenticides, including diphacinone, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Poison Free Malibu, a wildlife-protection activist group, was pleased by the passage of Assembly Bill 1322 but said there is still work to be done on other pesticides.
“We are still concerned about other poisons, which are coming to the fore now that the anticoagulants are being restricted,” said Kian and Joel Schulman, founding members of the group.
They suggest using alternative solutions to rid pests, such as trash control, sanitation and making sure buildings are properly sealed to prevent rodents from entering.
Two people were found shot to death Friday night in North Hollywood in a possible murder-suicide, Los Angeles police said.
Officers responded to reports of shots fired in the 6500 block of Riverton Avenue about 7:45 p.m., said Officer Melissa Ohana, an LAPD spokesperson.
Officers who arrived at the scene found a 48-year-old woman dead from gunshot wounds, she said. Nearby, they discovered a 46-year-old man with “apparent self-inflicted wounds” whom the police are investigating as the suspect in the woman’s death.
LAPD’s Valley Bureau Homicide will determine whether it is a murder-suicide, Ohana said.
KTLA-TV reported that police had said the woman was found inside a running SUV, and the man was found two houses away from the vehicle. Ohana said she could not confirm those details.
Newport Beach police are investigating the tagging of swastikas on a locker at Corona del Mar High School as a hate crime, the Newport-Mesa Unified School District said.
The school district became aware of the vandalism last weekend and reported it to the police.
“This behavior is unacceptable and will not be tolerated in our schools,” said Annette Franco, a spokesperson for the district. “We are investigating and have met with the Jewish Federation of Orange County to determine next steps in helping our school community to be better citizens. Immediate action is being taken as we develop longer-term plans.”
A spokesperson for the Newport Beach Police Department said detectives were investigating.
While the incident comes less than two weeks after the start of the war in Israel and Gaza, the school district has a history of antisemitic incidents.
In 2019, police were notified after a group of high school students drinking alcohol at a house party took a photograph giving a Nazi salute around a table with red plastic cups arranged in the shape of a swastika.
The students at that party attended Newport Harbor, Estancia and Costa Mesa high schools, not Corona del Mar High School.
Reports of hate incidents have increased over the past few years in Orange County, spiking from 41 incidents in 2021 to 103 in 2022, according to a county report.
Brian Levin, founder of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at Cal State San Bernardino, said there has been an increase in antisemitic and anti-Muslim incidents since the start of the war, though the data is very preliminary.
Levin said there were seven antisemitic hate crimes reported in the city of Los Angeles between Oct. 6 and 16 this year, compared with three in the same period last year.
“We have seen increases in anti-Muslim and anti-Jewish hate. More of the increases are occurring with noncriminal incidents, and anti-Jewish incidents for now seem to be going up more,” Levin said.
The famously flat and dry Badwater Basin now is home to a sprawling but temporary lake, visible from water’s edge and 5,575 feet above at Dante’s View.
Dante’s View, Death Valley National Park.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
Between sand dunes at Mesquite Flat, you might stumble on a puddle or a pond. In Mosaic and Golden canyons, where floodwaters surged in August, scattered boulders and silt have reshaped the narrow passages, hinting at violence just concluded. Across the plains and slopes, you see more green than usual and sometimes yellow and orange wildflowers, apparently blooming out of seasonal confusion.
Rangers say they can’t be sure how long the lake will last, and it’s unclear when the park’s many still-closed roads and other areas will reopen. But those travelers on the scene in recent days — some savvy, some lucky and most, it seems, from abroad — have half a dozen striking spectacles to choose from. They also have a few challenges to reckon with, including $8 gas at Furnace Creek. (Don’t worry. Stovepipe Wells is more than $2 cheaper.)
“We were very lucky,” said Todd Robertson, 35, of London, walking the Badwater shoreline in the aftermath of a spectacular sunset.
“I’ve never seen anything like this,” said Klaus Meyer, 32, of Germany’s Black Forest region, hiking through Mosaic Canyon.
Golden Canyon, Death Valley National Park.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
“Twelve-hour days. Six days a week. Good money,” said Jorge Santiago, 30, of Reno. He was working as a flagman near Zabriskie Point, where road repairs require traffic control.
Crucial stretches of State Route 190 and Badwater Road, which connect many of the park’s most popular sites, are open. Still, drivers from Southern California must enter the park by way of Lone Pine, using highways 395 and 136, and will face two road-repair stops on the way to Furnace Creek, with delays of up to 30 minutes each. There’s a third checkpoint between Furnace Creek and Dante’s View. (Check the park website before visiting.)
Once you’re in the park, trails are uncrowded, traffic is scant, roads are freshly scraped (through gravel patches remain) and occupancy is low in hotels and campgrounds at Furnace Creek and Stovepipe Wells Village. Many campgrounds are open. High temperatures are expected to dip from about 100 Friday to the high 80s for most of the next week.
A surprise lake at Badwater Basin
Badwater is the lowest spot in the continental U.S., 282 feet below sea level, and it’s usually a vast flat expanse of salty, crusty playa that was once a lakebed.
Sometimes there’s a little water near the boardwalk that the National Park Service has built near the parking lot, but usually there’s nothing you could call a lake. Now there’s more water than rangers have seen in 18 years, and the result is a glassy surprise that ripples in the breeze.
Todd Robertson and Karina Shah, both from London, were there shortly after sunset Monday, watching the sky darken and the lake’s colors change.
British visitors Todd Robertson and Karina Shah at Badwater Basin, Death Valley National Park.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
“We’ve been waiting 10 years to come and do the national parks,” Robertson said. “We were in Zion yesterday and the Valley of Fire en route to here. We were praying all the way that this would be open.”
And then, he said, “Last night when we checked in [at the Ranch at Death Valley in Furnace Creek], they let us know it was wet.”
Bill Altman, 68, was present for the same sunset, because he’d done plenty of homework.
“I’m from Maine and I’m doing a national park tour. Started at the Badlands in South Dakota. Been driving around for a month and a half already. I knew about the rain, knew about the closure, knew about the water,” he said. “I come every year and I’ve never seen the lake. … Pretty wonderful.”
Park ranger Matthew Lamar said rangers haven’t measured the depth of the lake, but “a little over 2 feet [at its deepest point] is what we think. That’s what it was in 2005, the last time there was a significant lake there.” Lamar noted that the park, besides being the hottest place in the world, also has the highest evaporation rate, so the lake may dry up within a few weeks. “It depends in part on temperatures.” In the meantime, he said, rangers in the Visitor Center are stressing to visitors that “this is really special.”
Mesquite Flat: ‘The flowers are really confused’
Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes, Death Valley National Park.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
For those willing to rise before dawn, it’s always been a treat to see the sun rise above the Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes, casting golden light on all that sand and the surrounding mountains. In recent days, that panorama has been punctuated by at least a few enduring puddles and one pond, which I found about half a mile from the Mesquite Flat parking lot.
More than once, I spotted a faint, flitting motion on the pond’s surface. A mosquito? In Death Valley? Maybe so. Ranger Shelby McClintock later told me that since the summer rain of 2022, “There’s been an uptick in insects.” And in some spots, she added, “The flowers are really confused, and they’re in bloom.”
Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes, Death Valley National Park. (Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes, Death Valley National Park. (Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
Meanwhile, on the dunes, the sun rose and colored the mountains. The temperature, about 70 at 7 a.m., began its climb to the 90s. On a neighboring dune, Klaus Meyer, 32, and girlfriend Leo Fischer, 33, were taking their time.
Meyer had just finished his last segment of the Pacific Crest Trail in the Sierra near Mammoth. Fischer had come from Germany to join him. As they roamed the dunes, Fischer spotted a set of sidewinder tracks, a repeating pattern that they would never have expected a rattlesnake to leave in its wake. Later they hiked Mosaic Canyon, where mud flows and flung stones have raised and rearranged the canyon floor, scraping and polishing walls that were always famed for their striations and markings.
“I’m an environmental scientist and all this geological stuff is great for me. So it was sort of an obvious step to come here,” Meyer said. Still, “It was definitely a surprise,” he said.
“Now,” added Fischer, “we have five days until your visa expires.”
Mystery spectacles at Zabriskie Point
From Zabriskie Point, visitors can survey a wonderland of rock formations and alluvial flow, and it’s just about impossible to tell what happened last week from what happened last century. Visitor Michaela Reichel, 33, from near Frankfurt, Germany, had come with a friend on a San-Francisco-to-Las Vegas-and-back itinerary they’d planned in spring.
Zabriskie Point, Death Valley National Park.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
“We didn’t know about the closure and reopening,” Reichel said. Looking into the distance from the point, they could see shimmering along the desert floor at Badwater. But was it a mirage or real water? They debated until a third party settled the question.
Zabriskie Point, Death Valley National Park. (Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
Zabriskie Point, Death Valley National Park. (Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
Dante’s View, a spot to take in the park’s recent transformation
“We expected it to be really crowded up here,” said Fredy Koepf, puzzled.
He and his wife, Karin Koepf, had little company as they stood atop the ridge at Dante’s View, looking down at the floor of Death Valley more than a mile below.
The centerpiece of that view was a blue-green blob that stretched for miles — the lake at Badwater. When the sun dipped beneath the mountains and the glare subsided, the lake’s colors deepened and the unlikeliness of it all seemed to double.
“We’re from Switzerland,” Fredy Koepf said. “We’ve been visiting U.S. national parks for decades.” But they had never come to Death Valley because they were traveling with kids in summer, he said, and wanted no part of that profound desert heat. Now, with their kids grown, the Koepfs had taken an extended autumn vacation to see the West, including Yosemite.
Travelers Fredy and Karin Koepf admire Dante’s View, Death Valley National Park.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
They knew Death Valley had been closed but saw that it was likely to reopen, so they spent a few days exploring the lakes and early autumn colors of the Eastern Sierra — a happy surprise, said Karin Koepf, because “we didn’t know fall is like this here!”
Once Death Valley opened on Sunday, Fredy Koepf said, “We were here Monday. It was perfect. … It’s amazing.” And in the narrow canyons, “You can really imagine the force of the water. … We have friends in San Diego. They’re too busy. We keep sending them pictures.”
It’s a spectacular time to visit Death Valley
The Monday sunset at Badwater had been so spectacular that I wanted to see it in reverse. So I went back for Wednesday sunrise.
Arriving in the predawn moments, I found John Osborn, 61, from outside Portland, Ore., pointing his camera across the water, along the water’s edge, then across the water again.
“This trip was planned two years ago,” he said, then paused to explain: “I went through cancer treatment two years ago.”
Traveler John Osborn at Badwater Basin, Death Valley National Park.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
Since those days, he said, “I’ve got a long list” of places to see. When he got word of the park’s reopening, he started driving south, stopping along the way in Inyo County’s White Mountains to see the bristlecone pines, some of the oldest living organisms on Earth. He checked into the hotel at Furnace Creek, got up early and drove 18 miles to Badwater to watch and snap the sun come up over the slowly vanishing lake.
“I lived in Southern California for 18 years and never came here,” he said.
Travel tips: hotels, food and, yes, those gas prices
Death Valley National Park includes lodgings and restaurants at Furnace Creek, Stovepipe Wells and Panamint Springs, with hotel prices starting between $100 and $200 nightly.
Since the park’s partial reopening Oct. 15, many services have been limited, in part because of staffing shortages.
Gas station, Furnace Creek, Death Valley.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
The largest number of visitor accommodations can be found at a complex in Furnace Creek known as the Oasis at Death Valley and run by the Xanterra management company. The Oasis, which is relatively close to Zabriskie Point and Badwater Basin, includes the Ranch at Death Valley hotel and the more upscale Inn at Death Valley. The breakfast buffet at Furnace Creek’s 1849 Restaurant costs $21 for adults.
The park’s Stovepipe Wells Village, which includes lodging, restaurant, store and gas station about 25 miles northwest of Furnace Creek, is close to the Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes and Mosaic Canyon. The breakfast buffet price is $9.50.
The Furnace Creek gas station, managed by Xanterra, was charging $8.20 per gallon of regular gas when I arrived — a number so high that I saw a motorcyclist pull out his phone to take a photo after gassing up.
When I asked the attendant about the price, he said that because of the road closures, “Our fuel delivery company has to drive an extra five hours to get here. So most of (the high prices) is extra fuel delivery cost.”
Meanwhile, at the park’s Stovepipe Wells Village gas station 25 miles away (and under different management), the price was $5.79 for regular.
A teenage girl accused of shooting five people outside a Denver club last month was arrested this week in San Bernardino County, according to authorities.
The girl, whose age was not released by police, was arrested Thursday in Barstow, about 115 miles from Los Angeles, according to a Denver Police Department news release. She was arrested on eight counts of first-degree attempted homicide.
She is accused of shooting five people on Sept. 16 in the 1900 block of Market Street, authorities said. All five people survived their injuries.
Police said the girl had tried to get into a bar but was rejected by the club’s security personnel because they thought she wasn’t using her real ID. She left the line and then shot toward the club as she was leaving, authorities said.
Police believe that she had tried to shoot toward security personnel and that those who were wounded were not the intended targets.
The Denver Police Department worked with the FBI’s L.A. SWAT team, the FBI’s L.A. Desert Cities Safe Streets Task Force and the Barstow Police Department to apprehend her. Because she is a minor, her booking photo and arrest affidavit were not released.
For Armando Herman, the July 11 L.A. County Board of Supervisors meeting was a typical outing.
He called an attorney a “dum dum” and an “Uncle Tom.” During a discussion on the upcoming Olympics, he accused a supervisor of fostering a Holocaust. He used an expletive 25 times, a gay slur twice and a racial epithet once. And he did much of it with a swastika pinned to his back.
Aside from labeling the diatribes as “off topic,” there was little the supervisors could do to stop Herman, 56, an infamous gadfly at both L.A. city and county meetings. His ugly remarks were protected by the 1st Amendment.
“You’re abusing my time,” he responded after one interjection from Board Chair Janice Hahn. “You need to stop that.”
“You’re abusing my ears,” she shot back.
Supervisor Janice Hahn at an L.A. County Board of Supervisors meeting on Oct. 3.
(Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times)
A week later, county officials accused Herman of crossing a line by sending vulgar, threatening emails to four of the five members of the all-female board of supervisors. The emails, the officials argued, went beyond what is allowable under free speech protections. A judge agreed, barring Herman last month from attending board meetings in person for three years — although he is still allowed to speak by phone.
Herman insists he didn’t send the emails.
Inflammatory commentators like Herman, who gleefully indulge in hate speech, have been a continual source of disgust for local public officials. Sometimes, the commentators are forced to leave meetings when they act disruptively, such as shouting from the audience or speaking beyond the time limit — but the ban doesn’t extend to future meetings.
In a few instances, officials have obtained restraining orders requiring a critic to stay away from their homes, cars and offices. In 2019, the city of Los Angeles got three separate restraining orders against Herman after he allegedly threatened Deputy City Attorney Strefan Fauble, Los Angeles Board of Police Commissioners Executive President Richard Tefank and City Council President Paul Krekorian.
The city also got a restraining order in 2016 against vocal critic Wayne Spindler after he submitted racially incendiary drawings at a public meeting and labeled then-City Council President Herb Wesson with a racial slur.
In each case, a judge allowed Herman and Spindler to continue attending public meetings as long as they stayed 10 yards from the public official.
The newest order against Herman is unusual in barring him from setting foot inside the Kenneth Hahn Hall of Administration — including during the board’s weekly meetings.
In their petitions for temporary restraining orders, filed July 17, Supervisors Holly Mitchell, Hilda Solis, Kathryn Barger and Hahn each said they had received an email from Herman a few days earlier. Each email asked whether the supervisor would like the sender to “eat her delicious p— at [address],” including the supervisor’s home address in both the subject line and body of the message. The emails were sent from the address “armandoherman@proton.me.”
“l have done my best to tolerate his offensive and vulgar comments and behavior at the public meetings, but his recent email is deeply troubling and an escalation of his behavior that has me concerned for my safety,” Hahn wrote in her petition. “The comments and threats in the email are highly vulgar, deeply offensive, and when coupled with the fact that he tracked down my home address and included it with his comments, I am greatly concerned for my safety.”
The petition from Solis cites other instances in which staffers say they were harassed by Herman. That harassment culminated in July, staffers say, when Herman sent the email to Solis and a text message to one of her field deputies threatening sexual violence.
Herman, who is listed in court documents as a Hacienda Heights resident, denied sending the text and emails, writing in a court filing that he had never seen the email address where the messages originated. He included a complaint that he said he sent to the FBI alleging that he was being set up. He did not specify whether he had a suspect in mind.
“Someone is attempting to impersonate me with the goal of having sanctions placed on me, stripping me of my constitutional rights of attending board hearings,” he wrote. “I am a known activist with a foul mouth, but I have never sent the messages that they alleged that I sent.”
Herman, who was not represented by an attorney in the proceeding, did not respond to several calls for comment. Asked in a text message about his statements that he never sent the emails, he wrote, “Yes , TRUE THEY ARE trying and doing!” but did not respond to follow up messages.
Senior Deputy County Counsel Kent Sommer wrote in a Sept. 7 court filing that the “content, threats and vulgarity” in the emails was “entirely consistent with Mr. Herman’s demonstrated language and conduct” towards the supervisors.
After the court granted the county’s request for a temporary restraining order, Judge Gary Eto issued a permanent order on Sept. 14, barring Herman from going within 100 yards of the four supervisors’ homes, workplaces or cars.
The permanent order also barred Herman from going in person to any public meetings in the Kenneth Hahn Hall of Administration for three years.
The next meeting he could attend would be Sept. 13, 2026. However, he can still speak at meetings during phone-in public comments.
David Loy, legal director of the First Amendment Coalition, said that even the most offensive speech spewed in city and county public meetings is considered protected speech. However, he said, these protections do not extend to legitimate threats.
“He could be a Democrat, Republican, Nazi, Communist — it doesn’t matter what his point of view is,” said Loy. “What’s relevant is if there’s genuine or true threats to cause harm, unrelated to his politics or ideology.”
Last week, a judge issued an order requiring that Donald Harlan, a frequent speaker at City Council meetings, stay at least 100 yards away from Councilmember Bob Blumenfield, his home, his office and his car.
The case stems from a Sept. 8 council meeting where Blumenfield ordered Harlan removed for yelling from the audience.
After being told to leave, Harlan got up and pointed at Blumenfield, screaming: “Bob, you’re f— dead you f— Jew! I’m going to f— kill all your f— Jewish f— people!”
Harlan, listed in court records as a resident of L.A.’s Westlake neighborhood, is still allowed to attend council meetings in person and speak, but he must stay at least 10 yards from Blumenfield. In a legal declaration, Blumenfield said Harlan had made other anti-Semitic comments earlier this year, during a celebration of Jewish American Heritage Month at City Hall.
“These characters who flit in and out …. are mostly there to be disruptive. They enjoy it.” said Eric Preven, a gadfly whose running commentary is pointed yet civil. “Most of the time you just have to take it.”
Occasionally, however, the casual use of hate speech has caused an uproar among audience members.
Yvonne Michelle Autry, center, is ejected from a City Council meeting on Sept. 18, 2018, while fellow attendee Armando Herman waves his arms.
(Los Angeles Times)
In August, after Herman uttered an anti-Black slur, an activist with Black Lives Matter-Los Angeles demanded that council members have him ejected from the room. As Herman continued to give his remarks, audience members chanted, “Cut his mic! Cut his mic!”
“I understand that the language is offensive,” responded Jonathan Groat, a deputy city attorney. “Nobody condones this. But he legally is entitled to give his public comment.”
Two protesters were eventually ordered to leave the room for yelling, even as Herman continued speaking at the podium.
“The longer we disrupt him, the longer he’s gonna be up here,” Councilmember Marqueece Harris-Dawson told the audience.
While Herman is barred from county meetings, he has remained a reliable presence at City Hall, hurling slurs and epithets and at times using fake foreign accents in ways that target various racial and ethnic groups. He sometimes makes loud bleating noises and has his small dog in tow. He rarely says anything substantive.
On Friday, when Councilmember Katy Yaroslavsky — who is Jewish — called Herman’s name at a committee meeting, he arrived at the podium and said, “Thank you, Jew.” At one point, he said Yaroslavsky and Blumenfield were “f— Jews.” At another, he called council members “fucking c—.” He also used the N-word.
“I hope god kills you,” Herman said, punctuating his statement with a profanity.
Yaroslavsky ordered Herman to be removed from the room, not because of the language, but because, among other things, his remarks were off-topic. “Get him out of here, he’s out,” she said.
“We apparently are required to listen to this because of lawsuits,” Yaroslavsky told the audience.
It’s hard to say what’s cooler about the Japanese shōya house at the Huntington Library, Art Gallery and Botanical Gardens — the centuries-old wood structure that was once the center of a small farming village in Marugame, Japan, or the backstory of how it got to its new home at the Huntington’s Japanese Garden.
The shōya house’s original conical ceramic roof tiles had to be broken to move the structure. They were recreated by Japanese craftspeople, complete with a sprouting seed design.
(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
The journey took nearly eight years of negotiations, bureaucratic wrangling and skilled craftsmanship to dismantle, reassemble and, in some cases, re-create the 3,000-square-foot house and gardens. And starting Saturday, visitors can finally tour the compound, which will be open daily from noon to 4 p.m. (except Tuesdays, when the gardens are closed).
Los Angeles-based Akira and Yohko Yokoi donated their ancient family home to the Huntington, but the $10 million job of moving it to San Marino was far more complicated than just taking apart a puzzle and putting it back together.
Consider the distinctive conical ceramic tiles covering the pitched roof like rows of tight curls. All those silver-gray tiles had to be remade by Japanese craftsmen because the originals were mortared to the roof and had to be broken to disassemble the house. The exquisite garden outside the largest and most important room of the house was carefully mapped and measured, and every stone numbered by landscape designer Takuhiro Yamada so it could be re-created at the Huntington.
Akira and Yohko Yokoi outside the shōya house they donated to the Huntington.
(Sarah M. Golonka / The Huntington)
And outside the gatehouse that protected the house, built new because the original was damaged by a storm, the Huntington installed a terraced mini farm growing small plots of rice, buckwheat, sesame, wheat and other traditional Japanese crops, surrounded by a riot of colorful cosmos flowers. The house sits higher than the farmland, so water collected from the roof and ponds all drains down to irrigate the farm land.
So this installation isn’t just an exercise in cultural awareness, says curator Robert Hori, the Huntington’s associate director of cultural programs, who oversaw the project from start to finish. To him, the Japanese Heritage Shōya House is a quiet but effective example of sustainability — “learning from the past for a better future” — and a reminder that farmers “are really the backbone of our society.”
Robert Hori, the associate director of cultural programs at the Huntington, is framed by tall cosmos blooms in the farm area outside the shōya’s gatehouse.
(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
Small terraced plots of farmland grow rice, sesame, wheat, buckwheat and other traditional Japanese crops outside the shōya house.
(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
There were plenty of trying times — more than two years of negotiating with city, state and federal officials to get the necessary approvals and occupancy permit to move and rebuild the house. And in the midst of the pandemic, when the disassembled house sat in dozens of packing crates for nearly nine months, Hori had to coax reluctant Japanese craftspeople to come and put it together so the ancient wood pieces didn’t warp in SoCal’s dry summer heat.
“When you’ve spent two years lovingly repairing this wood and then you’re told everything might be lost, that was a call to action to the craftspeople who painstakingly worked on this,” says Hori. “Even in the face of a pretty scary time, they felt like it was their responsibility to put this house back together.”
The project started with a chance meeting in 2016 during a party at the Beverly Hills home of Los Angeles philanthropist Jacqueline Avant. Hori had come to talk with Avant about a Japanese art collection she wanted to donate to the institution. During their conversation, Avant introduced Hori to her friend, Yohko Yokoi, who soon would be traveling to Japan.
“I said, ‘Oh, that will be a wonderful visit because the cherry blossoms will be in full bloom,’” Hori recalled, “and [Yokoi] said, ‘No, because I have to take care of my house.’ And then she began to tell me the story of this house.”
The front entrance for farmers and other common folk at the shōya house. The swept-dirt courtyard was for village events. Dignitaries entered through a special gate at the left.
(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
Hori recalls Yokoi saying the house had been built after the war, “so I thought it was a prefab house from the 1950s with poor construction, built after World War II. But then she was saying, ‘We used to have a castle,’ and that’s when it came to light that this house was built around 1700, after the war that unified Japan.”
Prior to that final battle, Japan had been a confederation of warring city-states and provinces, he said. It took 100 years of battles to create a cohesive central government known as the Tokugawa Shogunate. The Yokoi family’s castle was destroyed during the war. They had been fighting on the losing side, says Hori said, but the victorious Tokugawa clan decided to incorporate all the losing factions into its new bureaucracy, to become tax collectors and shōya, or village leaders.
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The Yokoi shōya house was built around 1700 in Marugame, says Hori, and was the family’s private residence as well as a kind of community center for the village.
Inside the gatehouse, a large courtyard provided space for weddings, funerals and celebrations. Farmers and merchants entered the shōya house through one entrance, to measure and store their rice, pay their taxes and try to collect funds for other provisions. These rooms had floors made from hard-packed earth, and rustic beams hand-hewn from pine.
Adjacent to the dirt-floored rooms were the places where the family lived and worked. These raised floors were covered with rice-straw tatami mats. The wood-framed walls and beams were planed to feel as soft to the touch as satin sheets. Sliding walls with windows covered in rice paper and glass opened to reveal exquisite gardens, enjoyed only by visiting dignitaries who entered through their own special gate.
The exquisite Japanese garden of distinctive stones, pond, trees and shrubs outside the shōya’s grand room for dignitaries.
(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
After the military shogunate system was overturned in the late 19th century, the house became the Yokois’ private residence and went through several renovations, according to Yokoi and her husband, Akira. The last family member to live there was Akira’s mother, who died around 1988. The couple moved to California in the late 1960s, says Hori, where Akira worked as an executive for Matsushita Panasonic, the parent company of Panasonic. They visited the house regularly and kept it maintained, with the idea of retiring there someday.That plan faded, however, and eventually, he adds, the upkeep became a chore.
Hori already was thinking about a big project for the Japanese Gardens when he first met Yohko Yokoi. The Huntington’s Chinese Garden was in the midst of a huge expansion, and the discussion was how to add to the Japanese Garden to balance the two, says Hori. “This was an ongoing conversation we’d been having [at the Huntington] since 2012, and I’d been taking several trips to Japan to figure out what we should be adding next to that garden,” he says.
The Yokoi house sounded promising, so even though he had just returned from a visit to Japan, he made another trip within a few weeks so he could see the house while Yokoi was visiting. And that’s when he got the vision that sustained him through all the difficult years to come.
“I thought it had good bones when I first went to look at it, but also, I was interested in the house because it was really a conglomerate of various styles: the front room with its very rustic wood beams and style on one side, and then on the other side a formal reception room with the elegant carvings and mix of styles; a public face and private face of a scale big enough to accommodate visitors circulating through it.”
There were other signs too. The Huntington’s historic Japanese Garden, with its curved wooden Moon Bridge over a small lake and display of a Japanese home, first opened in 1912 when the West was fascinated by Japanese culture, plants and architecture. The garden fell into disrepair during World War II but was refurbished with support from the San Marino League. In 1968, the garden was expanded with a bonsai collection and Zen Court of plants and raked stones. Then in 2010, the Pasadena Buddhist Temple donated a small ceremonial tea house to the garden, which was disassembled and sent back to Japan to be refurbished before being shipped back to San Marino, where it was reassembled.
Japanese black pine (Pinus thunbergii) rises above the shōya house gatehouse.An intricate carving of farm life at the top of the entrance to the shōya house’s grand room.A soft wood walk way surrounds the perimeter of the shōya house.(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
The tea house was much smaller than the shōya house, says Nicole Cavender, director of the Huntington’s botanical gardens, but it gave them the confidence to tackle a much larger structure and create a reconstruction of village life.
“We wanted this to be an immersive experience,” says Cavender, “so it has to be productive as well as beautiful.” The fields of tall magenta, pink and white cosmos flowers that edge the farm weren’t added just to enchant, she said, “but to show that we’re actually trying to grow something. The flowers draw pollinators who help the crops grow.”
Eventually there will be koi in the garden pond by the house, and the water circulating in that pond will be enriched with their poop, she says, and help feed the farmland below. Around the house is decorative edging called rain catchers — narrow drains filled with smooth gray rocks to collect any rain or dew falling off the roof, which also drained to the farming areas below.
Three hundred years ago, the Japanese didn’t have a word for sustainability, but they lived the concept every day with this type of regenerative farming, says Hori. “It’s how you survived. We want people to understand that ornamental gardening started with the ability to move water, and to move earth, which is what we have in farming. It all came out of farming.”
Robert Hori paces in the shōya’s largest room, reserved for dignitaries. The walls slide open on both sides to reveal the garden.
(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
Hori’s vision encompasses more nuanced lessons too. The house has few furnishings. The smooth wood decking around the perimeter of the house is patched in places where the wood was worn, but the patches were done decoratively in the shape of a small gourd. And the simplicity of the furnishings is a gentle question.
“It gets you thinking … do we really need all this stuff we have? We want this to be a living museum, and walking through the house you can really find the three Rs of sustainability — reduce, repair and recycle, reuse or remake,” says Hori.
“It was all part of a circular economy where nothing was wasted. A ‘circular economy’ is a big concept, but we’re hoping these small doses of a big concept can help people take away these lessons and understand them. As a nonprofit we are in the business of inspiring and changing lives. We can make a difference, and that’s a great thing to come to work to.”
A Los Angeles Unified School teacher was arrested Wednesday on suspicion of sharing child pornography with a county government worker, authorities said.
Detectives with the San Bernardino Police Department arrested Rene Gregorio Estrella on the 210 Freeway around 6:30 a.m. on suspicion of distributing and receiving child pornography. Estrella, 60, is a teacher at the School of Business and Tourism at the Miguel Contreras Learning Complex, according to the school’s website.
Investigators said Estrella exchanged multiple images of child pornography with 62-year-old Steven Frasher, who worked as a public information officer with the Los Angeles County Public Works Department.
Investigators with the San Bernardino Police Department’s Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force and Specialized Crimes Unit served search and arrest warrants on Estrella at a residence in Claremont and a second location in the city of Los Angeles. Police found several electronic devices that were taken as part of their investigation, according a news release from the police department.
In a statement, the Los Angeles Unified School District said it was notified about an employee’s arrest by San Bernardino police, but it did not name Estrella. Officials said the employee will be blocked from entering any LAUSD sites.
“All District protocols are being followed, and we remain in cooperation with local authorities,” the statement said. “Due to the ongoing investigation by law enforcement, we are unable to disclose additional details about this matter. Please be assured that the safety of our students continues to be our utmost priority. Students and the greater school community are always encouraged to share any and all concerns with their school or with local authorities.”
Jail records show that Estrella was booked into custody on Wednesday but released later that day.
Frasher, a resident of Redlands, was arrested Oct. 3 after investigators received a tip indicating that he was downloading illicit child porn on the internet and saving it in an internet storage account, police said.
The San Bernardino Police Department posted a video on its Instagram account of Frasher’s arrest, showing officers entering and searching his home. The video also shows Frasher being led away in handcuffs.
Times staff writer Summer Lin contributed to this story.
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