LA Times -09 July 2023

$3.66 DESIGNATED AREAS HIGHER © 2023 WST SUNDAY, JULY 9, 2023 latimes.com In the lowlands of the San Joaquin Valley, the winter’s torrential storms revived an ancient body of water that decades ago had been drained and dredged, its clay lake bed transformed into a powerhouse of industrial agriculture. Rivers swollen with biblical amounts of rainfall overwhelmed the network of levees and irrigation canals that weave through the basin, diverting water used for farming and livestock. Tulare Lake, once the largest freshwater lake west of the Mississippi River, was reborn, swallowing thousands of acres cultivated for tomatoes and cotton and vast orchards of almond and pistachio trees. In the months since the storms abated, the lake continues to take in runoff from a record snowmelt in the Sierra Nevada, blurring the lines between nature and farmland. Today, Tulare Lake, roughly the size of Lake Tahoe, appears like a mirage in the desert. Winds glaze off its algae-pocked surface, cooling the summer air, as ducks and egrets wade. Roads that once serviced farms, dairies, chicken barns and cotton gins abruptly give way to lake, their routes discernible only by the tops of telephone poles that cast crossFARMERS Charles Meyer Sr. and Charles Meyer Jr. of Stratford, Calif., inspect a berm on an irrigation channel near Tulare Lake. Photographs by Robert Gauthier Los Angeles Times TULARE LAKE’S REBIRTH SPARKS WONDER, WORRY Life in the San Joaquin Valley has been upended, but residents remain committed to the region and its seasonal rhythms By Robert Gauthier and Melissa Gomez reporting from the tulare lake basin MEMBERS of the California Conservation Corps affix tires to a levee being built to protect a dairy. [See Tulare Lake, A8] The robocalls poured in, tens of millions of them, in the months leading up to the 2016 presidential election. Some calls opened with a clip of Donald Trump speaking, then switched to another prerecorded voice urging listeners to make an “emergency investment to the campaign.” Contribute $1,000 or more, the call said, and receive a photo of Trump, “suitable for framing.” Other calls played a recording of Hillary Clinton, then urged listeners to press 1to help elect America’s first female president. Those who did were connected to a call center, where operators told donors that they would “work hard to make sure” Clinton won the election. The calls felt like many other political messages flooding U.S. phone lines during the bitter battle for the White House in 2016. The difference, federal officials said, was that these calls were scams. Two Californians set up a pair of political action committees, called the Liberty Action Group and the Progressive Priorities PAC, to cash in on the growing rift between Republicans and Democrats, the U.S. Justice Department said. The two groups made more than 275 million robocalls over a 16-month period and netted nearly $4 million in small-dollar contributions. Rather than using the money to buy television ads or run get-out-the-vote efforts, prosecutors said, the men behind the PACs lined their own pockets. The two committees distributed $19 to political campaigns and causes while organizers kept more than $1.5 million for themselves, prosecutors said. The two California men were sentenced this year to a combined 17 years in prison for the sham political fundraising operation, seven years after the first allegations of misconduct. The profits from the scheme are among the highest on record in the small but growing world of scam PACs. The FBI, along with consumer groups that include the AARP, have been warning for years of the rise of fraudulent PACs amid surging political spending by independent groups hoping to influence the electoral process. With the 2024 election fast approaching, including what is expected to SCAM PACS FLEECED BOTH SIDES Two Californians tricked Trump and Clinton supporters out of millions during 2016 election cycle. By Laura J. Nelson [See PACs, A10] Jet crashes in Murrieta field, killing 6 aboard Experts say pilot faced worsening visibility on trip from Las Vegas and tried to land the plane twice. CALIFORNIA, B1 Warming’s extra toll on farm work Activists raise alarm as climate change steadily worsens conditions for those who labor in intense heat. NATION, A6 Weather Partly sunny. L.A. Basin: 81/60. B10 Leader resigns in Netherlands The prime minister’s move sets the nation on track for a general election this year. WORLD, A4 Will Dodgers get Ohtani at last? Declined twice, L.A. tries to finally sign the most popular baseball act in world. SPORTS, D1 Printed with soy inks on partially recycled paper. Olivia Brandeis had a vision for her college application essay: She would write about covering a racist incident as a student journalist of color at Monte Vista High School in Danville, a majority-white city east of Oakland. But last month’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling striking down race-based affirmative action has filled her with anxious questions about sharing her experiences as an Asian American. Does her identity matter to colleges? Is her essay subject now a taboo topic? If she doesn’t write about her experience, how will she present her authentic self? Who can she turn to for advice? The college admission essay, a highstakes pitch in which applicants have limited words to describe who they are and why campuses should admit them, just got even more stressful for students of color. As colleges and universities nationwide prepare to accept applications for fall 2024 admission, the high court ruling has raised myriad questions about the all-important essay — the blank space where students describe their passions and promise, hardships overcome, challenges met, life lessons learned. Admission officers rely on essays to get to know a student beyond College essay’s high stakes made higher Affirmative action ban has left students of color confused and conflicted — with experts unsure how to advise them By Milla Surjadi, Howard Blume and Teresa Watanabe [See Essays, A16] Sara Nichols is torn. The environmental activist and political fundraiser loves the three Democratic members of Congress running to replace Sen. Dianne Feinstein — who at 90 has said she will not run for reelection. Feinstein’s wannabe successors all excite Nichols — with their interests in consumer protection, environmental justice and inequality. “I would be thrilled to see any one of these exceptional candidates win Dianne Feinstein’s seat: Rep. Adam Schiff, Rep. Katie Porter and Rep. Barbara Lee. Sadly, they will be duking it out for the foreseeable future, trying to win our hearts and minds,” Nichols wrote in an April email to her political network. But as Nichols has thought more about which candidate to support, having a woman represent California in the Senate has become a priority. She also wants generational change, and can’t get past Lee being nearly 77 years old. Lee “aligns with my political worldview. She’s one of the kindest people I know. I love that woman to the moon and back. But I also love my country, and I love my granddaughter more,” Nichols told The Times. “My generation has screwed up this planet so badly. We’ve had our chance. Time to move on,” she continued. “The end of her term, though, if [Lee] were to win, she’d be 84. And I had lots Barbara Lee’s age worries some Democrats LONGTIME House member Barbara Lee says the questions around her age amount to a distraction. Michael Owen Baker For The Times After frustration over Feinstein, they debate whether the Oakland progressive, 76, will remain fit for Senate. By Benjamin Oreskes [See Barbara Lee, A14]

A2 SUNDAY, JULY 9, 2023 S LATIMES.COM *Annual percentage yield (APY) is accurate as of publication date and may change at any time without notice until the account is opened. Minimum $1,000 balance to open and obtain APY. Early withdrawal penalties apply. Fees may reduce earnings. At maturity, the promotional rate Special Certificate of Deposit will automatically renew for the same term into a Standard Certificate of Deposit (CD) at the standard CD interest rate in efect on the maturity date. Ofer may be discontinued at any time. Business accounts excluded. Contact us for details. ©2023 Luther Burbank Savings. Beverly Hills 888.803.3691 El Segundo 888.520.2331 Encino 888.814.0755 Long Beach 888.835.3610 Pasadena 888.854.6621 Toluca Lake 888.865.0854 Secure a great rate now lbsavings.com/greatrates Save more for what matters 5.00% 7-Mo OR 13-Mo CD PERSPECTIVES President Biden wants to persuade Americans that the economy is better than they think — and that he deserves credit for turning it around. He’s calling his strategy “Bidenomics,” and it’s already become a central theme of his coming reelection campaign. “Bidenomics is working,” he said in a June 28 speech in Chicago. That sales pitch will be an uphill struggle. Most Americans aren’t just skeptical that the economy is recovering, they’re downright pessimistic. A Gallup Poll last month reported that 66% think the economy is getting worse, not better. In an AP/NORC survey in May, 64% disapproved of the way Biden has handled the economy, including a daunting 39% of Democrats. But even though most voters consider it a strike against him, it’s smart politics for Biden to claim ownership of the economy. For one thing, it’s an issue no presidential candidate, especially an incumbent, can avoid. “You can bet that Donald Trump is going to ask voters: Are you better off now than you were four years ago?” Democratic strategist Doug Sosnik predicted. “Biden has to have an answer to that.” For another, the facts are slowly rallying to Biden’s side. The economy is growing by about 2% a year, job creation remains strong and — most important from a political standpoint — inflation has eased to 4% from last year’s peak of 9%. After two years in which prices were rising faster than wages, real incomes are slowly growing again. “Bidenomics in action,” the president crowed recently when the Labor Department reported 209,000 new jobs were created in June. White House officials have expressed frustration at voters’ failure to notice — let alone celebrate — those upbeat numbers. But the public’s downbeat mood isn’t all that mystifying. Inflation is easing, but prices are still stuck at inflation-fueled levels. “The consumer price index is 16% higher than when Biden came to office,” Republican pollster David Winston pointed out. And though growth appears strong, financial pundits keep warning that a recession could arrive any day now, especially if the Federal Reserve raises interest rates again. Biden’s bet is that if the economy continues to improve, public opinion will evolve as well — and he wants to get credit when it does. Hence “Bidenomics,” a brassy way to claim authorship of a recovery most voters don’t see yet. “Good things are happening in the economy, but the average American doesn’t necessarily associate them with the president,” a Biden aide told me. “We need to make sure folks are making a direct link with his economic program.” As an economic strategy, Bidenomics is essentially a collection of the industrial policy initiatives the president managed to get through Congress during his first two years in office, focusing on infrastructure, high-tech manufacturing and renewable energy. As a political strategy, it boils down to job creation. Between now and election day, expect plenty of pictures of Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and other officials admiring bridges, tunnels and hightech assembly lines. In South Carolina last week, the president touted the bridges his grants are rebuilding, and bragged that workers in new semiconductor factories will make as much as $100,000 a year — “and you don’t need a degree!” But he didn’t have much to say about inflation, except for promising that it’s still “one of my top priorities.” That omission drew grumbles from some centrist Democrats. “I would have liked more of a narrative about Joe Biden, Inflation Fighter,” said Will Marshall, president of the moderate Progressive Policy Institute. Needless to say, Republicans renewed their longstanding accusation that Biden’s spending programs were what fueled inflation in the first place. But Biden doesn’t need to persuade every voter that his policies have been a triumph. If he can sway most of the Democrats who aren’t happy with his economic stewardship, his reelection campaign will be on firmer ground. What matters isn’t how Bidenomics looks now, it’s how it looks a year from now, when voters are making up their minds. That’s Biden’s gamble. If the economy continues to improve, Biden will already have told voters why he deserves some credit. If the Fed sends the economy into a recession, he won’t be able to claim those bragging rights — but he’ll be able to argue that he tried. LETTER FROM WASHINGTON Voters aren’t sold on ‘Bidenomics.’ Just wait DOYLE MCMANUS WHAT MATTERS isn’t how “Bidenomics” looks now, it’s how it looks a year from now, when voters are making up their minds, Doyle McManus writes. Evan Vucci Associated Press President has a year to get people to give him credit Everyone loves a good heist yarn, so I suppose we should be grateful to Major League Baseball and a Northern California billionaire for providing us with one. It’s the saga in which the Oakland A’s and its owner, an heir to the Gap fortune, are plotting to abandon the club’s home city and move to Las Vegas, enticed by more than $380 million in municipal subsidies for a $1.5-billion stadium and permanent immunity from property taxes. The move still requires approval by the owners of at least 23 of the league’s 30 teams. But it’s backed by MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred, who has even offered to waive the customary relocation fee of $300 million if the deal gets done. So it should be an odds-on favorite over at the Vegas sports books. The proposed deal has been bathed by its Nevada promoters in all the customary moonshine brewed to justify massive raids on the public purse. The main argument always advanced for these subsidies is that they’re economic development boons. Sure enough, as my colleague Bill Shaikin reported, Ben Kieckhefer, chief of staff to Nevada Gov. Joe Lombardo, told a legislative hearing in May that “the state general fund will make money on this deal.” Another ruse perpetrated by stadium promoters is to conceal the size of the public handout. At the same hearing, Kieckhefer declared that the public financing package for the stadium “contains no new taxes imposed against the residents of Nevada or our guests.” The deal requires the floating of $120 million in bonds by Clark County and $180 million in tax credits. No new taxes, sure — unless the county or state needs a way to cover the public services that would otherwise be funded by those bonds and taxes. As for the economic development gains, they’re unlikely to the point of being sheer fantasy. For more than 30 years, just about the most consistent finding in all economic research has been that stadium projects almost always “fall well short of covering public outlays,” a team of economists concluded last year. “Thus, the large subsidies commonly devoted to constructing professional sports venues are not justified as worthwhile public investments.” The craze for public financing of stadiums for team owners who could often pay for construction out of their own pockets peaked in the 1990s, when public entities floated billions in tax-exempt municipal bonds, raised sales taxes and even dipped into their general funds to finance what were essentially venues for multibillion-dollar private enterprises. Of 59 projects then underway in the U.S., I reported in 1997, all but five were wholly or partly funded by taxpayers. The trend faded after that but never entirely disappeared. Recently, it has been showing new life. Last year, the New York state Legislature approved a subsidy of at least $850 million in state and local funds — and possibly more than $1 billion, when all the giveaways are factored in — for a new stadium for the NFL’s Buffalo Bills. The team’s owner, oil and gas magnate Terry Pegula, has a net worth of $6.7 billion, according to Forbes. The Bills deal was derided by sports economist Victor Matheson as “one of the worst stadium deals in recent memory — a remarkable feat considering the high bar set by other misguided state and local governments across the country.” As for claims that stadium projects produce jobs, that’s also nonsense. One hired gun pushing the A’s stadium deal in Las Vegas told Shaikin that the ballpark would produce 5,400 jobs a year in team and stadium operations. That’s an absurdly misleading number. History teaches us the truth about stadium jobs: There may be thousands of them on game day, but those are mostly low-wage cooks, janitors, security guards, parking attendants and tickettakers. The higher-wage jobs generated by construction are only short term. One should not overlook all the hidden subsidies that typically fill the pockets of sports owners with new stadiums, even those claiming to be entirely privately funded. The pitch for what became SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, home of the NFL Rams, claimed that no public money would be spent. But the fine print revealed that the city would eventually have to reimburse the team for services such as game-day fan shuttles and police and fire protection, none of which would be necessary except for the stadium. The subsidy demanded from Las Vegas by Major League Baseball and A’s owner John Fisher, whose parents founded the Gap and who has a net worth estimated at $2.2 billion, would be contemptible enough. But it’s made only worse by Fisher’s behavior as owner. Fisher acquired a stake in the A’s in 2005 and became sole owner in 2016. Since then, he has systematically dismantled the team and allowed the stadium to fall apart, while he and Commissioner Manfred wept crocodile tears over the lack of fan support. Fisher launched ostensibly serious proposals to move the A’s out of the Oakland Coliseum and into new quarters in San José or other nearby communities. Oakland municipal officials trying to work with him on a plan to keep the team accused him of sabotaging those efforts, in part by insisting on massive subsidies for expansive joint stadium/commercial/residential developments. After the pandemicshortened 2020 season, when the A’s won the American League’s West Division, Fisher proceeded to trade or sell off the team’s best and most popular players. The player payroll went from $92 million in 2019 (sixth worst in the league) to $32.5 million last year, dead last. The Coliseum, which was opened in 1966 during a misbegotten trend for multipurpose sports venues — those that could accommodate football gridirons and baseball fields — was never an inviting place to watch a baseball game, in part because the seats were so distant from the action that they seemed to be in a different ZIP Code. Six decades later, it was well past its life span. During one game, it flooded with sewage. On another occasion, the lights went out. Feral wildlife roamed the increasingly vacant corridors. Then, for the 2022 season, Fisher doubled season ticket prices. This year, attendance has averaged about 10,000 fans per game; the Dodgers pull in nearly five times as many and the Angels three times as many. At the May 15 game between the A’s and the Arizona Diamondbacks, only 2,064 seats were occupied, the lowest attendance for an A’s game in 44 years. Why should anyone at all turn out? The A’s have lost nearly three out of every four games so far this season. As of this writing, they have the worst record in baseball. Yet these fans can be a hardy bunch. On June 13, while the Las Vegas subsidy deal was being voted on by the Nevada Senate, the fans staged a “reverse boycott,” in which 27,759 spectators saw the team beat the Tampa Bay Rays. Manfred responded to the turnout with the disdain of someone who doesn’t care about the quality of baseball in his league. “It is great to see what is this year almost an average Major League Baseball crowd in the facility for one night,” he sneered. That’s been the theme of this saga: Fisher and Manfred blaming the fans and the city for their own failings — in fact, for what look like deliberate efforts to destroy the viability of a major league sports team to justify moving it to a new city. Las Vegas civic leaders may be crowing about attracting another sports team to their town, to join the Raiders and the Golden Knights, a National Hockey League expansion team. But they should start worrying now. If Major League Baseball and the NFL can screw over Oakland, which supported its teams for decades, the day may come when Vegas discovers that the leagues don’t care about its fans, either. Hiltzik writes a blog on latimes.com. Follow him on Facebook or on Twitter @hiltzikm or email michael.hiltzik @latimes.com. Baseball owner’s dubious double play Gap heir ripped off Oakland A’s fans and is doing the same in Vegas, showing that cities never learn that stadium subsidies do not pay off MICHAEL HILTZIK BILLIONAIRE John Fisher is plotting to move the last-place Oakland A’s to Las Vegas. Michael Zagaris Getty Images

LATIMES.COM S SUNDAY, JULY 9, 2023 A3 July 8th – 23rd Mah Jong. Modular element sofa, designed by Hans Hopfer. Upholstered in fabrics designed by Kenzo Takada, Matsuri collection, Natsu version. Summer Sale prices valid in US participing stores only, from July 8 to 23, 2023. Not to be used in conjunction with any other offer. Photo by Michel Gibert, for advertising purposes only. Bad Schörgau Hotel, Zulma Editions. THE WORLD KYIV, Ukraine — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky marked the 500th day of the war Saturday by hailing the country’s soldiers in a video from a Black Sea island that became the symbol of Ukraine’s resilience in the face of the Russian invasion. Speaking from Snake Island, Zelensky honored the Ukrainian soldiers who fought for the island and all other defenders of the country, saying that reclaiming control of the island “is a great proof that Ukraine will regain every bit of its territory.” “I want to thank — from here, from this place of victory — each of our soldiers for these 500 days,” Zelensky said. “Thank you to everyone who fights for Ukraine!” It was unclear when the video was recorded. Zelensky was returning from Turkey on Saturday. He announced that five commanders of the defense of the Azovstal steel plant, a grueling months-long siege early in the war, were returning on the plane with him. The sprawling steelworks was the last bastion of resistance as Russian forces took control of the port city of Mariupol. Its defenders became renowned among Ukrainians for holding out in wretched conditions in the plant’s tunnels and corridors. Azovstal’s more than 2,000 defenders left the steelworks in May 2022 and were taken into Russian captivity. The five leaders, some of whom were part of the Azov national guard regiment that Russia denounces as neo-Nazi, were freed in a September prisoner swap and taken to Turkey. Under the exchange, the leaders were to remain in Turkey until the end of the war under the Turkish president’s protection. There was no immediate official explanation from Ankara or Kyiv about why they were allowed to return to Ukraine. Russian forces took control of Snake Island on Feb. 24, 2022, the day Moscow launched its invasion, in the apparent hope of using it as a staging ground for an assault on Odesa, Ukraine’s biggest port and the headquarters of its navy. The island took on legendary significance for Ukraine’s resistance when Ukrainian troops there reportedly received a demand from a Russian warship to surrender or be bombed. The answer supposedly came back, “Go f— yourself.” The island’s Ukrainian defenders were captured but later freed as part of a prisoner exchange. After the island was taken, the Ukrainian military heavily bombarded the small Russian garrison there, forcing the Russians to pull back on June 30, 2022. The Russian retreat reduced the threat of a seaborne Russian attack on Odesa and helped pave the way for a deal to resume Ukrainian grain exports. “Let the freedom that all our heroes of different times wanted for Ukraine and that must be won right now be a tribute to all those who gave their lives for Ukraine,” Zelensky said. “We will definitely win!” Intense battles continued to rage Saturday in the country’s east and south as Ukrainian forces pressed their attacks against multilayered Russian defenses in the initial stages of their counteroffensive. Ukraine’s Interior Ministry said a Russian rocket strike on the town of Lyman killed eight civilians and wounded 13 others early Saturday. Pavlo Kyrylenko, the governor of Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, posted images showing some of the dead, including a body lying under a bicycle, saying that “the Russian terrorists are continuing to strike civilians in Donetsk.” Lyman is a few miles from the front line, where Russian troops have recently intensified fighting in the forests of Kreminna. The U.K. Ministry of Defense said in its latest intelligence update that the eastern town of Bakhmut that was captured by the Russians in May has seen some of the most intense fighting along the front in the last several days. It said that Ukrainian forces have made steady gains to the north and south of Bakhmut, noting that “Russian defenders are highly likely struggling with poor morale, a mix of disparate units and a limited ability to find and strike Ukrainian artillery.” Amid the fighting, Russia and Ukraine accused each other of planning to sabotage the Russia-controlled Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, which is Europe’s largest, fueling fears of a radiation catastrophe. Ukraine’s military intelligence claimed Saturday that Russian troops have planted more mines around the plant, a claim that couldn’t be independently verified. The head of the United Nations nuclear agency, Rafael Mariano Grossi, told the Associated Press on Friday that the International Atomic Energy Agency experts had recently gained access to more of the site, including the cooling pond and fuel storage areas, and found no mines there. Grossi said he was still pushing for access to the rooftops of reactors where Ukrainian officials accused Russia of planting explosives. On Saturday, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu was shown visiting firing ranges where volunteer soldiers are being trained, a trip that comes two weeks after an abortive mutiny launched by mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin, whose Wagner troops marched on Moscow in a bid to oust Shoigu. Prigozhin agreed to end the mutiny, which represented the biggest threat to Russian President Vladimir Putin in his more than two decades in power, in exchange for an amnesty for himself and his troops and permission to move to Belarus. On Saturday, Russian messaging app channels ran comments by one of Wagner’s commanders, Anton Yelizarov, who said the mercenaries had taken leave but would eventually deploy to Belarus. Battles along the front line in Ukraine are raging as NATO leaders are set to meet in Vilnius, Lithuania, for a two-day summit this week to offer more help in modernizing Ukraine’s armed forces, create a new high-level forum for consultations and reaffirm that Ukraine will join the alliance one day. Ahead of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization summit, the U.S. has announced that it will provide Ukraine with cluster munitions, a move that President Biden described as a “difficult decision.” Two-thirds of NATO members have banned the munitions, which have a track record of causing many civilian casualties, but the U.S. sees their delivery as a way to help bolster Ukraine’s offensive and push through Russian front lines. Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov hailed the U.S. move, saying that the delivery of cluster munitions would help the country de-occupy its territories while saving the lives of the Ukrainian soldiers. Reznikov said Ukraine would use the munitions only for the de-occupation of its territory and would not fire them at Russia’s proper territory. He noted that the munitions would not be used in urban areas. Dana writes for the Associated Press. Zelensky hails troops on war’s 500th day UKRAINIAN President Volodymyr Zelensky, right, greets Azov regiment commander Denys Prokopenko in Istanbul. Five commanders from the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol, Ukraine, flew home with Zelensky. Ukrainian Presidential Press Office By Felipe Dana

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Future Premium issues may include: New LA Times Food 1/8/23, Festival of Books 4/16/23, 101 California Best 5/21/23, Ultimate Consumer Guide to Streaming 6/18/23, Boiling Point 8/6/23, De Los Latino 10/1/23, Holiday Gift Guide 11/19/23, 101 Best Restaurants 12/10/23. Dates and titles are subject to change without notice. Subscriptions with a Thurs. delivery, include 24 special issues of The Envelope via USPS with 2 issues in Jan., 5 in Feb., 2 in May, 4 in June, 3 in Aug., 1 in Oct., 3 in Nov. and 5 in Dec. Printed with soy-based ink on recycled newsprint from wood byproducts. THE HAGUE — Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte visited the king Saturday to hand in the resignation of his four-party coalition, setting the deeply divided Netherlands on track for a general election this year. King Willem-Alexander flew back from a family vacation in Greece to meet with Rutte, who drove to the palace in his Saab station wagon for the meeting to explain the political crisis that toppled his administration. Rutte declined to answer reporters’ questions as he drove away from the meeting, which lasted over an hour, saying the talks with the monarch were private. The vexed issue of reining in migration that has troubled countries across Europe for years was the final stumbling block that brought down Rutte’s government Friday night, exposing the deep ideological differences between the four parties that made up the uneasy coalition. Now it is likely to dominate campaigning for an election that is still months away. “We are the party that can ensure a majority to significantly restrict the flow of asylum seekers,” said Geert Wilders, leader of the antiimmigration Party for Freedom, who supported Rutte’s first minority coalition 13 years ago, but also ultimately brought it down. Opposition parties on the left also want to make the election about tackling problems they accuse Rutte of failing to adequately address — from climate change to a chronic housing shortage and the future of the nation’s multibillion-dollar agricultural sector. Socialist Party leader Lilian Marijnissen told Dutch broadcaster NOS the collapse of Rutte’s government was “good news for the Netherlands. I think that everybody felt that this Cabinet was done. They have created more problems than they solved.” Despite the divisions between the four parties in Rutte’s government, it will remain in power as a caretaker administration until a new coalition is formed but will not pass major new laws. “Given the challenges of the times, a war on this continent, nobody profits from a political crisis,” tweeted Sigrid Kaag, leader of the centrist, pro-Europe D66 party. Rutte, the Netherlands’ longest-serving prime minister and a veteran consensus builder, appeared to be the one who was prepared to torpedo his fourth coalition government with tough demands in negotiations over how to reduce the number of migrants seeking asylum in his country. Rutte negotiated for months over a package of measures to reduce the flow of migrants arriving in the country of nearly 18 million people. Proposals reportedly included creating two classes of asylum — a temporary one for people fleeing conflicts and a permanent one for people trying to escape persecution — and reducing the number of family members who are allowed to join asylum seekers in the Netherlands. The idea of blocking family members was strongly opposed by minority coalition party Christian Union. Pieter Heerma, leader of the Christian Democrats, a coalition partner, called Rutte’s approach in the talks “almost reckless.” The fall of the government comes just months after a new, populist pro-farmer party, the Farmer Citizen Movement, known by its Dutch initials BBB, shocked the political establishment by winning provincial elections. The party is already the largest bloc in the Dutch Senate and will be a serious threat to Rutte’s People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy. Prime minister of the Netherlands resigns over crisis associated press SONNEBERG, Germany — Mike Knoth is more than thrilled that a far-right populist party’s candidate recently won the county administration in his hometown in rural eastern Germany for the first time since the Nazi era. The gardener despises the country’s established parties, he doesn’t trust the media and he feels there are too many migrants in the country. The far-right party Alternative for Germany, or AfD, he hopes, will improve everything that’s not going well in his eyes in Sonneberg, which is in the state of Thuringia. “I think the fact that so many people voted for Alternative for Germany has already given it legitimacy,” Knoth, 50, said during an interview as he walked his dog down the town’s deserted main shopping street. But some in Sonneberg haven’t been won over by the AfD’s nationalist and antidemocratic rhetoric. Margret Sturm, an optometrist whose family has been selling glasses for almost 60 years in Sonneberg, voiced her concern over the AfD’s victory in an interview with a public television station. “I told them that I don’t think it’s good to vote for the AfD. And whoever votes for the AfD must know that they have the Nazis in tow,” Sturm told the Associated Press in an interview. Sturm can barely fathom what happened after the interview was aired last week. “We got hate mail, threatening phone calls, every minute. We were insulted by people we don’t even know, who don’t know us, who don’t know the business.” The threats were so relentless that Sturm’s husband installed surveillance cameras in the store. But Sturm, 60, said she won’t let anybody silence her. “People here are afraid to take a stand against the AfD and that makes us even more worried than anything else.” She said that other residents who oppose the AfD no longer want to voice their criticism openly. “That’s exactly the kind of intimidation that basically results from the machinery of hatred and incitement and then sadly spreads. And that really worries me,” Stephan Kramer, the head of Thuringia’s state domestic intelligence agency, told the AP at his office in the state capital, Erfurt. Kramer has warned for years that the AfD’s Thuringia branch is particularly radical and put it under official surveillance more than two years ago as a “proven right-wing extremist” group. It doesn’t bother Knoth that the AfD is under surveillance by Thuringia’s domestic state intelligence agency for its close ties to far-right extremists. “It was elected democratically, and I don’t find anything offensive about it,” he said. Knoth expects the AfD to take a law-and-order approach, curb immigration and make Germany safe. Tackling migration or fighting crime are hardly topics that belong to the job description of a local county administrator, but the AfD candidate Robert Sesselmann’s campaign on these themes proved to be successful. The runoff election in Sonneberg county last month pitted Sesselmann against center-right rival Juergen Koepper. Official figures showed that Sesselmann won by 52.8% to 47.2%. Sonneberg has a relatively small population of 56,800, but the win was a symbolic milestone for the AfD. Radoslaw Schneider, 39, also expects things to improve under Sesselmann. He said that the AfD “believes that something needs to be done also for the Germans,” and that foreigners should no longer get preferential treatment — which will happen now with the AfD in power, he thinks. Alternative for Germany first entered the national parliament in 2017 after an anti-migrant campaign in response to a mass arrival of refugees to Europe. The party, a decade old, has been polling at record levels nationally with between 18% and 20% of support. Center-left Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s governing coalition with the environmentalist Greens and the probusiness Free Democrats, meanwhile, faces strong headwind over high immigration, a plan to replace millions of home heating systems, and a reputation for infighting, while inflation remains high. The AfD’s Thuringia leader, Bjoern Hoecke, has espoused revisionist views of Germany’s Nazi past. In 2018, he called the Holocaust memorial in Berlin a “monument of shame” and called for Germany to perform a “180-degree turn” when it comes to the way it remembers its past. In the early 1930s, Thuringia was one of the first power bases of Adolf Hitler’s National Socialist Party. Nowadays, the AfD appeals especially to people in the formerly communist and less prosperous eastern states, such as Thuringia. The pandemic, Russia’s war in Ukraine and the influx of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian refugees to Germany have also contributed to the AfD’s success, Katharina KoenigPreuss, a lawmaker with the Left party in Thuringia, said at the state parliament in Erfurt. The party has been putting the blame for many problems squarely on immigrants or the national government, she said. “I would say that a great deal of these racist narratives, which don’t match reality at all, have now caught on with a larger part of the East German population,” said Koenig-Preuss, who is one of the most outspoken critics of the AfD and has received several death threats. Scholz tried to play down the recent rise of the farright populists. “Germany has been a strong democracy for a long time now, since World War II,” Scholz told reporters in Berlin recently after being asked what he’s doing to prevent a resurgence of fascism 77 years since Hitler’s demise. It was Germany’s Nazi rule, which led to the killings of 6 million Jews and millions of others, along with more than 60 million dead in World War II, that gives Kramer sleepless nights. “When I look at this development in Germany, the country where industrial mass murder was driven to perfection, then this is different from all other countries,” he said. In autumn 2024, there will be state elections in Thuringia. The AfD leads in the polls with more than 30%. If the AfD, which is still shunned by all other mainstream parties in Germany, will become part of the state government, then Kramer, who is Jewish, will leave the country with his family. “We’ve seen before in history where that can lead,” he said. “And I must honestly confess, I have no desire to wait for it to occur again.” Grieshaber writes for the Associated Press. A win for far right in Germany ROBERT Sesselmann’s victory marked a first by the far right in Sonneberg county since the Nazi era. Markus Schreiber Associated Press By Kirsten Grieshaber as the Rapid Support Forces, or RSF. Last month, an airstrike killed at least 17 people, including five children, in Khartoum. The RSF blamed the military for striking residential areas in Omdurman, where fighting has raged between the warring factions, according to residents. The military has reportedly attempted to cut off a crucial supply line for the paramilitary force there. A spokesman for the military was not immediately attack wounded an unspecified number of people, it said. The ministry posted video that showed bodies on the ground with sheets covering them and people trying to pull the dead from the rubble. Others attempted to help the wounded. People could be heard crying. The attack was one of the deadliest of the clashes in urban areas in the capital and elsewhere in Sudan between the military and a powerful paramilitary group known CAIRO — An airstrike in a Sudanese city on Saturday killed at least 22 people, health authorities said, in one of the deadliest air attacks yet in the months-long fighting between Sudan’s rival generals. The assault took place in a residential area of Omdurman, the neighboring city of the capital, Khartoum, according to a brief statement by the Health Ministry. The available for comment. Two Omdurman residents said it was difficult to determine which side was responsible for the attack. They said the military’s aircraft have repeatedly targeted RSF troops in the area and the paramilitary force has used drones and antiaircraft weapons against the military. At the time of the attack early Saturday, the military was hitting the RSF, which took people’s houses as shields, and the RSF fired antiaircraft rounds at the attacking warplanes, said Abdel-Rahman, one of the residents, who asked to use only his first name for his safety. “The area is like a hell ... fighting around the clock and people are not able to leave,” he said. The conflict broke out in mid-April, capping months of increasing tensions between the leaders of the military and the RSF, commanded by Gen. Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo. Airstrike on Sudan residential district kills at least 22 associated press Sunday Funday: In the July 2 Weekend section, a bracketed addition to a quote suggested Jaren Lewison lauded Paul Mescal and Daisy Edgar-Jones in “Daisy Jones & the Six,” which stars Sam Claflin and Riley Keough. He praised their work in “Normal People.” FOR THE RECORD Inquiries: 877-HERITAGE (437-4824) Craig Kissick | ext. 1995 | [email protected] Paul R. Minshull #16591. BP 15-25%; see HA.com. Licensed by the City of New York #1364738/9-DCA 72796 METEORITES FROM THE GEOFF NOTKIN COLLECTION PART 2 Signature® Auction | July 22 View All Lots and Bid at HA.com/Notkin Allende Meteorite Slice Carbonaceous Chondrite, CV3 Pueblito de Allende, Chihuahua, Mexico (26° 58'N, 105° 19'W) Witnessed Fall: February 8, 1969, 7h05m GMT 6.61 x 5.31 x 0.13 inches (16.80 x 13.50 x 0.32 cm) Weighs 134.2 grams ILLUSTRATION ART Signature® Auction | October 6 Now Accepting Consignments Deadline: August 3 Charles Addams (American, 1912-1988) “All Right, Children, A Nice Big Sneer, Now,” The New Yorker Magazine, Addams Family cartoon interior illustration, 1951 | Sold for $68,750 HA.com/IllustrationArt Inquiries: 310.492.8600 Paul R. Minshull #16591. BP 15-25%; see HA.com. Licensed by the City of New York #1364738/9-DCA 73038 Ed Jaster | ext. 1288 | [email protected] Todd Hignite | ext. 1790 | [email protected] Meagen McMillan | ext. 1546 | [email protected]

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Additional information concerning Pacific Western Bank accounts is contained in our Deposit Account Agreement and Disclosure, Schedule of Fees, including information about fees, balance computation methods, compounding and crediting of interest, and contractual terms and conditions. 5.15% APY* THE NATION Mily Trevino-Sauceda was 9 when her mother fell as she worked to move irrigation pipes along rows of potato and alfalfa crops on an Idaho farm. Mily’s 10- year-old brother splashed water over their mother’s face and body while her children looked on, scared and crying. Their mother had fainted from the heat, and could never again work as fast or as long in the sun. Decades later, the memory remains sharp for Trevino-Sauceda, who says few systemic changes have been made to safeguard farm workers from extreme heat. “Knowing all this still happens, it angers,” said Trevino-Sauceda, now the executive director of Alianza de Campesinas, a female farmworkers’ organization based in Oxnard. “It angers because we know what it is to do this kind of work. And even though we want to be loyal to doing a good job, we don’t even think at the time that if we’re treated as human beings or not. We just want to survive it.” As Earth set and then repeatedly broke unofficial records for average global heat last week, it served as a reminder that climate change is making conditions steadily worse for farmworkers and others who labor outside. Heat advisories and excessive heat warnings rolled out across much of the U.S., and farms in Oregon, Texas and much of the southern and central regions of the country were expected to see temperature highs pushing 100 this week. Farmworkers are 35 times more likely to die of heat exposure than workers in other industries, according to the National Institutes of Health, but there is no federal heat standard that ensures their health and safety. California is one of the few states that has adopted its own standards. Those include keeping fresh and cool water nearby; providing access to shade; and monitoring workers for health issues when the temperature goes above 95 degrees, according to the United Farm Workers Foundation. Edgar Franks describes working on farms in the heat as “a matter of life and death.” Like TrevinoSauceda, he has lifelong memories of being hot and uncomfortable in the fields where he and his family worked, first growing up in Texas while working on citrus and watermelon, and later in Washington state in fields of cauliflower, cucumbers and blueberries. “There’s no escaping it,” he said of the exposure to the elements over the 20 years he’s been in the industry. “No matter if you’re, you know, covered from head to toe in like the best ventilated clothing or wearing the hats and all that, or in a T-shirt or anything, it’s going to be hot no matter what.” Franks still works in berry fields in Washington but is also political director for farmworker union Familias Unidas por la Justicia. He’s been tracking climate change for a long time, and recalls being summoned to a 2017 strike by dozens of farmworkers in northwest Washington state. They were protesting poor working conditions, including laboring under oppressive heat and smoky conditions from Canadian wildfires. “It’s not normal to go through these heat waves and, you know, act as if nothing is happening,” he said. “And we just continue to normalize this, then, and nothing is going to be done to protect workers.” Climate change makes extreme heat more likely and more intense. Farm work is particularly dangerous because workers raise their internal body temperature by moving, lifting and walking at the same time they’re exposed to high heat and humidity, said Dr. Jonathan Patz, chair of health and the environment at the University of WisconsinMadison. If workers don’t take breaks to get out of the sun, drink water and rest, they can experience nausea, vomiting, dehydration, muscle cramps and more — all the symptoms of a fever without any infection, said Roxana Chicas, an assistant professor in the nursing school at Emory University in Atlanta. Chicas, who researches the health effects of environmental and occupational exposures on farmworkers, described what it was like to work with fern cutters coming in from the fields to have their blood drawn for samples, even after their bodies had had time to cool. “I can feel how hot they are,” Chicas said. “It’s just like dissipating their body and just see how their face is flushed red, and their clothing is, you know, soaking wet from sweating.” Even as the heat makes life more challenging for agricultural workers, unsustainable farming practices are also contributing to the emissions that fuel climate extremes. Patz noted the need to reduce the demand for meat in Western diets. He and Franks both called for changes in farming that could use less water and fertilizer and store more of the carbon that contributes to climate change. “I think looking at ways to do agriculture in more sustainable, regenerative ways that actually are better for the climate and for the workers, I think it’s possible,” Franks said. Walling writes for the Associated Press. CAMILO MARTIN picks blueberries at a farm in Everson, Wash. There is no federal standard that ensures farmworkers’ health and safety from excessive heat. John Froschauer Associated Press Warming’s extra toll on farm laborers By Melina Walling DES MOINES — Iowa Republicans announced Saturday that the party’s presidential nominating caucuses will be held Jan. 15, on the federal holiday honoring the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., putting the first votes of the 2024 election a little more than six months away. Presidential candidates have campaigned in Iowa since last winter, but there has been uncertainty about the date for the caucuses that traditionally kick off the Republican selection process for a nominee. What has changed is the Democratic National Committee’s election calendar, dropping Iowa as its first contest. The Iowa Republican Party’s state central committee voted unanimously for the third Monday in January — earlier by several weeks than the last three caucuses, though not as early as in 2008, when the contest was held just three days into the new year. The decision could have implications for both parties. Iowa Democrats had been waiting for the Republicans to set a date as they try to adjust to new DNC rules on their primary order. Democrats have proposed holding a caucus on the same day as the Republicans’ contest and allowing participants to vote for president via mail-in ballot. But Iowa Democrats have said they may not immediately release the results. That could allow the state party to retain the first-in-the-nation caucus without defying a new election-year calendar, endorsed by President Biden and approved by the DNC, that calls for South Carolina to replace Iowa in the leadoff spot and begin primary voting Feb. 3. Caucuses, unlike primary elections, are contests planned, financed and carried out by the parties, not by state election officials. The Iowa announcement allows New Hampshire to protect its first-in-thenation primary status, which is codified in state law that requires the contest to be held at least seven days ahead of any other primary. New Hampshire has not yet set a date for its primary election. Last month, South Carolina Republicans adopted Feb. 24 as the date for the traditional first Southern primary, leaving plenty of time for Nevada to schedule its Republican caucuses without crowding New Hampshire. “We remain committed to maintaining Iowa’s cherished first-in-the-nation caucuses, and look forward to holding a historic caucus in the coming months and defeating Joe Biden come November 2024,” Iowa Republican Party Chairman Jeff Kaufmann said in a statement. Republicans in Iowa to hold party’s leadoff caucus Jan. 15 Martin Luther King Jr. Day contest maintains first-in-the-nation status for the state. associated press

LATIMES.COM S SUNDAY, JULY 9, 2023 A7 ON SALE NOW ON SALE NOW ON SALE NOW BUY TICKETS TODAY AT YAAMAVATHEATER.COM DAVE MATTHEWS BAND | AUG. 24 ENRIQUE IGLESIAS | JULY 20 SEBASTIAN MANISCALCO | JULY 29 & 30 MUST BE 21 OR OVER TO ENTER. PLEASE GAMBLE RESPONSIBLY. 1-800-GAMBLER. CALIFORNIA'S #1 ENTERTAINMENT DESTINATION WIN AN ICONIC MASTERPIECE VALUED AT OVER $200,000* JULY 31 *Varies based on market conditions TOPEKA, Kan. — The Republican attorney general of Kansas sued Friday to block transgender residents from changing their sex on their driver’s licenses and to rebuke the Democratic governor for defying his interpretation of a new law. Atty. Gen. Kris Kobach went to a state court in hopes of getting an order to stop Gov. Laura Kelly and agencies under her control from allowing the changes to transgender people’s licenses. Kobach contends a law that took effect on Saturday prevents such changes and requires the state to reverse previous changes in its records, including about 1,300 made over the last four years. The new law defines a person’s sex as male or female based on the “biological reproductive system” identified at birth, applying that definition to any state law or regulation. It also says that the “important governmental objectives” of protecting people’s privacy, health and safety justify single-sex spaces such as bathrooms and locker rooms. Kansas is among at least 10 states with a law against transgender people using facilities in line with their gender identities, though the new law includes no enforcement mechanism. But Kelly’s office announced last month that the state health department, which handles birth certificates, and the motor vehicle division, which issues driver’s licenses, would continue allowing transgender people to change the markers for sex on those documents. The governor’s office said lawyers in her administration had concluded that doing so doesn’t violate the new law. Kelly is a supporter of LGBTQ+ rights and had vetoed the measure, but the Republican-controlled Legislature overrode her. In response to that announcement, Kobach said, “She is violating her oath of office to uphold Kansas law.” The lawsuit filed Friday names as defendants two officials who oversee driver’s licenses. Part of the lawsuit reads: “The Governor cannot pick and choose which laws she will enforce and which laws she will ignore.” His lawsuit seeks to force the governor to enforce the law, but did not request to stop changes to birth certificates. The rationale for restricting the lawsuit to driver’s licenses wasn’t immediately clear, nor was it clear how quickly the district court in Shawnee County, home to the state capital, Topeka, would deal with the case. Judges have the option of sending the lawsuit to a trial court to do fact-finding, which could delay a resolution for months. The new Kansas law was among a raft of measures rolling back transgender rights enacted this year in statehouses across the U.S. But only a few states do not allow transgender people to change their birth certificates. Federal judges last month upheld such policies in Oklahoma and Tennessee, and a no-changes rule in Montana is expected to face a legal challenge. Kelly won her first term as governor in 2018 by defeating Kobach, then the Kansas secretary of state. He staged a political comeback last year by winning the attorney general’s race as she captured a second term, both of them by slim margins. The governor’s statements about the new law are at odds with descriptions from LGBTQ+ rights advocates before the Republicancontrolled Legislature enacted it over Kelly’s veto. The advocates predicted that it would prevent transgender people from changing their driver’s licenses and amounted to a legal “erasure” of their identities, something Kobach confirmed as the intent when he issued his legal opinion. “For me to go into a bathroom and not have a marker that represents who I am, I was terrified. I was afraid I was going to get accosted or harassed,” said Ty Goeke, a 37-year-old transgender Topeka resident who changed both his birth certificate and driver’s license last month. Goeke participated in a transgender rights rally recently with his wife, Mallory, who carried a sign made from a toilet seat, calling for the new law to be “flushed.” Goeke said he sobbed with joy when he changed his birth certificate. “Now that I have the correct marker, I feel much better, feel more confident,” he said. “I feel at ease with myself.” The legal wrangling is complicated by a federal lawsuit filed in 2018 against Kansas health department officials by four transgender residents over a previous no-changes policy on birth certificates that was imposed under a GOP governor. That policy also hindered changes in driver’s licenses. Kelly settled the federal lawsuit months after taking office in January 2019, and a federal judge issued an order to enforce the settlement that requires the state to allow changes to birth certificates. Kobach has asked the federal judge to rescind his order but argues that the new state law supersedes it. Others disagree. Hanna writes for the Associated Press. Kansas official sues to block trans drivers from changing licenses By John Hanna ATTY. GEN. Kris Kobach says a new law prevents changing the markers for sex on driver’s licenses. John Hanna Associated Press

A 8 SUNDAY, JULY 9, 2023 S LATIMES.COM with more jobs. Born in Los Banos in Merced County to parents who migrated west from Oklahoma during the Dust Bowl, Nolan has only ever known life in the San Joaquin Val- ley. She learned how to pick cotton in Tulare, attended Corcoran High and stayed in town to work at a Caterpillar dealership. She got roped into volunteering for an or- ganization that donated clothing and food to children, and that evolved into the thrift shop. As executive director, Nolan has declined to take a salary. She uses the store’s proceeds to op- erate a companion food pantry for the county’s neediest. Her store has been a well of sup- port for Corcoran, which has many residents who work as farmhands or staff the maximum-security state prison. The thrift shop has been a staple for clothing, sundries and food boxes, first as the puni- shing winter storms put people out of work, and now as exhausted crews work to fortify the earthen levees that stand between Corco- ran and the lapping waters of the reborn Tulare Lake. “We’ve had men who had their hours cut quite a bit, and so that’s why we’re giving out food during the week now. We had about 50 families in this morning,” Nolan said on a recent weekday, as she plucked a pair of jeans from a shop- ping cart and added them, neatly folded, to a pile. Nolan, who has been diagnosed with oral cancer, said she intends to retire at year’s end. But there’s a lot to do before then. The walls need repainting, and the back of the shop could use renovation. She’ll keep at it as long as she is able, because that’s just the nature of people in Corcoran, a place she calls the “can-do city.” “I do as I’m told, honest,” she said, “and I’m told from above.” Javier De La Cruz 40, Corcoran Although Corcoran has es- caped catastrophic flooding, De La Cruz wants it known that fam- ilies like his lost nearly everything with Tulare Lake’s rise. De La Cruz works for Foster Farms, which runs a massive chicken processing plant in Corco- ran. As an assistant manager, he helped tend to more than a million chickens at the ranch. He rented a three-bedroom house on the prop- erty, where he lived with his part- ner and their seven children. They had a basketball hoop in the drive- way and a backyard where the chil- dren could run; a few neighboring families also worked on the ranch. But they lost everything March 18, when the water coursed in quickly. With just more than an hour’s notice, they managed to grab a few bags of clothing and documents before leaving. “We have to start over from the bottom,” De La Cruz said. As of late June, the ranch re- mained underwater, along with the cavernous barns where chickens drowned in their coops. The family of nine bounced around, moving in temporarily with another family before he landed a job with Foster Farms in Fresno County. He’s hold- ing out hope that soon, as the waters recede, he’ll get a chance to stop by his old home to see if there is anything left to recover. Despite the setback, De La Cruz said, he’ll do all he can to keep his family in the valley. He moved there at 21 from his hometown of Lynwood to escape a “bad life” of violence and gangs in southeast Los Angeles County. “Over there, there’s more traf- fic, life is faster, rent is higher,” De La Cruz said. “It’s more peaceful here.” Samuel Sanchez and Javier Puga 23 and 22, San Diego Their first day working the lev- ees, Sanchez and Puga baked on the towering dirt mounds as tem- peratures hit 101. Just below them, Tulare Lake spread on the horizon as far as they could see. “We weren’t expecting the type of weather we were gonna be in,” Sanchez said. “I had family from back home texting us, ‘Oh, it’s 60 degrees outside.’ ” As members of the California Conservation Corps, the two were among more than 100 workers who spent 24 days in May and June fortifying an eight-mile stretch of shaped shadows on the placid water. The lake’s rebirth has reshaped life in the Tulare basin and likely will do so for years to come. Some residents grew up here picking cot- ton. Others found their way to the basin as adults, fell in love with the country sunsets and never left. After a winter of hardships, they remain committed to the San Joaquin Valley and its remarkable seasonal rhythms. Here are some of their stories. Jerry Jones 74, Lemoore, Calif. Jones can point out where nearly every oak tree once stood near the Island District, a triangle of land in Kings County on the north end of Lemoore, bordered by the north and south forks of the Kings River. As a teen, he roamed Lemoore on foot, before the river was depleted for agriculture, draining the oaks of their suste- nance. Jones was raised in Lemoore, now a farm town of 27,000, with nine siblings. He remembers wanting to be a farmer, like his father and grandfather; the latter settled in the area in 1898. For a time, Jones’ father managed 20 acres of cotton, but competition for water and labor made it a difficult business, and he eventually sold the land. Jones grew up picking cotton and grapes to earn money for school clothes. His mother was adamant that the family members, with dark-brown hair and green eyes, call themselves colored and identify as Black. It wasn’t until he was older, he said, that he realized his family was Native American — his mother Apache and his father of Cherokee descent. His mother had lied to protect them, worried that their heritage would make them targets of suspicion and mis- treatment. With a soft smile, he recounted near-death experiences while growing up in the rugged country- side: the time his shirt got caught in a tractor, the time he dove too close to the riverbank and got trapped in tree roots, the time he and a friend rode their horses into a canal filled with quicksand. “It was part of the day,” he said with a laugh. He’s one of the few souls in Kings County who does not shy away from criticizing the J.G. Boswell Co., the basin’s largest landowner, for its dominating in- fluence over water management. Jones is a general contractor with no vast ranch of his own — just a few acres where he grows feed for his animals. Jones worries about what will become of the Tulare basin if the biggest landowners continue to manipulate water flow. He can point out how the landscape has been changed by human hands: once-mighty rivers sapped for irri- gation; in drought years, relentless groundwater pumping that has caused portions of the valley floor to sink; and, in the midst of this winter’s epic storms, levee building and levee breaks that affected what sections of land were flooded. “When they want water, they get water. When they don’t want water, guess what? They try to run it out someplace else,” he said. Tulare Lake’s resurgence is great, he noted, but the troubles that come with it — flooded farm- land, lost profits — are man-made. “They created it, this catastro- phe. They’re just messing with Mother Nature.” Marilyn Nolan 79, Corcoran, Calif. You can find Nolan most days among piles of clothes, toys and food boxes in a warehouse behind Corcoran’s Emergency Aid Thrift Shop. She has run the shop for 40 years, her hands ever in motion, sorting through donated clothes, shoes and household wares, care- fully wrapping each item in a plas- tic bag. The items go into one of two piles: for free or for sale. After years of doing this work, Nolan has a knack for what should be free and what can be used to raise money for the store. She sells dresses for $5.95 and gifts baby blankets to new mothers. She has watched new- borns grow up, first coming into the shop with their moms, then visiting as teens and, eventually, leaving Corcoran for bigger cities THE LIVES THEY ONCE KNEW WERE WASHED AWAY FROM TOP: Jerry Jones gathers hay for his livestock as Opie tags along. Chicken coops remain flooded at the Foster Farms facility in Corcoran. Samuel Sanchez works alongside fellow California Conservation Corps members to reinforce miles of levees. [ Tulare Lake, from A1]

LATIMES.COM S SUNDAY, JULY 9, 2023 A9 levee that protects Corcoran and adjacent farmland. The crews, who came from San Diego, Norwalk and Fortuna, worked 12-hour days, straining against deadlines to strengthen the barrier before Tulare Lake drank in what was expected to be epic runoff from a record Sierra snowpack. They employed a technique called “wave wash protection,” which involves blanketing the levee with a plastic liner secured with sandbags. The process would help the levees resist the powerful forces of water erosion. In all, they filled 70,000 sandbags. Sanchez and Puga, both San Diegans, were fascinated with Tulare Lake’s ghostly presence. It was Puga’s third flood emergency and his second time fortifying a levee. The lake, he said, was unlike anything he’d seen. “Once you get to the top of the levee, everything you see is water,” he said. “It’s like an ocean. You don’t see nothing but water.” Standing on the levee, they could see the signs of drowned farmland and roofs of flooded houses and barns. Sanchez grasped the magnitude of what had been lost — how livelihoods built over the years were submerged. “You could see the urgency of all the farmers to protect all the farms they have left,” he said. The hours were long, the work grueling, the hospitality unbounded. Sanchez said they met a couple whose home had been flooded, who nonetheless thanked them for their efforts to save Corcoran. Farmers sought them out to express gratitude. Business owners were generous. Some asked if they were Boy Scouts. “Yeah something like that,” Puga would reply. “If they needed us to go back to work,” Sanchez said, “we would go back to help them.” Dave Rinehart 79, Stratford, Calif. For more than 60 years, Rinehart has worked on tractors in Stratford, from sturdy older rigs to modern models with computerized equipment. Stratford sits in the Tulare Lake basin and, like much of the Central Valley, has been plagued for years by drought and a dwindling population. While fixing tractors, Rinehart would watch fishermen and boaters drive by in search of the basin’s fabled lake. “You’re in it,” he would tell them. “You’re in Tulare Lake basin right now, because you’re looking at that map, which shows the lake here. There ain’t no water down here.” At Stratford Auto, residents gather for morning coffee and conversation. There, Rinehart said, water is a constant topic — many years because there wasn’t enough of it. With the lake’s resurgence, there’s talk about how there’s too much. Still, the men aren’t too worried, Rinehart said. In some ways, it’s reflective of the Kings County resilience. No matter what, people find a way to keep living and keep working. “I don’t know why they make a big deal out of it,” Rinehart said of the lake’s return. “I laugh at [the] news when they start talking about that lake.” Charles Meyer Sr. 82, Stratford Meyer is proud to be one of the few family farmers left in Kings County, in a valley dominated by industrial-scale operations. He is a third-generation farmer, taking on land his grandfather once tilled. But times have hit the Meyer family hard. Once the proud owner of 3,500 acres, he has wittled his holdings down to 1,000; the rest was sold off due to years of drought, market fluctuations and inflation. Many family operations have been ground down, forced to sell the land they once hoped would keep their bellies full. Now, 600 acres of Meyer’s land are useless, swallowed by the lake: half with alfalfa, half prepped for cotton. He estimates his losses at $600,000. Meyer said it’s like losing a best friend. “There’s nothing you can do about it, so it’s no use getting upset,” he said. So far, he has not laid off any of his 10 employees. On a recent Monday, they were in the remaining acreage, irrigating cotton and cutting alfalfa. He doesn’t know how long before Tulare Lake recedes enough to give him back the rest of his land. “When it dries out, we’ll need them again,” he said of his crew. “We hate to lay people off and then hire ’em. My dad used to do that. I quit that.” These days, his son Charles Jr. has taken over the family business. On just about any morning, you can find them both in the fields, picking at weeds that have sprouted up where they plan to grow 40 acres of hemp. Meyer sees the move into hemp as a potential remedy for his recent loss. After years of advocacy, including his own testimony in Sacramento, hemp is a legal crop. He has begun making a CBD oil he thinks could generate an alternate source of revenue. He swears by its healing power for aching joints. Meyer hopes the farm can be passed down to his grandchildren one day, and that they’ll be interested in farming and the history of the land. He just prays there is land to pass down. Helena Jones 75, Lemoore Jones’ daddy traveled by bus to California from Idabel, Okla., in search of work and a better life, part of a wave of Black farmworkers who migrated to the Central Valley in the 1940s to work in the fields. Her family lived in a labor camp, sleeping in milk barns before moving into a shotgun house in Lemoore. By the time she was 4, Jones had joined her parents in the fields, running ahead of her mother and placing the cotton she picked in neat piles for collection. When she was stung by wasps, her mother spread turpentine on her skin, and they pushed on. When she was exhausted, she collapsed on a sack of cotton, worth $3 for every 100 pounds. Jones lived for a time in San Francisco and raised her children in Visalia, but she always knew she’d end up back in Lemoore, in the Island District. She married Lennard Jones (Jerry Jones’ brother), whom she had dated in high school. They reconnected as adults. “I made it back to my first love and Lemoore,” she said. When the warnings came that flooding would be bad, she placed sandbags around her home. She knew that with insurance, she could rebuild. But the photos of her husband, now deceased, and her late mother’s personal effects she could not replace. She packed everything in yellow-lid crates, placing them high on her closet shelves. She wanted to be ready. “I just prayed,” Jones said. She knew that if she did have to leave, there might be no road back. Today, Tulare Lake is slowly receding, and the threat of Lemoore being decimated by flooding has abated. But Jones remains concerned about what summer temperatures will mean for the mountain snow — and what next winter will bring. Her stuff will remain in boxes, she said, so she can stay prepared. Ernie Smith 76, Lemoore Smith remembers life in Lemoore when the roads were onelane and cotton was picked by hand. His parents, sharecroppers from Texas, were part of a wave of migrant farmworkers who came to California after World War II in search of work. Back then, Smith’s family, 12 in all, lived in cabins in a labor camp in Stratford, where they spent summers picking cotton for Gus Irons, whose brother guaranteed safe passage for Black tenant farmers who wanted to travel west. Growing up, Smith didn’t know he was poor. “I was never hungry,” he said, sitting in Mt. Olive Missionary Baptist Church on a Sunday afternoon. “I always had clothes. My mom washed clothes in a tub with a rub board.” He never missed a day of school. After high school, he earned his master’s degree and doctorate of education. He and his brother, Tommie Smith, a 1968 Olympic gold medalist in the 200-meter sprint, used to hunt rabbits with their bare hands. Eventually, his father saved enough to buy one acre in Lemoore, where he built a family home. Mt. Olive Missionary Baptist got its start in their living room and eventually moved into its own building on Jersey Avenue. Smith is now an associate pastor at the church, where he delivers inspirational readings and belts out worship songs to the beat of a tambourine. Smith can point out where he picked cotton for Irons by the levee. But the scenes that marked many of his early years have been erased by water. The dilapidated buildings of the labor camp are gone. “That’s where I learned how to work, down at the bottom,” he said. “Planting cotton, picking cotton, chopping cotton.” His family’s history, like that of many Kings County residents, is tied to the land. He maintains the acre where his father built their first home. He owns another 35 acres he plans to sell to a man who will grow pistachios. Like many long-timers in Kings County, Smith has watched his children leave, moving to cities to carve out livelihoods. But not Smith, who plans to stay in the basin, lake or no lake, until the end of his days. FROM TOP: Helena Jones attends Sunday service at Mt. Olive Missionary Baptist Church. Marilyn Nolan folds clothes at Corcoran’s Emergency Aid Thrift Shop. Dave Rinehart arrives at an Photographs by Robert Gauthier Los Angeles Times auto-parts store to join friends in a daily round of conversation. ‘Once you get to the top of the levee, everything you see is water. It’s like an ocean. You don’t see nothing but water.’ — Javier Puga

A10 SUNDAY, JULY 9, 2023 S LATIMES.COM be a highly charged presidential election, the climate is primed for another bumper crop of swindlers. As scam PACs become more common, prosecutors said, their operators “have conducted their criminal conduct with relative impunity.” In December, the Federal Election Commission asked Congress for more authority to crack down on scam PACs, including those that mislead contributors and falsely claim to be backing specific candidates. Court decisions over the last decade that loosened restrictions on political fundraising and led to a surge in independent expenditures in elections have also made it easier for scammers to blend in among the legitimate committees. “The goal of any scam PAC is not to engage in electoral advocacy, but simply generate more and more fundraising,” said Saurav Ghosh, director of federal campaign finance reform at the nonprofit Campaign Legal Center. That money is used for two purposes, he said: the “personal enrichment of the scam operators, or to simply feed the machine again.” The scope of the case was laid out in hundreds of pages of federal court records, which included emails and text message exchanges, the transcript of a 2019 deposition with the FEC, correspondence with state and federal investigators, and spreadsheets from the vast robocalling operation. Prosecutors said Los Angeles resident Matthew Tunstall, 36, was the driving force behind the scheme, setting up the committees, recruiting staff and netting about $790,000 in profit in less than two years. His coconspirator, Robert Reyes Jr., 41, of Hollister, Calif., made about $810,000. Tunstall also directed a robocalling vendor to overbill the groups by $353,000 and launder the money into shell companies that he and Reyes controlled. No charges were filed against the vendor. Using cash from mostly elderly victims, Tunstall built what he called a “baller life” in L.A. He produced electronic dance music and bought a Mercedes-Benz AMG with cash. He flaunted Gucci jewelry and a hat made by Hollywood’s milliner to the stars. And he moved into a high-rise apartment looking out on downtown L.A. Reyes lived a more modest life in Central California’s San Benito County, where he was married with two young children. His wife, an Instagram influencer from Germany, filed for divorce last year. Both men were arrested in 2021 and eventually pleaded guilty to several felonies, including money laundering and conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Tunstall’s lawyer acknowledged that his client had profited from deceiving donors, but argued that his massive fundraising operation was still a form of voter outreach. The committees spent almost $2.5 million, Tunstall’s attorney said in court filings, for “millions of minutes of direct canvassing to potential voters and donors.” Prosecutors, though, said Tunstall’s behavior was “tantamount to the historic traveling confidence man, pitching a shingle in a new community until discovery, and then moving on to engage in similar fraudulent conduct.” They urged a federal judge to sentence Tunstall to more than 15 years in prison to deter anyone “tempted to place their own personal gain above the disenfranchisement of those who seek to participate in the political process.” Tunstall was sentenced to 10 years and Reyes seven. Both are now in federal prison. Attorneys who represented the men did not return requests for comment. Tunstall had worked on the fringes of telemarketing and political fundraising for almost a decade before launching the venture that drew the attention of law enforcement. He grew up in Texas and moved to California to attend Orange Coast College. During the Great Recession, Tunstall worked at a Southern California call center. Then he took a job for Take 2 Direct, a media company in Corona Del Mar, where he refined his experience with telemarketing. Tunstall said he did “call center stuff” and video production for political clients, including the conservative Heritage Foundation and the libertarian advocacy group Freedom Works. He said he was “working with the people who were really big in the space” in 2012, the first presidential election in which super PACs were active. Super PACs began in 2010, when two federal court decisions eliminated the federal contribution limits for corporations, unions and other deep-pocketed donors and shifted political moneyraising organizations into overdrive. Such committees can now raise unlimited amounts but are barred from coordinating with a political party or a candidate. A conservative super PAC that used former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee as a spokesperson paid Take 2 Direct more than $250,000 for telemarketing in 2012 and 2013, federal filings show. That committee, Restore America’s Voice PAC, came under scrutiny after the group reported raising $4.6 million in 2011 and 2012, less than 5% of which went toward advertising or other campaign expenses. The committee declared bankruptcy in 2015. Another committee, the Conservative Majority Fund, paid Take 2 Direct more than $185,000 for “media production and airtime.” Politico later reported that the group’s aggressive telemarketing strategies had brought in nearly $10 million, of which $48,400 was spent on political candidates and committees. Take 2 Direct was not accused of wrongdoing in either case. In 2014, Tunstall moved to Washington, D.C., but found he “wasn’t able to get PACs and, like, candidates, like [he] had imagined.” He returned to California, where he said he worked in online advertising for diet and muscle products. Then he ran into legal problems. Records show California regulators filed a $27,047 tax lien against Tunstall in 2014, which was released in 2015, and the Internal Revenue Service followed in 2015 with a lien of $95,381. In the summer of 2015, a Burbank property owner secured a court order to evict Tunstall from a commercial space on Burbank Boulevard. The rent on the building was $3,500 per month, court records show. In late 2015, Tunstall turned his sights to the 2016 election. Prosecutors said he recruited Reyes and his 25- year-old cousin Kyle Davies, who prosecutors said had dropped out of college, to help set up the PACs. Neither man had experience with political fundraising. The trio set up shop at a WeWork in downtown Austin, Texas, where a lot of residents “are very, like, politically active,” Tunstall told the FEC in a 2019 deposition. They launched their first PAC, the Liberty Action Group, in January 2016 during the Republican presidential primary, a combative contest with a hefty field of GOP candidates that included Donald Trump and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz. They tapped a friend of Davies’, a Trump supporter, to act as the director. The group hired robocalling and call center vendors. Tunstall gave them a list of phone numbers, which he said were connected to people who had previously donated to other political causes. The committee made 475,000 calls in its first two weeks. Most followed the same format: An audio clip from Cruz or Trump, followed by a plea for money. Callers who pressed 1 were connected to a live operator who read from scripts designed to mislead donors into thinking their money would support the candidate. “Thanks for supporting the Liberty Action Group PAC to help Trump become the Republican nominee,” read one script. “Can we count on you to help make sure this election isn’t STOLEN from the American people and help elect Trump with $100 or $200 today?” Call centers used “highpressure sales tactics” to close the deal with donors who wavered, prosecutors said. Victims were talked into giving their credit card numbers over the phone. Those who refused were sent reminders of their “pledge” in the mail, with a request to mail a check. Davies, the office manager, mailed out photos and stickers to donors. He also called donors who had given more than $500 and asked them to make another contribution, of which he got a 10% cut. (Davies was sentenced to five years’ probation.) A few weeks into the Liberty Action Group operation, Tunstall emailed Reyes: “Yo, let’s get a hillary ad out and see what happens.” Reyes responded: “For sure! Test it!” They set up the Progressive Priorities PAC in May 2016. Davies tapped his then-girlfriend to be the director. She didn’t have dayto-day tasks, Tunstall said, but was “very pro-woman.” She was not charged. Nor were more than a dozen others — including call center workers, freelance voice actors, relatives of the organizers, and other PAC employees — whom prosecutors described as “unwitting participants” in the scheme. The Liberty Action Group reported about $85,000 in income in the first three months of 2016; about $600,000 between April and June; and $1.9 million from July to September, as election day approached, according to their federal disclosures. The group eventually brought in $3.11 million. Progressive Priorities brought in about $850,000. The massive robocalling operation also quickly drew the attention of political campaigns and law enforcement. Lawyers for Cruz’s presidential campaign sent a terse letter in April 2016 demanding that the Liberty Action Group stop using Cruz’s voice and refund all contributions that they had collected through calls that used the candidate’s voice. In the summer of 2016, Indiana’s attorney general launched an investigation to determine whether the Liberty Action Group had violated robocalling laws. In July 2016, an attorney for Clinton’s campaign sent a letter to the Progressive Priorities PAC demanding a stop to the “massive, nationwide fraud to collect money for itself while claiming to raise money for Secretary Clinton’s campaign.” One telemarketing supervisor told a Clinton supporter that the PAC had been “directly contracted” by the campaign, the lawyer wrote. The attorney told the PAC that the campaign had alerted the FBI, the Justice Department and the FEC. The FBI opened an investigation in response to the Clinton campaign’s report, but Tunstall brushed the letter off. “A lot of people just don’t like the robocalls,” Tunstall said in his interview with the FEC. Neither do campaigns, he said, claiming they try to deter PACs from “trying to raise money or speak up.” A note in the memo field of a $30 check to the Liberty Action Group from a Pennsylvania resident read: “I’m trusting you, this is for Donald Trump.” A $50 check made out to “Mrs. Hillary Clinton,” but sent to the Progressive Priorities PAC, had the memo line “Aloha nui loa,” which means “lots of love” in Hawaiian. The vast majority of donors were elderly. Tunstall tried to “target the most vulnerable victims,” prosecutors said. The Liberty Action Group reported 62 contributions from Californians and the Progressive Priorities PAC reported 31, according to FEC records. Nicolas Weber, an 87- year-old resident of Santa Barbara, gave $500 to the Liberty Action Group in September 2016. Reached by phone, the retired businessman didn’t remember making the donation and was taken aback to learn that he had been scammed. “It’s possible I gave money to Trump — or at least, I thought I was giving it to him,” Weber said. “But you’re asking me about 2016, and that was seven years ago, and I’m 87.” No one from law enforcement ever contacted him, Weber said. When he learned that Tunstall was in prison, he said: “Good. That’s where he belongs.” In the fall of 2016, Buzzfeed News wrote a story questioning why the two PACs were so closely linked. After that, Davies’ girlfriend, listed as the director of the Progressive Priorities PAC, no longer wanted “anything to do with it,” Tunstall told the FEC. “Very reactionary.” Both PACs kept fundraising after the election was over, cashing in on the anger and bitterness on both sides of the political divide. In December 2016, Tunstall fired off two scripts, 17 minutes apart, to two voice actors for Los Angeles Times photo illustration Scam PACs cashing in on growing rift between Democrats, Republicans Los Angeles Times photo illustration [PACs, from A1]

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L A K E AV E . 4th OF JULY SALE A S T O R E - W I D E S AV I N G S E V E N T U P T O 3 0 % O F F + S P E N D & S A V E $200 off when you spend $2,500 I $500 off when you spend $5,000 $1,500 off when you spend $10,000 a new set of calls. “We must ask for your help to fund our fax blast to Congress and electoral college, demanding they keep their Trump votes and accept the election results!” read one script, sent to an actor with a gravelly voice. Fundraising petered out in 2017. In 2018, Tunstall shut down the Liberty Action Group, facing “waning contributor interest, critical media reporting, pending investigative demands and inquiries from the FEC,” prosecutors wrote. Progressive Priorities remains active but has no cash on hand. Tunstall and Reyes launched two new PACs for the 2018 midterm election. Support American Leaders and Campaign to Support the President used the same robocalling techniques, prosecutors said, and took in about $3.7 million. Among the expenses reported by the two committees were $4,200 in withdrawals from a Wells Fargo ATM on Grand Avenue in downtown Los Angeles and $1,353 for “supplies” at Younique, a cosmetic surgery center in Santa Monica, records show. Reyes had married and settled in Hollister, about an hour east of Monterey. He met his wife online. Their first child was born in April 2016, when the PAC scheme was beginning to take off. She later recounted her husband’s 2021 arrest in a series of Instagram videos hashtagged #fbi #crime and #dertagderallesveränderte (German for “the day that changed everything”). She said she woke up at 6 a.m. to see flashing lights outside and Reyes in handcuffs. It felt, she said in German, like “a bad Hollywood movie.” She said she learned what her husband was accused of when a friend sent her some news stories about the indictment. The allegations made her realize, she said, that Reyes “would be held accountable.” “That was our life — my life,” she said. “I stand here with two kids and am totally alone.” Tunstall moved back from Texas into a high-rise apartment in downtown Los Angeles, across from the swanky Freehand Hotel, where federal agents arrested him in November 2021. Even after the arrest, Tunstall posted snippets of his high-roller life on his Instagram account, where he used the name Matte Nox. He released an EDM single in July of last year, with the lyrics: “Gucci on my wrist / Baby, what’s your wish? / You’re doing Pilates / Got you hot in every ’fit,” and, “Catch me flying private on my way to Italy.” And he posted regular workout selfies, some showing the tattoo across his bare chest that reads: “God Will Give Me Justice.” Times staff writer Scott Sandell contributed to this report. Los Angeles Times photo illustration operators,” the FBI warns. “That should be a red flag. Similarly, if you see the same operator running multiple PACs, that can be an indicator of a scam.” 8 If a group asking for money has a name similar to aseparate, well-known or established organization, be suspicious. 8 Also, the FBI warns it’s illegal to take money from another person and donate it to a candidate or PAC under your name. So don’t do that. In general, if it doesn’t feel right, don’t donate money. As the 2024 election heats up, campaigns and political organizations and candidates will be scrambling to raise money for everything from presidential candidates to programs to help veterans and protect the environment. Beware, however, that scam artists looking to line their pockets will be lurking among the legitimate federal political action committees. The FBI has seen an increase in these fraudulent PACs and is warning people to be on high alert. If you are solicited for a political donation by a political organization, the Federal Bureau of Investigation recommends you do the following: 8 Visit the Federal Election Commission’s website (fec.gov) and search the organization’s name to see if the PAC is registered. If it’s not registered, it’s illegal. 8 The FEC website also includes reports filed by PACs that show how they spend their money. Check to see what vendors they are using. “Often, in a scam PAC, you will see the vendors are also associated with the Protect yourself from scam PACs By Laura J. Nelson

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A14 SUNDAY, JULY 9, 2023 WST LATIMES.COM of reliable people tell me in 2018 that Dianne Feinstein was showing serious signs of dementia.” Nichols’ views reflect an anxiety heard among nearly a dozen political activists, donors and elected officials who spoke to The Times and questioned whether it would be right for someone in her late 70s to replace a 90-yearold. Some, like Nichols — who is 76 herself — said a changing of the guard is sorely needed. If Lee were to win the 2024 Senate race, it could leave the party in the same predicament it faced in 2018, when Feinstein insisted on running again despite calls for her to step aside. She won, but was spurned by the California Democratic Party, which endorsed Kevin de León, then a liberal state senator. Age remains a sensitive subject, at least publicly, among California’s political glitterati. When Feinstein announced this year that she wouldn’t seek another term, it appeared to clear the path for a younger person to take over. Porter, a third-term congresswoman from Irvine, is 49. Schiff is 63 and was first elected in 2000. Dodgers great Steve Garvey, 74, is contemplating a run as a Republican. Lee would be 78 on her first day in office if elected. She would join a body where the median age of a senator is about 65, according to the Pew Research Center. The collective agita over the question only increased during Feinstein’s monthslong absence from Washington when she was ill with shingles, and upon her return when, during a discussion with reporters, she appeared to not realize she’d been away from the Capitol. During this period, Porter, Schiff and Lee would only say they wished Feinstein a speedy recovery and that it was her choice when to hang it up. Recent polling from the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies and The Times indicated most Californians want Feinstein to resign, and nearly twothirds of registered voters in the state said her battle with shingles showed she was no longer fit to serve. “How can you say DiFi is old and [Lee] is not,” said one prominent California Democrat, who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid offending Lee. Others were leery of talking on the record because Feinstein’s failing health has also been such a fraught topic. “There’s already a frustration about how we’re gonna spend so much freaking money for a safe Democratic seat this cycle — and then what? We have to do it again if she’s not going to be there that long,” the prominent Democrat said. This all comes at a moment when the two leading candidates to be president of the United States are both over three-quarters of a century old. President Biden, 80, is constantly contending with questions about his age and fitness for office. In a recent ABC News/Washington Post poll, 68% of Americans said Biden is too old for another term as president. In that same poll, 43% said former President Trump, 77, is also too old for another term. :: Lee says the questions around her age amount to a distraction — one she addresses head-on but not something that she worries will hold her back. She’s running to win, and despite reports about her only seeking one term, she’s not closing off the option of running again in 2030. “It’s important for me to stay focused and to not let the noise become a destabilizing factor in my campaign, because I intend to win this,” Lee said. “Voters will make their own decision. ... People want representation. The lens that I bring as an African American woman has not been in the Senate for a while, and [there have been] only two African American women since 1789.” At the moment, she’s focused on fundraising. Her campaign advisors say raising $10 million would help propel her into a runoff. Shortly after the quarterly fundraising deadline, Lee’s campaign announced that she’d raised $1 million in the second quarter and $2.1 million overall. Schiff netted $8.1 million, boosted by headlines around his censure by House Republicans, and has almost $30 million in cash, according to his campaign. Porter has yet to release her numbers. Lee said donors and supporters bring up her age “only 10% of the time.” Some of Lee’s allies and other California Democratic Party officials said questions about her age smack of sexism and the same double standard they say Feinstein has faced. Elected officials including former Speaker Nancy Pelosi have repeatedly said that more infirm male senators have served longer with less scrutiny than Feinstein. “This is the first time I’ve really heard mention of her age. She looks great. I wasn’t even aware that she was 76,” said Los Angeles County Democratic Party Chair Mark Gonzalez, a candidate for state Assembly, who hasn’t endorsed anyone in the U.S. Senate race. “My only pushback to you is: Would you ask a white man that?” USC Davis School of Gerontology professor Jennifer Ailshire said the focus on Feinstein’s age had become Age question trails Lee’s Senate campaign REP. BARBARA LEE greets singer Goapele in May. Lee is “fresher” than her younger rivals, says Ro Khanna, a chair of her campaign. Michael Owen Baker For The Times [Barbara Lee, from A1] WIN A JEEP WRANGLER 4XE OR A SHARE OF $50,000 IN SLOT FREE PLAY Management reserves the right to change or cancel promotions and events at any time without notice. Must be 21 or older. Gambling problem? Call 1.800.GAMBLER. 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LATIMES.COM WST SUNDAY, JULY 9, 2023 A15 a proxy for frustrations about her being out of step with the Democratic Party’s liberal tilt. She said the way Lee or Biden campaign offers some insight into their fitness, because “some of these people in their 70s and 80s are just amazing in the amount of energy they have.” Lee has been crisscrossing the state fundraising and meeting voters, and just last week she held a multi-stop bus tour through the Central Valley. “Campaigning is difficult. It’s cognitively challenging. It’s certainly physically challenging. If someone seems to have high energy, they’re probably in pretty good shape,” Ailshire said. “Health risks do increase with age, and things can always happen to people. That’s a decision that we’re all making when we go to the polls,” she said. “But ultimately, I think if a candidate looks kind of worn down, I might question them a little bit. Focusing on the level of energy that the person is showing can tell us a lot about what the next few years are going to be like for them.” There are ample examples of Californians supporting older candidates for prominent elected offices. Jerry Brown was elected to his final term as governor at 76, nearly 40 years after he first served in the role. The longtime politician would challenge reporters to pushup contests, and recently told Politico that at 85 he is still fit enough to be president, but that “we’re not like the old Soviet Union, where they had all those men in the Politburo, people want some fresher faces.” Sen. Bernie Sanders, now 81, won the state’s Democratic presidential primary in 2020. Nearly half a century ago, Californians elected Republican S.I. Hayakawa, a former president of San Francisco State, to the U.S. Senate at the age of 70. And in November, Democrat Shirley Weber, 74, became the first Black politician to be elected as California secretary of state. :: Many of Lee’s supporters see her long track record of advocating for progressive policies as a strength. They are captivated by her experience in government representing the most progressive wing of the Democratic Party — and her dissenting views on committing American troops abroad. The Oakland politician regularly talks about her past: her key role in desegregating the cheerleading team while attending San Fernando Valley High School, her experience getting an illegal abortion in Mexico, her volunteer work with the Black Panthers, and how her career in politics began when she worked on Shirley Chisholm’s presidential campaign in 1972. One of Lee’s strengths is the wisdom she has attained with age, her supporters say. She has also witnessed this nation’s ever-changing political climate for more than half a century, from Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights era to Trump and his right-wing MAGA movement. Rep. Ro Khanna, a chair of Lee’s campaign, said he was drawn to her willingness to buck convention and take bold stands. The Fremont Democrat was one of the loudest voices this spring calling on Feinstein to step down after she missed an extended period of time. He said that voters saw the senator as someone unfit to fulfill her duties and that it showed how “D.C. politicians get to live by a different set of rules than most Americans who have jobs. There is such a frustration with a political system where entrenched politicians have clung to power for the last 40 years.” Lee is “fresher than the other candidates. It’s not about age,” Khanna said. “It’s a willingness to call into question the status quo and be the only vote against a 20-year war in Afghanistan, be the voice that speaks up against [invading] Iraq, and is a voice that is speaking out against bloated military budgets,” he continued. “When people say ‘Barbara Lee speaks for me,’ that’s what they’re talking about.” :: Nathan Barankin, a consultant for an independent expenditure committee supporting Lee, said her biggest challenge isn’t age, but introducing herself to voters. Public and private polls show she’s far less known than Porter or Schiff, he said, adding that there was a wide gulf between voters and political pundits when it came to views on Lee’s age. For voters, he said, being older isn’t a turnoff on its own. Rather, “it’s age plus something — an inability to do the job [or] a misalignment between where Democratic voters are on policy and where the elected is.” “Advocates for those running who are not named Barbara Lee whisper about this all over the place, and that’s sad to me,” he said. This spring, Barankin showed poll respondents the campaign launch videos for Schiff, Porter and Lee. Lee’s featured images spanning decades, including a blackand-white photo of her as the first Black cheerleader at her high school. He said that in polling before voters saw the videos, the numbers were very similar to those in public polls, with Lee trailing Porter and Schiff. But after voters saw the videos, their support for Lee grew — particularly among those 18 to 49 years old, whose support for her tripled. A similar phenomenon occurred among progressive and liberal voters. “It says that age has no effect unless there is something more,” Barankin said, adding that Lee “has none of the downsides of some of these other candidates — and certainly of Dianne Feinstein — and all of the upsides.” Former Times staff writer Melanie Mason contributed to this report. ‘Advocates for those running who are not named Barbara Lee whisper about this all over the place, and that’s sad to me.’ — NATHAN BARANKIN, a consultant for an independent expenditure committee supporting Lee, noting that voters, unlike pundits and prominent Democrats, are not focused on her age SEN. DIANNE FEINSTEIN, then 89, in May after a long illness fed frustrations over her fitness and refusal to resign. Supporters of Lee, who would be 78 on her first day in the Senate, say her age shouldn’t be an issue. Photographs by Kent Nishimura Los Angeles Times LEE IS KNOWN as a leader among progressives and for resisting sending Americans troops abroad. Get ready for the time of your life with this hilarious and deeply personal tribute to the playwright’s mother, deliciously portrayed by the person who knows her best—her son. Recommended for Ages 16+ (714)708-5555 SCR.org BUY NOW! July 15–Aug. 4 by Sandra Delgado Directed by Cheryl Lynn Bruce Live theatre under the stars starts Saturday! at MISSION SAN JUAN CAPISTRANO Performancesat 7:30pm Step backtothe 1960s astheMissiontransforms into LaHavanaMadrid, Chicago’s legendary nightclub.Newly arrived Latino immigrants dine, dance and find community—tothe gloriousrhythms ofmambo and salsa!At LaHavanaMadrid, it doesn’tmatter where you come from—musicmeans home and everyone is welcome. 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A16 SUNDAY, JULY 9, 2023 S LATIMES.COM Visit your local branch or go online to open yours today! homestreet.com/cd 4 great rates to grow with! *Annual Percentage Yield (APY) is accurate as of 6/16/2023 and is subject to change at any time without notice. $500 minimum balance required to open and obtain the advertised APY. The maximum balance is $240,000 per CD. Customer can have multiple CDs. Penalt y ma y be a s se s sed for early withdrawal. Fee s ma y reduce earnings. Available for personal, business, or IRA (Individual Retirement Account) CDs. Complete account Term s & C o n d it i o n s a n d S c h e d u l e of Fees are available at homestreet.com/cd. 3.50% APY 4.65% APY 4.25% APY 3.50% APY grades and transcripts — and it’s become even more crucial at institutions that have eliminated consideration of standardized tests, as the University of California did in 2020. But students of color like Olivia say they are conflicted and confused by the ruling — and how to interpret comments by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., who wrote in the majority opinion that race could be discussed within some parameters. “Nothing in this opinion should be construed as prohibiting universities from considering an applicant’s discussion of how race affected his or her life, be it through discrimination, inspiration, or otherwise,” Roberts wrote. But he said that colleges may consider race only if it is tied to an applicant’s individual experiences or qualities — such as demonstrating courage against discrimination. Roberts warned that institutions should not use personal statements as a backdoor way to ask students about their race and admit them on that basis. “Universities may not simply establish through application essays or other means the regime we hold unlawful today,” he wrote. Even the experts are questioning how to advise students. “I don’t think that we quite know how we should proceed yet,” said Melanie Gottlieb, executive director of the American Assn. of Collegiate Registrars and Admission Officers. “I think that the college essay ... is a crucial tool for institutions to determine who to bring into their class, who is going to best contribute to the overall class and who is going to best benefit from the opportunities. And so I don’t think it’s going to go away. But it’s going to be a question about how we proceed … within the legal constraints — because they’re not clear right now.” UC admission counselors have learned to walk that line since 1996, when California voters banned affirmative action in public education, contracting and hiring with the passage of Proposition 209. UC asks students to respond to four of eight “personal insight” questions that aim to “show us your personality” by writing about their creative side, talents and skills, thoughts on leadership, educational barriers overcome, a challenge faced or other topics. ‘Highlight those extra qualities’ UC Santa Barbara admissions director Lisa Przekop said students still write about their race and ethnicity. Although her team can’t consider race, they can evaluate how students responded to important issues that affected their lives. Many Black students wrote about the 2020 killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer, Przekop said. But she looked for how students’ pain and rage motivated actions — starting a school discussion group focused on racial discrimination, for instance. Asian students who wrote about giving up Saturdays for Chinese or Japanese school demonstrated sacrifice and commitment, she said. A Latina who described her lifelong involvement with Folklorico dance impressed Przekop by showing how she educated others about her culture. Przekop advised students who plan to share their race or ethnic background to include context about what it means to them. Or if sharing a difficult experience — discrimination or bullying for instance — explain what action it prompted. “This happened, so then what?” Przekop said. Morgan Blue, a counselor at Santee High School south of downtown Los Angeles, said she will emphasize that her students — virtually all of them low-income — showcase how they’ve made the most of their comparatively limited opportunities. “I just want the schools to be able to see who our students are, and it’s sometimes not fair because they’re put against applicants who have different opportunities than they have,” she said. “Now it’s even more important for our students to highlight those extra qualities.” Students weigh what to do next As they continued to absorb the impact of the ruling, several students shared their thoughts about how it is affecting their thinking. Sarah Yee said she will not change her topic because of the affirmative action ban. Her race is intrinsically tied to her interests and the career she would like to pursue. She will describe her experiences in healthcare journalism, her poetry about Asian American and Pacific Islander youth suicides, and how her interest in the healthcare field stemmed from Asian American role models such as Dr. Sanjay Gupta and Dr. Atul Gawande. “I’m proud to be Asian American. That’s never something that I want to hide,” said Sarah, a rising senior at Granite Bay High School near Sacramento. “It’s important that regardless of what college I go to, they accept me for who I am and my racial background and what I’m interested in,” she said. “So [writing about being Asian American] was never really a question for me.” Brielle “Yuuki” Lubin, a rising senior at a Los Angeles private school, wasn’t planning to mention his Jewish and Japanese heritage — and now is confused over whether he should. If he doesn’t talk about being Asian, will admissions officers look at his last name and assume he is French? Are they going to expect more complex personal statements now? Can he express who he is in totality — an Asian, Jewish, transgender man — or will it be too much? Brielle had planned to discuss how movies helped him discover his own definition of masculinity. His essay explains how, as a child, he saw himself in certain male characters in movies such as “The Boxtrolls” and “Kubo and the Two Strings.” After his middle school years, when he struggled to accept his LGBTQ+ identity, it was movies that saved him again. Indie movies he watched in high school that featured gay male characters “made me realize being trans is OK. ... I can just be who I am and still be a man,” he said. His essay concludes with a discussion about how his experiences as an aspiring filmmaker have motivated him to bring more transgender characters to the screen. As he waits for new guidance from counselors, Brielle plans to keep the essay as is. Brielle’s classmate, Nathalie Leung, had been nervous that her Chinese background could be held against her in admissions decisions but the ruling has made her feel “more confident” that she can write about how her heritage has shaped her values and thinking. Olivia, of Danville, was confused by Roberts’ opinion — banning the consideration of race, yet not prohibiting students to write about it. Now the rising junior is uncertain about her topic. She was going to explain how she covered high school racism for her school paper — students shouting a racial slur at a rival’s basketball game, a swastika found in the school gymnasium — as a mixed-race journalist who is Indian and white. She thought it would give her an edge at USC, Pomona, Georgetown and other colleges she’s targeting. “Now that whole idea is kind of in jeopardy,” she said. “Will it make admissions officers less willing to admit me?” Advice by college students of color Simya Smith, who graduated from Dorsey High School in June and will attend Stanford in the fall, said she wrote about the loss of her father when she was 9 years old, her ensuing depression and her realization that she needed to reembrace life and pursue opportunities, something that her father would have wanted for her. “I found this love for education because something that really helps with depression is being able to find hobbies or things that bring you joy,” she said. She also got involved in promoting restorative justice and other social justice activities. Even under the new legal landscape, “my personal statement would have stayed the same, just because, personally, it’s the most significant event in my life, and that really is what shaped me.” Her advice to rising seniors? “If there is an event that is super significant in their life, but it doesn’t necessarily [home] in on their racial experiences, I think that they should still talk about that. Because your story is your story. And everyone’s is very different.” Nani Ozelotzin-Hernandez spotlighted in her essays the struggle of being an Indigenous woman often deprived of resources or opportunities of more privileged students. She applied to 12 schools — she was accepted to about half of them — and decided to attend the nursing program at Seattle University. Nani said that her small public charter school — Anahuacalmecac International University Preparatory of North America, located in El Sereno — had a graduating class of about 13 and provided family-like emotional and cultural support. But the school did not have the resources to offer broad higher-level coursework or deep and consistent guidance with the college-application process. She alluded to this situation in her essays. “I just struggled a lot finding classes that would challenge me,” Nani said. “For me and my peers, when we were writing the essay, we really tried to spotlight how we overcame not having enough resources.” Quincy Diallo, a rising junior at Yale studying English and African American studies, wrote his personal statement about experiencing medical discrimination as a Black man. After an accident in gym class left Diallo with a concussion, he entered his freshman year at Campbell Hall, a private school in Studio City, unable to concentrate. His grades slipped for months as he struggled to keep up with schoolwork. Diallo experienced concussion symptoms. Nurses and doctors thought he was exaggerating when he insisted something was wrong. Teachers and administrators mistook his inability to focus in class as him being distracted. As people refused to take his concerns seriously, he wrote, his interest in becoming a doctor grew and cemented a commitment to a future combating medical discrimination. “The crux of the essay was that people writing me off actually helped me become more self-assured, standing on what I believe in,” he said. “How I took that negative and turned it into a positive.” Diallo aimed for universities such as Yale, Duke and Princeton and wanted to “give them exactly who I am on a piece of paper and they’ll take it or leave it.” He would still write the same essay today. Being barred from doing so, he said, would have prevented him from sharing his full complexity. “It would’ve stripped a lot of my humanity out of my writing,” he said. “It breaks my heart for kids who are going to be dealing with that.” Court ruling raises stakes on college essay BRIELLE “YUUKI” LUBIN, a rising senior in L.A., ponders whether he should express his full identity — Asian, Jewish and transgender — in his college essay after the Supreme Court’s affirmative action ruling. Christina House Los Angeles Times IN HER essay, Nani Ozelotzin-Hernandez shared her struggles of being an Indigenous woman with fewer of the resources afforded to more privileged students. Myung J. Chun Los Angeles Times [Essays, from A1]

LATIMES.COM S SUNDAY, JULY 9, 2023 A17 BUSINESS Don’t make any big decisions right away “The first move that you need to do is honestly decompress and not make any sudden decisions,” said Cinneah El-Amin, the founder of the wealth building and career advice platform Flynanced. She got laid off from her full-time corporate job in February. It’s easy to panic and decide everything about your life has to change immediately. But in the aftermath of any major life change — a layoff, a death, a divorce, a new baby — it’s wise to avoid major decision-making. Your first day of unemployment should not be the day you put your house on the market, cash out your retirement and investment accounts or cancel your insurance policies. Negotiate your severance Like a job offer, a severance payment may be open to some negotiation. ElAmin recently posted a video on her Instagram account about how she successfully negotiated an additional $20,000 with the help of an employment attorney. You can also negotiate things such as getting a lump-sum payout versus installments, changing your last day of work (for instance, moving it back long enough to get you another month of health insurance) and modifying other contract clauses. El-Amin said she contacted a few law firms until she got a free consultation to determine whether she had grounds to negotiate. In addition to the extra severance, she ensured that she’d be able to talk about being laid off on her social media platforms. One thing you don’t need to negotiate in California: a noncompete agreement, which isn’t enforceable in the state. The California Civil Rights Department has more information on what your employer can and can’t ask you to agree to. Do an audit of your spending To know how long your severance, savings and unemployment benefits will last, you need to know how much you spend every month on necessities. (The state has a calculator to estimate your unemployment benefits. The weekly maximum in California is $450.) Having a personal budget would make it easier to audit your spending. If you haven’t made one before, I write a (free!) personal finance newsletter called Totally Worth It where I teach you how to make and maintain a plan for your spending and savings. If starting a budgeting journey sounds too daunting right now, there is a shortcut. Open your banking website and download your last few months of credit card statements. Start by calculating the bare minimum amount you need to keep living your life: your rent or mortgage payments, a pared-back grocery budget, transportation costs, debt payments, medical expenses and pet and child-care fees. Then, scrutinize what you’re paying for. Yes, you need phone and internet access, but do you really need unlimited Wi-Fi? Does your paid-off car still need comprehensive insurance coverage? Can you buy your own internet modem and return the cruddy one you’re paying $10 a month for? Next, go to quality-of-life expenses such as subscriptions, streaming services, your gym membership and restaurant meals. Take this opportunity to really do a life audit, Ginty said. You’ll probably find some easy things to cross off. There might also be some things you’ve been paying for on autopilot that you could live without, at least for now. You probably don’t have to cancel every subscription service — you’re unemployed, not a monk; you can still watch TV — but do you need all of them? Remember, this is all just temporary until you find a new job. You can rejoin Equinox once you’re gainfully employed again. But you might find that you don’t miss it. Once you’ve got that basic unemployment budget in mind, you can calculate how long your money will last. Negotiate with anyone billing you You are about to have enough free time to tangle with customer service. Every bill that reaches your mailbox or inbox is up for negotiation. Call your credit card companies and ask if you’re eligible for a lower rate. Call your cable, phone and internet providers and ask to speak to the cancellation team. Tell them you’ll cancel or switch to a competitor unless they can offer you a better rate. Be strategic with your final paycheck If you’ll still be getting at least one regular paycheck before your last day of work, make the most of those incoming dollars, El-Amin said. You can reduce your 401(k) contributions or other withholdings to squeeze a little more juice. (If you live with a partner or family member, they might want to do the same.) Start making budget cuts and putting more in savings now. Evaluate insurance and other benefits Explore your options if your employer will no longer cover all or part of your health insurance premiums. You’re probably eligible to keep your current coverage through COBRA, though it can be pricey and is only temporary. But losing your job is considered a “qualifying life event,” meaning you can sign up for a different plan even though the annual open enrollment period has ended. The first place to look is Covered California, which sells policies for people not covered by employer plans. Depending on your household income, you may qualify for large discounts on your premiums. And if your spouse is eligible to get health insurance at work, you can join that policy, though you might not be able to change its key features (for instance, if your partner uses an HMO through their employer’s plan, you probably wouldn’t be able to switch to the PPO). Definitely don’t cancel all your other insurance policies. As with your other bills, it’s smart to evaluate them and decide whether you need the coverage you’re paying for. For example, this might seem like a good time to save a few bucks by getting rid of your renter’s policy, but Murphy’s Law is just waiting to kick you when you’re down. Ginty said post-layoff seems to be when her clients are suddenly faced with emergency room visits, vet bills and car repairs. Another insurance issue she sees: “A lot of people assume life insurance comes with them” when they lose their job. It doesn’t. If you have dependents who would rely on that money, start shopping for another policy ASAP. Consider ways to make a little extra In California, you can earn a small amount of money in wages without affecting your unemployment insurance benefits; the limit is $25 per week if your weekly unemployment benefit is $100 or less, or 25% of your benefit if you get more than $100 per week. If you earn wages above that threshold, that amount is subtracted from your weekly check. California’s Employment Development Department lists what qualifies as wages, which includes payment for work performed, tips, residual pay, self-employment income and severance. So-called “passive income” is not considered wages. You could exploresomething like renting out a spare room in your house or renting out your car, pool, garage space or whatever else on various “Uber but for XYZ” apps. You could also sell things, including flipping items you bought at below-market prices on Facebook Marketplace or Craigslist. At minimum, put whatever cash you can into a high-yield savings account. If you aren’t earning at least 4%, it’s time to open a new account. Brainstorm cheap things to do Going on a job hunt doesn’t mean you aren’t allowed to have fun. But if you were a regular at bottomless mimosa brunch and your local massage place when you were employed, you might want to think about how you can keep socializing and selfcare on your agenda without blowing your rent money. El-Amin said it’s important to build a buffer into your new budget: You might not be able to go out to eat as often, but a date night with your partner or an outing with your kids can still be a priority. Your friends will be OK switching to game nights with frozen pizza and grocery store wine. This is the perfect time to tackle your tower of to-read books. Wouldn’t learning to make your favorite smoothie at home be a fun thing to do? “Time to nourish and move your body, time with family and friends, that’s kind of the gift of being laid off,” El-Amin said. Think deeply about what comes next It’s easy to go from working to diving into a full-time hunt for a similar job, said El-Amin. But let this be a reset. Did you like your job? Do you have other skills you’d like to leverage in your next position? If you can stretch your budget and go a few months without working, do you want to explore starting your own business or creative endeavor? After being laid off, “I finally had as much time as I needed to find more ways to make more money,” El-Amin said. “I didn’t have to be beholden to the 15-20 hours I allowed myself to have outside of my 40-hour workweek.” Getting laid off is hard. But with smart financial planning, you can feel prepared to handle whatever life throws at you next. Los Angeles Times illustration; Apple Laid off? Make these money moves right now Have you been laid off? ¶ Take a deep breath, and take heart. ¶ Layoffs happen to almost everyone at some point, said Barbara Ginty, a certified financial planner and host of the podcast “Future Rich.” And despite all the news about layoffs, the economy and labor market are still strong overall. ¶ Unemployment remains an unusually low 3.7% nationally (though it’s 4.5% in California), according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Since there is always some churn in the job world, it’s virtually impossible for unemployment to reach zero. Unemployment below 5% is generally considered full employment. ¶ Though that might not seem comforting, it does mean you can expect to find a job faster than if unemployment were higher. Still, job hunts are stressful and time-consuming, and you want to be smart with your money. ¶ Here’s what to do now. BY JESSICA ROY In the last few weeks, Darren Cronian has noticed a trend: A listing for a fully remote position will go up on a job board, drawing thousands upon thousands of applications. Within 48 to 72 hours, it will be gone. “That’s because of the sheer demand for that job,” said Cronian, who coaches job seekers on how to land a remote gig. “From a company perspective, they’re thinking, ‘Oh, my God. We’ve got like 10,000 applications. There’s no way we can deal with all of those.’ ” The share of fully work-from-home jobs has dwindled as companies that went remote during the pandemic increasingly request staff return to in-person work as the hot job market of the last couple of years cools. But going back to the commute, cubicles and fluorescent lighting isn’t always popular. According to data from LinkedIn, jobs advertising full-time remote work still attracted almost half of all applications on the platform in May, even though those jobs made up only around 11% of all listings. By removing geographic barriers, remote jobs widen the applicant pool. “What people don’t realize is that you’re not just up against people locally. You’re up against people all over the country, or the world,” Cronian said. “The competition is definitely there, and it’s huge.” This harsh supply-anddemand imbalance has become the new reality for hundreds of thousands of job seekers who — for caregiving, lifestyle or health reasons — are determined to land a job that allows them the freedom and flexibility to work entirely remotely. In a competitive market where one can send out hundreds of applications and get radio silence in reply, many are turning to self-styled remote job coaches like Cronian for guidance and support. Such services don’t come cheap: Coaching sessions can run clients around $300 a pop, while months-long programs can cost upward of $3,000. Even with a coach, landing a WFH gig isn’t guaranteed. Cronian said his success rate has gone down as the competition has intensified. “Towards the end of the pandemic about 80% of my clients were getting a job,” he said. “But now I would say it’s about 60%, and people are getting incredibly frustrated.” Cronian, who’s traveling in Taiwan, got into the coaching business after quitting his IT job of 24 years in 2015 to see more of the world. Soon he began fielding questions from family and friends on how they might be able to do the same. He later started a website and an email newsletter, which took off as COVID-19 hit and remote work went mainstream. Over the last year this side hustle evolved into one-onone coaching. His business has since ramped up as companies tighten the screws on return-to-office mandates. Kate Smith, another remote career coach, traded the daily office grind for the digital nomad life in 2015, long before the pandemic hit. Smith booked a one-way ticket to Prague after getting laid off from her job as a project manager at a web design company. There, she was able to snag a remote job in marketing after much trial and error. She picked up her first coaching client in 2017 after blogging and launching an email newsletter, and she now offers one-on-one coaching, group sessions and free workshops. Though there are a greater number of work-fromhome opportunities now than before the pandemic, these days it can feel even more challenging to land one. “Before, not a lot of people were familiar with remote work. But now everybody is, so the competition is really high,” she said. In some ways, career coaching for remote work isn’t much different from providing guidance to land a more traditional office job. Many of the same rules apply: tailor your resume and cover letter for each position, shoot for quality applications over quantity, learn how to effectively communicate your value as an employee. A big part of the task is helping job seekers figure out how to truly stand out. Cronian encourages them to try things that are a bit unorthodox — whatever will grab the hiring manager’s attention. Although helping someone land their dream WFH job can be rewarding, it’s a tricky business. People may be unemployed or miserable in their current jobs, remote job coach Jordan Carroll said, and are often looking for a silver bullet. “I’ve really tried to focus on people who would consider themselves a high performer. I don’t want to work with someone who feels like they’re spending their last dollar with me,” he said. “I can’t guarantee things for people. They have to do the work.” Constantz writes for Bloomberg. Seeking a remote job? For $3,000, a coach can help By Jo Constantz DANNY CROUCH works from home in Virginia. The share of work-from-home jobs has been dwindling. Andrew Caballero-Reynolds AFP/Getty Images

A18 SUNDAY, JULY 9, 2023 WST LATIMES.COM Dear Liz: Our elderly father took out a reverse mortgage in 2010 with the goal of getting a $1,000 monthly income stream. Fast-forward to today: Dad has passed away, and our mom is still alive at 97. The payback amount of the mortgage has ballooned to $360,000. Because it’s an adjustable-rate mortgage, the rate is increasing with inflation. None of us children have enough cash to pay off the reverse mortgage, so it will continue to go up stratospherically each and every month. The entire balance will become due if our mom leaves her home or passes away. Do you have any suggestions? Answer: Reverse mortgages allow borrowers to tap their equity without having to make payments while they remain in the home. But the amounts they borrow accrue interest, and as you’ve seen, the debt can grow substantially over time. If your mother dies or moves out, the lender will demand payment within 30 days. It may be possible to extend the deadline for up to six months, according to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. If you don’t have the cash to pay off the loan, you could try to get a mortgage or sell the home to pay the debt. If you sell it, you would need to clear enough to pay off the debt or at least get 95% of the home’s appraised value. Another option — especially if there’s little or no equity left — is to simply turn the house over to the lender. You won’t be on the hook if the mortgage balance exceeds what the home is worth. How IRS knows about home sales Dear Liz: How does the IRS know you sold your house? If you sell and buy another home, must you report it? Most folks I know sell, then buy a more expensive house. Seems like lots of moving parts for the parties, including the IRS, to have to track. Answer: Not really. The title company or attorney handling the closing on a property sale typically generates a Form 1099 with the sales price of the home. The seller gets a copy, and so does the Internal Revenue Service. Sellers who “forget” to account for the proceeds on their tax returns will soon get a reminder from the IRS, which typically just tacks the sale amount onto the sellers’ income and demands a cut, along with penalties and interest. How to protect son’s trust from spouse? Dear Liz: I liked your answer to the person who wanted to ensure a son from a prior marriage got an inheritance. You mentioned creating a trust so the surviving spouse can get income from the assets but then the son would inherit when that spouse dies. However, what’s to prevent the surviving spouse from using up all the funds so that the son is left with nothing after all? Answer: These trusts typically put restrictions on how much the surviving spouse is able to access and in what circumstances. If the surviving spouse is the sole trustee, of course, the temptation to ignore the rules could be great. Alternatively, the ultimate inheritor or a third party can be named as trustee or co-trustee. But there’s no getting around the fact that the trusts create a conflict between the surviving spouse and the ultimate inheritor. The spouse typically wants as much income as possible from the trust, while the inheritor wants the trust to be left alone to grow. Another issue is taxes. Assets in the trust get a step-up in tax basis when the first spouse dies, but not when the surviving spouse dies. Often, the best way to make sure someone gets an inheritance is to make an outright bequest rather than putting the money in a trust. If a surviving spouse needs income from the assets to make ends meet, though, a trust with a responsible trustee can help ensure the ultimate inheritor gets the inheritance that was intended. An experienced estate planning attorney can help you sort through the available options and make the best plan. Liz Weston, Certified Financial Planner, is a personal finance columnist for NerdWallet. Questions may be sent to her at 3940 Laurel Canyon, No. 238, Studio City, CA 91604, or through asklizweston.com. MONEY TALK How to handle crushing debt of reverse mortgage By Liz Weston Three federal agencies are reviewing potentially predatory practices in medical payment products such as credit cards and installment loans patients use to pay for healthcare. The U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Department of Health and Human Services and Treasury Department sent a request for information Friday to learn more about the products and whether they can harm consumers with features such as exorbitant deferred interest fees. “Financial firms are partnering with healthcare players to push products that can drive patients deep into debt,” bureau Director Rohit Chopra said in a statement. The agencies didn’t single out banks or others in the industry. The bureau had said that the top providers of medical credit cards include CareCredit, a subsidiary of Synchrony Financial; Wells Fargo, which offers its “Health Advantage” card; and Comenity, a subsidiary of Bread Financial Holdings. “CareCredit’s convenient and transparent financing options make health and wellness care more affordable and expand consumers’ access to things like dental work, pet care or audiology,” a spokesperson said in a statement. “Our financing offers have been around for decades, are well understood by consumers, and have saved our cardholders billions of dollars in interest-free financing over the years.” Wells Fargo’s market share in the business is less than 1%, a representative for the San Francisco-based bank said in a statement. “We review an applicant’s ability to repay before approving any application,” the representative said. “All rates and terms are disclosed at application, and the maximum interest rate a customer will ever pay is 12.99%. Most of our customers pay off their balances without paying any interest.” A representative for Bread Financial didn’t respond to a request for comment. The products were once primarily used to pay for medical treatments that insurance didn’t cover, but are now more widely used to manage debt, even when insurers cover the bill, according to the statement. Some include deferredinterest offers, which could harm a consumer’s credit if payments are missed, the agencies said. Medical debt in the U.S. has ballooned in recent years and is a leading source of consumer credit. After the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau said last year that it would examine the effects of such debt on consumer credit, the main credit-reporting companies — TransUnion, Equifax and Experian — removed more than 70% of existing medical-debt entries from consumers’ credit reports. In Friday’s statement, the agencies said they are requesting public input on the payment-product market, patient experiences with the products, billing issues and healthcare provider incentives. Smith writes for Bloomberg. PERSONAL FINANCE Medical credit cards, loans under U.S. scrutiny By Paige Smith facebook.com/latimes twitter.com/latimes “In America, it sounds corny, but fairness is something we kind of expect,” Biden said. “And I don’t know anybody who likes to be viewed as having been played for a sucker.” Biden invited Cory Dowd to tell his story at the White House event to spotlight the initiative. Dowd in 2019 purchased a high-deductible healthcare plan before he started graduate school and was able to get on a student health plan. But just weeks before he started school, he had to have emergency surgery. President Biden on Friday rolled out a new set of initiatives to reduce healthcare costs: a crackdown on scam insurance plans, new guidance to prevent surprise medical bills and an effort to reduce medical debt tied to credit cards. Biden is building on previous initiatives to limit healthcare costs, with the Department of Health and Human Services releasing new estimates showing 18.7 million older adults and other Medicare beneficiaries will save an estimated $400 a year in prescription drug costs in 2025 because of the president placing a cap on out-of-pocket spending as part of last year’s Inflation Reduction Act. Gearing up for his 2024 reelection campaign as inflation remains a dominant concern for voters, the Democratic president has emphasized his policies to help families manage their expenses, as well as a spate of government incentives to encourage private-sector development of electric vehicles, clean energy and advanced computer chips. Republican lawmakers have criticized Biden’s policies by saying they have spurred higher prices that hurt the well-being of families. Biden said his administration was taking aim at what he called “junk” insurance plans, such as shortterm policies that can deny basic coverage as people transition between employers and still need temporary health care coverage. Months later, the hospital told him his insurer would cover only a small portion of his bill and that he would have to pay more than $37,000 out of pocket. “For me, there was both a financial and emotional cost,” Dowd said. The president also announced new guidance on medical billing stemming from 2020’s No Surprises Act. The guidance would limit the ability of insurers that contract with hospitals to claim provided care was not in network and have customers pay more money. Health plans also would need to disclose facility fees that are increasingly charged to patients and can surface as an unexpected cost in a medical bill. “Folks, that’s not health insurance,” Biden said. “That’s a scam.” The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and Treasury Department also are seeking information on third-party credit cards and loans that are specifically used to pay for healthcare. The higher costs and interest charges can discourage people from seeking care. Biden’s new push to cut health costs President seeks to aid families with expenses as inflation dogs his 2024 reelection bid. associated press PRESIDENT BIDEN arrives for his healthcare speech with Cory Dowd, who had a high-deductible plan that covered only a small part of his emergency surgery. 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LATIMES.COM/OPINION S SUNDAY, JULY 9, 2023 A19 HOW TO WRITE TO US Please send letters to [email protected]. For submission guidelines, see latimes.com/letters or call 1-800-LA TIMES, ext. 74511. LETTERS ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- OPINION EDITORIAL ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Executive Chairman Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong News: Executive Editor Kevin Merida • Senior Vice President, Content Business Strategy Julia Turner • Managing Editors Shani O. Hilton, Sara Yasin • Editor at Large Scott Kraft • Deputy Managing Editors Hector Becerra, Shelby Grad, Sharon Matthews, Christian Stone • Creative Director Amy King • Assistant Managing Editors John Canalis, Steve Clow, Angel Jennings, Kimbriell Kelly, Iliana Limón Romero, Samantha Melbourneweaver, Ben Muessig, Craig Nakano, B.J. Terhune • General Manager, Food Laurie Ochoa • General Manager, Latino Initiatives Angel Rodriguez • Opinion: Editorial Page Editor Terry Tang • Deputy Editorial Page Editor Mariel Garza • Business: President and Chief Operating Officer Chris Argentieri • Chief Human Resources Officer Nancy V. Antoniou • Chief of Staff; Head of Strategy and Revenue Anna Magzanyan • Chief Information Officer Ghalib Kassam • General Counsel Jeff Glasser • V.P., Communications Hillary Manning FOUNDED DECEMBER 4, 1881 A Publication Let our burned giants recover Re “We’ve got it all wrong about sequoias and wildfire,” Opinion, July 5 I oppose the falsely premised Save Our Sequoias Act logging bill, and I oppose the U.S. Forest Service’s circumvention of environmental laws and public participation in order for the agency to conduct a commercial logging project in the Nelder Grove of giant sequoias near Yosemite. I have surveyed post-fire recovery in giant sequoia groves since the late 1990s. My recent surveys in the Freeman Creek Grove after the September 2020 highseverity Castle fire discovered an average of 46 sequoia seedlings about 2 feet tall and fewer than a dozen of other pine and fir species in three plots. If left alone, sequoias can recover after high-severity fires. Ara Marderosian Weldon, Calif. The writer was the founding executive director of Sequoia ForestKeeper. :: Last week I documented thousands of giant sequoia seedlings and saplings while hiking through parts of Sequoia National Park, Sequoia National Monument and Sierra National Forest that burned intensely during recent wildfires. The juxtaposition of brilliant new greens and charcoal-blacks is at once stunning and surprising to the eye. I noticed them in the snow late last year; now they are in full swing. Let’s give the natural world time, rather than rushing in for removal and replanting that will likely wreck what’s already present: the next generation of giants, readying themselves. Maya Khosla Rohnert Park, Calif. :: One only needs to know that the Forest Service is within the U.S. Department of Agriculture to realize why they view trees as a crop to be sold to logging companies rather than a necessary part of nature. Perhaps the Forest Service should be moved into the Department of the Interior, where the National Park Service is. Our forests might be better cared for then. At least the science explained in this article should be paid attention to. Chris Gilbert Berkeley Railing against homelessness Re “9th Circuit conservatives blast homelessness ruling,” July 7 The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling allowing homeless individuals to sit, lie or sleep on public property if not enough housing is available is controversial. But in actuality, there isn’t enough housing for individuals living in cities across the western U.S., so where are these individuals supposed to sleep? In Los Angeles, we have been asking the same question since Martin vs. Boise was decided in 2018. The conservative judges who criticize the 9th Circuit’s rulings on homelessness should be asking instead, “Why not provide more low-income permanent housing?” Instead of building boutique hotels, build lowincome housing. Instead of providing only 10% lowincome units in a new development, provide 50% or 100%. Why allow thousands of renters to be evicted with very little opportunity to find alternate affordable housing? Why does an individual holding a housing voucher have such a hard time finding a landlord who will rent to them? The esteemed conservative judges need to look at the root causes of homelessness instead of resorting to knee-jerk reactions that do not provide solutions. Jane Demian Los Angeles :: Thanks to the progressives who have managed to destroy much of L.A. What happened to personal responsibility? Cars get parking tickets or towed away when people leave a vehicle where it does not belong. Truly homeless people should be required to ask for help, get temporary assistance and be directed to a long-term solution. That might be a cheaper area to go to and job assistance. If mentally challenged, a requirement for treatment has to be accepted. Residents who pay rent or a mortgage should be able to live in peace. Taxpayers fund the transit system but are afraid to use it. Voters keep the same “compassionate” folks who have enabled this crisis in power. It is time to get adults to replace them. I am glad to have moved up the coast from Los Angeles. I hope our people stay sensible. Benedict Lucchese Camarillo :: It seems that the left and the right are unified on one basic philosophy: Some problems are just going to be with us forever, so just make the best of it. No sense trying to regulate them. Of course, it’s homelessness that the left sees this way, while the right sees the gun problem that way. But at least we’re using the same logic. Progress? R.C. Price San Clemente A STAND of giant sequoias burned in the 2020 Castle fire is seen on May 25 in Sequoia Crest, Calif. Gary Coronado Los Angeles Times F rom the outside, the rows of tileroof houses in a new community in Menifee don’t look much different from those in other subdivisions cropping up in this fast-growing city in Riverside County. But on the inside, these all-electric homes are revolutionary, offering a glimpse of the zero-emission future we should be hurtling toward to fight climate change and adapt to its effects. All the houses in the Durango and Oak Shade at Shadow Mountain communities, two adjacent KB Home subdivisions I visited in May for an opening event, were built without natural gas hookups or appliances. Each of the 219 homes comes with rooftop solar panels, heat pumps for heating and cooling, induction cooktops and other energy-efficient electric appliances, and a smart electrical panel that manages energy use. In the garage is a battery storage system that can power the home during an outage and in the evenings when the cost of electricity from the grid is higher. They’ll also soon be connected to a shared community battery storage facility the size of a shipping container that’s a backbone of a system known as a microgrid. It will allow residents to disconnect from the electrical grid during an outage, and use the backup power to keep their lights on for a few days. I expected these homes to come with a premium price tag, given their futuristic amenities. But they start around $520,000, and a 2,900-square foot, four-bedroom, twobath Spanish-style home recently sold for about $590,000. Buyers aren’t paying extra for technology that would otherwise cost $30,000, according to the home builder, because the project was subsidized by a $6.65- million U.S. Department of Energy grant. The homes have other energy efficiency features, such as spray foam insulation under the roof to help cool the attic and the living space below. The houses are essentially “like a Yeti cooler,” as one official with SunPower, the company that provided their solar and battery storage systems, told me. That’s life changing in this corner of Riverside County where summer days often exceed 100 degrees and utility bills climb painfully high. After spending a few hours checking out the homes’ energy-smart features and listening to company and government officials talk up their climate-friendliness and resilience, I was almost envious. The people moving into these houses are living in a world that, for now, remains a distant reality for most Californians for whom a fossil fuel-free home is still very much a pipe dream. And it highlighted how much work there is yet to do by state officials to ensure all Californians start to benefit from home electrification as that need becomes increasingly obvious in a world altered by climate change. Underscoring that feeling for me was a remark by a California Energy Commission official in attendance, who noted that new construction accounts for less than 1% of the state’s housing stock in any given year. California has 14 million homes and builds only about 110,000 new housing units a year. So even if all new homes are built with at least one electric heat pump, as the Energy Commission expects, that would account for only about 8% of all homes by 2030, 14% by 2040, and 20% by 2050. That’s not anywhere near fast enough to slash climatewarming emissions, which means that most of this transition will have to happen by replacing appliances in existing homes. For now, California remains heavily dependent on fossil fuels in daily life, especially the methane gas that powers the majority of home appliances. For most of us, the transition to zero-emission electric living will be far more complicated, messy and slow than buying a new home. The furnaces, stoves, clothes dryers and water heaters in our homes and businesses may not seem like big polluters individually, but they all add up to a lot. Buildings are one of the biggest emissions sources in California, responsible for about 25% of its climate pollution. But California still lacks the kind of straightforward zero-emission targets for buildings that it has already adopted for other major pollution sources such as electricity generation and new cars. Because home appliances like furnaces and water heaters can last 15 years or longer, scaling up action over the next few years is critical if we are to get on a path to zero out greenhouse gas emissions by midcentury and avert catastrophic levels of climate change. A recent report by Rewiring America, an electrification-focused nonprofit organization, found that to meet those climate targets the U.S. has to dramatically increase the pace of replacing fossil-fueled appliances and cars over the next three years. That would mean purchasing about 14 million more electric heat pumps, water heaters, stoves, rooftop solar systems and electric vehicles above what’s expected. Although California has some laudable goals, including Gov. Gavin Newsom’s target of installing 6 million heat pumps by 2030, state officials acknowledge that much greater numbers will be needed to put California on track to achieving a carbon-neutral economy by 2045. State air quality regulators plan to end the sale of new gas-fueled furnaces and water heaters by 2030, and the Inflation Reduction Act and its array of consumer rebate and incentive programs should help bring down the cost of replacing them with electric heat pump models. But state leaders need to establish clear and ambitious targets for home electrification, while pursuing creative solutions such as establishing a neighborhood decarbonization program to retrofit entire low-income communities with electric appliances and infrastructure at the same time. There are reasons for optimism, including the home construction industry’s embrace of electric technology. Heat pumps are doing particularly well, now accounting for more than 50% of the market in new construction. But I’ve also encountered troubling stories that make me really concerned about the slow and uneven pace of change. I’ve heard from homeowners struggling to turn their houses all-electric and their travails through a thicket of contractor resistance, government red tape and other obstacles. I’ve spoken to community leaders who fear that low-income tenants and other disadvantaged groups will end up shouldering most of the burdens of electrification, such as higher utility bills and rent increases landlords are likely to impose to pay for electrical upgrades. I’ve covered legal setbacks and fossil fuel industry resistance operations that are hindering the transition to healthier, gas-free homes. At my family’s 1950s-era tract house, I want to replace the gas water heater, furnace, dryer and stove with heat pump and induction models as soon as we can afford to. But I know that will be a long, expensive journey with no shortage of complications — and electrical work. For now, our entry point is a $100 countertop induction cooktop we’ve started to use instead of our gas burners. It boils water faster and doesn’t pollute the air, but draws so much electricity that we can’t turn on other kitchen appliances at the same time or it overloads the circuit. Whether we rent or own or have a new or historic home, everyone should be able to live in an efficient, non-polluting and climate-ready dwelling even if it wasn’t purpose-built for an all-electric world like the new construction in Menifee. None of us should have to wait decades for that to be our reality too. — Tony Barboza, a member of the editorial board All-electric homes kick fossil fuels to the curb A MODEL of one of 219 units equipped with solar panels and battery storage. Photographs by Tony Barboza Los Angeles Times JD GILL of Schneider Electric shows off a smart electrical panel. PERSONAL NOTE Every Californian should be able to live in an efficient and non-polluting house like those in a new community in Menifee

A20 SUNDAY, JULY 9, 2023 S LATIMES.COM OP-ED T he state-by-state MAGA takeover of the Republican Party machinery, underway since 2021, will make it easier for the “next Trump” to emerge. But what could actually propel such a figure into the White House is the transformation of the GOP base. The increasingly reactionary views of grassroots Republicans virtually guarantee that the movement will maintain its dominant influence on the party for the foreseeable future. A yard sign I saw in rural Pennsylvania during the 2020 presidential campaign tells the story. Planted in front of a house was a homemade poster with the words “RONALD REAGAN IS A LOSER.” President Reagan’s face was crossed out with an X, with Donald Trump’s smiling face next to it. Presumably this was a Trump supporter, but why attack Reagan? The 40th president was beloved by Republicans, not on the ballot, long dead and certainly not a threat to Trump. The last assumption is where I was wrong. Trump fixated on his predecessors, and so have his supporters. “You go around Pennsylvania and you see Trump signs everywhere,” he once tweeted, quoting a supporter. ”The Donald Trump situation is bigger than the Reagan Revolution. Donald Trump has inspired us.” On another occasion: “94% Approval Rating in the Republican Party, an all time high. Ronald Reagan was 87%. Thank you!” And again: “Wow, highest Poll Numbers in the history of the Republican Party. That includes Honest Abe Lincoln and Ronald Reagan. There must be something wrong, please recheck that poll!” To be seen as powerful enough to restore the country to what it was, Trump requires that others see him as equal to, or greater than, those who came before him. I used to think such comparisons were a farcical insecurity. Now I believe Donald Trump was understating the comparison. In truth, there is no comparison. He created a cult, unlike any of his predecessors, inspiring throngs of supporters to create deeply personal — sometimes spiritual — connections with his movement. Tribalism is as strong as it’s ever been within the Republican Party. Whether or not Trump remains the tribal leader, the power of group loyalty has radicalized the base. Tens of millions of people now believe conspiracy theories that are provably false, a reality that will shape the American political system in unknowable ways for many years to come. In the summer of 2022, former Republican congressman Reid Ribble did a test. He was a founder of the Tea Party movement, though he was disillusioned by Trump. Speaking to a group of several hundred churchgoers in Wisconsin, he decided to poll the congregation. “How many of you believe the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump?” Ribble asked. A sea of hands went up. It was almost the entire room. Ribble disguised his shock by shifting to a second question, which he hoped would cause most of the hands to go down. “And how many of you believe Donald Trump is still the rightful president of the United States?” Some hands dropped, but roughly half of the room kept their arms in the air. It was worse than he had realized. “Populism — in almost all of its historical iterations — tends toward authoritarianism,” Ribble told me. The test with the congregation reminded him of another dark period in history: pre-Nazi Germany. In the 1920s, Adolf Hitler rose to power on a Big Lie. He alleged that Germany had been on the path to victory in World War I, but that its leaders surrendered prematurely. Victory was seized from Germans by corrupt politicians, Hitler said. The people had been “stabbed in the back.” In reality, the German military had been defeated and the country had no hope of winning the war; nevertheless, millions believed Hitler’s lie amid the harsh conditions of postwar life, from political gridlock to inflation. Anxious Germans welcomed the rise of a disruptor who could upend the institutions they believed had failed them, paving the way for Nazism. “He created a whole class of victims,” Ribble said, “and then he told them he would vanquish the villain.” Ribble worries Trump’s lies have created an opening for another dangerous leader to rise — or for Trump’s return to the Oval Office. The untruths have created an angry and restless electorate. In poll after poll, a majority of Republican voters say that Joe Biden was not the winner of the 2020 election. As one of the officials appointed by the Trump White House to oversee election security during his administration, I can confirm (once again) that this is entirely false. The 2020 election was the most secure in modern history. Yet such attestations have failed. In the aftermath of the Trump presidency, GOP-dominated legislatures in more than 30 states have put forward or passed measures to make it easier to interfere in the vote in the GOP’s favor, teeing up the possibility of legal war in future elections. This isn’t the only falsehood reshaping the system. An Economist/YouGov survey last year found that half of American Republicans now believe in core QAnon concepts, such as the assertion that a single group of people “secretly ... rule the world” and that “top Democrats are involved in elite child sex-trafficking rings.” GOP leaders have fanned the flames of these theories. The No. 3 House Republican, Elise Stefanik, referred to Democrats as “pedo grifters” in 2022, and the party has backed candidates who were open QAnon believers. Likewise, millions of Republicans subscribe to the Trumpfueled “great replacement” theory. The conspiracy alleges that the Democratic Party is attempting to “replace the current electorate” of white Americans with “Third World” voters, as former Fox News host Tucker Carlson claimed. A gunman cited this race-baiting theory in a manifesto before murdering nearly a dozen black Americans in a New York supermarket in 2022 — not to mention the mass shooter who killed nearly two dozen people in an El Paso Walmart in 2019, echoing Trump’s words about an “invasion” at the southern U.S. border. An AP/NORC poll found nearly half of Republicans believed in the theory. It would be willful delusion to think these conspiracy theories won’t have lasting repercussions. These highly motivated voters are hungry for MAGA candidates who share their views. And such views will not change overnight. The next Trump will have to feed this beast to win, which means keeping the base radicalized on a steady diet of conspiracy theories about existential threats to their way of life. “There’s a soft totalitarianism coming into play,” said Michael Steele, who spent two years leading the GOP as chairman of the Republican National Committee. “Modern-day conservatism meant lower taxes, less government, free markets. What we are witnessing now is a deconstruction of that. I think the rational side is losing, if not having already lost.” We’ve only seen the beginning of Trumpism. The rational faction of the GOP has been put down by the radical one and is no longer a check on the system. The disgraced expresident may return to power. Meanwhile, the conditions are right for the next Trump to emerge. Worse still for our democracy, when he or she enters the White House, the rest of democracy’s guardrails will be weaker than ever. Miles Taylor is a former chief of staff of the Department of Homeland Security in the Trump administration. This article is an adapted excerpt from his book “Blowback: A Warning to Save Democracy from the Next Trump,” which will be published July 18. The ‘next Trump’ is not the lasting threat The Republican Party is now dominated by a conspiracy-believing crowd. That’s a far deeper problem than can be solved in one election cycle By Miles Taylor THE GROUNDSWELL of supporters who lifted President Trump into office in 2016 cling to conspiracy theories and are eager for candidates who share their delusions. Melanie Mason Los Angeles Times We’ve only seen the beginning of Trumpism. The rational faction of the GOP has been put down by the radical one and is no longer a check on the system. The Supreme Court’s right-wing majority seems to be declaring war on young people. In recent days alone, the court has halted affirmative action in colleges, derailed student loan debt forgiveness and approved discrimination against LGBTQ+ couples in certain cases. The conservative justices seem hellbent on making the country a more hostile place for Gen Z and millennials, the most diverse voters in terms of race, ethnicity, gender identity and sexual orientation. Many young people are wondering whether they’ll ever be able to afford a house or a safe and comfortable life for themselves, let alone their children. They’re less inclined to have kids at all because of the high costs of living and other concerns. They see in the Supreme Court an older, mostly white and male cohort hoarding power in defiance of America’s shifting demographics. But young people shouldn’t despair. While it might be tempting to unplug from politics and renounce the democratic process, voting in elections still offers a path for change. If Democrats secure a big enough majority in Congress, they could carry out reforms of the Supreme Court — such as term limits and court expansion — to rein in the outsize power of conservatives and defeat their campaign to send the country back decades. So far, Gen Zers in particular appear to have what it takes to persevere and reverse the march backward. They’re more politically engaged than millennials were at their age, and they’ve repeatedly turned Republicans’ attacks into fury and fuel. “Young people are tired, but we are also committed to making sure we’re the last generation that has to face this,” Santiago Mayer, a 21-year-old Mexican immigrant who founded the youth voter engagement nonprofit Voters of Tomorrow, told me. Young people have reason to feel overwhelmed by the onslaught of bad news, but they’re also finding ways to avoid becoming paralyzed by apathy. Some find that activism and action is a psychological antidote to fear. “Young people don’t have a choice but to walk in the footsteps of our grandparents and our great grandparents,” says Olivia Julianna, a 20-year-old queer Latina from Texas who has raised millions of dollars for social justice using social media. “We are going to have to march in the same way they did. We’re going to have to vote and fight for our rights in the same way they did.” She’s urging people to vote in the 2024 elections, regardless of how disillusioned they feel. If more had voted in 2016, the Supreme Court wouldn’t have its stranglehold on civil rights. “I don’t think the system is broken in terms of people don’t have a voice,” she said. “It’s broken in terms of there’s so many people out there who choose not to use it. Your vote is your voice.” But it takes work to convince people to exercise their civic duties if they’ve lost faith in the system, or if they never had faith in it. First, people who are politically engaged have to venture outside of their ideological echo chambers. Rather than preaching to their choir of Twitter followers and close friends, they should be having in-person conversations with apolitical or semipolitical people. For those conversations to work, they should be rooted in understanding and empathy rather than shaming. I recently had an encounter that gave me hope that this type of persuasion may not be as difficult as we imagine it to be. I was having dinner with a fellow millennial who expressed progressive values and who told me he doesn’t vote because he gets overwhelmed following politics. I told him I empathize — if my job as a journalist didn’t require me to stay up on current events, I said, I’d want to unplug more often as well. I told him my reason for voting and staying engaged was to act on behalf of people who can’t vote, whose rights are under attack. By the end of the conversation, he said I’d changed his mind and that he was going to vote in 2024. I don’t know that he will, of course, but he seemed sincere in reconsidering his stance. I’ve found that Gen Zers — who are caricatured as dogmatic but are well-versed in navigating diverse communities and negotiating differences — are unusually skilled at these conversations. Mariah Allen, a 19-year-old Black student at Loyola Marymount University whom I’ve interviewed about Gen Z’s political leanings, has already been practicing respectbased discussions with her peers. “I’m not one for forcing opinions,” she said, adding that she prefers to ask people questions about their views if she doesn’t understand or agree. She told me the Supreme Court’s decisions are unsettling, but they won’t cause her to sit on the sidelines. She’s just as motivated, if not more so, to vote and talk with others about the importance of voting. “Complacency is not an option,” she said, reflecting on the Black activists who paved the way for her to be able to exercise her right to vote in the first place. Allen, who hopes to have kids someday, says she wants to be a part of a movement to build a country where children can grow up safely. The Supreme Court may not care about preserving the rights that matter to the youngest generation, but she does. It’s up to Gen Z and millennials to remake the government for the youth who are coming next. @jeanguerre JEAN GUERRERO AFFIRMATIVE ACTION supporters and opponents demonstrating outside the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington last month. Kent Nishimura Los Angeles Times The Supreme Court is waging war on the young The conservative justices are making the country a more hostile place for Gen Z and millennials. But elections can still change that.

LATIMES.COM S SUNDAY, JULY 9, 2023 A21 OP-ED O n Tuesday, a federal judge banned communications between large parts of the federal government and social media platforms. The case was brought by two Republican attorneys general and several individuals to allege that the government has unconstitutionally censored online speech from conservatives. The issue of government interference in what social media platforms can publish is real. But the judge’s solution — widely halting contact between the government and Big Tech — is both legally dubious and practically dangerous. It’s important that online speech, irrespective of political viewpoint, flourish without the specter of censorship. But it’s also essential that the government be allowed to engage with social media giants to address manifest harms from online content. The solution lies not in this ban, but in exposing government communications with tech to scrutiny so that both parties are held accountable for ensuring that their relationships serve the public interest. The Biden administration has appealedJudge Terry A. Doughty’s 155-page ruling, which remains in effect as the case advances. Given the vast dominion social media companies hold over public discourse, real concerns exist about authorities potentially using platforms to punish critics, invade privacy and limit political speech. Yet instead of surgically targeting the most concerning facets of government engagement with tech companies, the judge’s sweeping injunction prohibits even routine and crucial exchanges between government and platforms regarding issues such as child safety and public health. In fact, this unprecedented near-blanket ban is, in itself, a major infringement on freedom of speech. Although the order provides exceptions, including for content relating to criminal conduct and national security, those loopholes are too narrow. They will not allow government officials to alert social media companies when, for example, false cures for a raging disease or other forms of dangerous quackery go viral. Nor do they allow the government a role in countering false information about election results. Tech watchdogs also fear the ruling will give online behemoths a convenient excuse to scale back costly efforts to remove disinformation, harassment and other harmful content from their platforms on the grounds that they cannot risk being seen as doing the government’s bidding. For all these reasons, it’s important that a higher court scale back Doughty’s ruling. Nonetheless, buried within the court’s opinion are some claims of government contacts with social media companies that raise genuine concerns. As the COVID-19 pandemic unfolded, officials reasonably sought to curb the spread of public health claims that contradicted factual evidence and advice from health agencies. In some cases, though, the pandemic’s unprecedented nature and fast-breaking spread led public health authorities to seek to tamp down viewpoints that should have been subject to open debate. One plaintiff claims that her posts questioning the efficacy of mask mandates for young children were censored on Facebook and other platforms at the government’s behest. We now know, as we did not in an earlier stage of the pandemic, that masking little kids offers limited benefits; efforts to quash discussions of the issue now appear wrongheaded. Others claim that government officials sought to prevent online discussion of the “lab leak” theory that tied the origins of COVID-19 to the work of a virology institute in Wuhan, China. While the theory remains unproved, efforts from the Chinese government and others to prevent it from even being assessed have impeded a clear-eyed understanding of the pandemic’s origins. The case also involves the alleged suppression of posts and accounts related to the Biden family, which may have been motivated as much by a desire to protect the president and his relatives as by disinformation concerns. The government has argued that, in many instances, its overtures took the form of flagging and conveying concerns about specific content rather than demanding its removal. But even friendly calls from officials can be read as intimidation. The Meta Oversight Board, on which I serve, is a body of independent experts commissioned by the company to review content moderation decisions. The board has documented how Facebook and Instagram privilege certain users, including government officials, by affording them more leeway for posts that would otherwise be swiftly removed for violating company standards. That such officials also enjoy special access to get problematic posts removed further illustrates how platforms can aid the powerful, often in hidden ways. Whereas ordinary users fighting online harassment or false information can feel as if they are shouting into a void, top officials more easily have their requests accommodated. While this unique influence can be used responsibly to protect citizens from online harms, it also poses risks. Most examples cited in Doughty’s decision appear to involve wellintended officials sincerely trying to prevent serious online harms. But cozy relationships between governments and social media companies cannot be presumed benign. Around the world, we’ve seen governments weaponize concepts including disinformation and fake news to silence critics. Tech platforms have sometimes been accessories to repression, focusing on keeping government interlocutors happy to prevent shutdowns and other legal troubles that could impair operations and cut profits. Before Turkey’s May election, Twitter announced it was heeding government requests to close accounts critical of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Though these demands flouted Turkey’s own constitution, Twitter owner Elon Musk said he acquiesced to keep his platform from being “throttled in its entirety.” Wikipedia, which denied similar requests, was banned in Turkey for nearly three years. The public has a right to hold government authorities and tech platforms accountable for how they collaborate. To do so, citizens need far greater visibility for these relationships. While certain social media platforms, including Meta and Google, voluntarily disclose government content requests, as Tuesday’s decision shows, dealings between officials and tech executives go beyond takedown demands for specific pieces of content. Rather than cutting off these exchanges, regulators should impose transparency requirements that force companies to reveal the breadth of communications they receive from the government and how those contacts have affected content on the platforms. Subject to limited redactions on legal or national security grounds, such disclosures would help elucidate how government is influencing social media, and vice versa. In the meantime, companies should expand their voluntary disclosures, allowing civil society and other watchdog organizations to assess whether such dealings are in the interests of users. Knowing that their encounters would be the subject of detailed public reports would help deter government officials from abusing their clout. Doughty’s overbroad injunction should be overturned on appeal. At the same time, legitimate concerns about the ties between government and tech must be addressed. The best way to do so is subjecting such interactions to the light of day. Suzanne Nossel is chief executive of PEN America and author of “Dare to Speak: Defending Free Speech for All.” Prohibiting government from talking to Big Tech is no win for free speech Instead of tackling legitimate censorship concerns, a federal court went overboard in muzzling officials By Suzanne Nossel N ever in the field of public legislation has so much been lost by so many to one law, as Churchill might’ve put it. The National Organ Transplant Act of 1984 created the framework for the organ transplant system in the United States, and nearly 40 years later, the law is responsible for millions of needless deaths and trillions of wasted dollars. The transplant act requires modification, immediately. We’ve got skin in this game. We both donated our kidneys to strangers. Ned donated to someone who turned out to be a young mother of two children in 2015, which started a chain that helped an additional two recipients. And Matt donated at Walter Reed in 2021, after which his kidney went to a Seattleite, kicking off a chain that helped seven more recipients, the last of whom was back at Walter Reed. Ned founded, and Matt now leads, an organization that represents nearly 1,000 living donors, many of whom serve as mentors to those considering becoming donors. We ensure that each donor candidate is informed and protected to the greatest possible extent. When potential donors talk to amentor, it roughly triples the likelihood they’ll donate. Still, eight years ago, when Ned donated, the number of living kidney donors was 6,000. With all the work we’ve done since, the number of living donors is still about 6,000 annually. In the United States, nearly 786,000 people suffer from end-stage kidney disease, more people than can fit in the 10 largest NFL stadiums combined. End-stage kidney disease occurs when your kidneys can no longer properly filter your blood. If that happens, you either die, get a kidney transplant or go on dialysis. And if it’s the latter, the outcome is still either dying or surviving long enough to get a transplant. More Americans die of kidney disease than breast or prostate cancer, and 1 in 3 of us is at risk. This illness is widespread, but what makes it worse is the staggering financial burden borne by everyone. The head of the National Kidney Foundation testified in March that Medicare spends an estimated $136 billion, nearly 25% of its expenditures, on the care of people with a kidney disease. Of that, $50 billion is spent on people with end-stage kidney disease, on par with the entire U.S. Marine Corps budget. Increasing transplants is the solution to save lives. And every transplanted patient taken off dialysis saves society more than $1.6 million, according to a recent paper published in the medical journal Value in Health. When people acknowledge the kidney shortage, they may think, “I’m a registered organ donor. I’m doing my part.” Unfortunately, there’s a limit to deceased donation — the numbers don’t work. To be a deceased organ donor, you have to die in a very rare manner (only about 1% of deaths occur in a donation-suitable manner). Even if we maximized our registered organ-donation rate from 60% at present to 100%, we would increase the available deceased-donated kidneys only by about 12,000, compared with the 100,000-plus who qualify to be on the transplant wait list right now. We’ve run out of options. The supply is nowhere near the demand for kidneys, and the gap is widening. Why not pay people to donate a kidney? The National Organ Transplant Act prohibits compensating kidney donors, which is strange in that in American society, it’s common to pay for plasma, bone marrow, hair, sperm, eggs and even surrogate pregnancies. We already pay to create and sustain life. Another way to think about this, as one bioethicist points out: “Every person in the chain of living organ donation, except one, profits.” The hospital gets paid, the doctors and nurses and staff get paid, the pharmaceutical industry gets paid and the recipient is the main beneficiary. Everyone benefits except the donors, who get reimbursed only for their expenses. The ethical concerns regarding compensation are straightforward. Nobody wants to coerce or compel those in desperate financial straits to do something they would not have done otherwise. The challenge, then — until artificial or nonhuman animal substitutes are viable options — is to devise a compensation model that doesn’t exploit donors. Compensation models have been proposed in the past. A National Institutes of Health study listed some of the possibilities, including direct payment, indirect payment, “in-kind” payment (free health insurance, for example) or expanded reimbursements. After much review, we come down strongly in support of indirect payment, specifically, a $100,000 refundable federal tax credit. The tax credit would be uniformly applied over a period of 10 years, in the amount of $10,000 a year for those who qualify and then become donors. This kind of compensation is certainly not a quick-cash scheme that would incentivize an act of desperation. Nor does it commoditize human body parts. Going forward, kidney donation might become partly opportunistic rather than mostly altruistic, as it is now. But would it be exploitative? Not at all. As prior donors, we would be ineligible for such a program. Some may question our ethical calculus, but we’d ask that those challenges be balanced against the deaths and losses certain to occur if the transplant act continues in its current form. We’d also ask that those who wish the act’s compensation rules to remain in place consider the wishes and hopes of someone, anyone, among the hundreds of thousands right now dying on dialysis. We’re confident that modifying transplant law to permit a tax credit for living kidney donation is asafe and ethical way out of our national kidney crisis. We have the ability to eliminate unnecessary loss and pain. That’s a rare opportunity — we should seize it and save as many as we can. Ned Brooks and ML Cavanaugh are living kidney donors, and Brooks is the founder of the Coalition to Modify NOTA. A PATIENT undergoes kidney dialysis at a clinic in Sacramento. Many with end-stage kidney disease die awaiting a donor. Rich Pedroncelli Associated Press A reform that could save 100,000 lives The National Organ Transplant Act should be modified to allow ethical compensation for donated kidneys, which remain in short supply By Ned Brooks and ML Cavanaugh

A22 SUNDAY, JULY 9, 2023 S LOS ANGELES TIMES JU LY 15 – 23, 2023 A POE TIC AND CINEMATIC PER FORMANCE FREE ADMISSION BY REGISTRATION AT HERMES.COM/WINGS THE BARKER HANGAR 3021 AIRPORT AVENUE SANTA MONICA, CALIFORNIA SHOWS BEGIN PROMPLTY AT 1:30 PM | 3:30 PM | 6 PM DOORS OPEN 30 MINUTES BEFORE SHOWTIMES CLOSED ON JULY 18

CALIFORNIA S UNDAY , JULY 9 , 2023 :: L ATIMES.COM/CALIFORNIA B Six people were killed early Saturday when their plane crashed near French Valley Airport in Riverside County, the second deadly crash in the area in the last four days. The Cessna 550, a turbo fan jet, crashed in a field at 4:16 a.m. near Briggs and Auld roads in Murrieta and burst into flames, according to a tweet posted by the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection and the Riverside County Fire Department. All of the people aboard were pronounced dead at the scene, authorities said. Coroner’s officials had not released the identities of the pilot or passengers as of Saturday evening. All were adults, and the plane appeared to be privately owned, Eliott Simpson of the National Transportation Safety Board said at a news conference. The flight originated at Harry Reid International Airport in Las Vegas around 3:15 a.m. and was supposed to land at French Valley Airport, Simpson said. The Federal Aviation Administration’s aircraft tracking database lists the plane as belonging to Prestige Worldwide Flights of Imperial, Calif. Agents for the company could not be reached Saturday. Investigators with the FAA and the NTSB responded to the scene. The NTSB’s media office released a statement saying the plane crashed on its second approach to the airstrip. Simpson said a marine layer began enveloping the area shortly before the plane was to land. The pilot told air traffic controllers at another airport that he would perform a “missed approach” procedure to abort the landing, which generally happens when a pilot can’t see the runway, Simpson said. Air traffic control eventually cleared the airplane for landing. With a half-mile visibility, Simpson said, the flight appeared to have just met the minimum requirement to land at the airport. The plane crashed about 500 feet short of a runway. Most of the wreck was consumed by fire. The debris field extended about 200 feet, Simpson said. Simpson said it’s too soon to tell if weather was a factor in the crash. On Saturday morning, a layer of fog hung over the field where the wreckage lay, a short distance north of the runway. Max Trescott, a Palo Alto flight instructor who publishes the Aviation News Talk podcast, said data from an FAA weather website showed that visibility three minutes before the jet’s initial approach just before 4 a.m. was one-eighth of a mile less than required for instruJet crashes into Murrieta field, leaving 6 dead Experts say pilot faced poor visibility on the trek from Vegas and tried to land twice. By Irfan Khan, Doug Smith and Jeong Park OFFICIALS inspect the scene of a plane crash near Auld and Briggs roads Saturday in Murrieta, Calif. Irfan Khan Los Angeles Times [See Crash, B4] Gov. Gavin Newsom will not challenge a California appellate court’s decision to allow parole for Leslie Van Houten, moving the former follower of Charles Manson closer to release after more than 50 years behind bars. “The governor is disappointed by the Court of Appeal’s decision to release Ms. Van Houten, but will not pursue further action as efforts to further appeal are unlikely to succeed,” Newsom’s communications director, Erin Mellon, said in a statement Friday. Newsom has on three previous occasions rejected parole for Van Houten, 73, who is serving a life sentence for helping Manson and members of the cult leader’s “family” kill Los Angeles grocer Leno LaBianca and his wife, Rosemary, in August 1969. Van Houten, who was 19 at the time of the murders, put a pillowcase over Rosemary LaBianca’s head and stabbed her more than a dozen times. The group of Manson followers smeared the couple’s blood on the walls of their Los Feliz home. Manson and his followers were sentenced to death in 1971, but the sentences were commuted to life in prison after capital punishment was ruled unconstitutional in 1972. Since then, Van Houten has been recommended for parole several times and has had more than two dozen parole hearings. Each recommendation was denied by Newsom or his predecessor, Gov. Jerry Brown. The May decision by the 2nd District Court of Appeal marked the first time a court had overruled a governor’s denial of parole to a Manson follower. Newsom’s rejection, judges for the appellate court wrote, failed “to account for the decades of therapy, self-help programming and reflection Van Houten has undergone in the past 50 years.” Newsom, who denied Van Houten’s previous parole recommendation, in 2022, would have had to petition the California Supreme Court to contest the appellate court’s decision. “More than 50 years after the Manson cult committed these brutal offenses, the victims’ families still feel the impact, as do all Californians,” Mellon said. Nancy Tetreault, an attorney for Van Houten, told Manson follower closer to release Gov. Gavin Newsom won’t challenge court ruling of parole for Leslie Van Houten, 73. By Jeremy Childs [See Van Houten, B10] Rep. Grace Napolitano, a veteran California lawmaker and the oldest member of the U.S. House of Representatives, announced that she would not seek another term in Congress during an event Saturday in her district to honor her career. The 86-year-old Norwalk Democrat has been a fixture in state, local and national politics for nearly four decades. She announced her retirement plans Saturday morning at a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the Grace F. Napolitano Nature Education Center in La Puente. “I am incredibly grateful for the people of the San Gabriel Valley and the people of Southeastern Los Angeles County for the trust they have bestowed in me to represent them for a quarter century,” she said in a statement. “I have lived in this community since I moved to Norwalk, California in 1960. I have seen our region grow with ingenuity that has built some of America’s greatest businesses, and the desire for residents to live in a kind, picturesque, and familyfriendly community that has made millions of people move here, build homes, and have their own piece of the American dream.” Democrats had been speculating about Napolitano’s plans because of her age and lackluster fundraising for the 2024 election. She reported raising less than $21,000 during the first three months of this year, according to the Federal Election Commission. Her retirement is expected to unleash an intraparty battle to represent her San Gabriel Valley congressional seat. Napolitano, a Texas native, was elected to the Norwalk City Council in 1986, the state Assembly in 1992 and Congress in 1998. She worked at Ford Motor Co. for more than two decades. Trade, immigration, transportation and the environment are among the issues she focused on while in office. She represents the Latino-majority 31st Congressional District, which is contained in Los Angeles County and includes Azusa, Baldwin Park, Covina, Napolitano says she won’t run again Congresswoman’s news draws several Democrats hoping to represent 31st District. By Seema Mehta and Hannah Wiley REP. Grace Napolitano has endorsed a state senator to succeed her. Mariam Zuhaib AP [See Napolitano, B10] 2 teenagers shot at beach party Officials take 14- and 17-year-old girls to hospitals after gunfire erupts at a gathering in Santa Monica. B3 July 4 revelers trash Tahoe Volunteers removed more than 4 tons of garbage from the lake and its shoreline after the holiday. B3 Cat got ‘lost’ in a Laguna hotel Florida couple’s feline that went missing 10 months ago is back home, thanks to a microchip. B4 Man arrested for femicide L.A. County resident is a suspect in killings in Tijuana. B7 Lottery...................... B4 Her Marie Antoinettestyle dress is elegant and intricate, with detailed lace along the edges, an angular corset and different white, pink and gold layers filling out the hoop skirt. Lifelike pink florals adorn her matching purse, fan and hairpiece, and detached sleeves cascade from her elbows, almost majestically. A complex white lace choker completes the regal look. And it’s all made out of duct tape. Karla Torres, a recent graduate of Francisco Bravo Medical Magnet High School in Boyle Heights, designed and created the 18thcentury-inspired ensemble herself — with the support of her crafty mom — for the yearly “Stuck at Prom” scholarship contest, sponsored by Duck Tape, a trademarked brand of duct tape. The Los Angeles teen was named a finalist last week and is now vying for votes to win the grand prize: a $10,000 scholarship. “We’ve never made a dress, much less out of duct tape,” Torres, 18, said. “We didn’t know how much duct tape we needed. It’s such a random thing … we were just doing it by trial and error.” In the end, the collegebound teen estimated she and her mom spent at least 120 hours, over many days, working on the gown, and used 14 rolls of tape. “Tape is so rigid and you can’t move it like fabric,” Torres said. “It was really challenging making it all come together.” But the fashion-forward teenager overcame that challenge. Of the more than 200 entries in the contest, Torres’ gown was selected among the top five designs for dresses, judged for color, quality, originality, accessories and the use of Duck brand tape, according to the company. Another top five KARLA TORRES, 18, with her entry in the “Stuck at Prom” scholarship contest. She said the Marie Antoinette-style gown was inspired by a visit to the Getty Museum — the only field trip she took in high school. Gary Coronado Los Angeles Times L.A. teen hopes duct tape dress sticks with the judges TORRES designed the ensemble with the support of her mother. “We were just doing it by trial and error.” Rocia Tejeda An 18th century-style gown could be Karla Torres’ ticket to a $10,000 scholarship. By Grace Toohey ‘Tape is so rigid and you can’t move it like fabric. It was really challenging making it all come together.’ — KARLA TORRES, a recent graduate of Francisco Bravo Medical Magnet High School in Boyle Heights [See Contest, B4]

B2 SUNDAY, JULY 9, 2023 S LATIMES.COM SAN DIEGO — Alvin, the famous research submarine that revolutionized science’s understanding of the deep oceans and took the first human explorers to the wreckage of the Titanic, has a temporary home: San Diego. The three-person submersible, which is owned by the Navy and operated by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, arrived in June and will stay until late July or early August. The institution periodically works from UC San Diego’s large marine facility in San Diego Bay as a base when it is conducting research in Southern California. Scientists from UCLA and UC Santa Barbara are currently using Alvin to do seafloor sampling in the Santa Barbara Basin, where there is a rich mix of marine life despite a constant and natural seepage of oil from the bottom. In mid-July, they’ll hand Alvin over to Lisa Levin, a marine ecologist at San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography who has taken more than 50 trips aboard Alvin. Levin specializes in studying biodiversity and ecosystems, notably methane seeps. In early August, Alvin’s engineers will spend several days conducting training exercises off San Diego, many of which are devoted to the safe operation of a sub that can descend nearly 4 miles deep. The safety of submersibles received international attention last month when Titan, a tourist-oriented vessel with an experimental hull, imploded underwater off Newfoundland, Canada, as it was trying to dive down to the Titanic. The accident killed all five passengers, and it led to disclosures that many deep-sea explorers and oceanographers were concerned about the safety of the sub’s experimental design. Bruce Strickrott, an Alvin pilot, declined Thursday to make comparisons between his submarine and Titan, which was owned by OceanGate, a tourism and expedition company. Instead, he spoke about Alvin’s rigorous design and operation standards. “About 60% of the sub is Navy-certified,” Strickrott said. “These are systems that are critical to the life and safety of the occupants — things like life support, windows, the flotation foam.” The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution added that Alvin, which has performed more than 5,100 dives, is taken out of service every five years, disassembled, inspected and reassembled, then goes through recertification by the Navy. The original Alvin was commissioned in 1964 and made a major contribution two years later when it located a 1.45 megaton hydrogen bomb that fell into the Mediterranean Sea after a B-52 bomber collided with a tanker aircraft. The bomb, sitting in water nearly 3,000 feet deep, was later recovered. In 1968, Alvin suffered a near-tragic accident. The cables holding the sub snapped while it was being lowered into the ocean off Massachusetts. Alvin tumbled into the sea and sank. Its three crew members managed to escape. Alvin was recovered in 1969 and put back into service, leading to a series of historic achievements that included the first close-up photography of the MidAtlantic Ridge, which is part of the longest mountain system on Earth. Among other things, the images helped clarify how portions of the seafloor spread. That advance was followed in 1977 by the discovery of rich and varied marine life thriving in the Galapagos Islands near warm, deep and very dark seafloor vents. Scientists realized this was made possible by chemosynthesis rather than photosynthesis, a major finding at the time. Alvin’s profile became more public in 1986 when oceanographer Robert Ballard and his colleagues climbed inside the sub and successfully rode it down to the Titanic, whose location had been found only a year earlier. The photos and videos from that dive were electrifying and helped give birth to an undersea tourism industry that included OceanGate, Titan’s owner, which suspended operations earlier this week. Robbins writes for the San Diego Union-Tribune. Famed research sub Alvin berthed in San Diego Vessel, first to take people to Titanic, will be used this summer for study and training. By Gary Robbins THE SUBMERSIBLE Alvin has made more than 5,100 dives, including one in 1986 when an oceanographer rode it down to the Titanic. Luis Lamar Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution ‘About 60% of the [Alvin] sub is Navycertified. These are systems that are critical to the life and safety of the occupants — things like life support.’ — Bruce Strickrott, pilot, on the high standards of the research submarine Alvin

LATIMES.COM SS SUNDAY, JULY 9, 2023 B3 CITY & STATE AT ONE WITH THE WATER Allen J. Schaben Los Angeles Times A youngster participates in free beginning swimming lessons offered by the Los Angeles Department of Recreation and Parks at the LA84 Foundation/John C. Argue Swim Stadium. A heat wave is forecast to hit Southern California later this week. Two teenage girls were shot Friday night after officers responded to a call of a party at Santa Monica beach, police said. Officers received a call around 9:20 p.m. about a large party in the 2700 block of Santa Monica beach, according to a Santa Monica Police Department statement. As officers approached the area, they heard gunshots, and the group dispersed. The girls, 14 and 17, were shot in their lower legs, police said. They were taken to hospitals with injuries that were not life-threatening. The victims did not see the gunman. Witnesses described him as a 5-foot-10 Black male with dreadlocks who wore black pants, a white shirt and a black hat, police said. Police are asking anyone with information about the shooting to contact the Santa Monica police detective unit at (310) 458-8451, or the watch commander (24 hours) at (310) 458-8427. 2 teens shot at Santa Monica beach By Melissa Gomez Partygoers who crowded Lake Tahoe beaches over the Fourth of July left more than 4 tons of trash on the shore and in the water, according to cleanup volunteers. A record total of 8,559 pounds of trash was collected from six beaches, according to the League to Save Lake Tahoe, the nonprofit that led the effort. The hardest hit area was Zephyr Shoals, a beach on Tahoe’s east shore, where hundreds of volunteers cleaned 6,279 pounds of litter, including plastic cups, beach toys and cigarette butts. The beach there has fewer regulations than many in the area. Images shared by the organization reveal toppled tents, chairs and coolers scattered across the beach, with geese poking their beaks through Cheetos bags and beer cans. Daniel Cressy, a public services staff officer for the Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit, estimated that more than 4,000 people visited Zephyr Shoals at the peak of the July 4 celebrations. The lake this year was near its high water level, and beaches dramatically shrunken, as a result of melting from record snowpack, forcing visitors to spill onto the bluffs instead of sticking to the sand. “I heard some folks show up and say, ‘Where’s the beach?’ They were expecting more beach, but that didn’t discourage them from staying,” Cressy said. “It looked like your most crowded music festival.” This year marked the nonprofit’s 10th annual “Keep Tahoe Red, White & Blue” July 5 cleanup event. The mess was cleaned with support from the U.S. Forest Service and 400 volunteers from local businesses and government agencies, including the nonprofit Clean up the Lake, which brought in scuba divers, kayakers and snorkelers. “BEBOT,” an electric sand-sifting robot combed the beach, too, salvaging bits of plastic. Colin West, executive director of Clean up the Lake, said his team fished sunglasses, shoes and vape pens from the water. He said he found small bags of cocaine and canisters of “whippets,” an inhalant drug. “Images that I’ve seen [of the partying] have just been ridiculous. Literally someone … jumping off, like, a log and body-slamming a beerpong table into the lake and breaking it,” he said. “I remember my fiance and I unloading that beer-pong table into the dumpster in the back of my truck.” Among the people dedicated to keeping Tahoe clean, the holiday mess elevated an ongoing conversation about beach management. According to the League to Save Lake Tahoe, several beach sites — including those with permanent restrooms, trash cans and management staff — were relatively free of litter. Zephyr Shoals, which is within the jurisdiction of the U.S. Forest Service, is not permitted for commercial operations and does not have designated parking or fees. Chris Joseph, communications director for the League to Save Lake Tahoe, said that’s a problem. “What we have seen in 10 years of managing this July 5 cleanup event is that sites that have no regulation of access … are the places where the impacts from litter tend to be the heaviest,” he said. “There’s always going to be a group of people who don’t want to pay to park, and they do want to party, and they’re being squeezed into the few remaining places on the lake where it’s relatively easy to get there.” Zephyr Shoals will be permitted as part of Zephyr Cove Resort in the fall, according to Cressy. That means the public — who will retain access to the beach — can expect the addition of designated parking and sanitation, he said. Cressy wants Lake Tahoe visitors to be responsible for keeping the lake clean. He said he was pleased to see people happily taking the trash bags he handed out over the holiday weekend. “Enjoyment of public land is not just a consumer activity, but it’s a participatory activity where everybody has a role to play in it being successful,” he said. “That’s sort of the bigger picture that we’re working toward.” Lake Tahoe trashed by July 4 revelers Volunteers cleaned up more than 4 tons of rubbish from the water and beaches. By Cari Spencer MORE THAN 400 volunteers from the League to Save Lake Tahoe, Clean up the Lake and other groups worked with the U.S. Forest Service to remove garbage on July 5. Most was collected from Zephyr Shoals. League to Save Lake Tahoe Five years after prosecutors announced charges against a Newport Beach surgeon and his girlfriend, portraying them as serial predators who drugged vulnerable women, a judge has thrown out the last remaining sex charges in the case. In ruling that there was too little evidence to send Grant Robicheaux and Cerissa Riley to trial for allegedly drugging and sexually assaulting two women, Orange County Superior Court Judge Michael Leversen on Friday handed the defendants a major victory but an incomplete one. The two still face a felony charge of slipping GHB into the drink of one of the women, the judge ruled. Robicheaux, an orthopedic surgeon once deemed the county’s “Most Eligible Bachelor” by a local magazine, also faces two felony counts of illegal possession of assault weapons, plus misdemeanor charges of possessing cocaine and other drugs. The case has been a tabloid favorite, in part because of Robicheaux’s appearance on the Bravo reality show “Online Dating Rituals of the American Male.” Defense attorneys have portrayed Robicheaux and Riley, a former schoolteacher, as hard-partying swingers. Both deny having nonconsensual sex with any of the accusers. After announcing charges against the couple in 2018, Orange County prosecutors said that more than a dozen women had accused Robicheaux of attacking them, with some alleging Riley’s participation. Robicheaux was charged with sexually assaulting five women. Riley was charged with being involved in attacks on three. Then-Dist. Atty. Tony Rackauckas said a search of Robicheaux’s property had turned up “tens or hundreds” of apparently incriminating home videos, some featuring women “highly intoxicated beyond the ability to consent or resist.” Rackauckas characterized the couple as predators who found victims in Newport Beach bars and restaurants and lured them to Robicheaux’s home for sex after plying them with drugs. One accuser compared them to “Bonnie and Clyde.” The case quickly became entangled in politics, with Todd Spitzer, who was running for district attorney, accusing Rackauckas of embellishing the case and exploiting it in hopes of winning reelection. After Spitzer won, he ordered a review of the case and announced it had “serious proof problems.” There were no videos of incapacitated women being sexually assaulted, he said. But Orange County Superior Court Judge Gregory Jones refused to let Spitzer dismiss the charges and took the rare step of removing the local district attorney’s office from the case, saying Spitzer’s position had left his prosecutors “hopelessly conflicted.” The California attorney general’s office announced last August that it would proceed against the defendants with a focus on allegations by the remaining two victims. Sex charges dropped against O.C. surgeon and girlfriend By Christopher Goffard NEWPORT BEACH surgeon Grant Robicheaux, left, and girlfriend Cerissa Riley in court in 2020. Allen J. Schaben Los Angeles Times Southern California Edison and two other companies have paid out $22 million to the U.S. government to settle a lawsuit for their roles in the massive 2016 Rey fire, the U.S. Justice Department announced this week. Edison, Utility Tree Service and Frontier Communications Holdings paid the U.S. to resolve claims on behalf of the U.S. Forest Service, the department said Friday. The government filed a lawsuit to recover costs related to the fire, which burned more than 32,000 acres in Santa Barbara County. The companies agreed to the settlement without admitting wrongdoing or fault, the department said. “This settlement will compensate the public for the expense of fighting the Rey fire and restoring these federal lands that are enjoyed by all Americans,” First Assistant U.S. Atty. Joseph T. McNally said in a statement. The Rey fire broke out Aug. 18, 2016, when a tree fell onto power lines and communication lines owned by Southern California Edison and Frontier. Edison, two other companies settle Rey fire suit By Melissa Gomez

B4 SUNDAY, JULY 9, 2023 S LATIMES.COM Virtual Guards! Secure your business with Virtual Guard services. Deterring criminals remotely! Watching over your property while you are sleeping! Free Estimate! 213-761-7900 L.A. security, Inc. VirtualGuards.com To advertise in this directory, go to or call 1.800.528.4637, ext.72769 www.latimes.com/placebpsdad, Play for FREE at latimes.com/games Think inside the boxes. LEGAL SERVICES MISC. Open Sunday 2 - 5 3582 Mandeville Canyon Rd 3/2.5 $2,075,000 Coldwell Banker / Joan Caplis 310-748-2208 Brentwood Open Sunday 2-5pm 9153 Janice Place 6/9 $15995000 Estates & Trusts Realty, Inc./Jody Katz 310-930-9200 Beverly Hills PO New X - By Appointment 512 N. Elm Dr 4/3 $10,000 Compass / Michael J. Libow 310-991-2689 Beverly Hills OPEN HOUSE & BY APPOINTMENT DIRECTORY To advertise your property, log on to latimes.com/placead To view expanded property information please go to HomeFinder.com A DREAM IN BURGUNDY Gevrey-Chambertin, Burgundy, France SAVILLS +33 (0) 629382668 Out of Area Open Sunday 2-5 5811 Valley Oak Dr 3/3.5 $3,590,000 Kennon Earl + Colby Brown 424.230.7928 Los Angeles By Appointment 356 S Hudson Ave 9/14 $19,500,000 Ron Holliman / Lisa Hutchins 310-270-6682 Hancock Park For Friday, July 7, 2023 Mega Millions Mega number is bold 8-10-17-55-66—Mega 3 Jackpot: $450 million California winners per category: No. of winners Amount of prize(s) 5 + Mega 0 — 5 1 $1,698,158 4 + Mega 8 $4,621 4 91 $457 3 + Mega 253 $187 3 5,797 $9 2 + Mega 5,309 $9 1 + Mega 39,134 $4 Mega only 93,637 $2 Winning jackpot ticket(s) sold in other states: None For Saturday, July 8, 2023 SuperLotto Plus Mega number is bold 1-25-44-45-46—Mega 20 Jackpot: $74 million Powerball Powerball number is bold 7-23-24-32-43—Powerball 18 Jackpot: $615 million Fantasy Five: 1-26-35-36-39 Daily Four: 6-3-8-6 Daily Three (midday): 1-6-2 Daily Three (evening): 2-9-6 Daily Derby: (9) Winning Spirit (6) Whirl Win (3) Hot Shot Race time: 1:45.93 Results on the internet: www.latimes.com/lottery General information: (800) 568-8379 (Results not available at this number) Lottery results tuxedo finalists were chosen. One from each category will win the top prize, while all finalists will receive $500. Torres said she’s spent the last few days trying to spread the word about voting for her dress, even dressing up in the heavy gown one more time to show it off on TikTok. Her parents are helping spread the word too, telling friends and extended family about the contest. “It’s just like teamwork, asking people to vote,” Torres said. “You don’t know if we’re winning or we need more votes, but we’re feeling confident and hopeful that we can win.” And though it’s Torres’ name officially in the contest, as the first in her family headed to college, she said the entire process is more of a collective effort for her family, and especially her parents, who immigrated to the U.S. from Mexico. “It means a lot to me that I was able to make it this far with the support of my parents — graduating from high school is not just me graduating, it’s my parents graduating, anyone who helped me,” Torres said. “I’m a firstgeneration student … it means a lot to me that now we made it past high school and now we’re entering college.” She said the $10,000 prize would go a long way as she plans to attend a California State University school in August. “I wouldn’t want my parents to struggle trying to find a way to pay for it,” Torres said. “It would really help my parents.” Torres plans to study business marketing in college, ideally focused on the fashion industry. In high school, she participated in Nordstrom’s ambassador program, which gives young people a chance to explore the retail industry up close. “I really love fashion, it’s a really big passion of mine,” she said. “I’m down and willing to try any style.” Torres said she often spends hours looking at outfit ideas or different styles, from the ’70s to Gothic to Rococo, on Pinterest and TikTok — which is how she initially found the Duck Tape competition. While scrolling on social media during the pandemic, she saw one of the 2021 finalists promoting a traditional Mexican-style duct tape dress, and she made sure to vote for her fellow Latina. “I was so interested and fascinated,” Torres said. But it wasn’t until a recent visit to the Getty Museum — the only field trip she took in high school — that she found her inspiration from the 18th century French paintings featuring lavish, ornate dresses. “I wanted light pastel colors because that just reminds me of that era,” said Torres, who recognized it as a challenge because of the tape’s neon focus. “I wanted something more subtle, more elegant.” She was able to find the perfect shade in a light pink tape, which she paired with white and gold. “When you see the top 10 finalists’ designs, you’ll have to remind yourself that high school students created these out of Duck Tape,” said Ashley Luke, senior product manager at Shurtape Technologies LLC, the company that makes Duck Tape. “The intricate design and personality put into each ensemble is unbelievable.” Voting for the finalists is open through Wednesday, and winners should be announced by July 19. She hopes rolls of tape are a dress for success [Contest, from B1] KARLA TORRES said the $10,000 prize would go a long way as she plans to attend a California State University school in August. She intends to study business marketing, ideally focused on the fashion industry. Gary Coronado Los Angeles Times ment approach. That differs from Simpson’s assessment. A minute after the crash, Trescot said, visibility was worse, at three-eighths of a mile below the minimum. “The weather did get worse during the time they were making their two approaches,” he said. The county-owned airport has no tower — pilots rely on air traffic controllers at another airport. They can use instruments to get near French Valley but have to see the runway to land. Trescott said an instrument landing would have guided the plane to about 250 feet above ground, at which point the pilot would have made the decision to land if he could see the runway. Instead, he aborted and circled to make a second attempt. “If they had flown the approach the first time and didn’t see the runway, they could have chosen to divert to another airport with better weather,” Trescott said. A preliminary report is expected in 14 days, Simpson said. The crash came four days after one person was killed and three injured when a plane went down shortly after takeoff from the airport. THE WRECKAGE of a Cessna 550 lies in a field near Auld and Briggs roads Saturday in Murrieta, where the pilot had apparently attempted to land the jet twice. Irfan Khan Los Angeles Times Jet crashes in Murrieta, killing 6 [Crash, from B1] Ten months had passed since long-haul truckers Alfonso and Sherrie Meletiche lost their family cat, Baby, while making a delivery in Southern California. The couple had pulled over at a stop in Rancho Santa Margarita when a loud noise caused the feline to break free of her harness and run away. A search team could not find her. Weeks turned into months. Hope turned into despair. Ten months later, the Meletiches, who live in Fort Myers, Fla., got a surprise call. It was Gail Landau, the founder of Catmosphere Laguna Foundation, which finds homes for rescued and abandoned cats and kittens. Baby, a Maine Coon mix, had been located. It turned out she had been masquerading as a guest at the fivestar Montage Laguna Beach hotel. Landau was able to find her owner because the cat had been outfitted with a microchip, a tiny transponder about the size of a grain of rice implanted in the animal’s skin. A year earlier, Alonna Meletiche, Alfonso and Sherrie’s daughter, had taken the cat to the veterinarian for her shots and made the decision at that time to have her microchipped, which has become increasingly popular as a way to reunite pet owners with their lost animals. “I was shocked,” Alfonso said of Landau’s call. “I couldn’t believe it because I, myself, gave up. I said, ‘There’s no way. There’s no way that we’re ever going to get her back,’ but when Gail called, I was overwhelmed, and I was also shocked.” He immediately booked an airline ticket to California but had to cancel his trip when Baby disappeared again from Landau’s house in Mission Viejo. “I said, ‘Oh my God.’ It’s like feeling this emptiness all over again,” Alfonso said, “just when she was right there within reach.” Baby would eventually be found again — at the Montage. When Baby was hanging around the Laguna Beach hotel the first time, passersby had taken to feeding the cat, including resident Nancy Welch, who wound up corralling the feline after her second flight. “The big mystery is how did the cat get down from Mission Viejo to Laguna,” said Welch, who commented that Baby was living her best life at the luxury resort. “What I keep laughing about is ... it’s like a marketing ad for the Montage, that the cat got herself back to the Montage after being at Gail’s house.” The Meletiche family received the good news. Alfonso flew into John Wayne Airport last week, nervous that Baby might not remember him. She did. Alfonso and Baby were on flight home to Florida on Monday. “I must have shared that story with the whole airport,” Alfonso said. “Everyone that can hear me, I told them, and they were in awe. They were shocked. They said, ‘What? 10 months?’ I said, ‘Yes, 10 months.’ “I sort of gave up a little bit, but my wife never gave up, and as soon as she heard news, she demanded that I book a flight and go over there and pick her up.” Microchipping pets has become a welcome relief for many pet owners in recent years as it grew in popularity. Susan Hamil, a founding director of the Blue Bell Foundation for Cats, a sanctuary for senior cats in Laguna Beach, said all Blue Bell cats are microchipped. A native of Baton Rouge, La., Hamil looked back on her experience providing aid after Hurricane Katrina in discussing the importance of the technology. “Hurricane Katrina was a life-changing moment in this country for a lot of things, and one was lost pets,” Hamil said. “I went back and worked in Katrina and worked at the LSU [Louisiana State University] vet school for a few weeks, and if those pets had been microchipped, they could have gotten back, they could have been reunited with their owners in a matter of days or weeks.” Missing cat found later hanging out at a Laguna hotel Thanks to microchip, feline who spent 10 months at luxe resort is returned to Florida. By Andrew Turner TRUCKERS Alfonso and Sherrie Meletiche reunite with their cat, Baby, in Fort Myers, Fla., after being separated from the pet 10 months ago in Orange County. Meletiche family

LATIMES.COM S WST SUNDAY, JULY 9, 2023 B5 Unscramble these Jumbles, one letter to each square, to form six ordinary words. Now arrange the circled letters to form the surprise answer, as suggested by the above cartoon. PRINT YOUR ANSWER IN THE CIRCLES BELOW Get the free JUST JUMBLE app • Follow us on Twitter @PlayJumble GIMTAS TUTIOW SCANIO RIENWY UQESEL PYYUSR THAT SCRAMBLED WORD GAME By David L. Hoyt and Jeff Knurek ©2023 Tribune Content Agency, LLC All Rights Reserved. THINKING ABOUT RELOCATING? REDUCED TO $700,000 INCOME PROPERTY FOR SALE 17171 Frank Taylor Rd., Saucier, Ms. Less than 20 miles from the Gulf Coast Property has main home with three additional house rentals to help pay for the mortgage. 61-acre parcel South of Saucier, Mississippi on Hwy 49. The main house is located near a natural spring lake; plenty of land to build additional rentals surrounding the lake. For info: contact Dr. Sylvia Ulmer at (209) 482-8480 Dr. Sylvia Ulmer (209) 482-8480 Pp FREE E-MAIL BROCHURE Getting out of your dangerous and expensive crowded city NOW; could save you money and heartache. Rural northwest living is the place to live and enjoy life. $ 2,000,000 cash. Serious buyer only. No agents. CountryLifeNow066@gmail. com Pp Out of State FOR SALE Montana Smoke/Gift FOR SALE $89,000 Turn key. Complete inventory, equipment, set-up, displays. Humidor Room. Owner retiring. Livingston, Montana. Near North Entrance to Yellowstone Park Intersection I-90 and State RT89 Call Ron(845)721-8830 Pp Retail Stores for Sale 12% TD Glendale $1M, low ltv, 1yr 310-628-1717 DRE 01967641 Investment Opportunities ELECTRIC WHEEL CHAIR SIX WHEEL ELECTRIC SHOPRIDER CHAIR. USED IN NEAR NEW CONDITION. HARDLY USED. ASKING $600. L.A. AREA OLYMPIC & WESTERN. JOHN AT 213 456 1285 Appliances/ Electronics Polyester Linen INVENTORY Multiple sizes and colors tablecloths and napkin inventory liquidation Michael (458)280-2865 Miscellaneous Merchandise Assistance League of Newport-Mesa® Mega Estate Sale - July12th15th Assistance League of Newport-Mesa headquarters - 2220 Fairview Road, Costa Mesa (cross streets - Fairview & Wilson). The sale includes upscale items from Newport Beach, Corona del Mar and Laguna Beach estates such as antiques and vintage quality furniture including amoires, credenzas, couches, tables, lamps, artwork, decorator accessories and a variety of unique collectibles. Everything MUST GO! Proceeds to benefit Assistance League community based programs. For more information please call (949) 645-6929. Estate Sales Baseball Cards Cash paid 4 pre1975. Buying all SPORTS CARDS of any size collections. (310) 614-3312 Collectibles and Memorabilia M A R K E T P L A C E JOBS latimes.com/placead To place an ad call 1.800.234.4444 Supply Chain Analyst for Value Group Enterprises, Bachelor in Operations Research and Supply Chain Management or Business Admin. Salary $55,370/Year- $75,000/Year. Rsm to HR at 13220 Molette St, Santa Fe Springs, CA 90670 Senior Financial Analyst for Coupang Global LLC in Riverside, CA to create & maintain Operations WBR to measure productivity, safety & quality. Req Master’s or foreign equi deg in Business Analytics, Statistics, Supply Chain or related field & 2 yrs’ exp in job offered or related occupation. Will also accept Bachelor’s & 5 yrs’ progressive, post-baccalaureate exp in job offered or related occupation. Salary range: $125,080.00-$154,000.00/yr. To apply submit resume to [email protected]. Ref 114105-000030 Senior Accounting Analysis & Reporting Analyst: prepare regulatory reports; perform accounting analyses; MS in acctng. or rltd w/ 3 yrs exp. as acctng. analysis & reporting analyst or asset accountant or rltd or equiv. for having BS in acctng. or rltd w/ 5 yrs exp. as acctng. analysis & reporting analyst or asset accountant or rltd; 40hrs/ wk; pay range: $106,974- $110k; Send resume to East West Bank, Attn: Jennie O’Donnell, 135 N. Los Robles Ave. 3rd Fl., Pasadena, CA 91101 Administrative Supervisor. Req’d: Associate’s Degree in Business Administration, English or Related. Mail Resume: Joiluv, Inc., 2620 Leonis Blvd. Vernon, CA 90058 Taekwondo Coach. Req’d: Bachelor’s in Physical Edu., Sports Sci., or rel. Mail resume: International Taekwondo College, Inc., 7525 Fallbrook Ave, West Hills, CA 91307. Institutional Research Analyst - Provide data analysis & data mgmt in support of institutional research for an acad planning & budget office. UCLA Office of Academic Planning and Budget located in L.A., with part-time work from home benefits. $102,565 to $192,500/yr. Apply online at https://apptrkr. com/4306439 Administrative Assistant needed in Rowland Heights, CA / Salary: $39,686/yr. Send resume to Rowland Heights Korean Baptist Church, 1717 Otterbein Ave., Rowland Heights, CA 91748. Acupuncturist: Diagnose, treat by needles, etc. Req’d: MA in Acupuncture & Oriental Medicine w/ active CA Acupuncturist Lic. Mail Resume: Rapha Acupuncture Healing Center: 22525 Crenshaw Blvd., Torrance, CA 90505 Deloitte & Touche LLP seeks an Audit & Assurance Senior in Los Angeles, CA to design audit approaches, conduct field audit engagements, & perform complex accounting. & auditing. Less than 10% travel outside of normal commuting distance. Salary: $72,730 - $135,070/ yr. To apply visit https:// apply.deloitte.com/. Enter XS24FA0084 in ‘Search jobs” field. EOE, including disability/veterans. Deloitte & Touche LLP seeks an Audit & Assurance Senior in Los Angeles, CA to design audit approaches, conduct field audit engagements, & perform complex accounting & auditing. Less than 10% travel outside of normal commuting distance. Salary: $72,730 - $135,070/ yr. To apply visit https:// apply.deloitte.com/. Enter XS24FA0059 in ‘Search jobs” field. EOE, including disability/veterans. Accounting Clerk: Req’d: AA deg. in Acct, Econ, Bus. Admin. or related. Mail resume: ABL CPA APC, 3600 Wilshire Blvd., Suite 1118, Los Angeles, CA 90010 Accounting Assistant: Req’d: AA in Acct., Bus. Admin., Int’l Bus., or related. Mail Resume: Yoon Han Kim & Associates APC, 2954 W 8th St. Ste 101, LA, CA 90005 Accountants: Req. Any Bachelor’s Degree Wage: $54,704/YR Mail Resume: All Satisfied Logistics, Inc. 14900 S Avalon Blvd. Gardena, CA 90248 ACCOUNTING Accountant Prepare tax, analyze and mitigate financial risks need. BS in Accounting or a related field. Sal based on EXP. CV to Trois CPA, a Professional Corporation. Employment PHLEBOTOMY CLASS Allied Professional Institute 562-808-2152 www.apiedu.net Vocational Schools Quantitative Analyst (multiple openings) at MPG Operations LLC in Newport Beach, CA will build & write analytics necessary to implmt equity options relative value strategy, incl contributions to our Firm’s core s/ ware infrastructure. Salary: $150k-$200k/yr. Reqs a PhD in Comp Engg, or a related field, + 3 yrs of professional exp building infrastructure for equity volatility investing. Must incl 3 yrs of exp w/ each of the following: portfolio construction & optimization, incl nonlinear optimization techniques; dvlp exotic equity option models; stochastic optimization, dynamic pricing, & state estimation; machine learning to assist in the logic & execution of integrating equity volatility in interest rate volatility portfolio optimization; C++, Java, & Python; front office researcher in equities; &, partial differential equations (PDEs). Send resume to recruiting@ mlp.com & ref. code job code 0155 when applying. Web Developer. Req’d: Associate’s degree in Comp. Sci., Comp. Eng. Or rel. $73,424/ yr. Mail rsme: Biospace, Inc. 13850 Cerritos Corporate Dr. #C, Cerritos, CA 90703 Market Research Analyst: Collect and analyze data on customer demographics etc. Annual Salary: $44,803. Bachelor’s degree in business administration or its foreign equivalent degree is rqr’d. Send resume to Entro Inc.: 6440 E. 26th St. Commerce, CA 90040 Data Sys Analyst – Perf data sys analysis & architecture dev for univ data warehouse with cloud-based tech & reporting tools. UCLA Information Technology Services, jobsite: Los Angeles, work at home benefits with intermittent onsite at UCLA. $90,522 to $216,700/year. Apply @ https://apptrkr. com/4356871 Data Analytics & Systems Manager for Macias Gini & O’Connell LLP to report to our Los Angeles, CA regional office and may work remotely. Dev & mng end-to-end analytics solutns (reqs gather, est metrics, build data pipeline, & analyze data) to drive performnce of ops. Influence build choices, understand ecosystms & trends, ID new levers to move key metrics. Coord w/ int clients to dev & mng budgets & projections. Create & monitor data roadmaps & projects. Dev cross-functnl partnershps to drive data initiatives (get data & integrate into DBs & dashboards). Lead reports & dashboard engr & automation & predictive models, using bus. intel tools & programming langs. Oversee data integrity & gov, & lead/ support bus. readiness (may incl tech train, sys test, bus. impact msrmt). Rvw op & bus. growth issues & ID process efficiencies & analytics approaches. Dev new techniques & data methods. Mng data vendor/expert to investigate & implem new sys for data migration using ETL. Collab w/ IT team/engr partners to optimize systm. Eval. bus. initiatives & ops thru quant. analysis & provide data, analyses, feedback, etc., to int clients for accountability & report results. Personnel duties (hire/term., promote/demote, assign proj). Communic & present effectively, & promote data techniques & culture; Audit int data & sys quality via data reporting. Advise lower lvl staff, providing perfmnce feedback/evals. Provide coach & mentor suppt for professionls. Little domestic travel may be involved. May undergo background checks. Requires communication skills. Wage range: $100,000 to $105,000. Must have Bachelors in Analytics, Math, Comp Sci, Engr, Business, Marketing, or related field; 5 yrs relevant exp. in data mgmt. or analysis, bus. Analysis, Marketing Analytics, or related field; and required skills. Alternatively, have Masters in Analytics, Math, Comp Sci, Engr, Business, Marketing, or related field; 4 yrs relevant exp. in data mgmt. or analysis, bus. Analysis, Marketing Analytics, or related field; and required skills. Requires skills (3 yrs exp) in: schema design and dimensional data modeling; manipulating large data sets in SQL and R (R or Python); marketing automation and marketing analytics tools; and CRM systems. Any suitable combination of education, training, or experience is acceptable. Apply at www.mgocpa.com/careers; ref. Job 2023-3320. Data Analyst: Thrive Market, Inc. has an opening in Playa Vista (L.A.), CA. Data Analyst (Product): analysis & insights re: user experience; analyze & document data; tools & analysis. Salary range $120K to $152K per year. Remote work may be permitted in Los Angeles area. Submit resume (principals only) to: daniel.rivera@ thrivemarket.com. Must include recruitment source + full job title in subject line. EOE Employment FRENCH BULLDOG Two-month old Frenchies ready for rehoming $3k-$7k. Includes blue, myrle, and exotic fluffies. Healthy pups raised on homemade meals ready for your love. Located in Los Angeles. More info at CaliforniaFluffyFrenchies.net 3104982887 Dogs PETS To advertise your pets, log on to placeanad.latimes.com/pets-for-sale MARKETPLACE BUSINESS Netflix, Inc. is accepting resumes for the following positions in Los Angeles, California. Associate, Studio FP&A (Ref#6494958) to manage financial forecasting, reporting and consolidations for the company’s Animation Studio. The wage range for this position is $114,483 – $290,000 per year. Manager, Creative Services (Ref#6794960) to develop business plans, incorporating our desired technology, staffing, design, service levels and projected revenue. 20% domestic and international travel. The wage range for this position is $183,082 – $1,300,000 per year. Mail resume to Netflix, Inc., ATTN: Talent Mobility, 100 Winchester Circle, Los Gatos, CA 95032 Must include Ref. code. No phone calls please. EOE. www.netflix.com/ BUSINESS Netflix, Inc. is accepting resumes for the following positions in Los Angeles, California. Associate, Studio FP&A (Ref#6494958) to manage financial forecasting, reporting and consolidations for the company’s Animation Studio. The wage range for this position is $114,483 – $290,000 per year. Manager, Creative Services (Ref#6794960) to develop business plans, incorporating our desired technology, staffing, design, service levels and projected revenue. 20% domestic and international travel. The wage range for this position is $370,000 – $1,300,000 per year. Mail resume to Netflix, Inc., ATTN: Talent Mobility, 100 Winchester Circle, Los Gatos, CA 95032 Must include Ref. code. No phone calls please. EOE. www.netflix.com/ Office Assistant: HS Diploma Req. $32,843/yr, F/T, Resume to Young Yi Park, Sierra Home Healthcare Services, Inc., 1063 N. Chicago St. LA, CA 90033 Concept Artist. Create character concepts including character sheets, movement studies & detailed breakouts for equipment & weapons. Req. Bach. in Animation, Game Development, or rel. field & 5 mos. exp. in job or 5 mos. exp. as Artist, Marketing Artist, or rel. occup. Any suitable combo of educ, training, &/or exp is acceptable. Jobsite: Irvine, CA. Wage range: $54,829/yr to $75,000/yr. Send resume to C. LaForge, Frost Giant Studios, Inc., 13416 Spectrum Blvd., Irvine, CA 92618. ARCHITECTS 2 Positions - CallisonRTKL Inc., Los Angeles, CA. Designer – L47 - Req B Arch (5 yr) or foreign equiv + 1 yr exp. Salary is $61,194 to $72,009 per year. Senior Designer – L48 - Req B Arch (5 yr) or foreign equiv + 3 yrs exp. Salary is $61,194 to $73,819.20 per year. Pls review addl reqmts & apply online at https://www. callisonrtkl.com/careers/ for Req. No. DESIG001770 & SENIO001771 Staff Artist: US or foreign Bachelors or equiv. and 1 yr. exp. Work location: 126 W Elmyra Street, Los Angeles, CA 90012. Mail resume to: Possible, Inc., 129 Llewelyn St, Los Angeles, CA 90012. Senior Animator. Use Motion Capture & Hand-Keyed Techniques to create highfidelity 3rd person player Animations that are genredefining. Req. 4 yrs exp in job or 4 yrs exp as Animator, Gameplay Animator, or rel. occup. Any suitable combo of educ, training &/or exp is acceptable. Jobsite: Woodland Hills, CA. Wage range: $157,080/yr to $194,500/yr. Send resume ref#22151 to K. Finnsson, Activision Publishing Inc, 2701 Olympic Blvd, Bldg. B, Santa Monica, CA 90404. Animator 2 (Los Angeles, CA) Sony Interactive Entertainment LLC: Wrk w/ Combat Dsgn Team during the previsualization process, assisting both w/ combat & character navigation 3D pre-vis using Maya & After Effects. Reqs Bachelor’s in Animation, or rel. fld or equiv, & 2 yrs of exp dsgn’g imaginative & visually stunning virtual worlds for video games. Prior exp must incl two 2 yrs of exp creating character & camera animation; assembling, editing, cleaning up, & enhancing animation performance; wrk’g w/ classic animation principles, incl staging, timing, anticipation, follow through, exaggeration, squash, & stretch to create a full range of lifelike performances; dsgn’g & dvlp’g animation best practices; collaborating w/ directors to achieve balance btwn animation fidelity & gameplay responsiveness; integrating moves into the game engine, monitoring & troubleshooting any technical issues that arise; util’g custom proprietary game engines; & util’g tools incl Maya, Motion Builder, & After Effects. Telecommuting &/or wrk’g from home may be permissible pursuant to co. policies. Salary $123,540 - $131,300 /yr. Send resumes to SIE-Job-Postings@sony. com & indicate job code JL6501365. EOE. Employment Software Engineer II needed by DIRECTV, LLC in El Segundo, CA [and various unanticipated locations throughout the U.S.; may work from home] to be responsible for the development of high performance, distributed computing tasks using big data technologies such as Hadoop, NoSQL, text mining and other distributed environment technologies. Software Engineer IIs earn between $143,850 - $192,050 yearly. DIRECTV, LLC offers amazing benefits from health insurance to tuition reimbursement and paid time off to discounts on products and services. Apply at https://jobs.directv.com/, select JOB SEARCH and APPLY and select Search by Requisition Number at the left bottom of the page and enter Job Number: R230271. Senior Software Engineer needed by DIRECTV, LLC in El Segundo, CA [and various unanticipated locations throughout the US; may work from home] to develop the headend system development support across the DIRECTV Beam and Stream platforms. Senior Software Engineers earn between $158,464 - $232,415 yearly. DIRECTV, LLC offers amazing benefits from health insurance to tuition reimbursement and paid time off to discounts on products and services. Apply at https:// jobs.directv.com/, select JOB SEARCH and APPLY and select Search by Requisition Number at the left bottom of the page and enter Job Number: R230257. Senior Applications Developer needed by DIRECTV, LLC in El Segundo, CA [and various unanticipated locations throughout the U.S.; may work from home] to lead web development teams, including internal and external team members. Our Senior Applications Developers earn between $157,500 - $232,415 yearly. DIRECTV, LLC offers amazing benefits from health insurance to tuition reimbursement and paid time off to discounts on products and services. Apply at https:// jobs.directv.com/, select JOB SEARCH and APPLY and select Search by Requisition Number at the left bottom of the page and enter Job Number: R230293 Principal, Software Engineer 2 needed by DIRECTV, LLC in El Segundo, CA [and various unanticipated locations throughout the U.S.; may work from home] to collaborate to gather and review software requirements and user stories. Principal, Software Engineer 2s earn between $166,819 - $255,530 yearly. DIRECTV, LLC offers amazing benefits from health insurance to tuition reimbursement and paid time off to discounts on products and services. Apply at https://jobs.directv.com/, select JOB SEARCH and APPLY and select Search by Requisition Number at the left bottom of the page and enter Job Number: R230302. Lead Marketing Analytics needed by DIRECTV, LLC in El Segundo, CA [and various unanticipated locations throughout the U.S.; may work from home] to develop big data analytics modeling using Tableau, Palantir, Power BI, Databricks, AWS, Azure, Synapse, H2O Driverless AI, and business process integration. Our Lead Marketing Analytics earn between $143,978 to $192,050 yearly. DIRECTV, LLC offers amazing benefits from health insurance to tuition reimbursement and paid time off to discounts on products and services. Apply at https:// jobs.directv.com/, select JOB SEARCH and APPLY and select Search by Requisition Number at the left bottom of the page and enter Job Number: R230295. Computer Network Specialist: Req. BS/BE in Com. Sci, Info. Sys. & Tech., or rel. Wage: $59,093/YR Mail resume: Vlan24, Inc. 2017 E 8th St. 2nd Fl. LA, CA 90021 Chemical Laboratory Technician. Perf chem & physcl lab tests. Reqs: Associate’s in Arts/Science. Skills/knwldge in calibration of lab instrums, perf qual analys, implmntng lab safety param, maintng lab equip, & keep lab envmt clean. Incdntl trvl – 1%. 40hrs/wk. Salary:$52,000.00/yr Job Site: Compton, CA Send Resume to: Carbon Activated Corporation at hr@activatedcar bon.com. CASHIER : Receive payment. Issue receipts/refunds after tabulating prices. Process returns. Maintain clean check out area. Salary $15.50 per hr. Send resume to : Job Site: Seagate Liquor, 16101 Bolsa Chica Rd, Huntington Beach, CA 92649 Wella Operations US LLC (Calabasas, CA) seeks a Mgr of Analytics, Insights & Strategic Initiatives. Telecmmtng prmttd. Qrtrly trvl to Dallas, TX reqd. Mst hv a Bach dgr or frgn equiv in bus admin, finance, stats, or rltd fld + 2 yrs exp in bus & mrkt anlyss w/in beauty indstry. Exp must incl 2 yrs in: PM usng productive, agile, or hybrid apprchs; Cllctn & anlyss of bus, POS, & mrkt trend data to idntfy bus opprtnts; Delivery of monthly reports on key bus metrics; Use of consumption & invntry data to dlvr monthly forecasts; Anlyss of promotion, in-store mrktng & e-comm v. KPIs; Dlvry of ad-hoc data anlyss requests. Send CVs to NA.Recruiting@ wella.com Employment LABRADOR RETRIEVER Silveroselabs.com AKC Black, Chocolate, Silver & Charcoal Pups Shots/Wormed/Microchipped/Guarantee [email protected] 559 246-0676 GERMAN SHORTHAIRED POINTER Puppies, males, 9 weeks old, health certified. AKC registered 5593590568 MALTIPOO $699. Maltipoo dad and mini goldendoodle mom. Available now. (949) 331-0035 Mastador (English Mastiff x Lab) Puppies: Great Family Dogs. Delivery. www.MastadorPuppies.com 320-267-8034 Dogs Senior System Engineer needed by DIRECTV, LLC in El Segundo, CA [and various unanticipated locations throughout the U.S.; may work from home] to design and delivery of cost effective, high-performance public cloud infrastructures. Our Senior System Engineer earn between $181,461 - $211,255 yearly. DIRECTV, LLC offers amazing benefits from health insurance to tuition reimbursement and paid time off to discounts on products and services. Apply at https://jobs.directv.com/, select JOB SEARCH and APPLY and select Search by Requisition Number at the left bottom of the page and enter Job Number: R230276. Senior Solution Architect needed by DIRECTV, LLC in El Segundo, CA 90245 [and various unanticipated locations throughout the U.S.; may work from home] to design video delivery network architecture for high performance, availability, Security, and redundancy. Senior Solution Architects earn between $157,711 to $192,050 yearly. DIRECTV, LLC offers amazing benefits from health insurance to tuition reimbursement and paid time off to discounts on products and services. Apply at https://jobs.directv.com/, select JOB SEARCH and APPLY and select Search by Requisition Number at the left bottom of the page and enter Job Number: R230261. Senior Manager, Financial Due Diligence (Mult Pos), PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, Los Angeles, CA. Prvd fin due dlgnc & othr trnsctnrel srvcs to large cmpns & pvt equity fund clnts. Req. Bach’s deg or foreign equiv in Acct, Fin, Bus Admin, or rel + 6 yrs rel wrk exp, of whch at least 5 yrs mst be post bach’s, prgrssv relwrk exp; OR a Master’s deg or foreign equiv in Acct, Fin, Bus Admin, or rel + 4 yrs rel wrk exp. Cert(s) req: US CPA license or foreign equiv. 80% telecommtng prmttd. Mst be able to commute to designated local office. Domestic and/ or int. trvl up to 80% req. Salary $188,000-$188,000/ yr. Please apply by sending your resume to US_PwC_Ca reer_Recruitment@pwc. com, specifying Job Code CA3476 in the subject line. Senior Big Data Engineer needed by DIRECTV LLC in El Segundo, CA (& various unanticipated locations throughout the US; may work from home) to gather, analyze, and interpret a wide variety of data utilizing a variety of statistical methods to support Data Analysts and Business Users. Senior Big Data Engineers earn between $169,520 to $211,255 yearly. DIRECTV, LLC offers amazing benefits from health insurance to tuition reimbursement and paid time off to discounts on products and services. Apply at https://jobs.directv.com/, select JOB SEARCH and APPLY and select Search by Requisition Number at the left bottom of the page and enter Job Number: R230253. Computer/IT: ByteDance Inc., Research Engineer, Virtual Human (Mult.Pos.), Culver City, CA. Assist Research Engineering team in creating virtual humans (Avatar) by performing data capture (including 2D & 3D) & processing for deep learning-based algorithm usage. Salary Range: $119,700- $232,560 per year. To apply & info. on benefits offered visit: jobs.bytedance.com/ en/ & type Job ID A139152 in search bar. Contact [email protected] if you have difficulty applying. Professional - Software Engineer needed by DIRECTV, LLC in El Segundo, CA [and various locations throughout the U.S.; may work from home] to lead the design and development of complex solutions for distributed authorization, content delivery and video streaming; participate in researching, benchmarking, designing and creating services based on the microservices architecture. Our Professional-Software Engineers earn between $142,729 to $192,050 yearly. DIRECTV, LLC offers amazing benefits from health insurance to tuition reimbursement and paid time off to discounts on products and services. Apply at https:// jobs.directv.com/, select JOB SEARCH and APPLY and select Search by Requisition Number at the left bottom of the page and enter Job Number: R230297. Professional- Advanced Analytics needed by DIRECTV, LLC in El Segundo, CA [and various unanticipated locations throughout the U.S.; may work from home] Manipulate large datasets using computer languages to summarize the data into insights and communicate your findings and recommendations with our marketing partners and other organizations. Our Professional- Advanced Analytics earn between $156,403 - $211,255 yearly. DIRECTV, LLC offers amazing benefits from health insurance to tuition reimbursement and paid time off to discounts on products and services..Apply at https://jobs.directv.com/, select JOB SEARCH and APPLY and select Search by Requisition Number at the left bottom of the page and enter Job Number: R230275. Employment Don’t let the phone stop ringing Advertise with LA Times Classified LA Times Classified (800) 234-4444 A-Sha Foods USA Co., Inc. seeks Digital Marketing Specialist in Alhambra CA performing marketing related work. Req’d: Master’s degree in Information Systems & Technology Management or Marketing Related Field; able to read, speak, write/ type in Chinese. $85k/year. Mail resume to A-Sha Foods USA Co., Inc. 304 S Date Ave, Alhambra, CA91803. Visual Design Specialist (salary $76,500) sought by a Digital Dsgn Company in Venice, CA to: Conduct user research to determine dsgn reqmts; Dvlp Web site maps, application models, image templates; Research & apply innovative solutions for product dsgn, visuals, & user exp. Reqmts: 2 yrs of exp in the job offered or related occupations; Can telecommute from any location w/in the U.S; 2 yrs of exp working w/ the s/ware: Figma, Sketch, Adobe XD, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator & Adobe InDesign, or Adobe Lightroom & Cinema 4D; 2 yrs of exp working w/ Keynote, Google Slides, Google Notes, Google Sheets, Google Meet, or Hangouts. Send resume to: Jam3 of America Inc, dba Jam3 of America, attn. Ritu Sahai, 555 Rose Ave., Venice, CA 90291. Surreal Technology Inc. has job opening for Lead Product Designer in Los Angeles, CA. Salary: $94786-$150000/ yr. Send resume by mail to 12130 Millennium Drive, Suite 300, Los Angeles, CA 90094, Attn: Z. Xu Web and Database Manager (Venice, CA): Enhance and develop new and existing software, websites and applications to timelines and specifications set down by manager in conjunction with stakeholders. $171,600/ yr. Resumes: HR, IBISWorld, Inc., 285 Fulton Street, One World Trade Center, Floor 56, New York, New York, 10007. Data Science: TikTok Inc, Senior Business Analyst (Mult. Pos.), Culver City, CA. Conduct interviews w/key stakeholders w/in org. to study & eval operational inefficiencies & uncover hidden problems to assist management in operating more efficient & effective org. Dev. automated reporting by ensure data quality through doc. & provide quality assurance of delivered insights. Salary Range: $117,716-$216,600 per year. To apply & info. on benefits offered visit: careers.tiktok.com & type Job ID A253116 in search bar. Contact lpresumes@ tiktok.com if you have difficulty applying. Database Developer II (Torrance, CA and travel to client sites throughout the continental U.S.) Integrate Databases with other Enterprise applications. Provides database related technical expertise to application development and infrastructure teams. Bachelor’s degree or equivalent in Comp. Sci. or reltd field. 3 years of relevant experience. Required Skills: Oracle, PL/ SQL, SQL Server, SQL. Salary $88,000-$122.000. Mail resume to Numentica LLC, 3868 W Carson St Suite 300, Torrance, CA, 90503. DATA STRATEGY ANALYST (Los Angeles, CA) Resp for overseeing the dvlpmnt, maintenance & security measures of the company’s databases. Dev solutns & tools to address the data collectn & analysis needs of internal strategy groups & sector desks. Integrate or dsgn applicatns that allow for data visualizatn. Monitor & improve the process for collectn & disseminatn of data. Maintain integrity & security of the data base & informatn collected. Monitor perf of H/W & S/W and work w/ IT team to support relevant business functns. Salary range: $87,651 to $100,000 Req: Master’s deg in Comp Sci. Mail resumes to Payden & Rygel Attn: S, 333 S. Grand Ave 40th Fl, Los Angeles, CA 90071 Patient Coordinator: Mail resume Song Dental Corporation 2920 Huntington Dr. #238, San Marino, CA 91108 Wage: $35,152/YR Thai Cooks 1 yr exp Amphai Northern Thai food 5301 W Sunset Bl #11 LA CA 90027 Senior – Software Engineer needed by DirecTV, LLC in El Segundo, CA [and various unanticipated locations throughout the U.S.; may work from home] to collaborate to gather and review software requirements and user stories. Senior – Software Engineers earn between $180,272 to $232,415 yearly. DIRECTV, LLC offers amazing benefits from health insurance to tuition reimbursement and paid time off to discounts on products and services. Apply at https://jobs.directv.com/, select JOB SEARCH and APPLY and select Search by Requisition Number at the left bottom of the page and enter Job Number: R230274. Employment Answer: STIGMA OUTWIT CASINO WINERY SEQUEL SYRUPY He was telling his friend that this pizza place had the best pizza, — ANY WAY YOU SLICE IT Industrial Senior Engineer sought by Skyworks Solutions, Inc., Newbury Park, CA: Maximize constraint tool productivity. Salary: $114,171 - $164,600 / year. Email resumes: Angela.Ho@ skyworksinc.com. Job Code: CA0822BY. Chief Engineer, Boeing EnCore Interiors, LLC, Huntington Beach, CA: Works with design team to determine project deliverables and helps establish design specifications for each component/assembly. Up to 5% international travel and up to 10% domestic travel required. Employer will accept any suitable combination of education, training, or experience. Salary $160,005.00 per year. For a complete job description, list of requirements, and to apply, visit jobs.boeing.com and search Job ID 000003760542 Technology Meta Platforms, Inc. (f/k/a Facebook, Inc.) has the following positions in Los Angeles, CA: Data Engineer, Analytics: Design, model, and implement data warehousing activities to deliver the data foundation that drives impact through informed decision making. (ref. code REQ-2306-123302: $172084.59 - $191000). Data Scientist, Product: Collect, organize, interpret, and summarize statistical data in order to contribute to the design and development of Meta products. (ref. code REQ-2306-123290: $164393.79 - $191000). Software Engineer, Product: Develop, design, create, modify, and/or test software applications or systems for various products or software services. (ref. code REQ2306-123280: $208690.40 - $235000). Software Engineer, Systems: Research, design, develop, build and test operating systemslevel software, compilers, and network distribution software for large distributed components that run our applications. (ref. code REQ-2306-123030: $198940 - $235000). Individual pay is determined by skills, qualifications, experience, and location. Compensation details listed in this posting reflect the base salary only, and do not include bonus or equity or sales incentives, if applicable. In addition to base salary, Meta offers benefits. Learn more about benefits at Meta at this link: https://www.metacareers. com/facebook-life/benefits For full information & to apply online, visit us at the following website https://www.metacareers. com/jobs & search using the ref code(s) above. Ocean Hills Recovery, Inc. located in Laguna Niguel, CA is seeking a Recreational Therapist – Group Facilitator with a Master’s Degree in Interdisciplinary Art and Science Art Therapy. Salary offered: $50,253.00 yearly. Send resume to: [email protected] Educational Coordinator: Revise program policies, curriculums, and instruction delivery options to promote student welfare. Master’s in Education, Curriculum & Instruction, Music Therapy, or related. Mail resume to Korean American Special Education Center at 1661 N. Raymond Ave. STE 109, Anaheim, CA 92801; Attn: Ms. Chang Partner/ECT Director (The Boston Consulting Group, Inc. - Los Angeles, CA): Oversee and direct multiple consulting engagements simultaneously for BCG focusing on transformation initiatives, reorganization, and development of growth strategies. Requires Bachelor’s degree in business administration, management science, or a quantitative field (related to a BCG client industry) (willing to accept foreign education equivalent) and 7 years of exp as a management consultant, business analyst, or a quantitative analyst which must include at least 3 years of exp in management strategy. Alternatively will accept a Master’s degree (or higher) in business administration, management science, or a quantitative field (related to a BCG client industry) (willing to accept foreign education equivalent) and 5 years of exp as a management consultant, business analyst, or a quantitative analyst which must include at least 3 years of exp in management strategy. Partial telecommute benefit available. Domestic/international travel required (up to 80%) based on company/client need. Multiple positions available. Salary: $268,400 to $450,000. Send resume to [email protected]. Los Angeles, CA – Creative Agency seeks Design Director to lead dvlp & xecute crtve slut’ns. Mnge prjcts dvlpmnt via strtgy, dsgn, cntnt & tchnlgy to ID gaps & oprtunties. Lead dsgn on key prjcts or prvde drct’n for dsgn leads on othr prjcts usng dsgn s/ware e.g Adobe CS, Sketch, HTML5, CSS, Javascript & Web GL. Lead key clnt interct’ns, mlestne mtgs & dsgn rvws w/ team. Explre oprtunties to enhnce & xpnd wrk prtflio via rsrch & dvlpmnt & new biz ptches. Dvlp dsgn prceses, toolng & mthdlgies per glbl orgnz’l bst prctces wrkng w/ Chf Crtve Ofcr & glbl snr mngmnt. Spprt Hd. of Prdct’n & team w/ plning, rsrcing & csting for prjcts. Mntor crtve stff. Asst w/ hrng prfss’nl dsgn stff. Set stndrd for wrk qlty& clnt rltnshps. Wrk w/ MD & Exec Crtve Dir to spprt & nrture hlthy crtve cltre & +ve wrk prduct. FT. Min. Req: bachelor’s in graphic design or rltd field + 3 yrs’ exp as a Design Director. Will accept single degree, cmbinat’n of degrees/ diplomas/professional credentials equvlnt to US 4-yr degree in Graphic Design. Annual Salary - $150K. Email Resume to Karin Wester – Chief Human Resources Officer, B-Reel Creative Agency Inc., at [email protected] Employment Software Engineer II (Los Angeles, CA) - 1661, Inc. dba GOAT. Dsgn & implmt new features across multiple frontend/backend apps to expand customer mobile retail exp. Play key role in team setting to enhance frontend/backend apps & building new, scalable servicedriven architecture. Must pass company’s standard technical test. May work remotely anywhere in the U.S. $128,500 to $160,700/yr. Apply online at https://www. goatgroup.com/ Senior-Software Engineer needed by DIRECTV, LLC in El Segundo, CA [and various unanticipated locations throughout the U.S.; may work from home] to design, development, testing, deployment, production application support (e.g., troubleshooting) and maintenance with a focus on automation. Senior-Software Engineers earn between $180,617 - $232,415 yearly. DIRECTV, LLC offers amazing benefits from health insurance to tuition reimbursement and paid time off to discounts on products and services. Apply at https://jobs.directv.com/, select JOB SEARCH and APPLY and select Search by Requisition Number at the left bottom of the page and enter Job Number: R230254. Pluto TV seeks a Senior Software Test Engineer - Core API in West Hollywood, CA to test infrastructure and write code to examine and validate large-scale software development. Telecommuting permitted. $125,000 - $150,000 per year. Apply at www.jobpostingtoday.com Ref #62362. Senior Process Development Engineer (Balt USA LLC, Irvine, CA): Develop new processes & support & continuously improve current mfg. processes through technical & process innovation for manufacture of neurovascular medical devices. Salary: $97,500 - $117,500. Req’s: Bachelor’s in Biomed. Eng. or rel. Eng. field & 4 yrs. exp. Apply by resume only to [email protected] incl. SH10547 in subject line. Senior Product Engineer sought by Skyworks Solutions, Inc., Newbury Park, CA: Perform ATE data and yield analysis. 10-15% Intl & domestic travel. Salary: $114,213 - $164,600/ year. Email resumes to: Angela. [email protected]. Ref: CA0721MV Fulgent Therapeutics, LLC seeks a Senior Network Engineer in El Monte, CA, to monitor, analyze, & maintain network sys. for medical tech co. $97261/yr. Mail CV to: VP of HR, 4399 Santa Anita Ave, El Monte, CA 91731 Senior Engineer. Design, implement, debug & optimize systems in C/C++ & other languages. Req. Bach. in Comp. Science, Software Engineer., or rel. field or foreign equiv. & 2 yrs exp in job or 2 yrs exp as Engr., Software Engr., or rel occup. Any suitable combo of educ, training &/or exp is acceptable. Jobsite: Los Angeles, CA. Wage range: $149,800/yr to $201,880/yr. Send resume ref#22201 to K. Finnsson, Activision Publishing Inc, 2701 Olympic Blvd, Bldg. B, Santa Monica, CA 90404. Rocket Lab USA, Inc. in Long Beach, CA seeks: Senior Embedded Flight Software Engineer w/ Master’s or equiv plus 2 yrs exp. In related field ($156K-$170K); and Senior Spacecraft Structural Analysis Engineer w/ Master’s or equiv plus 2 yrs exp. In related field ($150K- $165K/yr). Send resume to: Daniel Murillo, People & Culture Business Partner, 3881 McGowen Street, Long Beach, CA 90808 or e-mail people&culture@rocketlab usa.com. Principal Software Engineer needed by DIRECTV, LLC in 2200 E Imperial Hwy, El Segundo, CA 90245 [and various unanticipated locations throughout the U.S.; may work from home] to collaborate to gather and review software requirements/user stories, provide estimates, create software design specifications and collaborate with engineers/architects to assess and test hardware and software interactions. Our Principal Software Engineers earn between $174,082 to $255,530 yearly. DIRECTV, LLC offers amazing benefits from health insurance to tuition reimbursement and paid time off to discounts on products and services. Apply at https://jobs.directv.com/, select JOB SEARCH and APPLY and select Search by Requisition Number at the left bottom of the page and enter Job Number: R230250. Principal Cybersecurity Software Engineer, Valencia, CA. From $137,778 - $160,000/ yr. May require to travel/ telecommute. Develop, implement, and support solutions that improves Boston Scientific’s capabilities for threat reduction. Contact Sarah Okusanya, Boston Scientific Corporation, Global [email protected]. Please include reference H4872- 00861. (EOE) Skidata Inc. has opening for Lead System Engineer in Van Nuys, CA. Ensure SKIDATA installations function smoothly. Analyze & resolve technical issues, providing technical trainings, & supporting incidents & installations on-site. Domestic travel required. $136,157/ year. Email resume to [email protected]. Must reference job 39. Electrical Engineer 2 sought by Skyworks Solutions, Inc., Irvine, CA: Bench test, performance validation for complex RF front end modules. Salary $101,254 - $132,600 / year. Email resumes to: Angela.Ho@ skyworksinc.com. Job Code: CA0423US. Employment

B6 SUNDAY, JULY 9, 2023 WST S LATIMES.COM A group of probation chiefs from nearly every county in the state has decided to disband a secretive nonprofit organization they set up to work out of the public eye on a sweeping stateordered reform of juvenile justice. The decision came five days after the San Diego Union-Tribune published a story on the group’s history, organization and financing, and followed months of questioning by advocacy groups, some of which sued over its approach to state open meeting laws and its rejection of requests to review its records. The move by the County Probation Consortium Partnering for Youth Realignment was quietly announced in a news release June 23. The unsigned release, which was posted on the group’s website, said the board of directors had decided that the “critical need” for the group had ended at the end of June with the closure of state juvenile detention facilities and transfer of youths to county facilities. The board, which is made up of probation chiefs, said it would wind down operations by the end of the year. The decision came four months after the group was sued by a coalition of advocacy groups, which said the consortium was violating state laws concerning open meetings and open records. The announcement abruptly ends an unusual chapter in the nearly threeyear plan by the state to close down the youth detention system and transfer responsibility back to the counties. In response to legislation in early 2021, 55 of the 58 probation chiefs in the state quietly formed the nonprofit. It was focused on housing and the treatment of youths in the system who needed to be held in secure facilities, which not all counties in the state have. When they agreed to work together, the chiefs also decided to set up the consortium by incorporating as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, funded with membership dues drawn from the public funds of each county and a contract with the state. When the advocacy groups asked for records of the meetings and other documents in August, lawyers from a firm retained by the consortium responded it was not subject to the open records or meetings laws because the group was not a government agency and was not making policy or legislation. That position triggered the lawsuit. An expert on government transparency criticized that stance, arguing the law holds that any entity that conducts a “core government function” is subject to the open government and transparency laws of the state. In the application for taxexempt status submitted to the Internal Revenue Service, the consortium wrote that the stated goal of the group was to “lessen the burdens of government” by coordinating realignment efforts by counties, drafting model agreements between counties for housing some youths and creating a database of treatment programs in counties. The records also showed that the consortium had short-term goals of dealing with the immediate issues relating to realignment and longer-term plans three or four years out that could include forming a “legal entity” like a joint powers authority “to ensure counties can continue to access appropriately responsive and highquality treatment capacity.” Under California law, a joint powers authority can be set up as a separate entity to perform a specific government role; it is subject to open records and meetings laws. None of the materials indicated the group would close down after the initial wave of youths were returned to counties. Elizabeth Siggins, the executive director of the consortium, said in an email that the group decided to disband because the shortterm goal of managing the return of youths from the state to county facilities had been completed, and that, as it turned out, there was less need to house youths in other counties than first thought. She said documents that discuss a longer-term role were done before the formation of the consortium when there were “many discussions taking place” at that time. “The non-profit organization was the short-term solution with the idea that if a longer-term solution were needed it would likely be established as a JPA,” she wrote in an email. “At this time, it is not clear that is needed.” She said the decision to stop had nothing to do with the lawsuit, which she called “baseless.” Erin Palacios, a lawyer with the Youth Law Center who filed the suit on behalf of a collection of juvenile justice groups called California Alliance for Youth and Community Justice, said it was “welcome news” that the consortium was dissolving. “An organization that fights so hard to avoid transparency and public participation cannot effectively or appropriately coordinate California’s juvenile justice realignment,” she wrote in an email. She said her group had no indication that the consortium was closing down and was preparing for continued litigation. The consortium collected $750,000 from member counties — money largely drawn from public realignment funds each county received — plus a consulting contract of the same amount from a new state agency created to oversee realignment. Siggins said whatever money was left at the end of the year would be returned to counties on a proportional basis. The lawsuit is still pending, Palacios said. The coalition of youth groups still wants to know “how the money was used to benefit the public, how much remains, and where the remaining funds will go now.” Moran writes for the San Diego Union-Tribune. Secretive probation nonprofit disbanded By Greg Moran A YOUTH detention facility in San Diego. A group of California probation chiefs will close a secretive nonprofit that was working on juvenile justice reform. The group was sued for alleged open meetings violations. Eduardo Contreras San Diego Union-Tribune After going missing during Fourth of July celebrations, a Reedley, Calif., police K-9 has been found dead. Kona, a 10-year-old German shepherd, escaped from his handler’s garage in Visalia on Tuesday. After a search that involved the public and several other law enforcement agencies, his body was found just outside Visalia on the 14000 block of Avenue 280 on Thursday. A tracking device was found in the area earlier, but it wasn’t on his collar, the Fresno Bee reported. According to the department’s Facebook posts, it seems likely that Kona was hit by a vehicle and then crawled into a vineyard where he died. A Reedley Police Department spokesperson was not available for comment Friday. “Despite our best efforts, we were unable to provide the happy reunion we all wished for,” the post read. A preliminary investigation found that after escaping from his handler’s garage during the fireworks, Kona removed wooden fence panels to escape the backyard. The department will continue to investigate what happened. The department’s Facebook post on Kona’s passing garnered hundreds of comments, many expressing their condolences for Kona and his handler. “Please take a moment to remember Kona and keep his handler in your thoughts during this difficult period of grief and loss,” the department posted. Missing police K-9 is found dead By Saumya Gupta Dimensional Engineer, Exteriors: Fisker Group Inc. in Manhattan Beach, CA. Lead delivery of high-quality automobiles. May telecomm from any location w/in the U.S. Resume to mkulasekaran@fiskerinc. com. Job code 49434.2106. Salary $110,000 Freight Operations Specialist: Req. BBA or rel. Wage:$55,370/YR Mail resume: Silverstar Express, Inc. 19010 S Laurel Park Rd. Rancho Dominguez, CA 90220 Food Service Manager: Supervise Kitchen and Train workers in food preparation, and in service, sanitation, and safety procedures. No Exp. Req’d. Resume to SMOKING TIGER COFFEE AND BREAD CERRITOS, INC., 11900 SOUTH STREET STE 134, CERRITOS, CA 90703. Food Preparation Worker: Follow company procedure in preparing dishes. $29827/ yr. Mail resume to Crux Enterprise, Inc. at 14121 Jeffrey Rd, Irvine CA 92620; Attn: Minami Chun FASHION MERCHANDISER Bachelor’s degree in Fashion Design or Fashion Merchandising. 40 hr/wk. Mail Resume: DHNW LLC, 8617 Ambassador Row Suite 110, Dallas, TX 75247. Jobsite is: 2140 E. 25th Street, Vernon, CA 90058. Fashion Designer: search new textile and fashion design trends provide basic sketches and assist creating new textile/garment design req bacl’s deg in fashion design & apparel or related FT $53082/YR sub res BNK Import Inc att J Bang 1567 E 25th St Los Angeles CA 90011 Attn J Bank Fashion Designer (LA, CA) Design fashion apparels per trends. Bachelor’s in Fashion Design related. $53082/yr. Resume to: Fate Inc. 2014 S San Pedro St, LA, CA 90011 Sr. Supplier Development Engineer w/ ResMed Motor Technologies, Inc. in Chatsworth, CA. 10% dom/10% int’l travel req’d. Email resume w/ Job #AB1018 to myconnect@ resmed.com. Position qualifies for comp. med, vision, dental, and life, AD&D, STD, LTD, sleep care mgmt, HSA, FSA, commuter benefits, 401(k), ESPP, EAP & tuition assist. Employees accrue 3 wks PTO 1st year of employment, 11 pd holidays, 3 floating days & eligible for caregiver leave. Individual pay decisions based on factors such as geo work location, relevant qualif., work exp & skills. Wage range: $126,485- $168,000/yr. EOE-M/F/D/V. ResMed participates in EVerify Software Engineer (Altruist Corp. HQ in Culver City, CA): Work with SWE Team using agile methodologies & define reqs. Requires: Master Comp Sci, Eng fld or rltd & 2yrs exp as SWE or job offered, alternatively, Bach in same fields & 5 yrs exp as SWE or job offered. 100% telecommuting ok and some travel to HQ. Salary $137,000 - $164,000/yr. Apply to careers2@altruist .com & specify job code: S111993M Employment M A R K E T P L A C E JOBS latimes.com/placead To place an ad call 1.800.234.4444 IT Specialist in Los Angeles, CA: Please send resume to Coway USA, Inc. 4221 Wilshire Blvd STE 210, Los Angeles CA90010 wage from $48,838 to $55,000. Human Resources Operations Mngr – Negotiate sales agreements, analyze info, bridge mgmt. & employee. Min. Req: Bachelor’s or foreign equiv., in Psychology, Business, Communications or related. Salary $62,982/ yr. Mail resume: Lehigh, Inc. 714 South Plymouth Blvd., LA, CA 90005 Attn: Fred Houriani HOUSEKEEPERS (SEVERAL POSITIONS) Clean, equipment and rooms/linen. Replenish supplies. Level supplies in carts. Dispose of trash, Salary $15.50 per hour. Send resumes to job site of Om Shree Sai Ram Corp dba Palm Inn & Suites, 430 W Palmdale Blvd, Palmdale, Ca 93551 Thoroughbred Racehorse Hotwalker John W. Sadler Racing, Inc. 3 Full-time Santa Anita Racetrack Arcadia CA, 91007 please contact: [email protected] Technology Meta Platforms, Inc. (f/k/a Facebook, Inc.) has the following position in Los Angeles, CA: Software Engineer, Android: Research, design, develop, and test operating systems-level software, compilers, and network distribution software for user interfaces, infrastructure, and/or tools supporting applications on Android using the Android SDK. (ref. code REQ-2306-123345: $198940 - $235000). Individual pay is determined by skills, qualifications, experience, and location. Compensation details listed in this posting reflect the base salary only, and do not include bonus or equity or sales incentives, if applicable. In addition to base salary, Meta offers benefits. Learn more about benefits at Meta at this link: https://www.metacareers. com/facebook-life/benefits For full information & to apply online, visit us at the following website https://www.metacareers. com/jobs & search using the ref code(s) above. Elevance Health, Inc. seeks IT Quality Control Sr Advisor in Newbury Park, CA to analyze business requirements and coordinate with business and development team to derive test requirements. Salary: $121,555 – $142,000. Apply at www.jobposting today.com ref #10391 Human Resources Specialist. Los Angeles, CA. $65k- $75k/yr. Conduct applicant screening-hiring process; inform new & existing employees on employmnt details, policies, benefits, & opportunities; research & study current employmnt standards, laws, and reg’s; conduct employee disciplinary processes & address of grievances. Req’d: Bachelors in HR, Psychology, Org. Behavior, Business, or equiv’; 2yrs exp job duties; Knwldge of HR, negotiation, organizational diagnosis, & qualitative research. Send Resume: Job#5, M.I.D. LA, LLC, 606 South Olive St. STE 1000, Los Angeles, CA 90014 Employment Manager, Software Engineering (Tintri By DDN, Inc.- Chatsworth, CA) Lead team of distributed sw engnrs to design, troubleshoot & optimize storage ecosystems solutions through sw dev, testing & certification. May telecommute from any location in U.S. Compensation incl. base salary of $205,733 to $210,000. Salary rate may vary w/in range based on factors such as candidate’s exp. Resumes: email to C. Cottrell at ccottrell@tintri. com. Ref job code 7404. Manager, Machine Learning Engineering sought by Snap Inc. (Santa Monica, CA) *Hybrid work permitted - Snap practices a “default together” approach & expects team members to work in Santa Monica ofc at least 80% of time (avg 4 days/wk). Lead ML Engs to create exciting products & breakthrough interactive exp. Base salary: $205,733-$295,000/ yr. Eligible for discretionary performance-based bonus award. Eligible for equity in form of RSUs. Our Benefits: https://careers.snap.com/ benefits. Email Resume: [email protected]. Ref. Job Code #MMLE-SM-0623- KG. EOE. Manager, Global Change Control sought by ICU Medical, Inc. in San Clemente, CA: Manage all aspects of global change control administration. Telecommuting permitted from anywhere in the US. $138,632- $143,750/yr. Send resume to Ana Robles: humanresources@icumed. com Must ref.: CA0426MP Mgr-Tech, Int’l Govt. Programs, and Reg Affairs (Astrophysics; Industry, CA); Rep Astrophysics before domest. & int’l reg. agcy on maj. policy matters or decisions re. company prods. Sal: $188,323-$200,000. Resume to: Trina Pangalilingan, 21481 Ferrero Pkwy, Industry, CA 91789 BM Group LLC, Los Angeles, CA - Residential Maintenance Technician; daily inspections of resdntl properties; repair props, maintain recrds; contact with tenants. Rqs: HS Dip (Foreign ok)+10 mos in maintenance-related job+CA DL+Crim Bckgrnd. Resumes to: rent@bueno. group Production Manager: Req’d: Associate’s in Bus. Admin., Economics, or related. Wage: $53,914/Yr. Mail Resume: Mi In Fashion Inc., 1423 East Adams Blvd., LA, CA 90011 Systems Developer at Ready Pac Produce, Inc. (Irwindale, CA): Developing, enhancing, and maintaining Core ERP system. Require BS in Info Tech, Comp Sci, cls rel. Fgn Eqv & 5 yrs exp. Pays $147,410 - $160,000. Add’l duties, requirements, avail upon request. Email resume & cvr ltr to gabriela. [email protected], ref Job#PJ01. EOE. Commission Junction LLC has an opening for Software Engineering Manager in Santa Barbara, CA. Plan, initiate, and manage information technology (IT) projects. Must be available to work at various, unanticipated sites throughout US. Send resume to: recruiting@ cj.com. Must reference job 6630.5808.12. Rate of Pay: $193,000 - $202,650 per year. Employment Production Pharmacist for Pharmacy. Orange, Ca. F/T. $135,200/year. Ensure completeness/ accuracy of data & dispensed medication before packing & shipment to patients. Patient counseling. Report any misconduct, suspicious or unethical activities to the Compliance Office. Send resume to hr@ ameripharma.us Operations Lead (Invemo, LLC, Santa Monica, CA): Analyze & oversee biz ops (budgets, fin rep, track expend & investing) for tech co. Reqs: MBA & 1yr pre/post MBA exp oversee biz ops incl budgets, finan. reps, expend, and gen quotes. Salary $97,500 - $99,000/yr. Apply via email operations_jobs@invemo. com & specify job code: INVORM-003. Operations Manager-Establish dept. policies, goals, objectives, procedures, plan, direct activities. Min Req: Bachelor’s or foreign equiv., in Bus. Admin, Management, Operations or related. Salary $62,982/yr. Mail resume: KG Home Care Services LLC dba: 1Heart Caregiver Services, Beverly Hills Attn: Kamran Ghasri 8383 Wilshire Blvd, Suite 800, Beverly Hills, CA 90211 OFFICE Office Coordinator Associate Degree in Any Major req’d. Resume to Stephanie Bae. Lee, Bae & Bitticks Accountancy Corporation. 3701 Wilshire Blvd STE 512, Los Angeles, CA 90010 Office Clerk: Organize record of office work. Answer phones and take messages. No. Exp. Req’d. Resume to P. I. L. EXPRESS INC. 22704 Normandie Ave, Torrance, CA 90502 Office Clerk: Answer telephones, direct calls etc. No Exp. Rqr’d. Send resume to LA Agape Chiropractic & Healing Center, Inc.: 903 Crenshaw Blvd Ste 202 Los Angeles, CA 90019 Office Clerk: Organize record of office work. Answer phones and take messages. No. Exp. Req’d. Resume to OCEANUS APPAREL INC., 6720 WILSON AVE, Los Angeles, CA 90001 Marketing Specialist Maui and Sons Pacific Palisades, CA Pay: $48,000 - $54,000 Email Resume: dorotheek@ mauiandsons.com Marketing Research Analyst (Ramar International Corporation; Huntington Park, CA): Gather information about consumer preferences, needs, demographics, purchasing patterns, and competitors to provide trends and forecasts related to our products development, marketing, and sales to the marketing management. Salary: $44,803/year. Email resume to hr@ramarfoods. com. Medical & Health Manager (Mission Hills): Dvlp goals, budgets & policies. Manage & control finances & operations. Ensure facility is compliant. MUST MAIL RESUME & COVER LETTER TO Junfeng Jia, 10949 Burnet Ave, Mission Hills, CA 91345. Employment SALES REPRESENTATIVE: Recommend products to customers, based on customers’ needs and interests. 60 Month Exp. Req’d. Resume to OCEANUS APPAREL INC., 6720 WILSON AVE, Los Angeles, CA 90001 Sales Manager – Prep sales budgets, oversee sales. Min Req: Bachelor’s or foreign equiv., in Business Admin, Mgmt., Finance, Accounting or related. Salary: $65,853/yr. Mail resume: Fred 26 Importers, Inc., 4401 S. Soto Street, Vernon, CA 90058 Attn: F. Azizollahi UV RML Films, LLC, dba Relativity Media in Los Angeles, CA is seek’g a Manager, TV Sales & Distribution to liaise w/ clients & mng bus. rltnshp of U.S. mrkts. No trvl req’d. WFH benefit avail. Salary $65,893/yr. Send resumes to: jobs@relativity media.com. Staff Research Associate Conduct research on the neural basis of learning, memory, and spatial navigation for neurological and psychiatric disorder treatments. UCLA Semel Institute located in L.A. $62,315.40 to $100,211.40/yr. Apply online at: www.uclahealthcareers.org Printing Co. seeks a Market Research Analyst in Irvine, CA. Bachelor in Marketing, Business or rltd req’d. Frm $44,803-/yr. Send resume to Goshiki, LLC 17972 Sky Park Cir. Ste. E, Irvine, CA 92614 Attn: Mr. Tanaka Quality Assurance Technician: Req’d: Bachelor’s degree in Pharmaceutical Chemistry, Chemical Engineering, Nutritional Science or rltd. $48,194/year. Send resume to US Pharmatech, Inc., 2927 Lomita Blvd., #A, Torrance, CA 90505 Public Relations Specialist (Job Site: L.A., CA), Baek Clinical Inc. B.A. Req’d. Salary:$85k/yr, Send resume 3511 W.6th St. #12 L.A., CA 90020 PR Specialist (Los Angeles, CA) sought by Sinica Education Inc to Administer official acct on Chi & Eng social media plat; Prep & update materials & suprt promo strat targeting Chi stu; Anlys & eval users’opinion, respond to users’ fdbk; Research intl edu trend, competitors & cust’ demands; Create PR campaigns. U.S. Master’s in Comm, or closely rel. Read, write & speak Mandarin. FT. $77626/yr. Res: Wenqi Fu, 11835 W Olympic Blvd, # 745E, LA, CA 90064 Demand Planning Manager sought by Masimo Corporation, Irvine, CA: Forecast global business demand, production demand, optimize inventory investment, improve overall supply chain efficiency & deliver revenue forecast. $129,854 - $130k/ year. Email resumes to Delora Sandoval: [email protected] Must ref: IR0323MG. Nocturnist Physician (San Bernardino, CA) Inpatient Specialists of California, PC dba Sound Physicians of California IV: Diagnose, treat, & provide inpatient care for hospitalized adult patients. To apply, email Maggie McCluney at belong@ soundphysicians.com. Employment Consumerinfo.com, Inc. in Costa Mesa, CA is seeking to fill the position of Software Development Manager to deliver on-time, on budget, high value complex software development projects. Telecommuting permitted from anywhere in the U.S. Pay range for this role is $150,000.00-$221,540.00, with actual pay based on work location, job-related skills, experience and education. Role incl. variable pay and comprehensive benefits. Send resumes and benefit inquiries to Amy Harmon, HR, via email at amy. [email protected]. Must reference job code: 20596.434 Software Developer for digital marketing co @ $102,544/yr. Mail to Golden Entropy Marketing, Inc, 17547 Ventura Blvd., #200, Encino, CA 91316. Senior Software Developer (NetSuite) Dsgn, devlp, implmnt, & maintn NetSuite ERP s/w sols. Reqs: Master’s deg in Comp Sci, Comp Eng, or rltd fld & 2 yrs exp in job offrd or rltd postn. May be sub w/ Bach deg in Comp Sci, Comp Eng, or rltd fld & 5 yrs exp in job offrd or rltd postn. Skills/knwldge in NetSuite CRM, NetSuite ERP, NetSuite API, SuiteScript, JavaScript, TDD, JIRA, & Jenkins. Incdntl trvl–1%. 40 hrs/wk. Salary: $147,410.00- $170,000.00/yr Job Site: Pasadena, CA. Email Resume to: Smallboard.com at [email protected] Roku, Inc. in Santa Monica, CA seeks: Senior Software Engineer, Machine Learning. Des & implem Recommender Sys algorithms & sols (Spark Scala Python). Up to 2 days/wk telecom’g may be permitted. Reqs incl. Ph.D. or fgn equiv. in Information, CS, CE, Electrical Engg or rel + 1 yr rel exp, or MS + 3 yrs rel exp. $444,550 - $444,550 per year. Email resume to [email protected] ref job code 83017 in subj line. PayPal, Inc. has openings in Los Angeles, CA for MTS 1, Software Engineer: Architect, design, develop, write, and implement software programming applications using JavaScript, Node. Base Salary: $147,410 – 204,600 per annum. Must be legally authorized to work in U.S. w/o sponsorship. To apply, send resume w/ references, specifying Req#20- 3050 to: paypaljobs@paypal. com. MULTIPLE POSITIONS. El Segundo, CA. #1-2 Software Developers: BS in CS, SWE, IT or rltd + 3 yrs exp. $102,544- $124,987/yr. #3 Software Engineer: BS in CS, SWE, IT or rltd + 3 yrs exp. $102,544- $147,410/yr. FPT USA Corp., [email protected]. SOFTWARE Lead Developer Apartment Owners Association of California, Van NuysF/T Lead Developer, Bach Degree in Comp. Sci. 24m exp prop mangmnt software programming. CV to [email protected] SECURITY SECURITY $15-$18.50 hr no exp nec. will train, pt/ft all 3 shifts in LA , OC. 8a-6p 7 days. Montebello 323-889-1922 Employment Head/Grand Prix Show Groom in Calabasas, CA (other unanticipated worksites may vary; quarterly travel to show venues). ER is Leslie Steele dba Acres West. Care for grand prix show horses, prep/maintain specialized tack/equip & horses for competition. Oversee nutrition & well-being. Assist w/vet care, meds/treatment. Supv 2 show grooms. 2 yrs practical exp as show groom or related. Will also accept 2 yrs trn’g as show groom or related. Knowledge & exp in care/maintain horses & w/ specialized tack/equip. Mail resume to M. Giffin, 23200 Mulholland Hwy., Calabasas, CA 91302. CSS Payroll Co, L.P. (Los Angeles, CA) seeks Sr. Software Engineer, Onboarding Digitization to collab w/ Prdct Mngrs, Dsgnrs, & Frontend Engnrs to concptlze & dvlp new sftwre features for growng customr base. Reqs MS in CompSci or Comp Engg +3yrs exp in pos offrd, sftwre dvpmt or sftwre engg pos or Bach in CompSci or Comp Engg +5yrs prgrssv post-Bach exp in pos offrd, sftwre dvpmt, or sftwre engg pos. All reqd exp mustve incld dvlpng & operatng IT sys usng commn langgs incl C++, C#, Go, Java, or Pythn; wrkng w/ REST API, SOAP API, & Webhook; wrkng w/ distrbutd sys, microsrvces IT wrkflws, big data, query optmzn tchnqs, storage, ntwrkng & makng tchncl archtctre decisns; wrkng thru full SDLC from dsgn & implmntn to testng & dploymt; explaing cmplx sftwre engg topics to othr engnrs, dsgnrs, prdct mngrs, & suppt teams; wrkng w/ data structures, algrthms, threadng, & info retrievl. Telecmmtng permttd from any US locatn. Salary $178,640/ yr. E-mail res to: catarino. [email protected]. CSS Payroll Co, L.P. (Los Angeles, CA) Sr. Software Engineer (Back-End) to collab w/ Prdct Mngrs, Dsgnrs & Frontend Engnrs to concptlze & dvlp new sftwre features for growng custmr base. Reqs MS in CompSci, Comp Engg or rltd fld +3yrs exp in pos offrd or sftwre dvpmt/engg pos or Bach in CompSci, Comp Engg or rltd fld +5yrs prgrssv post-Bach exp in pos offrd or sftwre dvpmt/engg pos. All reqd exp mustve incld dvlpng & operatng IT systms usng common languages incl C++, C#, Go, Java, or Pythn; utlzng cloud srvces incl AWS, Azure or GCP; wrkng w/ distrbtd systms, srvces, IT wrkflows, big data, query optmzn tchnqs, storage, netwrkng & makng tchncl archtctre decisns; wrkng thru full SDLC from dsgn & implmntn to testng & dploymnt; & wrkng w/ data structures, algrthms, threadng, & info retrieval. Telecmmtng permttd from any US locatn. Salary $206,080/ yr. E-mail res to: catarino. [email protected] Software Engineer sought by Accurate Background LLC in Irvine, CA. Dev and maintain .net service-oriented arch platforms from start to finish. Salary ranging from $102,600 to $120k/yr. Employee reports to office in Irvine, CA, but may telecommute from anywhere in the U.S. Send resume to [email protected]. Employment Firefighters First Federal Credit Union in Pasadena, CA is seek’g a Principal System Architect to lead the archt’l dsgn, dvlpmnt & deplymnt of overall bus. sys’s environ. No trvl; post’n is fully remote. Salary: $147,410/yr. Send resumes to: Firefighters First Federal Credit Union, Attn: HR, 1520 W. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena, CA 91105. Supervisor - FAAS for Macias Gini & O’Connell LLP to report to our Los Angeles, CA regional office and may work remotely. Work in Financial Accounting Advisory Services [FAAS] dept. Duties: Provides/assists to implemnt or upgrade acct software, & tailors acct software set-up per client needs. Review reconciliation of statements & closing, rev fin statements, &analyses of accts. Prep &coordinate acct for client audit &communicate w/ auditor. Review journal entries of prepaids, accruals, depreciation & payroll. Assist w/ tax return prep incl liaise btween client & tax dept. Assists to implemnt & maintain int fin controls & process. Direct/prepare 1099’s, W2’s, &/ or Payroll Tax Reports. Maintain proficiency over acct practices & software. Provide tech acct training to clients (web or in person). Anticipate, ID, & fix complex assignment issues. Supervise job & ensure QC standards. Develop team, incl mentor & dev lower lvl associates by providing performnce feedback (discussions &/or evaluations). Dev & maintain good client relations (incl meets deadlines, timely communics). Dev new business for firm. Review payroll wires & acct transfers. Prep billing worksheets/WIP analysis, & communic. to promote client retention. Little domestic travel involved. Work time beyond standrd bus. hrs may often be req’d to meet deadlines. May undergo background checks. Requires communication skills. Wage range: $106,974 to $116,000 annually. Must have Bachelors in Accounting or related field and 5 yrs relevant accounting exp. Requires skills (4 yrs exp) in: GL, AP, AR, and reconciliations. Apply at www.mgocpa.com/ careers; ref. Job 2023-3319 First Line Supervisor: direct quality control; 12 months of post-secondary education; Go Investment Group, LLC. 3450 W. 6th Street, Suite #103 Los Angeles, CA 90020 First - Line Supervisor. Req’d: AA Degree in Management, Hospitality Management, or rel. Wage: $53,914/Yr. Mail Resume: Modu Food Service, Inc, 5050 Everett Ct., Vernon, CA 90058 Asst Superintendents @ Hathaway Dinwiddie Constr. Co., Los Angeles, CA. Implmnt & enforce safety regs. Review prjct estimate & subcontract scope of work. Work assgnmnts of a few months to a few years @ project sites in LA County. Sal: $103k/yr. Apply: [email protected], Subj: Job ID# AS24. Reinforcing Steel Estimator: B.S. in Civil Engineering req’d. Wage: $40,290/Yr. Mail resume to: Rebar Engineering, Inc., 10706 Painter Ave., Santa Fe Springs, CA 90670, Attn: K. Krebs. Employment Video Editor: Mt. Melvil LLC, located in Culver City, CA, seeks Video Editor. Bachelors req’d. Resumes to: Motoki Tomatsu, 6021 Washington Blvd., Culver City, CA 90232. Truck Driver needed: Send resume to Osso Corporation, 3407 W. 6th St., Ste. 602, Los Angeles, CA 90020. Job location is in Los Angeles, CA, wage ranges from 35K to 38K. Culinary Travel Guide needed in Northridge, CA to plan and organize travel tours to Italy. Requires international travel to Italy. Apply to Italian Culinary Adventures at rhonda@italianculinaryad ventures.com. Transportation Manager (Compton, CA) Supervise the activities of workers engaged in receiving, storing, testing & shipping products or materials. Plan, develop, or implement warehouse safety & security programs & activities. Plan, organize, or manage the work of subordinate staff to ensure that the work is accomplished in a manner consistent with organizational requirements. 40hrs/wk, Offered wage: $107,806/year, High School/ GED diploma & 4 years of experience as Transportation / Logistics Manager required. Resume to OCEAN BLUE EXPRESS INC. Attn: Sung CHI, 255 W VICTORIA ST, COMPTON, CA 90220 Cell Phone Repair Technician needed: Send resume to Goxel, Inc., 12467 Altura Dr., Rancho Cucamonga, CA 91739. Job location is in Rancho Cucamonga, CA, wage ranges from 33K to 35K. Building Safety Technician (La Mirada, CA) Maintain/ repair building structure/ equipment. Bachelor’s in construction/architecture related. $49358/yr. Resume to: Highlander Group LP, 13902 Highlander Rd, La Mirada, CA 90638 Preschool Teacher to assist teacher in montessori preschool. Mail to Woodlake Montessori Preschool, 23363 Burbank Blvd., Woodland Hills, CA 91367. CBIZ Accounting, Tax & Advisory of San Diego, LLC d/b/a CBIZ MHM Golden State Open Position: Supervising Senior Location: Los Angeles, California Salary Range: $90,000 - $119,000 Resp: Complete all aspects of tax engagements for clients; demonstrate understanding of client’s business, adhere to engagement budget constraints and complete assigned tasks within time requested; review associates tax work and provide constructive review points, supervise, train and mentor associates on engagements. Requirements: Bachelor’s degree in accounting, taxation, or related field, plus 3 years of experience in public accounting or a related field. Prior experience must include 3 years of experience performing public accounting; 3 years of experience working with GAAP; and 1 year of experience supervising staff. To apply, please contact Kathe Kirstein at [email protected] Employment

LATIMES.COM S SUNDAY, JULY 9, 2023 B7 A Los Angeles County man was arrested this week on suspicion of killing a dancer and sex worker last week in Tijuana, and Mexican authorities allege that he could be linked to other slayings in the city. Bryant Rivera, 30, of Downey was taken into custody by U.S. officials in connection with the death of one woman. However, Baja California Atty. Gen. Ricardo Iván Carpio Sánchez said Rivera is a suspect in the murders of three women, all in Tijuana. The U.S. Marshals Service arrested Rivera at his home Thursday. He is scheduled to appear Monday in federal court in Los Angeles. According to a complaint filed in U.S. federal court, the Baja California attorney general’s office has charged Rivera with femicide in the death of Ángela Carolina Acosta Flores, who was strangled in January 2022 in a Tijuana hotel room. Acosta Flores began working as a dancer and “on some occasions as a sex worker” at the Hong Kong Gentlemen’s Club in 2021, her mother told Mexican officials. On the night of Jan. 24, 2022, Acosta Flores texted her mother that she would be with a client in a hotel room for 30 minutes. The mother said that after the time elapsed, she texted and called her daughter multiple times but received no response. Acosta Flores’ mother and boyfriend searched for her until approximately noon the next day, when an ambulance arrived at the hotel, and they learned that her body had been found in room 404. A sex worker who also worked at the Hong Kong Gentlemen’s Club told Mexican investigators she had arranged to meet a client she said was named Bryant Rivera on the afternoon of Jan. 24. The client was from California, she told investigators. That woman said she took the man she knew as Rivera to a hotel, then returned to the club. At around 10 p.m. that evening, she saw Rivera leave the bar with Acosta Flores, she said. Authorities say U.S. Customs and Border Protection surveillance cameras caught Rivera reentering the United States on foot just after midnight Jan. 25. In statements late last year, Carpio Sánchez said a U.S. resident was being sought in connection with the murder of sex workers in Tijuana. “If someone threatens the lives of our citizens, of our women, then they will have a serious problem with our justice system,” he said in a report by NBC 7 San Diego. The circumstances of the other killings were not known. The complaint focused on Acosta Flores and did not reveal information about other victims. In 2021, Mexico saw 1,000 cases of femicide, the murder of women or girls because they are female. Arrest made in L.A. for Tijuana killing Bryant Rivera, 30, of Downey is a suspect in slayings classed as femicide. By Christian Martinez THEIR DAY IS ON TRACK Jason Armond Los Angeles Times Visitors enjoy the sights on Angels Flight Railway on a warm day in downtown L.A. Morning low clouds will start the day on Sunday, which will otherwise be sunny. Inland areas will be a bit warmer than Saturday as a ridge of high pressure begins to build. A girl was found at Camp Pendleton more than two weeks after she had been reported missing, according to her family, who alleges she was raped by a Marine on the military base north of San Diego. The girl’s aunt, Casaundra Perez, said in a video posted to TikTok that her niece, whom she did not name, went missing from her home near Spring Valley on June 10 and was found at the base June 28. A photograph posted to Instagram by the account notinregz, which shares content submitted by military personnel, shows an unidentified Marine in handcuffs being escorted by military police officers. The post included a photo of what it said was a handwritten logbook from Camp Pendleton that says military personnel found a 13-year-old girl in the barracks June 28. The Times could not verify the authenticity of the logbook page. A Marine with Combat Logistics Battalion 5 was taken into custody for questioning by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service the day the girl was found, 1st Marine Logistics Group spokesperson Capt. Charles Palmer confirmed. The Marine is on active duty and assigned to the battalion stationed at Camp Pendleton, Palmer said. “This command takes this matter and these allegations very seriously. The incident is under investigation, and we will continue to cooperate with NCIS and appropriate authorities,” Palmer said in a statement. In the TikTok video, Perez alleged that her niece had been trafficked and accused military personnel of trying to “cover up” the case and shift blame to the girl for the alleged sexual assault. Perez could not be reached for comment. NCIS spokesperson Jeff Houston said in an email that the agency does not comment on or confirm details relating to ongoing investigations. According to the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department, a 14-year-old girl who had been reported missing by her grandmother June 13 after not being seen since June 9 was found at Camp Pendleton. The grandmother said the girl had run away from home before, according to the Sheriff’s Department. After the girl was found at Camp Pendleton, sheriff’s deputies reunited her with her grandmother. Detectives interviewed the girl and offered services to the family, according to the Sheriff’s Department, which is supporting NCIS with the investigation. The department declined to provide additional details about the case because it involves a minor. Teen girl found at Camp Pendleton; family alleges rape By Nathan Solis SAN DIEGO — New amendments to legislation that state Sen. Toni Atkins (D-San Diego) introduced in April to foist more accountability on elected sheriffs have done away with a key oversight provision that would have allowed county supervisors to assume control of local jails. The legislation, Senate Bill 519, would now create a special state monitor to investigate in-custody deaths and audit substandard healthcare practices — only when invited to do so by state officials or county boards of supervisors. But rather than require sheriffs to better protect people in custody by implementing whatever fixes the state recommends, the monitor could only ask that specific reforms be enacted. Atkins, who now serves as Senate president, said she had expected the bill would be amended as it made its way through the statehouse. She said law enforcement interests across the state had pushed back against the idea of allowing county boards to establish their own departments of corrections to run local jails. But she said the bill still contains significant reforms designed to improve conditions in San Diego County jails and beyond. “Clearly, I liked the bill as it was introduced originally,” Atkins said last week. “It was a little bit of an uphill battle. I had the benefit of being the (Senate) pro tem, but it doesn’t change the dynamic when it comes to the Senate and Assembly voting. “We knew there would have to be changes.” The legislation would still require sheriffs to release internal investigative records related to in-custody deaths — a crucial change that would give the public and family members of those who die in jail a broader understanding of what led to their deaths. The bill is scheduled to go before an Assembly committee this week. If passed in the Assembly, it would have to return to the Senate for approval of the amendments before heading to the governor’s desk. “If we get it through the Assembly and it comes back to the Senate, I guarantee I will do everything in my power to get it to the governor,” Atkins said. “I am optimistic we will be successful.” The Atkins bill is one of two pieces of legislation that seek to strengthen the Board of State and Community Corrections, the California agency that regulates local jails. While the state board would oversee the monitor created through the Atkins bill, a proposed law introduced by Assemblymember Akilah Weber(D-La Mesa) would add one healthcare provider and one mentalhealth expert to that panel. It would also require the Board of State and Community Corrections to raise the standard for mental health care inside jails. The Weber bill would require detailed safety checks of at-risk incarcerated people and require at least four hours per year of mentalhealth training for guards and at least 12 hours of continuing education for healthcare workers. Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed a similar measure last year, saying he was concerned that adding two members to the now 13-person panel would impede its ability to carry out its mission in a timely manner. Both bills were introduced in response to continuing deaths in San Diego County jails, which have recorded the highest mortality rate among California’s largest counties for years. Eight people have died in local jails so far this year, and a record 20 died last year, including one who died hours after his release. According to a state audit released last year, conditions in San Diego County jails had become so dangerous that state legislation was needed to force reforms. The continuing deaths have prompted a wave of litigation, much of which has yet to be resolved. More than $60 million in taxpayer funds have gone toward jury awards and settlements to plaintiffs alleging wrongful deaths and other negligence by deputies. Paul Parker is the executive officer of the San Diego County Citizens’ Law Enforcement Review Board, the civilian panel that oversees the Sheriff’s and Probation departments. Parker, who traveled to Sacramento in April to testify in favor of Atkins’ original bill, said he continues to support the legislation even though it no longer permits county supervisors to take over control of jails where sheriffs refuse to impose reforms. “I am pleased with these amendments as they, in my opinion, strengthen SB 519,” he said. “They lessen the fiscal impact to the county while permitting a local entity to exert a level of control by calling for an audit or review.” The review board executive said the state monitor, his agency’s oversight and Sheriff Kelly Martinez’s commitment to reforms “will provide a necessary three-pronged approach to reduce in-custody deaths and improve the quality and delivery of medical and mental health care.” Michele Deitch, an expert in jail oversight at the University of Texas at Austin, said that giving the Board of State and Community Corrections investigative authority can prompt much-needed reforms. “Getting an official, credible assessment of what happened is going to lead to changes,” she said. Deitch said she hopes the bill will include a provision that gives investigators the ability to make unannounced visits to the jails and speak confidentially to incarcerated people. The legislation, she said, “has a lot of potential” and was unlike anything she has seen in other states. Another provision of SB 519 would require the release of internal sheriff’s findings related to jail deaths. Atkins said making investigative findings available for public inspection would help hold California sheriffs more accountable to voters. The legislation does allow for specific redactions of personal information. But Martinez has often resisted allowing even family members of people who died in custody to review the internal reports. In the run-up to the November election, Martinez said she would approve the release of records produced by the Critical Incident Review Board, a group of department leaders that meets regularly to discuss jail deaths and other cases. But soon after being sworn in, Martinez reversed her position. Instead of releasing the records, the department posts brief Critical Incident Review Board summaries that are similar to news releases. Even the relatives of people who died in San Diego County jails have had difficulty accessing the sheriff’s internal findings. The San Diego UnionTribune and other news organizations intervened in one case this year, asking a federal judge to force Martinez to turn over Critical Incident Review Board records related to a lawsuit the county settled for nearly $8 million. U.S. District Judge Jinsook Ohta ruled against San Diego County in May, directing the Sheriff’s Department to produce internal findings related to injuries plaintiff Frankie Greer suffered in the Men’s Central Jail in 2018 and to the injuries and deaths of other formerly incarcerated people. “There are valid and compelling reasons for the public to be informed about the conditions inside the county jails,” the judge said. “The public has an interest in those documents.” The county reserved its right to appeal but last month turned over some 170 pages of records associated with the Greer case and the deaths and injuries of a dozen other people in San Diego County jails in recent years. Lawyers for the San Diego Union-Tribune and other news outlets said Friday that both sides had submitted their proposed redactions to the court. The judge is likely to make a decision about what details may be withheld from public view in the next several weeks. SB 519 is scheduled to be heard by the Assembly Committee of Public Safety on Tuesday. The Weber bill, AB 268, is scheduled to be heard the same day by the Senate Public Safety Committee. Davis and McDonald write for the San Diego Union-Tribune. Key oversight removed from jail reform bill By Kelly Davis and Jeff McDonald STATE SENATE President Toni Atkins, center, with Sens. Brian Jones and Janet Nguyen, said, “We knew there would have to be changes” to her jail reform bill. Rich Pedroncelli Associated Press

B8 SUNDAY, JULY 9, 2023 S LATIMES.COM Beatrice McAlexander Reynolds January 16, 1925 - June 27, 2023 Beatrice (Bea) McAlexander Reynolds passed away peacefully on June 27, 2023, at the age of 98. She lived a long and full life. Born in Jamestown, North Dakota in 1925, she always had a sense of adventure. After high school, she and a friend escaped the snow and moved to sunny California. There she met her first husband, William McAlexander, had 3 children, and they settled in La Cañada in 1958. She worked at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory from 1962 to 1990. After the death of her husband in 1975, she expanded her horizons, graduating from college and enjoying dancing, bicycling, and traveling. She married James Reynolds in 1989, and they continued to travel visiting every continent except Antarctica. She was a member of the La Cañada Presbyterian Church, Seafarers Group, Chapter BA of P.E.O., the Glendale Symphony Supporters, and a happy aqua aerobics member where she had many friends. She leaves daughters Lynn and Janice and son Bill, seven grandchildren and seven great grandchildren, stepchildren, nephews and nieces, neighbors and friends. She will be greatly missed. Services will be held at the La Cañada Presbyterian Church on Saturday, July 22 at 2:00 pm. In lieu of flowers, please donate to the La Cañada Presbyterian Church or the charity of your choice. Scott Dallavo Scott Dallavo, prominent radio host and marketing executive, died at the end of June at home. He was 56. In high school, when classmates recognized Scott by creating the category “Most Likely to be a Radio DJ”, his future appeared to be stamped. Over the next thirty-five years, he went on to host radio programs at KLA (1990 Broadcaster of The Year), KDAY, 100.3/92.3 The Beat, Indie 103.1, and KCRW. From his top-rated, reggae centric “Get Up Stand Up” show, to original punk and indie “Retrograde”, Scott, seemingly without effort, mastered the blending of multiple genres into deep dive adventures in rhythm. His most recent “A One World Celebration” on KCRW featured global grooves from all decades and all corners of the Earth. Scott’s knowledge of music from across the world was comprehensive and astounding. He graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles, earning a B.A. in Communications Studies. Combining his natural talents, education, and on-air experience, Scott started a career as Marketing Director at 100.3/92.3 The Beat – the most listened-to station in the Los Angeles market. Scott then moved to Indie 103.1, becoming Marketing Director for the radio station named by Rolling Stone Magazine as the “Best Radio Station in America”. Scott and his family owned Go Boy Records, the celebrated record store on Pacific Coast Highway in Redondo Beach. Specializing in surf, punk, and indie, the South Bay institution was a survivor from the analog era, and represented a culture that Scott helped preserve up to the advent of digital music streaming. Scott made a career-changing move to the Los Angeles Times, serving as Director of Events. He led a team producing over 80 events each year, including legendary projects such as the LA Times Festival of Books and the LA Times The Taste. He received multiple BIZBASH awards, including an Individual Award for Top 1000 People in Events. “You are one of the heroes of the LA Times”, said the Los Angeles Times Editorial Page Editor at the time. Scott’s most recent, and favorite, professional position was Senior Marketing Director at Public Radio Station KCRW. According to a colleague, “Scott helped to make KRCW more KCRW”. Performing as a live Disc Jockey throughout Southern California, Scott opened concerts for many major musical acts, including the Pretenders, Madness, Lily Allen, Adam Ant, Blondie, Echo & the Bunnymen, Paul Weller, Billy Idol, and just about every reggae act on planet Earth. Scott Dallavo was born in Michigan to Bill and Virginia Dallavo. The family later moved to California when his father accepted a job there. Throughout his childhood, Scott was active in youth sports, including AYSO and Little League. He graduated from Nevada Union High School, lettering in both soccer and basketball. Always an avid fan of many sports, Scott was nicknamed “Stats” by his step-brother, due to his passion for sports and his wide-ranging knowledge of sports statistics. At an early age, he fell in love with the Dodgers and the Rams – an affair that never ended. Scott lived a full, rich life. He was a dedicated husband and father, a devoted son and brother, a Little League and AYSO Coach, and a hard-core Dodgers/Bruins/Rams fan. A friend commented, “When I think of Scott, I think of his humility, his wisdom, and his love for his family and Jesus. Not sure if you get clothes in heaven, but if so, Scott is wearing blue”. Scott loved and was deeply influenced by his extended family. He credited his maternal grandparents, Harold and Patsy McGuire, for helping to make him the man he was through their example. In whatever Scott did, he sought to contribute to others and to be of service - whether it was through sharing his vast wealth of musical knowledge as a DJ, going above and beyond for the companies he worked for, uplifting his coworkers, an unerring devotion to his family and friends, or the ways that he inspired others’ faith through his work within his church. He truly loved people, and he showed it in so many wonderful ways. Scott was a warm, genuine, and exceptionally good human being. Scott is survived by his wife Lori, son Luke, daughter Lucy, mother Jennie Burridge and step-father Herb Burridge, sister Laura Drew and brother-in-law Josh Drew, and step-brothers Mike Burridge and Chris Burridge. He is preceded in death by his father Bill Dallavo. Obituaries Place a paid notice latimes.com/placeobituary Search obituary notice archives: legacy.com/obituaries/latimes To place an obituary ad please go online to: latimes.com/ placeobituary or call 1-800-234-4444 Henry Shapiro June 21, 1923 - December 23, 2022 Henry Shapiro was born in Chicago, Illinois, the youngest child (of seven) of Polish Jewish emigrants. His parents and eldest brother immigrated to the United States after a pogrom targeted their village in 1905. His father served seven years in the czar’s army, leaving to avoid the front lines of the RussianJapanese war. Henry grew up on the south side of Chicago, a native Yiddish speaker who gained fluency in English in grade school. Henry (Hank) served in the US Navy during World War II, stationed in the Pacific. He was responsible for radio communication for eight ships. He met Miriam Barofsky in Washington, D.C. They were married for 71 years, until his wife’s passing in 2018 at the age of 95. Through the G.I. Bill, Henry received a six-year scholarship to the California Institute of Technology, graduating with an M.Phil in electrical and mechanical engineering. Hank and Mim raised two children, residing in Blair Hills, Culver City, for 62 years. Hank was an ardent supporter of Mim’s passionate work for social justice and an inclusive world. Hank and Mim traveled throughout the world. Hank chronicled these journeys through photography. Hank played the ukulele, violin, organ, piano, and harmonica. He loved music and filled their home with song. Love and laughter were central in his life, and he gave much to others through the relationships he shared. In retirement, he also served as a docent for local museums. Their daughter, Reba, an artist, died of cancer at 50 years of age. Their son, Richard Shapiro, is an anthropologist and educator. Hank is survived by his son, Richard, and his daughter-in-law, Angana Chatterji, a scholar and social justice advocate. Hank will be remembered for the love he gave, his generosity of spirit, insatiable curiosity, tremendous openness to people and worlds, and appreciation of every moment of the gift of life. He is deeply loved, will be fiercely missed, and forever remembered. Sharon Marlow December 11, 1943 - July 4, 2023 Sharon Marlow was born on December 11th, 1943 in Los Angeles, CA. She passed away on July 4, 2023 in Santa Barbara, CA. Sharon’s heart was eternally young and her gift of living life to the fullest was contagious. She spent the majority of her life between the beautiful beaches of Santa Barbara, CA and the majestic mountains of Sun Valley, ID. Sharon leaves behind her children Suzanne, Michael, Leslie (Todd Maschmedt) and grandchildren Oliver (Sarah) & Ben Fries, Sam, Charlie,Teddy Maschmedt, and Luke, Emma, and Finn Marlow. Family and Friends are at ease knowing Hobbs and Sharon are together again. Funeral Service will be held on Friday July 14th at 1pm: Santa Barbara Cemetery. In lieu of flowers, a fund in Sharon’s name has been set up at St. Judes Children’s Medical Research Center. Share a memory To sign a guest book please go to latimes.com/guestbooks William A. Soroky Mount Sinai Mem Parks Simi Valley 800-600-0076 mountsinaiparks.org Albert Shonk May 23, 1932 - June 17, 2023 Albert Davenport Shonk Jr. died peacefully on June 17th at the age of 91. He was at home on Balboa Island, which he had loved since he was a child. He was born to Albert Davenport Shonk and Jean Spence Stannard and grew up in Glendale, CA. He graduated from the University of Southern California with a d e g re e i n B u s i n e s s Administration. He was an account executive with Hearst Advertising Service, Keith H. Evans & Associates, and was the owner and president of the Albert D. Shonk Co., Publishers Advertising Representatives. Always active in community service, Al was president of the Florence Crittenton Center in Los Angeles, the Balboa Island Museum and Historical Society and Chairman of the Rotary Club of Los Angeles Foundation. Truly a Trojan, Al served on the Board of Governors, as the Class of 1954 50th Reunion Co-Chair and as Half Century Trojans President. He received their Distinguished Service Award. He was a member of the Skull & Dagger Honor Society, where he received the Arnold Eddy Service Award and also the President’s Award from the USC Alumni Association. Al was a proud member of his college fraternity, Phi Sigma Kappa. He was Historian for 40 years until his death, and National Grand President from 1979-1983. The fraternity Leadership School and the Archives at their headquarters are named after him. Al also served as a Director of his family’s land company in West Virginia, was established by his great, great-grandfather in 1869. He was dearly loved and will be missed by his wife Elizabeth, his step-children Tracy duPont (Alfred), Trent Smith (Valentina) and Jeffery Smith (Sara), as well as grandchildren Taylor, Henry, Austin, Emily, Edward, and Myra. He is also survived by his sister, Sally Matthews, and his nieces Katherine (Lars) and Kristine, as well as great nephew Gavin. Donations in Al’s name may be made to the Phi Sigma Kappa Shonk Archive and Educational Center, 2925 E. 96th St., Indianapolis, IN 46240. Leon Stanley Wozniak July 18, 1936 - June 28, 2023 Leo was born in Ozone Park NY and raised in Philadelphia, PA. He graduated from LaSalle high school and Temple University. He moved to California in 1961. In California, he worked for the LA Unified School District in the Office of Communications and retired as Director of Communications. In 2005, he and his wife, Sally, retired to a fabulous 55+ community in Peoria, AZ. He is survived by his wife of 62 years, Sally, son Leon S. II (Lee) and his wife Peggy, son Jonathan J and grandson Huntington. Funeral Mass will be held at St. Thomas More 6180 W. Utopia Rd., Glendale, AZ on Monday, July 17 at 10:30 AM. Bright-colored casual dress is highly recommended for this Celebration of Life. No flowers, please. Donations can be made in Leo’s name to the St. Vincent de Paul Society at St. Thomas More church or to Hospice of the Valley 1510 E Flower St. Phoenix, AZ 85014. Elaine Ruth Warick July 17, 1937 - June 24, 2023 Always in our hearts. Wife, Mother, Grandmother, Poet. Ronald Sumner Stone July 2, 1949 - July 2, 2023 Dr. Ronald Stone passed away peacefully on his 74th birthday. With a Ph.D. from UCLA and expertise in accounting and auditing, he was an esteemed professor at California State University, Northridge. He mentored countless students and went above and beyond the call of duty as they moved through their education and into their careers. Anyone who had the privilege of benefitting from his contribution considered him to be a legend. Ron also built a reputation of integrity and professionalism in his CPA practice, where he specialized in condominium homeowner associations. Ron also developed a specialty in forensic fraud investigation and was an expert witness. Born in Stamford, CT, Ron was known as Mr. Rolodex and was a master connector. He enjoyed traveling with his family. Ron received his bachelor’s degree from the University of Wisconsin, Madison and studied at Rutgers University where he earned a master’s degree in business with a specialty in accounting. Ron regularly watched the Nightly News and Jeopardy. He loved matzo ball soup and his Aunt Gertrude’s lemon meringue pie. Ron was a devoted son, husband, father, brother and grandfather. He is survived by wife Arlene, children Karen and Daniel (Alanna), grandson, Micah and sister Jean S. Cohen (Mark). May he rest in peace. A Celebration of Life will be hosted by the family on August 20th in Northridge. Donations in his honor can be made to the Dr. Ronald Stone Endowed Scholarship Fund at CSUN, where the scholarship money will be granted to students studying accounting. Even while on summer break from college, Elizabeth Lovat did not stray from the water. A former aquatics standout at Huntington Beach High School, Lovat was serving as a city lifeguard before her planned return for her senior year at Iona University in New Rochelle, N.Y., in August. The work was routine for Lovat, who had previously worked as a lifeguard. But on Monday, she suffered a “spinal injury while performing her duties,” according to the city of Huntington Beach. She was taken to a hospital, where she is stable but remains in serious condition. “Our priority at this time is to provide support for Elizabeth and her family while she recovers,” the city said in its statement on Twitter. The message added, “Out of respect for the family’s privacy, no other information will be provided.” The Huntington Beach Fire Outreach Assn. created a fundraising page for Lovat. “Elizabeth has a passion for helping others and has learned and used her communication skills with American Sign Language to help her community, which has in turn shaped her career and educational goals,” the fire group said. “She knows what it takes to overcome life’s most challenging setbacks and persevere.” Officials did not specify how Lovat was injured. According to the California Surf Lifesaving Assn., a nonprofit that promotes beach safety awareness, most spinal injuries are “associated with diving head first and hitting the bottom.” The injuries can “have severe lifelong consequences for the victim, parents, friends and even rescuers.” Aside from paralysis, signs of spinal injury include bruises, pain or tenderness to the neck, difficulty breathing, weakness in the arms or legs and numbness or tingling, the group noted. Lovat was a standout water polo player at Huntington Beach High School, earning an All-Wave League first-team selection her senior year of 2019-20 after tallying 20 goals and 15 assists for the league champion Oilers. Huntington Beach won league titles in her junior and senior year, while the program claimed its first postseason victory in six years in 2018-19. From there, Lovat joined the women’s water polo team at Iona University. The utility player enjoyed her best season in 2022-23 as a junior, playing in 23 of the team’s 31 games and finishing with 10 goals on 16 shots. She earned her second consecutive All-Metro Atlantic Conference All-Academic Team honors. A studentathlete must earn a 3.2 grade-point average on a 4.0 scale to qualify for the accolade. Her junior year efforts came after a shoulder injury sidelined Lovat her entire sophomore season. Lovat is scheduled to begin her senior year studying speech pathology in late August. The Huntington Beach native is part of an aquatics family. Her brother John Lovat was a star player at Huntington Beach High, a member of the 2012 Golden West College men’s water polo state championship team, and a player at UC San Diego. Her sister Allison was a long-term lifeguard, having once participated in an exchange program in New Zealand. Calls to the Lovat family were not immediately returned. Lifeguard suffers spinal injury while on duty Huntington Beach native Elizabeth Lovat was on summer break from college. By Andrew J. Campa ‘Elizabeth ... knows what it takes to overcome life’s most challenging setbacks and persevere.’ — The Huntington Beach Fire Outreach Assn. Weeks after having a 2014 conviction of driving under the influence dismissed in court, Riverside Councilmember Clarissa Cervantes was arrested July 1 on suspicion of DUI. Riverside Sheriff’s Office jail records show that Cervantes, 32, was arrested at 1:23 a.m. California Highway Patrol officers pulled her over on Interstate 10 in Banning. Cervantes did not immediately respond to a request for a comment. This was Cervantes’ second DUI arrest, with the first in September 2014, according to Riverside County Superior Court records obtained by The Times. The previous arrest was first reported by the PressEnterprise. Court records show that Cervantes paid more than $2,500 in fines for the prior case, which alleged she had a blood alcohol content over 0.15% — nearly twice the legal limit in California — and ended in a conviction in 2015. In a hearing on the dismissal of that conviction, Cervantes told Judge Timothy J Hollenhorst: “Each day I carry remorse and promise to never repeat those actions,” according to the Press-Enterprise report. The judge dismissed the conviction on May 19 this year, weeks before she was arrested again. Cervantes has been released, and her next court date is Aug. 30, jail records indicate. The council member was involved in a public spatwith Sheriff Chad Bianco last year after the sheriff accused her of supporting vandalism of the county courthouse at an abortion rights protest. Cervantes sued for libel after Bianco posted on Instagram: “Shame on the Riverside city councilwoman for supporting the defacing of our courthouse. You are lucky we couldn’t arrest you.” Cervantes denied being involved in the protest and said in a Facebook post she was in downtown Riverside the day of the protest for dinner and a gallery show. “It’s been extremely challenging to process that our sheriff would not only do this to an elected official, but to a person, without offering any evidence or proof,” Cervantes told The Times shortly after the incident. Times staff writer Nathan Solis contributed to this report. Riverside official convicted of DUI is arrested again By Terry Castleman CLARISSA Cervantes’ first DUI arrest was in September 2014. Riverside County Sheriff ’s Department

LATIMES.COM S SUNDAY, JULY 9, 2023 B9 Attlelyn Miu King Kamaka January 17, 1934 - June 10, 2023 Attlelyn “Sweetheart” Miu King Kamaka, age 89, returned to Ke Akua on June 10, 2023. She passed away at home, held by her devoted son, John. Lynn was born on January 17, 1934, in the Territory of Hawai’i to Alfred and Lydia Wong, the fourth of six children. The family lived in Damien Tract, Wahiawā and Pālolo Valley. She was in Maryknoll’s Class of 1952. She worked at Liberty Bank and the Hilton Hawaiian Village. But it was while working earlier at Foodland that she met George Kamaka, Jr., whom she married in May 1956. They were married for 35 years when George passed in 1991. The young couple lived in ‘Āina Haina, Honolulu and Kapahulu while George worked in maritime shipping. Later he landed at Matson Terminals, which promoted him to Operations General Superintendent and moved the family to Southern California in May 1969. They selected Garden Grove in Orange County for their home, and Lynn bravely faced the new mainland challenges very far from family, friends, and the familiar. Her faith in God was unwavering, and she was active in her new parish of Saint Callistus. Moving away from Hawai’i meant missing milestone celebrations with friends and relatives, and the fellowship of Hale O Nā Ali’i O Hawai’i, where she maintained a membership for 64 years. After many years as an accomplished homemaker, gardener, and much more, she enjoyed a career at Allergan Pharmaceuticals in Irvine, CA. Always eager to learn new things, she took courses in Mandarin and Japanese, pursued artistic endeavors in painting and silk screen, and had an extraordinary green thumb. A breast cancer survivor, she participated in Susan G. Komen walks to raise funds and awareness. Even as she slowed down in later years, she was always quick to smile, joyful and upbeat, and loved soothing back rubs and lomilomi massages. Frugal at home, she was generous with time and resources for friends and family. She was preceded in death by her husband George, youngest daughter, Miriam, sister Magdalen Haake and brothers Wilfred and Frederick Wong. She leaves to mourn her passing her sons John, Michael and daughter Georgietta Peters (Irving TX), granddaughters Meghan Kamaka-Park and Emily Kamaka, and greatgrandchildren Ella and Emery Park. She also is survived by her sister Errolline Elliott (Birmingham AL) and brother Earlvin Wong (Honolulu). Private family viewing & service were on June 22 at Dimond & Shannon Mortuary in Garden Grove, CA. Final services will be held at Diamond Head Mortuary chapel, Honolulu, on Thursday, July 20 at 9 A.M., with inurnment at the adjoining Diamond Head Memorial Park at 12:30 P.M. Bright Aloha attire. Share a memory To sign a guest book please go to latimes.com/guestbooks Sandra E. Gerston Mount Sinai Mem Parks H. Hills 800-600-0076 mountsinaiparks.org Daniel C. Boone Dan Boone passed away on June 12, 2023 at the age of 88 due to complications from pneumonia at Montecedro Retirement community in Altadena, CA. He was born March 8, 1935 in Duluth, Minnesota and moved at a young age to New York City. He graduated from Regis High School and obtained a Mechanical Engineering degree from Brook lyn Polytechnic Institute in 1956. He worked for Aramco in The Hague, Netherlands, where he met his wife Cissy. They lived in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia for 15 years where all five of their children were born. He transferred to Houston, TX in 1974, then went to work for ARCO in Pasadena, CA in 1979. After retiring, Dan started a consulting firm, which he operated until 2018. Dan had a passion for travel and languages which he shared with his children, and he will be remembered for his sense of humor and easygoing manner. Dan was pre-deceased by his wife, Cissy, in 2018. He is survived by his five children, Daniel, Sabrina, Anita, Teresa and Jacqueline, and his eleven grandchildren. Obituaries Place a paid notice latimes.com/placeobituary Search obituary notice archives: legacy.com/obituaries/latimes June Ruth Goodman June 22, 1922 - July 4, 2023 Born in Chicago, and a long-time resident of Los Angeles, June Goodman passed away on July 4, 2023, at the age of 101. June’s third date with Norman, the love of her life, was their wedding. It was a marriage that would last 45 years until Norman’s passing in 1986. In 1946, June and Norman packed all their belongings, including the dog, and drove west to Los Angeles, where they became partners in their jewelry business and raised their family. A loving mother and grandmother, June was passionate about life and sharing her many interests. She had a lifelong desire to expand her knowledge. June loved the theater, classical music, opera, ballet and art; excelled at bridge; and travelled the world, oftentimes accompanied by family and friends. She had a lively sense of humor and countless friends. She held the family together in good times and bad and gave back to her community, serving actively in numerous leadership roles in both Hadassah and Jewish Federation during all her adult life. She was also a proud Democrat—liberal as they come. June is survived by her children Judy, Ellen and Howard (Bonnie) and her grandchildren Jillian (fiancé Matthew) and Jason, all of whom she adored, as well as cousins, nieces and nephews. The family would like to thank her caregivers, particularly Elena, who was also a constant companion to June. Donations in honor of June’s memory may be made to Hadassah, the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles, or to a charity of your choice. William Immerman December 29, 1937 - June 24, 2023 William J. Immerman—a native New Yorker, graduate of the University of Wisconsin and Stanford Law School, was a Los Angeles Deputy District Attorney before establishing a six-decade career as a leading studio and financing executive centrally involved in the productions of such movies as LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS, STAR WARS, YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN, THE OMEN, SILVER STREAK, THE WIZ and RAY—died of natural causes on June 24 at his Los Angeles home. He was 85. His death was announced by his wife Ginger Perkins Immerman, who survives him along with his children Scott Immerman, Eric Immerman and Lara Myrene. One of the industry’s early pioneers in the use of foreign tax credits and start-up money from Wall Street, Immerman began his Hollywood career in the mid-1960s as an executive at American International Pictures (AIP), managing AIP’s legal and business affairs and serving as the production executive on such films as WILD IN THE STREETS, THREE IN THE ATTIC and BOXCAR BERTHA. In 1972, at the age of 35, Immerman joined Twentieth Century Fox to lead business affairs for both motion pictures and television. He was soon promoted to Senior Vice President of Worldwide Administration and Business Affairs of Fox’s feature film division, working with fellow Senior Vice Presidents Alan Ladd, Jr. (Worldwide Production) and David Raphel (Worldwide Marketing) as the “troika” leadership for Fox during the time the studio produced STAR WARS, YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN, THE OMEN and SILVER STREAK. He served as Fox’s executive in charge of the original Broadway production of THE WIZ. Immerman left Fox in 1977 to establish Scoric Productions with an exclusive deal at Warner Bros. He became one of the industry’s pioneers in capitalizing on foreign production tax incentives, and later became the first to raise start-up money from Wall Street through initial private placements and public offerings to form Cinema Group as its Chairman of the Board and President financing such films as TAKE THIS JOB AND SHOVE IT, SOUTHERN COMFORT, STAYING ALIVE, STAR TREK II and FLASHDANCE. He later formed Salem Productions and continued to produce and to consult on films. In 2000, Immerman joined Denver entrepreneur Phil Anschutz and producers Howard and Karen Baldwin to form Crusader Entertainment, where Immerman served as Senior Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer. Crusader produced the Oscar-nominated RAY, as well as SAHARA, CHILDREN ON THEIR BIRTHDAYS and THE GAME OF THEIR LIVES. Following his Crusader days, Immerman was Senior Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of Yari Film Group and its affiliated companies and was involved in the production of THE ILLUSIONIST, PAINTED VEIL, CAN’T STAND LOSING YOU: SURVIVING THE POLICE. At the time of his passing, Immerman was a partner in RSVP Entertainment, an independent film production company formed with the Baldwins. He also worked with Robert MacLean as an Executive Producer on the soon-to-be released ACROSS THE RIVER AND INTO THE TREES and is a partner with Tim Chonacas and Rom Alborzi in Gold Tree Studios, a post-production facility on the Sunset Strip. He was a member of the Academy since 1970. Bill was an avid LA Kings and Dodger fan. The Immerman family plan a “Going Away Party” for Bill on Friday, July 21, at 6:00pm at the Skirball Cultural Center, 2701 N. Sepulveda Blvd. RSVPs should be directed to [email protected] or http://evite.me/ bEPNdmCkAt. To place an obituary ad please go online to: latimes.com/placeobituary or call 1-800-234-4444 Don’t let the story go untold. placeanad.latimes.com/obituaries In partnership with Share your loved one’s story. Hart Isaacs, Jr., M.D. Har t Isaacs, Jr., MD, transitioned peacefully, surrounded by family, at his home in Del Mar, CA, June 7, 2023. Born in Los Angeles, CA, March 7, 1932, to the late Hart Isaacs, Sr. and Josephine Harris Isaacs, his life was distinguished by an enduring commitment to the betterment of human health. A proud alumnus of Stanford University (1953), and Stanford University Medical School (1958), Dr. Isaacs cultivated a remarkable career spanning over six decades as a specialist in Anatomic and Pediatric Pathology, with affiliations with UCSD Medical Center - Hillcrest and Rady, Children’s Hospital San Diego, over 25 years at Los Angeles Children’s Hospital, as a professor at USC, and from 2015, as a professor at UC San Diego. He wrote several authoritative works on child pathology and had medical expertise in twenty other areas. Married to Patricia Ann Levi (d. 2015) in 1955, he is survived by four of his five children Dorothy (Steve), Charles (Paula), Craig (Margaret), and Donna (Scott). He was predeceased by his sister, Diane Isaacs Fink, and daughter, Diana (Geoffrey). He was “Papa Hart” to twelve grandchildren, to six great-grandchildren, and is also survived by brotherin-law Douglas Levi, two nieces, two nephews, their spouses, and five grandnieces. He leaves an enduring legacy through his profound contributions to medicine, steadfast service to the community and generous, often anonymous, donations, his love of family, and passion for sailing, bonsai, automobiles and music. In lieu of flowers, the family kindly requests donations be made in Dr. Isaacs’ memory to the Huntington Gardens Bonsai Exhibit, in San Marino, CA. Karen Kasen Mount Sinai Mem Parks H. Hills 800-600-0076 mountsinaiparks.org Dr. Reynold Kagiwada Dr. Reynold Kagiwada, age 84 passed away on June 11, 2023. Beloved father of Conan (Susan) Kagiwada and Julia Kagiwada; grandfather of Alexa and Sean Kagiwada; brother of Jeanne (Robert) Yamamoto Schar f and Kenneth Shu Kagiwada; also survived by many nieces, nephews and other relatives. Funeral services will be held on Wednesday, July 12, 9:00am at Fukui Mortuary “Chapel in the Garden”, 707 E. Temple St., Los Angeles, California. www.fukuimortuary.com 213-626-0441 Tomasina Ramos Custodio Jones Tomasina Ramos Custodio Jones, 69, of Thousand Oaks passed away June 9, 2023. She was born March 23, 1954 in Ormoc City, Leyte in the Philippines. Her family moved to the U.S. in 1955 when Tomasina was almost a year old. They lived in Oxnard in 1955 and then moved to Torrance in 1956. In 1964, when Tomasina was 10 years old they moved to Wilmington. She has been a resident of Thousand Oaks with her husband George since 1988. She earned her BSEE from Cal State Long Beach and started as an electrical engineer in 1978 at Hughes Aircraft Company. She went on to work for TRW, Raytheon, Aprisa, and eventually moved into a senior electrical engineer p o s i t i o n a t N o r t h r o p Grumman before retiring in January 2020. Aside from engineering, Tomasina devoted decades of her life to saving and rescuing animals with her sister Liz but her greatest passion was for her family. She served as her daughters’ Girl Scout leader for many years, volunteered in various church and school programs, coached volleyball during her daughters’ middle school years, and found joy in attending every award ceremony or sports game that her daughters took part in. She was well known for making her famous cookies for family and team events. She was never without her camera in hand, capturing every memory. Her immense love for her family was always evident and it continued to spill over into the lives of everyone she met. Tomasina is the daughter of Max Melendres Custodio and Agustina Ramos Caya Custodio, both deceased. She is survived by her beloved husband of 34 years, George Arthur Jones Jr; loving daughters Jennifer Ly n n J o n e s Ce s p e d e s (spouse Alexis) of Thousand Oaks, Kathryn Jones Zvorak (spouse Craig) of Thousand Oaks; and siblings Lawrence Custodio (spouse Marilynn), Elizabeth Custodio Cox (spouse Michael), Gilbert Custodio (spouse Milanie), Roland Custodio (spouse Karen), Reynold Custodio, and many cherished nieces and nephews. Tomasina is preceded in death by her eldest brother Manuel Custodio. Tomasina saw ever y obstacle as a challenge to be conquered. She was full of energy and optimism that could spark hope in every situation. Her unforgettable smile and personality could light up any room. Tomasina’s strength and ambition will continue to live within her loved ones as she sends gentle daily reminders from Heaven that she is watching, guiding, and covering us with love. Services are at Godspeak Calvary Chapel Newberry Park, CA 6/14/23 11:00AM Share a memory To sign a guest book please go to latimes.com/guestbooks Valerie Jean Maisner December 24, 1937 - July 5, 2023 Valerie (Val) Jean Maisner passed away peacefully in her sleep at the age of 85 with her beloved dog Trevor by her side at her home of 51 years in Encino. She battled an inoperable brain tumor for six months under hospice care and with three caretaker women who helped keep her comfortable in a dignified, peaceful setting. The family is grateful to all of them. Val is predeceased by her parents George and Beatrice Wallad and her loving husband (of 31 years at the time of his passing in 2019) Lawrence Maisner. She is survived by her sister Lynn Ober, her stepchildren Steve (Michelle) Maisner, Robin and Vivienne Maisner and her step grandchildren Derek and Alec Maisner. Even though she didn’t have children of her own, she embraced Larry’s children and was proud to be “Gram Val”. Val attended schools throughout the Los Angeles area, where she was actively involved in several school organizations, graduating from Beverly Hills High School. From there she moved on to UCLA where she was selected for several honorary groups including her sorority Alpha Epsilon Phi where she served as president. As a sociology major, she graduated Cum Laude and was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa. After graduating from UCLA, Val started her nearly 40 year professional career. She worked as a social worker for Los Angeles County and then moved on to be a training and development manager for Glendale Federal Savings and Unocal Corporation. Val remained invested in her UCLA family the whole time, volunteering her services for various alumni committees, serving on the board of directors for UCLA Alumni Association. Soon after, she joined Gold Shield Alumnae of UCLA, a prestigious group of women serving UCLA and their communities. Val was also very passionate about mentoring students. She established a scholarship in her name at UCLA and developed close ties with amazing students who she considered part of her extended family. Val met Larry on a tennis court over 30 years ago, and they enjoyed a very active life together traveling to places like Africa and enjoying the arts visiting museums and attending the theater. She leaves behind a legacy of hard work and community service, all while enjoying her life to the fullest. Her tenacious and engaging spirit will live on in our memories, and we will miss her dearly. Services will be held on Wednesday, July 12, 2023 at 12:30 pm. Mount Sinai Memorial Parks and Mortuaries 5950 Forest Lawn Drive Los Angeles, CA 90068. A reception will be held at her home immediately following. Warren Loo February 22, 1940 - May 18, 2023 Warren is survived by his wife, Janet; children, Taryn and Jon (Sonja); grandchildren, Reese and Grant; siblings, Joyce and Allen; also survived by many nieces, nephews, and other relatives. A Celebration of Life service will be held on Saturday, July 15, 2023 at 12:00PM, for information, call (323) 596-7568. Linda Leavens May 21, 1947 - June 18, 2023 Linda was born to Irene and Frank Levitt. The family moved to the San Fernando Valley in 1951. Linda was cute, much smarter than she let on, and people were drawn to her. In 1965 one of those people was Jeff Leavens. They married on June 26, 1966. Linda was a loved and loving daughter, wife and mother to her two sons and daughtersin-law, Shannon and Laura, and Brad and Jessica. She adored her grandchildren: Slone, Audrey, Brea, Ashley and Luke, as well as her great-grandchildren, Adelyn and Ella. She was a beloved aunt to Marla and Scott, and Diane and Brian. She was also an adored sister to the two who knew her the longest, her sister and brother-in-law, Gail and Roger Samuel. To place an obituary ad please go online to: latimes.com/placeobituary or call 1-800-234-4444 Robert Saxe June 24, 1944 - July 7, 2023 Robert Saxe, PhD, beloved husband of Deborah C. Saxe, Esq. and father of Elizabeth Sara Saxe and Emily Jane Saxe, has passed away peacefully. He was a generous and loving husband and father and was treasured by all who knew him. His presence and heart created a safe space for others to be who they truly are without judgement, and is the gift that will forever keep on giving. Robert loved his family, music, humor (especially “Dad” jokes), learning, and keeping physically fit. He played the viola, ukulele, charango, and guitar, and sang in a barbershop quartet. While at UCLA, he was a member of the original Mariachi de Uclatlán, a student group dedicated to the performance of traditional Mexican music. He was curious about the world. A constant reader, he was interested in almost everything. Until he was diagnosed with stage 4 renal cell carcinoma in 2016, he hiked in the San Gabriel Mountains, ran marathons and other races, and was a barefoot runner. Rober t was born in Washington, D.C., and grew up in Downers Grove, Illinois. He moved to California with his parents and siblings during his senior year of high school and graduated from Santa Monica High School. After receiving his PhD from UCLA, he ran his own marketing research company (Saxe Research) until he retired in 2004. He lived in La Canada, California, for more than 30 years. In lieu of flowers, please donate to City of Hope. Benjamin Craner Norton III Died in Las Vegas, Nevada. Actor, Film Editor, Classic Car Collector Donations to Motion Picture Health & Welfare Fund Thomas (Tom) T Myers January 1946 - May 2023 Long-time Redondo resident, Thomas ( Tom) Myers died May 27. During his lifetime, Tom made significant contributions in the fields of vehicle dynamics and aerospace. He was well known for his generosity, love of Iowa State and cars. A private gathering was held on June 10, and a public event will be held in IA. See the Tom T. Myers Memorial Facebook page for details.

B10 SUNDAY, JULY 9, 2023 S LATIMES.COM Pressure: L Low Cold Front Jet Stream H High Warm Front Trough –0 0s 10s 20s 30s 40s 50s 60s 70s 80s 90s 100+ Rain T-storm Snow Ice Temps ◗ ▲ Monterrey 99/73 Chihuahua Chihuahua 101/76 Los Angeles Los Angeles 81/60 Washington Washington 85/70 New York New York 82/70 Miami 94/79 Atlanta 88/71 Detroit Detroit 82/61 Houston 96/79 Kansas City 83/61 Chicago 83/63 Minneapolis 87/68 El Paso El Paso 107/80 Denver 81/60 Billings Billings 88/61 San Francisco n Francisco 69/56 Seattle 78/55 Toronto 76/61 Montreal 82/66 Winnipeg 78/51 Monterrey 99/73 Chihuahua 101/76 Los Angeles 81/60 Washington 85/70 New York 82/70 Miami 94/79 Atlanta 88/71 Detroit 82/61 Houston 96/79 Kansas City 83/61 Chicago 83/63 Minneapolis 87/68 El Paso 107/80 Denver 81/60 Billings 88/61 San Francisco 69/56 Seattle 78/55 Toronto 76/61 Montreal 82/66 Winnipeg 78/51 Good Moderate Unhealthful for: All Not Available Sensitive people South Coast Air Quality Management District forecasts air quality Air quality Today in Southern California Today in North America 5-day forecasts High/low temperatures are average forecasts for entire zone. L.A. Basin Valleys Beaches Mountains Deserts Surf and sea POINT CONCEPTION TO MEXICO California cities Tides Almanac UV index Sun and moon City Hi Lo Prcp. Hi Lo Hi Lo City Hi Lo Prcp. Hi Lo Hi Lo City Hi Lo Prcp. Hi Lo Hi Lo L.A. Outer Harbor, in feet. County Height Period Direction Temp Saturday Downtown readings Minutes to burn for sensitive people Temperature Los Angeles Fullerton Ventura Today’s rise/set July 9 July 17 July 25 Aug. 1 Los Angeles Co. Orange Co. Ventura Co. VENTURA CO. LOS ANGELES CO. RIVERSIDE CO. SAN BERNARDINO CO. SANTA BARBARA CO. SAN DIEGO CO. ORANGE CO. Santa Barbara Ventura Oxnard Ojai Camarillo Santa Paula Westlake Village Woodland Hills Santa Monica Torrance Long Beach Newport Beach Santa Ana Laguna Beach San Clemente Mission Viejo Irvine Oceanside Escondido Poway Ramona San Diego Temecula Hemet Palm Springs Fullerton Chino Riverside Ontario Pomona/ Fairplex San Bernardino Yucca Valley Hesperia Whittier Hills UCLA Simi Valley Chatsworth Burbank Monrovia Santa Clarita L.A. Downtown Key: Su sunny; Pc partly cloudy; Cy cloudy; Fg foggy; Prcp precipitation; Dr drizzle; Hz hazy Sh showers; Ts thunderstorms; R rain; Sn snow; Sf snow flurries; I ice; Rs rain/snow; W windy; Tr trace. Notes: National extremes exclude Alaska and Hawaii. Missing data indicated by “xx”. Saturday’s readings as of 5 p.m. U.S. cities City Hi Lo Prcp. Hi Lo Sky City Hi Lo Prcp. Hi Lo Sky World Sun 5:49a/8:07p 5:48a/8:06p 5:53a/8:12p Moon 12:13a/12:49p 12:11a/12:48p 12:17a/12:53p Anaheim 82 63 -- 82 59 86 59 Avalon/Catalina 68 54 -- 72 60 74 63 Bakersfield 92 67 -- 92 62 92 66 Barstow 102 70 -- 104 66 105 70 Big Bear Lake 79 41 -- 77 39 82 47 Bishop 98 56 -- 98 57 99 57 Burbank 80 59 -- 84 60 87 61 Camarillo 73 57 -- 76 57 76 58 Chatsworth 85 57 -- 87 60 88 61 Chino 88 57 -- 91 57 96 60 Compton 77 59 -- 79 60 82 61 Dana Point 69 61 -- 72 59 74 60 Death Valley 113 90 -- 118 93 120 94 Del Mar 69 62 -- 66 59 69 61 Escondido 84 59 -- 83 54 85 59 Eureka 62 54 -- 62 52 61 51 Fallbrook 80 59 -- 80 55 83 57 Fresno 90 63 -- 90 59 92 66 Fullerton 78 62 -- 81 61 83 63 Hemet 88 53 -- 90 58 92 63 Hesperia xx xx xx 94 53 97 54 Huntington Beach 73 62 -- 72 60 73 62 Idyllwild 85 44 -- 86 59 88 67 Irvine 78 62 -- 78 59 81 61 L.A. D’ntown/USC 78 61 -- 81 60 84 60 L.A. Int’l. Airport 71 60 -- 72 60 72 58 Laguna Beach 75 64 -- 71 60 73 63 Lancaster 96 69 -- 93 61 97 61 Long Beach 74 62 -- 79 60 82 60 Mammoth Lakes 83 48 -- 80 46 85 45 Mission Viejo 80 58 -- 79 59 81 63 Monrovia 82 55 -- 86 59 89 64 Monterey 64 55 -- 66 54 65 50 Mt. Wilson 72 56 -- 66 58 68 61 Needles 109 75 -- 110 82 113 84 Newport Beach 68 62 -- 72 61 73 64 Northridge 84 58 -- 88 60 90 60 Oakland 65 55 -- 69 56 69 52 Oceanside 75 61 -- 77 57 78 59 Ojai 81 50 -- 82 57 84 56 Ontario 87 58 -- 89 60 93 65 Palm Springs 107 73 -- 109 77 112 83 Pasadena 84 60 -- 84 59 87 62 Paso Robles 91 52 -- 87 50 93 52 Redding 96 67 -- 92 62 96 62 Riverside 88 54 -- 91 56 95 62 Sacramento 83 54 -- 81 54 88 54 San Bernardino 91 60 -- 94 59 97 63 San Diego 70 63 -- 71 61 74 64 San Francisco 66 56 -- 70 56 67 54 San Gabriel xx xx xx 85 60 88 61 San Jose 70 54 -- 72 56 75 56 San Luis Obispo 73 55 -- 74 53 78 53 Santa Ana 74 64 -- 76 62 80 65 Santa Barbara 70 53 -- 73 55 73 56 Santa Clarita 84 57 -- 90 58 93 59 Santa Monica Pier 72 58 -- 72 58 74 59 Santa Paula 84 52 -- 80 56 81 58 Santa Rosa 82 45 -- 79 50 83 49 Simi Valley 79 53 -- 84 57 89 57 Tahoe Valley 78 41 -- 77 40 78 40 Temecula 83 57 -- 87 55 92 60 Thousand Oaks 74 54 -- 80 57 84 56 Torrance 75 63 -- 74 61 73 61 UCLA xx xx -- 76 58 80 58 Van Nuys 85 60 -- 89 62 93 62 Ventura 67 55 -- 68 56 68 56 Whittier Hills 83 61 -- 83 59 85 59 Woodland Hills 88 53 -- 87 59 89 60 Wrightwood 78 52 -- 78 57 80 59 Yorba Linda 83 61 -- 84 57 88 58 Yosemite Valley 86 56 -- 79 54 82 50 Sunny 84/60 Mostly sunny 86/61 Sunny 86/61 Partly sunny 85/63 Sunny 88/62 Mostly sunny 92/67 Lots of sun 92/67 Very warm 92/63 Mostly sunny 74/59 Mostly sunny 75/59 Mostly sunny 74/58 Clouds, sun 75/61 Sunny 82/47 Mostly sunny 85/51 Sunny; warm 85/44 Sunny 85/47 Sunny; warm 112/83 Sunny; hot 116/85 Sunny; hot 117/85 Very hot 119/85 Partly sunny Sunny Partly sunny Sunny Lots of sunshine Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Today Inner waters: Wind southwest at 5-10 knots, becoming west at 10-16 knots. Mixed swell 2-4 feet at 8 seconds and south 3 feet at 14 seconds. Surf zone: The risk of strong rip currents is moderate at most area beaches, high at O.C. beaches and low at Santa Barbara County beaches. Santa Barbara 1-3’ 9 sec SW 59 Ventura 3-5’ 9 sec SW 59 Los Angeles 2-4’ 14 sec S 66 Orange 2-4’ 14 sec S 67 San Diego 3-6’ 14 sec SSW 68 Saturday Today Monday Saturday Today Monday Saturday Today Monday Today 2:21a 4.3 Hi 8:57a 0.5 Lo 3:51p 5.1 Hi 10:20p 1.7 Lo Mon. 3:51a 3.6 Hi 9:47a 1.2 Lo 4:42p 5.4 Hi 11:48p 1.1 Lo High/low 78/61 78/62 67/55 Normal high/low 81/64 84/66 73/57 High/low a year ago 82/61 82/62 69/57 Record high/date 98/2018 97/2018 87/2018 Record low/date 50/2019 60/2010 48/1948 24-hour total (as of 5 p.m.) 0.00 0.00 0.00 Season total (since Oct. 1) 28.03 21.35 26.61 Last season (Oct. 1 to date) 12.17 6.56 11.35 Season norm (Oct. 1 to date) 14.14 11.71 15.94 Humidity (high/low) 86/49 93/49 95/62 Precipitation Los Angeles Fullerton Ventura Las Vegas, 10 Los Angeles, 10 Phoenix, 10 San Francisco, 30 81/60 86/60 71/58 78/41 107/78 73/55 82/57 68/55 71/56 80/56 76/57 81/58 86/59 73/61 79/60 72/62 71/61 74/59 77/58 82/55 75/57 71/61 87/53 87/55 79/59 78/60 76/63 71/58 83/59 81/61 90/57 90/58 107/78 91/55 81/60 76/58 86/60 84/57 89/59 84/61 86/59 94/53 87/58 88/60 93/58 93/67 Forecasts by AccuWeather, Inc. ©2023 High 115 in Eloy, Ariz. Low 31 in Bryce Canyon, Utah Saturday Today Saturday Today Albany 87 69 -- 83 67 Ts Albuquerque 96 71 Tr 99 73 Su Anchorage 58 47 .15 62 50 Cy Aspen 82 43 -- 84 47 Su Atlanta 92 72 -- 88 71 Ts Austin 99 74 -- 98 75 Su Baltimore 92 74 .01 84 69 Ts Boise 95 69 -- 101 69 Su Boston 77 72 -- 77 67 Ts Bufalo 80 58 -- 76 64 Ts Burlington, Vt. 89 68 -- 82 68 Ts Charleston, S.C. 92 74 .82 95 77 Ts Charlotte 92 73 .06 88 71 Ts Chicago 76 64 .14 83 63 Su Cincinnati 80 67 .40 80 62 Ts Cleveland 79 64 .17 76 61 Ts Columbia, S.C. 94 72 -- 93 75 Ts Columbus 79 68 .11 81 61 Ts Dallas/Ft.Worth 98 81 Tr 92 77 Ts Denver 80 56 .12 81 60 Pc Detroit 75 70 .02 82 61 Cy El Paso 108 83 -- 107 80 Su Eugene 80 53 -- 82 53 Su Fort Myers 93 83 -- 94 78 Su Hartford 90 74 .06 82 69 Ts Honolulu 87 75 Tr 87 75 Pc Houston 94 74 Tr 96 79 Pc Indianapolis 79 65 1.59 82 62 Pc Jacksonville, Fla. 96 74 .01 94 75 Ts Kansas City 75 65 .01 83 61 Cy Knoxville 89 68 .30 83 68 Ts Las Vegas 105 78 -- 106 78 Su Louisville 86 73 1.08 83 65 Ts Medford 92 57 -- 93 56 Su Memphis 88 76 .48 80 66 Ts Miami 96 81 -- 94 79 Ts Milwaukee 76 63 .48 78 64 Su Minneapolis 81 58 -- 87 68 Su Nashville 90 73 .57 83 65 Ts New Orleans 94 78 Tr 91 79 Ts New York 88 76 -- 82 70 Ts Norfolk 88 77 Tr 88 72 Ts Oklahoma City 88 68 .25 79 68 Ts Omaha 77 55 .01 84 63 Pc Orlando 87 77 .02 94 77 Ts Philadelphia 90 75 .18 84 70 Ts Phoenix 113 86 -- 110 88 Su Pittsburgh 82 61 -- 74 60 Ts Portland, Ore. 78 59 -- 84 58 Su Providence 85 71 -- 83 68 Ts Raleigh/Durham 90 72 .46 88 72 Ts Reno 94 63 -- 91 57 Su Richmond 90 74 .01 87 69 Ts St. Louis 80 71 .06 86 67 Pc Salt Lake City 95 70 -- 102 76 Su Acapulco 91 76 .04 88 75 Ts Amsterdam 90 64 -- 83 60 Ts Athens 93 72 -- 90 73 Su Bangkok 95 83 .18 92 79 Ts Barcelona 85 72 -- 85 74 Su Berlin 88 57 -- 91 65 Pc Cabo San Lucas 93 76 -- 90 79 Ts Cairo 101 77 -- 94 74 Su Dubai 110 97 -- 107 92 Su Dublin 72 57 .08 68 52 Ts Havana 91 75 .26 95 73 Pc Ho Chi Minh City 88 82 .51 90 77 Ts Hong Kong 91 84 .22 93 83 Ts Istanbul 81 72 .23 82 68 Pc Jerusalem 85 67 -- 84 69 Su Johannesburg 66 41 -- 57 25 Su Kuala Lumpur 89 76 1.09 89 75 Ts Lima 73 67 -- 73 67 Su London 77 67 .04 75 57 Cy Madrid 93 66 -- 98 67 Su Mecca 109 83 -- 109 85 Pc Mexico City 82 59 .09 79 59 Sh Montreal 84 70 -- 82 66 Sh Moscow 73 64 .10 76 56 Cy Mumbai 88 79 .48 87 80 Ts New Delhi 87 79 .82 84 77 Ts Paris 93 68 -- 83 63 Ts Prague 85 57 -- 92 62 Pc Rome 90 72 -- 91 69 Su Seoul 88 72 -- 86 74 Ts Singapore 87 77 -- 88 78 Ts Taipei City 95 79 -- 100 79 Pc Tokyo 90 77 .04 88 79 Ts Vancouver 72 57 .01 73 57 Su Vienna 86 55 -- 90 62 Pc Seattle 75 54 -- 78 55 Su Tampa 89 80 .12 93 82 Ts Tucson 108 82 -- 103 79 Su Tulsa 89 72 .03 83 66 Cy Washington, D.C. 91 76 .82 85 70 Ts Wichita 81 66 .21 83 62 Pc SATURDAY’S EXTREMES FOR THE 48 CONTIGUOUS STATES Coastal morning low clouds: There will be morning low clouds to start the day, which will otherwise be sunny. Inland areas will be a bit warmer than Saturday as a ridge of high pressure begins to build. This ridge will intensify over the next several days, causing inland areas to continue to warm. At the coast, the marine layer will become shallower as the week progresses. Downpours in the Northeast, mid-Atlantic: A slow-moving system will bring drenching showers and thunderstorms to portions of the Northeast and mid-Atlantic regions. A few strong to severe thunderstorms will occur in the Southeast. The central Plains will be mainly dry. Duarte, Irwindale, La Verne and San Dimas as well as parts of Glendora, Industry and Monrovia. Democrats had a 27-percentage-point lead over Republicans in the district’s voter registration as of Feb. 10, according to the California secretary of state’s office. Democrats accounted for 48.6% of the district’s voters, while those who expressed no political preference made up 23.3%. Nearly 21.5% identified as members of the GOP. The district’s partisan tilt is among the reasons Democrats predicted it would be a blockbuster race once Napolitano decided to retire. It’s a rare open seat that offers ambitious legislative and local elected officials a higher perch — even though it won’t affect control of a narrowly divided Congress. “These seats don’t come up and open that often so you would expect a pretty big field given the opportunity and no term limits in Congress,” said Dan Rottenstreich, a San Diego-based Democratic consultant. With the 2024 primary less than a year away, he said, candidates with established bases of political support and proven fundraising ability will have a big advantage. Both will be essential to win in the Los Angeles area, one of the most expensive media markets in the nation. Three Democrats have opened campaign accounts to run: state Sen. Bob Archuleta (D-Pico Rivera), Citrus Community College Trustee Mary Ann Lutz and Baldwin Park Planning Commissioner Ricardo Vazques, according to the Federal Election Commission. After she announced her retirement, Napolitano endorsed Archuleta, who was at the Saturday event. “Her dedicated service to the community over the years has been priceless,” Archuleta told The Times in a Friday interview. “What a remarkable legacy. And I’ve received encouragement from her to go ahead and run.” A former Pico Rivera mayor and more moderate member of the Legislature’s Democratic caucus, Archuleta is the most wellknown among the three candidates who have filed to replace Napolitano. He is an Army combat veteran and former paratrooper, according to his official legislative biography, and has spent much of his time in the statehouse focusing on military and veterans issues, as well as promoting hydrogen energy technology. Archuleta was elected in 2018 to replace a state lawmaker who resigned amid allegations of inappropriate behavior during the #MeToo movement in the Legislature. In 2021, Archuleta faced scandal after a former staffer filed a lawsuit, which has not been resolved, claiming sexual harassment and retaliation. Archuleta has denied the accusations. State Sen. Susan Rubio of Baldwin Park, another moderate Democrat and a former public school teacher, announced Friday that she would also run for the seat. “My decision to run for Congress is fueled by an urgency to confront pressing challenges and safeguard our shared values,” she said in a statement, adding that she would prioritize fighting against gun violence, climate change, attacks on the rights of women and the LGBTQ+ community, book banning and anti-immigrant rhetoric. Rubio said she would also focus on strengthening public schools, building affordable housing, reducing the cost of living, creating jobs and expanding access to healthcare. “With too many working families being left behind, we need a government that works for everyone, that is why I will push for social, emotional, and economic equity for all of our communities,” Rubio said. “America is the most powerful nation in modern history and that power can be misused. Our might should be used to build bridges to a brighter future for every child, no matter who they are or where they come from.” Rubio spent more than a decade in local politics before she was elected to the Legislature in 2018. During her time in Sacramento, Rubio has written a number of affordable housing and education bills, including an unsuccessful proposal last year to make kindergarten mandatory in California. But the bulk of Rubio’s legislative accomplishments include strengthening protections for domestic violence survivors, efforts that stem from her own accusations of abuse while she was a Baldwin Park City Council member against her then-husband Roger Hernandez, a former Assembly member. Lutz said she would bring experienced leadership representing the district as its congresswoman. “I know how to lead through difficult times and produce positive results. And that’s exactly what I’ll do for the constituents of this district as their next congresswoman,” Lutz said in a statement last month announcing her run. Vazques said he decided to run because he’s had personal experience with poverty, homelessness, the foster care system and other struggles many in the district face. “I understand the many challenges that are in the communities this district is facing,” he said. Gil Cisneros, a former congressman who is the undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness in the Biden administration, also has been receiving calls urging him to run for the seat, according to an advisor close to him. Congresswoman to retire, leaving rare open seat [Napolitano, from B1] the Associated Press that his client could be released from the California Institution for Women within a couple of weeks, pending parole board reviews and paperwork. After release, Van Houten would spend about a year living in a halfway house as she learns skills necessary for modern daily life, such as using a smartphone and getting a debit card, Tetreault said. A Southern California native, Van Houten graduated from Monrovia High School. Her parents divorced when she was 14, and she began taking drugs, including LSD. Beginning in 1968, she lived on Spahn Ranch in Chatsworth, a headquarters for Manson and his followers. Van Houten initially described the commune as “idyllic” but said it had a “sinister side,” with Manson espousing beliefs in a “race war” between Black and white people. Manson believed the “family” had to start killing white people to start the race war. Though Van Houten was involved in the LaBianca murders, she was not in attendance the previous night, when Manson’s followers killed five people at the Benedict Canyon home of Roman Polanski: the film director’s wife, actress Sharon Tate, who was pregnant, and her friends Jay Sebring; coffee heiress Abigail Folger and her boyfriend, Voytek Frykowski; and Steven Parent. The crimes, which came to be known as the “TateLaBianca murders,” horrified and fascinated the nation. Five people were convicted of the murders, including Manson, who died of natural causes in prison in 2017. Van Houten’s original case was overturned on appeal, but she was later convicted of murder and conspiracy. According to the judges’ ruling in May, Van Houten worked as a tutor and earned a master’s degree in humanities while incarcerated. She also participated in mental health and selfhelp programs. Outside of a single writeup in 1981 for “verbally communicating with women,” she had a spotless disciplinary record during her time in custody, officials said. Times staff writer Summer Lin contributed to this report. Manson follower Van Houten closer to release [Van Houten, from B1] LESLIE VAN HOUTEN, shown in court in 2017, has been incarcerated for more than 50 years for her role in the 1969 murders of Leno and Rosemary LaBianca. Stan Lim Pool photo via AP

A new Sports section The Times is revamping our print coverage, to highlight our best, most ambitious sports journalism. D2 NBA unveils in-season tournament Attempt to create early-season interest will work only if teams make it an event, Dan Woike writes. D3 Time to trade Ohtani Angels have no chance of keeping him, Bill Plaschke writes, so swallow hard and get a deal done. D7 Allen J. Schaben Los Angeles Times Will this be a Dodgers cap next season? Twice the Dodgers were considered the favorites to land Shohei Ohtani. Twice the Dodgers failed. Why will this coming offseason be any different? D6 S S UNDAY , JULY 9 , 2023 PORTS :: L ATIMES.COM/SPORTS

D2 SUNDAY, JULY 9, 2023 S LATIMES.COM/SPORTS D ear readers, Today, we are introducing a new era for the Los Angeles Times sports section. The printed sports section will take on the look and feel of a daily sports magazine, with a different design showcasing our award-winning reporting and photography. Our new layout highlights our best, most ambitious sports journalism — distinctive work you cannot find anywhere else. We are making this change to adapt to how readers follow news and sporting events each day while managing rising production costs. You no longer will see box scores, standings and traditional game stories, but those will be replaced by more innovative reporting, in-depth profiles, unique examinations of the way teams operate, investigations, our distinct columnists’ voices, elite photography and more. We remain heavily invested in covering sports spanning Southern California and beyond, with the journalists you know well dedicated to chronicling your favorite teams and athletes while also introducing you to newcomers who soon will make their mark. You can still find scores, breaking news, instant analysis, commentary and more as games and tournaments are unfolding at latimes.com/sports and via our L.A. Times app. And please sign up for our sports report newsletter at latimes.com/newsletters to get the latest developments delivered to your email inbox early each morning. I am honored to continue highlighting the incredible talent on the L.A. Times sports staff and look forward to helping guide readers to all we have to offer in our print edition and online. For assistance using your print subscription to access all of our online offerings, visit membership.latimes.com or call 213-283-2274. Iliana Limón Romero L.A. Times sports editor Introducing the new look of the Sports section in The Times The Times maintains Clayton Kershaw is kind of a “bulldog,” slogging through injuries and exhaustion to make his next start. Sorry, but with yet another visit to the injury list because of a nagging injury, he’s certainly not Orel Hershiser-dominant anymore. Still a good one, but even seven innings an outing is a long shot. Allan Kandel Los Angeles :: It seems like the past few years we hold our collective breath waiting for Kershaw to go on the IL. This letter isn’t to bash Kershaw, but more to point out to him and Dodgers president Andrew Friedman that Kershaw has given a lot to the Dodgers and his body is beat up. They should work out a plan that allows him to retire. But his $20 million a year needs to be freed up to allow the Dodgers to sign a younger, more durable pitcher next year. It has been great, but it’s time. Russell Morgan Carson :: It might be time to question the Dodgers’ conditioning program for their pitchers, since the staff either is or has been on the IL. Eddie Barron Los Angeles :: Thank goodness the Dodgers finally acquired a new pitcher, but why do they only use his initials, TBD? Elliot Powers San Diego :: If Dave Roberts has his way, the only way a Dodgers pitcher will ever pitch a complete game will be a rain-shortened game after five innings. Jeff Hershow Woodland Hills :: Again, Bill Plaschke has it all wrong. Renting another pitcher before the trade deadline makes no sense. The Dodgers need to concentrate on several rookie pitchers and use this season to build the rotation of the future. Friedman should go on vacation, without his phone, until after the trade deadline and Plaschke needs to retire. Victor Benickes Los Angeles Bad move Through Saturday, Cody Bellinger is batting .298 with nine home runs and 29 RBIs. Enough said. Richard Raffalow Valley Glen :: It’s beyond me, in a year when the shift is banned, that Andrew Friedman did not resign Bellinger, for whom defenses overshifted on a regular basis. I guess it wasn’t in the analytics. John C. Borrego Safety Harbor, Fla. Leaning in Dave Roberts leans against the Dodgers dugout fence. I lean against my recliner. Give me Roberts’ salary for doing the same thing. Tom Neldner Redondo Beach Making it happen The Kansas City Royals are not a good team but it sure was refreshing to watch a team putting on plays, stealing bases, sacrificing, doing what they can to manufacture runs. Much better than sitting in the dugout, spitting out sunflower seeds and waiting for one of your players to hit a home run. R.D. McCall Fallbrook Listen to this Great article, “From star turn to new Dodgers intern,” on Mo’ne Davis by Jack Harris. Mo’ne said, “Since eighth grade, I wanted to go into broadcasting.” Maybe the two Davises, Joe and Mo’ne, will be calling a game together soon! Vaughn Hardenberg Westwood :: If we fans are being consulted, add my name to the list in favor of electronic determination of balls and strikes. The umpiring mistakes are giving me a headache. Anne Singer North Hills Parking issue I am a disabled person with a severe breathing problem. I went to the Dodgers game on the Fourth of July. The Dodgers let handicapped people park close to the stadium with a general parking ticket. On the other hand, I have Rams season seats and have to park at the casino. The Rams know of my breathing problem, but I still have to walk the whole parking lot and stadium to enter at Gate 2. On a hot day, I need my inhaler and water to get there. The Rams have no class, but they are my team, till my last breath. Ed Villanueva Chino Hills Angelic problems Of late, the Angels have suffered from being inept and unfortunate. Now Mike Trout is out after hamate surgery and Shohei Ohtani has a blistered finger that will keep him from pitching in the All-Star Game. Seems that this once-promising team has been dealt bad “hands” by fate, and it’s highly doubtful yet again that they’ll make it to postseason play. Tom Stapleton Glendale :: The Angels have two problems, owner Arte Moreno and general manager Perry Minasian. Moreno tried to take pressure off of himself by announcing that he was going to sell the team only to not pursue any serious attempt to do so. Minasian has not delivered on the real need of the Angels, which is pitching, mostly a proven closer. The one positive thing Moreno could do would be to change the name of the team back to the Anaheim Angels. Edward A. Sussman Fountain Valley :: Arte Moreno has made some drastic mistakes over the years, but he should not believe Ohtani will re-sign with the Angels. Make the smart decision and get some firstrate pitching as well as a strong group of future stars from another team’s minor league system. If he does not do this, Ohtani will certainly be leaving to a large-market team and the Angels will get nothing in return. Bruce Olson Upland Suggestion for USC In regard to replacing Mike Bohn, USC should again look within the Trojans family by hiring a former athlete as athletic director thereby saving search time and money. David Marshall Santa Monica Not so fast Bill Plaschke’s irrational exuberance over the Lakers’ free-agent signings is hilarious. Adding the immortal Gabe Vincent to a team swept in the Western Conference finals is hardly the missing link to a title. Beating a Memphis team devoid of its injured big men and Golden State, whose tallest starter is 6-foot-8, was fool’s gold. This Lakers team, as presently constituted, will likely be fighting to reach the play-in tournament, not the Finals. Mark S. Roth Los Angeles Seeking humane treatment Those in the now-lethal gambling business of racing horses for profit are well aware of the measures that could be taken if they wish to continue without the constant death count of the exploited equine athletes. But as deaths still mount, it appears that those measures have little interest for them. Profit trumps ethics. To have this intolerable record would be totally unacceptable in any other sport and I am joined by thousands of members of the public that say, “Enough, end it.” Elaine Livesey-Fassel Los Angeles :: The Los Angeles Times welcomes expressions of all views. Letters should be brief and become the property of The Times. They may be edited and republished in any format. Each must include a valid mailing address and telephone number. Pseudonyms will not be used. Email: [email protected] LETTERS WITH CLAYTON KERSHAW going on the injured list again, Dodgers fans are imploring president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman to pivot toward the future and bring in some younger arms to bolster the increasingly banged-up staff. Chris O'Meara Associated Press Feeling frustrated over fatigued Kershaw and manager’s follies

LATIMES.COM/SPORTS S SUNDAY, JULY 9, 2023 D3 LAS VEGAS — They all stood, the fans who sold out Thomas & Mack Center on Friday night, as Victor Wembanyama jogged onto the court. That the game meant nothing, that the rosters were made up mostly of dreamers whose hopes eventually will be unfulfilled, meant nothing. They stood because this was a moment: the 7-foot-4, No. 1 overall draft pick taking the court as an NBA player for the first time. It was an event — Kareem Abdul-Jabbar walked into the arena before the game to see the teenager who could become the NBA’s next great big man. Wembanyama struggled, looking very much like a tentative 19-year-old instead of anything close to a finished project. Yet regardless of how Wembanyama played, it was an unquestioned success, the NBA giving people a reason to pay attention to its product in the middle of the summer. The success Friday underscores the NBA’s big challenge moving forward, creating as many events as possible that feel special. It’s the biggest drawback to the prolonged NBA season — that the big moments aren’t predictable enough. The league unveiled its latest crack at trying to solve this problem Saturday — an in-season tournament. Over the course of four pool games and potentially three rounds of singleelimination games, all 30 teams will compete for the NBA Cup. Tournament games will be played every Tuesday and Friday in November (minus Election Day on Nov. 7). All games, minus the finals, will count for regular-season standings and statistical leaders. Teams have been split into three groups per conference, not dissimilar to the World Cup draw, based on last year’s standings. The top two in each group, plus two wild-card teams, will advance to the single-elimination quarterfinals. The Lakers will be in West Group A along with Memphis, Phoenix, Portland and Utah. The Clippers will be in West Group B with Dallas, Denver, Houston and New Orleans. West Group C is Golden State, Minnesota, Oklahoma City Sacramento and San Antonio. The East pools are: Group A — Atlanta, Cleveland, Detroit, Indiana and Philadelphia; Group B — Charlotte, Miami, Milwaukee, New York and Washington; Group C — Boston, Brooklyn, Chicago, Orlando and Toronto. The semifinals and finals will be played in Las Vegas on Dec. 7 and Dec. 9. Each player on the team that wins the NBA Cup will receive a $500,000 bonus. The goal will be to make the games feel as different as possible and the tournament will include special uniforms and different court designs and broadcast graphics. All of it is meant to create stakes early in the NBA season when the games feel like they matter the least. Expect the change to be met with skepticism and, in some cases, mockery. It’ll be imperative that whoever wins the NBA Cup treats this like it’s important — it’s a must in making this work. But consider what would happen if the Lakers were to win. For any organization with such a rich championship history, the NBA Cup would seem like just some gimmicky trinket. Imagine trying to hang a banner for that in the rafters. On the flip side, if a team with no championships in its history, like the Clippers, were to win the NBA Cup and commemorate it with a banner, that also would be easy ammunition for people looking to mock it. The NBA is hardly the first sports league to try something like this. The NHL took games into baseball stadiums. Major League Baseball took a game to a cornfield in Iowa. MLS and Liga MX are working together to create a continental competition. Other innovations, most famously the NBA’s switch to a synthetic leather ball in 2005, have flopped. By December, the league switched back to leather. The NBA consistently has tinkered with its All-Star weekend, a player-led draft and target scoring the latest tweaks. The NBA explored rule changes for the in-season tournament games with a target score being the most realistic option. Though once the league settled on keeping tournament games as part of the regular-season schedule, that kind of experimentation wouldn’t be possible. Will fans be more interested in these games if all but the championship ones are special, mostly, in name only? The NBA thinks it can still win them over. Finding ways to add big moments, even if they’re more contrived than the organic buzz in Las Vegas for Wembanyama’s debut, is a necessary part of the NBA’s future. The in-season tournament will be the next innovation. And whether it works or flops, it won’t be the last. NBA in-season event may face stumbling block SPURS ROOKIE Victor Wembanyama, shown trying to block Hornets guard Amari Bailey as he attempts a layup, created a buzz in his summer league debut. Will the NBA’s latest experiment also capture fan interest? John Locher Associated Press League will have to convince fans that new tournament is special and important to capture interest. DAN WOIKE ON THE NBA Gregg Popovich evidently doesn't plan to leave the San Antonio Spurs anytime soon. The NBA's all-time-winningest coach signed a fiveyear contract to remain coach and president of the team, the Spurs announced Saturday. There has been speculation about the 74- year-old Popovich's future, though after the team landed the chance to draft Victor Wembanyama last month it was presumed that the five-time champion would continue coaching. Now it's official. The Spurs announced the move in a two-sentence release, not detailing any of the terms, without any quotes from Popovich or team personnel. Popovich took over as coach of the Spurs in December 1996. He’s won 1,366 games — 31 more than Don Nelson, who was the career wins leader before Popovich caught him. He’s also third in playoff wins with 170, behind only Phil Jackson (229) and Pat Riley (171). And Popovich is one of only five coaches with at least five championships; Jackson won 11, Red Auerbach won nine and Popovich is in a group with Riley and John Kundla as winners of five. Popovich will enter the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame next month. “His ability to connect and spend time and bounce between the really detailed development of basketball players and the bigger picture of developing people is just so impressive,” Spurs managing partner Peter J. Holt said in May. “I think no matter what Pop does, he’s going to find a way to do that because that’s in his heart. And I’m excited to see whatever the next phase is in that journey.” Summer league Chet Holmgren took another positive step on his surgically repaired right foot. Holmgren had 16 points and 10 rebounds, helping the Oklahoma City Thunder beat the Dallas Mavericks 91- 80 in their opener. ... Jason Preston had 15 points and 10 assists in the Clippers’ 105-99 loss to the Utah Jazz. NBA NOTES Popovich gets five-year deal to extend tenure with Spurs GREGG POPOVICH, shown with then-Celtics forward Grant Williams, has been the coach of the Spurs since December 1996, guiding the team to five titles. Steven Senne Associated Press wire reports Neither the wind at Pebble Beach nor the stage of a U.S. Women’s Open could stop Nasa Hataoka, who delivered the best round in the toughest conditions Saturday for a six-under 66 and a one-shot lead. Hataoka not only posted the low score of the championship, but she also played bogey-free on a day Pebble Beach dished out big numbers without much warning. Her 66 was nearly nine shots better than the field average. More importantly, it left the 24-year-old from Japan one round away from her first major. Hataoka has lost playoffs at two majors, including two years ago to Yuka Saso at the U.S. Women’s Open up the California coast at Olympic Club. “It could be just happenstance, perhaps good luck,” Hataoka said about another shot at a Women’s Open in California. There wasn’t much luck involved on a day at Pebble Beach so tough that only 10 players broke par and Hataoka was the only one to break 70. She will play in the final group with Allisen Corpuz, the Hawaii native who stayed at USC an extra year to get her MBA during the COVID-19 pandemic. Corpuz stayed atop the leaderboard for most of the day until her second shot on the par-five 18th into the wind caught a plugged lie in the bunker, forcing her to chop out to the fairway. Her bogey gave her a 71. Corpuz has never won on the LPGA Tour, and now she’s in the final group of the Women’s Open with $2 million going to the winner. This isn’t exactly what she imagined as a kid. “I had putts to win the U.S. Open, like little tap-ins, but I don’t think I ever really thought I’d be in this position,” Corpuz said. “Just really, really grateful to be here, and yeah, hope that tomorrow goes well.” Bailey Tardy, the LPGA rookie who had a two-shot lead at the start, began to fall back as she turned into the wind and then lost her way with a double bogey on 15. Tardy shot 75 and was three shots behind. “Disappointed in some of my shots today, but overall, I’m still in contention,” Tardy said. “I was leading the U.S. Open after two days. I think there was a little bit of nerves involved today.” Rose Zhang, the crowd favorite at Pebble Beach from her sterling amateur career at Stanford, had a chance to get to three under for the round until missing a four-foot birdie putt on the seventh hole. She didn’t make a birdie the rest of the way. She settled for a 72 and was among those eight shots behind. Todd saves late par to lead John Deere Brendon Todd scrambled for par on the par-four 18th to take a one-stroke lead in the John Deere Classic, holing a 12-foot putt after drawing an awkward stance near a fairway bunker. Todd had a five-under 66 in breezy conditions at TPC Deere Run in Silvis, Ill. The three-time PGA Tour winner drove close to the left fairway bunker on 18, forcing him to hit with his left foot in grass and his right foot well below in the sand. He advanced it 65 yards to set up a 105-yard wedge. “Kept me bogey-free and kept me in the lead,” Todd said. “You always want to be the guy being chased.” The 37-year-old former Georgia player, the only tour winner in the top five on the leaderboard, also eagled the par-five second, holing a 25- footer. Alex Smalley (62), Denny McCarthy (66) and Adam Schenk (67) were tied for second. Smith recovers at LIV-London British Open champion Cameron Smith overcame a pair of bogeys at the start to post a four-under 67, giving him a three-shot lead at LIV Golf-London. Smith is playing his final event ahead of his British Open title defense in two weeks at Royal Liverpool. The Australian has yet to win this year. GOLF Hataoka coasts with a championship-low 66 as rest of field crashes WINDY CONDITIONS made the U.S. Women’s Open unusually difficult for players such as Bailey Tardy, who shot 75 on a day when only 10 players broke par. Darron Cummings Associated Press associated press

D4 SUNDAY, JULY 9, 2023 S LATIMES.COM/SPORTS SOCCER SAN JOSÉ — Megan Rapinoe’s soccer career has unfolded largely on her terms, so it made sense that it should end that way, with the two-time world champion and 2019 FIFA player of the year announcing Saturday that this season will be her last. Rapinoe will play what could be her final home match for the national team Sunday before heading to New Zealand for this summer’s World Cup. She then plans to finish the NWSL season with the OL Reign before stepping aside, leaving behind a hole far too big for one woman to fill. “I’m just really grateful to be able to do it in this way,” said Rapinoe, 38. “It is incredibly rare for athletes of any stature to go out in their own way, on their own terms, in a way that feels peaceful and settled for them. So I wanted to do it now and kind of get it out of the way before we go down to New Zealand so we can focus on the task at hand, which is winning another World Cup.” Winning another World Cup would give Rapinoe three in a row, something no player, male or female, has accomplished. A skilled passer and deadly artist on set pieces, she’ll finish her 17-year career with more than 200 appearances and among U.S. Soccer’s top 10 in goals and assists. But it’s what she has done off the field that will define her legacy and be remembered as her biggest victories. Rapinoe, who is gay, is an outspoken advocate for LGBTQ+ rights and was a leader in the national team’s fight for gender equality, which paid off last year when U.S. Soccer became the first federation in history to agree to equal pay, travel and accommodations for both male and female players. Last summer that work was honored at the White House, where President Biden made her the first soccer player to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor. And this summer, prodded in part by Rapinoe and other player advocates, FIFA increased the prize-money purse for the Women’s World Cup to $152 million — four times what it was in 2019 — and agreed to pay each player $30,000 for showing up. Rapinoe has been an equally effective activist away from the spotlight, where she quietly has pledged part of her salary to soccer-centered charities around the world, worked with the American Civil Liberties Union, partnered with the Seattle-area Boys & Girls Clubs and served as an ambassador for Athlete Ally, which opposes homophobia in sports. After the Carr Fire ravaged her hometown of Redding in 2018, she raised more than $150,000 in less than two weeks to help those affected. “Megan Rapinoe is one of the most important players in women’s soccer history and a personality like no other,” said U.S. coach Vlatko Andonovski, who also coached Rapinoe for two seasons with the Reign. “She has produced so many memorable moments that will be remembered for a very long time. But her impact on people as a human being may be even more important.” She also has courted — even embraced — controversy, kneeling during the national anthem to protest police brutality and waging a Twitter war with President Trump during the 2019 World Cup, which ended with Rapinoe scoring a tournament-high six goals and being chosen the tournament’s outstanding player. “She’s been an advocate for this team. She’s been a backbone for this team,” said Alex Morgan, co-captain of the World Cup team and Rapinoe’s teammate since 2010. “Whether it’s going through the equal pay fight, standing up for marginalized communities, she’s someone who is going to stand up for that when it’s not always a popular opinion.” “She’s true to herself,” Morgan added. “That’s from the beginning when I met her until now. She says what she thinks, she means what she says. You have to love her for that.” Nowhere is she loved more than in the national team’s locker room, where she is surrounded by those who know her best. Defender Crystal Dunn broke down while describing Rapinoe as “an incredible person, human being, friend.” “I just love her so much,” Dunn said through the tears. “She’s somebody that I can call with the most random stuff. She’s so huge for the team, on and off the field.” Rapinoe made her international debut in 2006, less than three weeks after her 21st birthday, but knee injuries three games apart wiped out most of the next three years, threatening her career and delaying her first national team start until 2009. She became a mainstay of the team a year later, with the U.S. losing just 14 of the 199 games in which she played. “Megan has left an indelible mark on women’s soccer globally,” said Jill Ellis, the winningest coach in U.S. Soccer history. “One of the most skillful players to ever play, she will forever be one of the greats in our storied program.” She’ll be forever remembered for the way she went out as well. By announcing her decision two weeks before the U.S. team’s World Cup opener, Rapinoe, who informed Morgan of her decision in a group chat message Saturday morning, has signaled to her teammates what she’d like as a retirement gift. “Well,” Morgan responded, “now we just have to win the whole damn thing.” Leaving game like she played, on her own terms American star Rapinoe, who inspired change and advocacy as well as a new generation of players, says this will be her final season. MEGAN RAPINOE will lead the U.S. women’s national soccer team into one final World Cup beginning later this month. “I’m just really grateful to be able to do it this way,” she says. Brad Smith ISI Photos/Getty Images ‘Megan Rapinoe is one of the most important players in women’s soccer history and a personality like no other.’ — VLATKO ANDONOVSKI, U.S. women’s national team coach KEVIN BAXTER ON SOCCER Trinity Rodman has her father’s last name and fierce competitive instincts, but she has not had Dennis Rodman’s constant presence in her life. A rising star on the U.S. women’s World Cup soccer team, Trinity knows her father best through viewing videos of his career dominating the boards with the “Bad Boy” Detroit Pistons and indomitable Chicago Bulls. He was a moldbreaker who dyed his hair different colors and partied outrageously but was almost frighteningly intense on defense, leading the NBA in rebounds per game for seven consecutive seasons and winning five NBA championships and two defensive player of the year awards during a Hall of Fame career. Trinity and her brother, DJ, who recently joined USC’s basketball team as a graduate transfer, were born in Newport Beach and raised by their mother, Michelle Moyer, the third of Dennis Rodman’s three ex-wives. He kept Trinity and DJ at a financial and emotional distance. He didn’t let them get to know him, but they made a point of at least getting to know who he was as a basketball player. “I watched my dad play a lot more than people really know. I mean, my brother lived watching my dad’s clips. He knows everything and anything there is to know about basketball,” she said. “I admire that about him.” She particularly studied the anticipation that made her father such a great rebounder and defender, and she has put that to good use. Trinity, who was the NWSL’s rookie of the year in 2021 and last year signed the league’s most lucrative contract at $1.124 million over four years, has adapted elements of her father’s game to her sport. But she won her roster spot for the upcoming World Cup in Australia and New Zealand purely on her own merits: her pace, finishing skills and an intuitive ability, at 21, to deftly read plays. Rodman is one of 14 World Cup newcomers on the 23-woman roster and among six forwards entrusted with extending the American women’s World Cup title streak to three. Before departing, the team will play a friendly send-off game against Wales on Sunday at PayPal Park in San José, a preview of the short-term and long-term future of the U.S. women’s program. Rodman described her biggest takeaway from her father’s game as “hunting.” That sounded odd, she acknowledged. It made complete sense when she explained it. “It’s hunting in front of the goal. It’s hunting when you lose the ball. And I think that’s a huge part of my game — regains, tracking back and being the first person to get a foot, a head, a knee, a shin on something that pops up,” she said during a recent news conference for the World Cup club. “Even if he wasn’t the first guy under the basket or he was next to Shaq [O’Neal], who was way bigger, way taller, he was going to get the rebound. It was timing, it was anticipation, it was body movement, it was positioning, it was everything. And I think he was so intelligent and I think people take that away. He was a freak of nature. He was an insane athlete, but at the end of the day, he, I think, was one of the smartest players at the time. He knew the game.” O’Neal was an adversary of her father’s but is a friend to her. In a video U.S. Soccer created featuring cameos of artists, actors and athletes introducing each member of the World Cup team, O’Neal did the honors for Rodman. “Trinity Rodman, welcome to your first World Cup,” he said. “Go kick some ass and bring back that victory. Go USA, and congratulations, Trinity.” She was thrilled. “It was definitely a full-circle moment,” she said. “Getting that message from him was amazing, and I want to continue to have that connection with him.” She heard nothing from her father after the announcement. Not that she expected to. They hadn’t been in communication for months. That’s sad, but it’s nothing new. He’d show up occasionally — he appeared at a 2021 playoff game she played for the Washington Spirit and enveloped her in a big hug when her team won — and then he’d vanish from her everyday life. “Like I’ve said before, I’ve gotten closure with it all,” she said. “I know he’s proud of me. I truly do. He has his own things to deal with but at the end of the day, he’s communicated to me that he knows I was going to be here, and that’s all I need.” Trinity, who has scored two goals in 17 appearances with the senior U.S. national team, doesn’t follow her father’s example in terms of preparing for games. Or, in his case, not preparing for games. “Definitely not the same at all. Still got that performance to worry about,” she said. But after becoming familiar with those clips of her father’s remarkable performances and championship seasons, she defended him and marveled at his ability to compete so ferociously after he had experienced so many late nights and early mornings. “Even the days that he didn’t prepare the best for the games, when he was out partying — I mean, everybody knows that — he was there. It doesn’t even matter what he was doing the night before or the morning of. He was there every single game and you can’t take that away from him,” she said. “His mentality was insane.” She credited her mother for supporting her along her path. “My last name has always been a factor, especially before I kind of made my own way,” she said. “But there’s always expectations and questions that I had before I kind of proved myself, but my mom helped me a lot with kind of tuning that out and being about my family and my success.” She is Dennis Rodman’s daughter but she’s her own person, a star in her own right, with an opportunity coming soon to shine as never before on the world stage. Father’s intense play is Rodman’s biggest takeaway TRINITY RODMAN speaks with reporters on media day for the Women’s World Cup. After watching videos of her father and NBA Hall of Famer, Dennis, the American forward has a highly instinctive style of play. Myung J. Chun Los Angeles Times HELENE ELLIOTT

LATIMES.COM/SPORTS S SUNDAY, JULY 9, 2023 D5 David Brown hears the ball. As it rolls across the soccer pitch, it contains rattles that make the crunching sound of soldiers marching through a sand pit. He moves toward the ball and responds with measured steps when a coach yells, “Left! Left!” The ball strikes Brown squarely on the calf. He listens, finds the ball and ping-pongs it between his feet before giving it a swift kick. The attack on goal is averted and his teammates begin an assault of their own. Brown is a center back on the United States Blind Soccer team, assembled only a few months ago with gold medal dreams and a fiveyear timetable ahead of the Los Angeles Olympics and Paralympics in 2028. He and teammate Antoine Craig already are Paralympic track and field stars, the fastest visually impaired sprinters in the U.S. They were excited to shift to soccer, intrigued by its tactical challenges and warmed by the camaraderie among teammates. A gold medal winner in the 100 meters at the Rio Paralympics in 2016, Brown brings an unbridled competitive spirit and sense of urgency to this fledgling U.S. sport. The U.S. is assured a berth in the eight-team 2028 Paralympics soccer bracket because it is the host. That’s not enough for Brown. “The automatic bid, that’s what inspired creating the team but that’s not our narrative,” he said. “People say we have five years to prepare and that’s true. But I’ve been through several four-year cycles in track and field. The time goes by fast. “I don’t want us to go out there and look like garbage. I want us to make people shake in their boots.” :: Spectators are silent during a blind soccer match so players can hear instructions from guides stationed behind the goals and on the sidelines. Cheers are allowed only when a goal is scored, and U.S. fans reacted four times in two wins over Canada in March. Fans of the Canadian team remained mum — the U.S. posted shutouts, 1-0 and 3-0. Blind soccer — also called 5-aside because each team has five players including a goalie — is played on a field 40 meters long and 20 meters wide. The pitch is lined with kickboards to prevent the ball from going out of play and signal to players that they are at the sidelines. A player who rushes toward the ball must yell “Voy!”— the Spanish word for “go” — to inform his opponent that contact might be imminent. Playing too rough can be costly: A fifth foul results in an ejection. There are no throw-ins or offsides rule, reducing interruptions and resulting in a fast-paced game. Each team’s four field players must be visually impaired, meaning they are completely blind or have very low visual acuity or no light perception. Nevertheless, all players except goalies wear eyeshades to ensure uniform blindness. Goalies are sighted, primarily for safety reasons, and also serve as guides for the center back, whose job is to disrupt opposing attacks on goal. U.S. goalie Brandt Herron has earned Brown’s trust. “He’s my eyes on positioning and where their players are so we can lock down on defense,” Brown said. “He’ll be like, ‘Yo, David, you are coming at an angle. You are outside the goal. The ball is loose, go left, left, right.’ He is steering me.” Meanwhile, the opposing guide is standing behind the goal hollering instructions to his forwards. If the goalie moves to the right, the guide goes left and shouts so his player attempting a shot can aim for his voice. Players talk throughout a game, announcing their intentions and placement so teammates can make accurate passes and avoid collisions. Every exhortation on the pitch is meaningful, and everyone in the stands cannot say a word. “It’s strange at first,” said Craig, who is tapering back from sprinting to focus on soccer. “But you get used to it.” :: Brazil has dominated blind soccer since it debuted as a Paralympic sport in 2004, winning gold at the Athens Games and every four years since. The team’s best player, Jeferson da Conceicao Goncalves, goes by Jefinho and is billed as the Paralympic Pelé. Videos of his deft dribbling, uncanny spatial awareness and scoring ability pepper social media. David Clarke of Britain was an early star, scoring 128 goals in 144 international matches from 1994 until he retired in 2012 at age 42. He once spent a day teaching David Beckham to play blind football, as the sport is called in most of the world. Clarke was inducted into the English Football Hall of Fame in 2013 and currently is head of Paralympics Great Britain. More than 60 countries field blind soccer teams, and international heavyweights include Argentina, China and France. The sport originated in Spain in the 1920s and Brazil developed the 5-aside rules in the 1960s and held the first tournament in 1974. All of which means the U.S. has some serious catching up to do. The team trains in Chula Vista but players live all over the country, creating logistical challenges for Amanda Duke-Boulet, director of performance for the U.S. Assn. of Blind Athletes. “It’s expensive to start and grow a sport at the grassroots level,” she said. “Then to ID athletes and make them world class, that’s also expensive.” Yet soccer isn’t expensive to play. And because most Americans are familiar with the game, DukeBoulet believes interest will spike in the visually impaired community. “All of a sudden you have kids and adults who say, ‘I have been waiting to play with peers,’ ” she said. “It can grow so fast. The number of people who want to play is insane.” U.S. players such as Brown and Craig love the idea of spreading the word. Craig lives in Richmond, Va., and traveled to L.A. last week to help the national team stage a clinic for visually impaired youths at USC as part of the Angel City Games, the blind leading the blind in the best possible way. “When I first lost my vision, I hated the fact that I didn’t have people to direct me and show me the way,” said Craig, 41, who had a genetic disease that caused his retinas to break down over time. He lost his night vision as a teen and has been blind since 2010. “I can help these kids become anything they want. If soccer is something they want to play, let’s get after it. That gives me a lot of joy.” :: The U.S. national team coach is Katie Smith, a doctoral candidate in adaptive physical education at Ohio State and the only female head coach of a men’s blind soccer team in the world. Five years ago, Smith started a blind soccer program in Columbus, Ohio, that is now one of seven across the country boosted by funding from U.S. Soccer. Los Angeles, through Angel City Sports, the largest adaptive sports program in the West, is another of the seven. The programs introduce visually impaired adults and children to the game while also enabling Smith to identify candidates for the national team. “We stage clinics and weekly practices across those sites for a variety of athletes to come out and try it,” said Smith, who also holds the title of grassroots coordinator with the U.S. Assn. of Blind Athletes. “Plus, there are schools for the blind that participate in blind soccer. Already a pipeline of talent is starting to build.” Blind soccer for women is beginning to take hold worldwide, with eight teams qualified for the International Blind Sports Federation World Games in August at the University of Birmingham in England. The U.S. plans to form a team within a year. “It’s on our horizon, to light that fire with women,” Smith said. “We hope to have a women’s tournament in the Paralympics by 2032 or so.” The U.S. men’s team had no chance of qualifying for the 16-team BSF World Games tournament in August. Nor will the U.S. compete in the 2024 Paris Paralympics. Growing the sport on U.S. soil comes first. Smith says she appreciates Brown’s exuberance but her expectations are tempered. “Our goal is to go into the 2028 Paralympics competing for a medal and competing with Brazil, Japan, Argentina, the top teams,” she said. “The first step is to get ranked. That means playing middle-tier competitors. I do believe we can be competitive with many international teams. As for the top 10, we are not there yet.” :: Brown holds the Paralympics world record of 10.92 seconds in the 100 meters. He’s accustomed to swiftly reaching his destination and can’t wait for the soccer team to compete with the traditional powers. “I want us to be on the radar of the top teams,” he said. “We should have been ready yesterday.” Several U.S. players transferred to soccer from goalball, a longstanding Paralympic sport for the visually impaired. Two teams of three players each attempt to roll a basketball-size ball with rattles inside over the opponent’s goal line. The U.S. women’s goalball team took the silver medal at the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games, and the men’s team reeled off six consecutive victories to claim the gold medal at the Nations Cup in Berlin last month. Both U.S. teams have enjoyed sustained success since the 1970s. Soccer probably has a better chance of catching on with the public because about 20 million people play the game in the U.S., including about 850,000 high school athletes. “When we played Canada, everybody understood it’s soccer, the only difference is that the ball rattles and they have to be quiet,” Brown said. “Just to see all the big plays, everybody on edge of their seats, oh, oh, oh, and a breaking play, then yelling from sideline. People can follow it a lot better than goalball.” Recruiting blind players and teaching them the intricacies of the game also is easier with soccer. The U.S. team is thrilled to bring the game to as many potential participants as possible. “It is humbling and rewarding to me,” Brown said. “I don’t say that lightly. I’m a world-class track-and-field athlete and here I am teaching not track and field, but teaching soccer. It’s super crazy thinking that I’m a track guy and now I’m a national-level blind soccer player and people are looking at me saying, ‘Hey, how can I get better?’ ” Craig, the other elite sprinter turned soccer player, recently was named by the U.S. Assn. of Blind Athletes as one of 16 Sport Ambassadors for 2023. Like Brown, he takes the responsibility seriously. “I’ll go to soccer games and put on clinics during the tailgate,” Craig said. “I bring out a bunch of blindfolds and give everyone the opportunity to dribble, then challenge them to do it with the blindfold on. They ask me questions. They become conscious of spacial awareness.” And they hear that rattle that has become so familiar to Craig and his teammates, the sound that means it’s time to compete. “I let them touch the ball and shake it, then put it on the ground and kick it,” Craig said. “They become in tune with the sound, and they begin to play blind soccer.” BLIND SOCCER players hold on to one another for guidance as they walk off the field for a water break during a scrimmage at a U.S. training camp in Chula Vista. Photographs by Wally Skalij Los Angeles Times Visions of Olympic glory U.S. Blind Soccer athletes, led by elite Paralympians, are driven to grow the game as they prepare for the 2028 Games in Los Angeles in a sport dominated by Brazil By Steve Henson A BATTLE for the ball ensues as Ricardo Castaneda, left, and Noah Beckman make contact.

D6 SUNDAY, JULY 9, 2023 S LATIMES.COM/SPORTS Shohei Ohtani, the most popular baseball act in the world, continued his 2023 tour at Dodger Stadium this weekend. He brought with him a media horde and large crowds. It did not matter the Angels are a middling ballclub without Mike Trout. Ohtani is baseball’s main attraction. He completed his two-day stop Saturday before heading to Seattle to take center stage there for Major League Baseball’s All-Star Game. Barring an implausible Freeway World Series or an unfathomable trade in the next three weeks, it’s the last time he’ll play baseball in Los Angeles this year. The next time he shows up could be as a member of the home team. The Dodgers’ top objective this winter isn’t a secret. Ohtani is scheduled to become the most coveted free agent ever and they want to sign him. Badly. It won’t be the first time. Ohtani has been a target for the Dodgers since he was a high school star in rural Japan. That was more than a decade ago, when Ohtani went by “Otani” and the idea of a player becoming so dominant as a pitcher and hitter at the highest level was a pipe dream. The franchise’s infatuation spans two ownership groups, two front-office regimes, and two pursuits. Twice the Dodgers were considered the favorites to land Ohtani. Twice the Dodgers failed to persuade Ohtani to join them. He has been the organization’s white whale. The circumstances surrounding a third chase — if the Angels don’t shock the industry by signing him to an extension before the season ends — will be different. :: For the first time, Ohtani will be a true free agent, unencumbered by restrictions that limited his earning power coming from Japan as an international amateur. For the first time, there won’t be a question about whether he is a pitcher or a hitter or both. For the first time, he’ll be a known quantity. Ohtani, who turned 29 last week, undoubtedly will earn the richest contract in North American professional sports history. With six major league seasons under his belt, he fully understands the landscape. He probably knows what he wants. The rest of the baseball world doesn’t have a clue. For now, it’s all speculation. The rumors about his preferences. The conjecture about his leanings. Ohtani has dropped periodic clues, like two years ago when he mentioned winning is a priority, but he is a famously private person. He speaks to reporters only after games he pitches. He doesn’t partake in small talk. But ask around the industry and the Dodgers are the consensus front-runners to sign Ohtani. The reasons are consistent. They have more than enough money. They produce a consistent winner. They play in great weather. He wouldn’t even have to move. The presentation writes itself. One rival team executive, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because tampering rules forbid him from discussing prospective free agents on other teams, was willing to bet a sushi dinner on the Dodgers. Three other executives echoed that it’s the Dodgers and then everyone else. Multiple agents, granted anonymity to speak freely, agreed. “I know we’ll make a huge offer,” one Dodgers player said. Coming to that conclusion takes a simple analysis of the team’s recent roster moves. Decisions seemingly have been made with Ohtani in mind. Just look at last winter when the Dodgers gave only one-year deals to the free agents they signed. Notably, they opted to sign J.D. Martinez over Justin Turner to be their designated hitter partly because Martinez was willing to take a one-year deal and Turner sought multiple years. Martinez, as a result, is the designated hitter this season. He has excelled so far, earning a spot in the National League All-Star team’s starting lineup. Ideally for the Dodgers, though, he won’t be their DH next year. Ohtani will be. On the pitching side, the Dodgers let Tyler Anderson and Andrew Heaney leave to sign multiyear contracts in free agency. Meanwhile, Noah Syndergaard was the only free-agent starting pitcher they signed to a major league deal. Syndergaard, like Martinez, agreed to a one-year contract. With Clayton Kershaw and Julio Urías hitting free agency this offseason, the Dodgers’ starting rotation for next year is filled with questions. And that was before last week, when Dustin May was ruled out until next summer. There will be more than enough room for Ohtani in the rotation should they lure him. The Dodgers have at least $67 million coming off their books after the season, and they could shed more. Ohtani is expected to sign for more than $500 million — if not $600 million. He could earn $50 million a season, an increase from the $30 million he’s making this season. The Dodgers can absorb the expenditure. The team is also undoubtedly fawning over Ohtani’s marketing potential — he makes $40 million in endorsements, significantly more than any other baseball player. But they’re far from the only franchise salivating over the possibility. Clubs from coast to coast will bid for the two-way sensation’s services. He’s doing things on a baseball field nobody has ever done. Babe Ruth doesn’t even compare. Ohtani might be coming off the best month a player has ever put together: He batted .394 with 15 home runs, 25 extra-base hits and a 1.444 on-base-plus-slugging percentage while posting a 3.26 earned-run average with 37 strikeouts in 301⁄3 innings across five starts on the mound in June. He’s on a path to his second most valuable player award in three seasons. And yet the Angels remain outside of the playoff picture. A rash of terrible luck over 24 hours against the San Diego Padres last week further dampened the Angels’ chances of reaching the postseason for the first time since 2014. On Monday, Trout fractured his left wrist and will sit out at least a month. On Tuesday, Anthony Rendon fouled a pitch off his left leg and hasn’t played since. Minutes later, Ohtani left his start because of a blister on his middle finger. It was an injury Ohtani said was a continuation of a cracked fingernail issue that hampered him in his previous start. The issue prompted Ohtani to announce he won’t pitch in Tuesday’s All-Star game and has spawned speculation about the Angels’ plans before the trade deadline with one central question: Could they really trade Ohtani? The answer is probably not. :: Trading Ohtani would bolster the farm system. His stock has never been higher. The Dodgers tried hard buying early. The first chance to sign Ohtani arose after the 2012 season when Ohtani was a senior in high school. MLB had just put new limits on teams’ spending for international amateur players. The Dodgers could offer him around only $1 million. And yet Ohtani remained determined to take the unusual step of going straight to the United States over first playing in Nippon Professional Baseball. He requested NPB teams not draft him. At that point, the Dodgers were considered the favorites. Their scout in Japan — Keiichi Kojima — was a constant presence at Ohtani’s high school practices. They had the inside track. The Dodgers and their MLB peers viewed Ohtani as a pitcher. Japanese teams saw a hitter. The Nippon-Ham Fighters, disregarding Ohtani’s request not to draft him, selected him in the first round and offered to let him do both. That was enough and Ohtani stayed in Japan. Otherwise, he probably would’ve signed with the Dodgers. “I can’t say that for sure,” Ohtani told Times columnist Dylan Hernández in 2017, months before leaving for the major leagues. “But there’s a strong possibility that’s what would have happened.” The Dodgers got their second chance that winter. By that point, Ohtani had reached A-list celebrity status in Japan for his two-way prowess. He led the Fighters to a championship. He won an MVP award. He was the country’s best player. He sought the next challenge. MLB rules stipulated an international free agent must wait until age 25 to sign a contract of any length and value. Ohtani was 23, so his options were limited to what teams had remaining in their international bonus pools. No team could offer him more than a $3.5- million signing bonus. He chose to leave for the major leagues anyway. Last summer, he revealed the impetus for the decision was he thought it would increase his chances to make the Hall of Fame. The Dodgers could offer Ohtani only $300,000. That didn’t stop them from trying. A contingent representing the organization met with Ohtani in Beverly Hillsas part of the recruiting process. The group included Clayton Kershaw, Turner and Dave Roberts. “We did everything we could to get him,” Roberts said. There was one, unsolvable problem: The designated hitter wasn’t added to the National League yet. The Dodgers, according to people with knowledge of the situation, were willing to give Ohtani the chance to pitch and hit. But he wouldn’t play every day without the DH. The Dodgers’ plan for Ohtani included putting him in a six-man starting rotation and giving him 300 to 400 plate appearances per season. Ohtani would be available to pinch-hit on rest days after pitching and play a corner outfield position on the other days he wasn’t on the mound. “He wanted to DH,” Roberts said. “That was the non-negotiable. We didn’t have the DH.” In the end, Ohtani’s decision was a stunner. The Angels, without a playoff win in nearly a decade, weren’t considered a strong possibility. But he chose to join Trout in Anaheim for $2.315 million. He quickly became the biggest bargain in sports, earning less than $15 million in salary over his first five seasons while winning American League MVP in 2021, making two All-Star teams, and smashing the ceiling for what’s possible from a baseball player. This season, he was voted to the AL All-Star team as both a designated hitter and pitcher for the third straight year. He’s better than he has ever been. He’s maybe better than anybody has ever been. The Dodgers are waiting. SHOHEI OHTANI’S two-way brilliance casts a long shadow in baseball and he soon could receive the most lucrative contract in North American sports history. Allen J. Schaben Los Angeles Times For the Dodgers, to try, try again is worth it for Ohtani Team twice tried to sign the two-way star but fell short. Many in baseball believe this winter will be different MOOKIE BETTS smiles at Shohei Ohtani during a game, and all Dodgers fans will be doing the same if the team can convince the superstar pitcher/hitter to join the roster starting next season. Mark J. Terrill Associated Press By Jorge Castillo

LATIMES.COM/SPORTS SSS SUNDAY, JULY 9, 2023 D7 SEATTLE — Will Gasparino’s life is about to change. At some point in the next two days — preferably Sunday — the Studio City Harvard-Westlake student should hear his name called at the Major League Baseball draft in Seattle. The 18- year-old star center fielder will then have three weeks to decide whether to attend the University of Texas or go professional. It’ll be a moment he and his loved ones will cherish. “It’s everything I’ve ever worked for,” Gasparino said. “It’s like my dream’s coming true, you know?” The plan is to watch the event with family at home in Los Angeles. His father, especially, will be paying close attention. He just might not be there with his son. Work might get in the way. Billy Gasparino’s job is busiest this time of year — in the lead up to the draft and during the three-day, 20- round event. He isn’t just any proud dad. He’s the Dodgers’ vice president of amateur scouting. Or, simply, he’s the guy who oversees the draft for the hometown team. This is his time of the year every year. “It’s been more stressful and awkward trying to help my son and go through it and knowing the ups and downs and ins and outs,” Billy Gasparino said. “I kind of felt that stress more than I even thought. It’s been awkward, even dealing with other teams. The whole thing has been a little weird when it’s your own kid and something I’ve never expected to experience and just trying to handle it the best way.” Will Gasparino is a real prospect. The Athletic recently ranked him as the 59th-best player in the draft. MLB.com had him at 75. Baseball America slotted him at 93. He’s an athletic 6- foot-6 center fielder who exploded onto the scene with a strong showing last summer and into the winter after traveling to Oklahoma to hit with former major leaguer Matt Holliday and his son, Jackson Holliday, who was the first overall selection in last year’s draft. A hand injury hampered Gasparino’s senior season, but his tools — highlighted by his raw power and the talent to stay in center field — have enticed scouts. The emergence wasn’t linear. His father encouraged him to focus on other sports when he was younger. But, growing up around the game, going to spring training and spending time in clubhouses, he eventually chose to focus on baseball. “That was the one thing I’m super grateful for,” Will Gasparino said. “He never forced baseball on me. I’m glad he never pushed because eventually I kind of fell in love with it myself.” A growth spurt early in high school produced an uncoordinated phase. Then it all came together. “As a parent you never know if you’re being biased or not,” said Billy Gasparino, a former infielder chosen by the Colorado Rockies in the 17th round of the 1999 draft. “So you don’t know if you’re really giving a true evaluation of him, but you kind of started to see, like, ‘All right, he’s tall, he’s athletic, he has tools. He’s starting to put all this together.’ ” Billy Gasparino’s track record as director of scouting is one of the best in the industry. His first eight drafts in the role have produced several notable major leaguers, including Will Smith, Tony Gonsolin, Dustin May, Gavin Lux, Walker Buehler and Bobby Miller. The Dodgers own the 36th and 60th picks Sunday, when the draft kicks off with the first two rounds. The selections present an opportunity to acquire building blocks to sustain long-term success. Will Gasparino should be on the board for the first pick, if not both. Does he want the Dodgers — and his dad — to choose him? “Eh, no preference,” Will Gasparino said. “I think it would be cool, but people would think it’s just because of my dad.” Gasparino said he’s met with 15 to 20 teams but has worked out only “for a few because the amount of money that I’m asking for, not a lot of teams can pay it.” His father is allowed to talk to other clubs on his son’s behalf but acknowledged the interactions “have been a little strange.” “He has an advisor that we really trust that we put a lot of this into his hands,” Billy Gasparino said. “And that’s been a good thing because that’s created a third party that people can go to and talk to freely and don’t have to worry about information coming back to me. Because I’m sure there’s a little bit of fear of like, ‘Hey, something I tell Billy could actually help the Dodgers so Ihave to be a little more careful than usual.’ ” At work, Gasparino said he and his boss — president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman — created a “system” to avoid a potential conflict of interest. He explained it as a way to keep him “out of it for the most part to the very end.” When he logs into his computer, for example, he can see his son’s name but his reports are blocked. Will Gasparino said he’s 50-50 between attending Texas or playing professional baseball. Whatever happens, it’ll be a moment for the Gasparino family to remember. “He’s the one who’s earned this and worked hard and sometimes I hate that I even get mentioned with him because it’s really his path and his passion and success,” Billy Gasparino said. MLB draft a nice father-son outing Dodgers’ amateur scouting boss is helping to guide his skilled offspring By Jorge Castillo WILL GASPARINO (23) was slowed by a hand injury during his senior year at Harvard-Westlake. Robert Gauthier Los Angeles Times For all the glitz and glam found within the rosters of Southern California’s successful sports teams, there is only one bit of bling that truly interests them. They play for rings. They build for rings. They’re irrelevant without rings. They know these championships are not about style, they’re about substance, and they win them with more than the gleam of stars, but also the grit of role players, of depth, of team. The ball from the last out of the Dodgers’ last World Series game ended up in the hands of backup catcher Austin Barnes. Arguably the best player in the Lakers’ last crowning game was sixth man Rajon Rondo. The cornerstone of the Rams’ only title was a hidden hulk named Andrew Whitworth. Which brings us to the Angels, whose last championship win 21 years ago came from the arm of a rookie named John Lackey. These current Angels have the biggest star in Major League Baseball, a far bigger star than anyone on that 2002 team, quite possibly the best player in baseball history, but he probably will walk away at the end of the season, and they are faced with a widely publicized choice. Do they keep Shohei Ohtani until October and risk losing him for virtually nothing? Or do they trade him before the Aug. 1 deadline and bolster their roster with at least two starting players and a passel of prospects in building a team that eventually can win a ring? It says here, trade him. If Arte Moreno truly wants to own a Los Angeles team in more than first name only, he will prioritize winning above all else, and attempting to keep Ohtani beyond Aug. 1 is a losing proposition. Trade him. Swallow hard and trade him. Sacrifice all that marketing revenue and trade him. Anger your fans and trade him. Use him to build that championship and trade him. Change the face of your losing franchise and trade him. Sacrifice style for substance and trade him. Ohtani already has one foot out the door. Don’t let him slam that door in your face. Did you hear him say he values winning above all else, even more than the quiet and comforting confines of Anaheim? “I like the fans. I like the atmosphere in the organization,” he said through his interpreter two years ago. “But my feelings of wanting to win are stronger.” If you believe that, it’s pretty clear he’s not coming back. If he wasn’t already convinced, a recent injuryfilled losing streak that pushed the Angels back to the edge of postseason irrelevance probably cemented it. Listen to him and trade him. Heed your gut and trade him. Be fearless and trade him. Yeah, it stinks. In a perfect world, Ohtani would be an Angel forever, finishing his big league journey where it started six years ago, with one of the few teams that cherished him before the rest of the baseball world realized he was Babe Ruth. Actually, he’s better than Babe Ruth, he’s a top-10 hitter and top-20 pitcher, and having just turned 29 he’s in the prime of his career, no more stats necessary, you’ve seen him, he’s a unicorn. In a perfect world, Ohtani and teammate Mike Trout would have swung off into the sunset together as a dynamic duo with multiple championships. But in the bitter reality that has been the Angels’ existence for more than a decade, Ohtani and Trout haven’t appeared in a playoff game together, and the last six years have resembled something of a total waste. The Angels haven’t played in the postseason in nine years. They haven’t won a playoff game in 14 years. And this year doesn’t appear to be any sort of streak buster. Their recent spate of injuries has cost them six starters, most notably Trout, who will sit out at least a month because of a fractured wrist. During this bleak stretch, the Angels have lost nine of 10 games and fallen to the middle of a crowded wild-card race. And their upcoming schedule after the All-Star break and before the trade deadline offers little relief, with their first six games being against the New York Yankees and Houston Astros, and later series at Toronto and Atlanta. It’s enough to tighten a manager’s jaw. “It’s one of those things, you just have to push through,” Phil Nevin said before Friday’s 11-4 loss to the Dodgers at Chavez Ravine. “Next guy up.” The problem with the Angels is, there are very few next guys up. They lack the organizational depth to plug in adequate reserves the way the Dodgers do. Their best players go down, there’s little left to fill the void. What they need is something that only Ohtani can give them. They need powerful prospects. They need reliable cornerstones. Simply put, they need more good players, and the best way for that to happen quickly is by using Ohtani as the chip to acquire them. If he walks away in November, they get virtually nothing — a draft pick after the second round probably — and the last six years were for naught. Seriously, it stinks. The fairy tale of a sports superstar staying in one place forever rarely has a feel-good ending. You can’t count on it. You can’t believe in it. LeBron James never should have left Cleveland, but he did. Tom Brady never should have left New England, but he did. And Ohtani never should leave Anaheim, but he will. No matter how much loyalty Ohtani feels, every indication is that he’ll chase a $500-million contract from a place that has a legitimate shot at a championship. Did you see how he relished that World Baseball Classic victory last spring? This is about more than dollars, this is about titles on a national stage. Ohtani has had a taste and he clearly wants more. If he stays, he might never get that shot. His wingman Trout is a slowly declining player whose body has been ravaged by his relentless effort. The other star, Anthony Rendon, can’t stay on the field. By paying those three guys, Moreno would have little left to build a team around them, and Ohtani surely knows it. He would be re-signing with a squad that needs a first baseman, a second baseman, and a bunch of pitchers … and has no short and clear path to acquire them. It’s obvious what will happen and what needs to happen, even if the Angels are sick of hearing about it. I asked Nevin if the Ohtani stuff was a distraction. “What stuff?” he said. The Ohtani trade talk. “I don’t talk about it,” he said. “You’re the first I’ve heard of it today.” Today. “I don’t pay attention to that stuff,” he said. “I know it goes on, the players and us, it’s not something we talk about. We come out, we know he’s our teammate today.” Today. “And we’re ready to utilize him and be as best we can with him,” Nevin said. “He’s a great teammate, he likes being here, we love having him here.” All true, but they’re probably going to part ways soon, and there’s seemingly only one way this charmed relationship can end, yet another fractured fairy tale. Trade him. Trade Ohtani? Angels need to face the reality BILL PLASCHKE The Dodgers’ rotation lost Dustin May because of a season-ending elbow injury in mid-May, Tony Gonsolin to an ankle injury for all of April, Julio Urías to a hamstring strain for six weeks of May and June, Noah Syndergaard to a bruised ERA (7.16) in early June, and Clayton Kershaw to an inflamed shoulder last week. The bullpen was a hot mess for 21⁄2 months, ranking second to last in the majors with a 4.97 ERA in midJune before finding its footing — but losing potential setup man Daniel Hudson because of another knee injury — over the last three weeks. The lineup against lefthanded starters often falls off a cliff after All-Stars Mookie Betts, Freddie Freeman, Will Smith and J.D. Martinez and slugger Max Muncy, the struggles of Miguel Vargas, James Outman and Miguel Rojas putting a drag on production. There are 12 front-line players on the injured list, including ace Walker Buehler, who is recovering from Tommy John surgery, and shortstop Gavin Lux, who suffered a freak, season-ending knee injury in February. But with all that has gone wrong, the Dodgers enter the All-Star break after Saturday night’s 10-5 win over the Angels at Dodger Stadium with a 51-38 record, and they’re half a game behind the Arizona Diamondbacks in the National League West. “We’ve been playing average baseball, but this homestand was more like what we’re about,” Muncy said after the Dodgers won five of six games from the Pittsburgh Pirates and Angels. “We’ve had a ton of injuries. We haven’t been playing that great, and we’re still a halfgame behind the Diamondbacks for first place. “We’ve kept ourselves in a good spot, and that’s really what it’s all about. You try to keep yourself in contention, and at some point, we’re gonna go on a nice little run here, and when we do I know we’ll start putting some distance between other teams.” The Dodgers put more distance between themselves and the Angels on Saturday night, crushing five solo homers and breaking the game open with a five-run second to extend their win streak over their Southern California rivals to 10 games dating to 2021. Betts jump-started the offense in the first with his team-high 26th homer, giving him a franchise-record 10 leadoff homers this season and 46 in his career, which ties him with Jimmy Rollins for seventh on baseball’s alltime list. Freeman hit a two-out, two-run double and Smith followed with a two-run single in the second, Freeman had a solo homer in the fourth, Muncy hit a solo homer in the second and an RBI single in the fourth, and Martinez (sixth inning) and David Peralta (seventh) hit solo homers. Angels two-way star Shohei Ohtani hit his major league-leading 32nd homer, a two-run shot in the seventh, and added a single, a triple and a sacrifice fly, but that didn’t prevent the Angels from limping into the break having lost nine of 10 games to fall to 45-46, their first time under .500 since they were 11-12 on April 24. More bad news for the Angels: An already overcrowded training room added another patient when left fielder Jo Adell left the game after his first-inning strikeout because of left-oblique discomfort. The Dodgers are expected to aggressively pursue a starting pitcher and a reliever or two before the Aug. 1 trade deadline to bolster a rotation that ranks 20th in MLB with a 4.56 ERA and a bullpen that ranks 23rd with a 4.43 ERA. The offense ranks second in homers (149) and walks (366), third in on-base-plusslugging percentage (.786) and fourth in runs (494) thanks in part to its clutch hitting. Betts ranks among baseball’s top 10 in OPS (.965), homers (26) and RBIs (62) and is batting .333 (26 for 78) with a major league-high 1.209 OPS, 10 homers and eight doubles when leading off games this season. The Dodgers are 12-5 since losing 11 of 16 games from May 31 to June 18 to fall a season-high 41⁄2 games back in the division. “There’s always room for improvement. Things could be worse, right?” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “I think our best baseball is ahead of us. Considering all that we’ve gone through, no one has wavered. We’re right in the thick of things.” FREDDIE FREEMAN hits a solo home run during the fourth inning of the Dodgers’ 10-5 win over the Angels. Freeman finished two for four with three RBIs to help the Dodgers sweep the two-game Freeway Series. Kyusung Gong Associated Press Breaking loose at right time Dodgers hit five home runs, sweep Angels to continue their surge to the All-Star break. DODGERS 10 ANGELS 5 By Mike DiGiovanna

WIMBLEDON, England — Carlos Alcaraz played for the second straight day at Wimbledon and won again. So did Christopher Eubanks, Aryna Sabalenka and Petra Kvitova. Stefanos Tsitsipas also won a match for the second day in a row, but on his fifth consecutive day on court. The rain early in the week at the All England Club has caused some chaos with the schedule, forcing many players to get on court day after day. Even more rain came Saturday, delaying the proceedings briefly. The backlog hasn’t seemed to slow down Alcaraz, a 20-year-old Spaniard who is seeded No. 1 and is considered to be the next big star in men’s tennis. Playing under the roof on Centre Court, Alcaraz advanced to the fourth round at Wimbledon for the second straight year by beating No. 25 Nicolas Jarry 6-3, 6-7 (6), 6-3, 7-5. “Stay focused all the time,” Alcaraz said on court. “I knew I was going to have my chances.” Alcaraz, last year’s U.S. Open champion, reached the semifinals at the French Open — losing to eventual champion Novak Djokovic —but came into the Wimbledon tournament after winning a grass-court title at Queen’s Club. He next will face 2021 runner-up Matteo Berrettini for a quarterfinal berth. Berrettini defeated No. 19 Alexander Zverev 6-3, 7-6 (4), 7-6 (6). Eubanks, out in the open on Court 18, is a 27-year-old American playing at Wimbledon for the first time. He beat Christopher O’Connell 7-6 (5), 7-6 (3), 7-6 (2) to stay undefeated at the All England Club at 3-0, though he complained about hating to play on grass as recently as a month ago “It’s slowly, slowly growing on me,” he said. “But at this point, I think borderline I might say it’s my favorite surface.” Tsitsipas already has eliminated two Grand Slam champions — Dominic Thiem and Andy Murray. On his fifth day in a row on court, he advanced to the fourth round at Wimbledon for only the second time by eliminating Laslo Djere 6-4, 7-6 (5), 6-4. Eubanks and Tsitsipas next will play each other Monday for the spot in the quarterfinals. Third-seeded Daniil Medvedev, another player back out on court after a win Friday, beat Marton Fucsovics 4-6, 6-3, 6-4, 6-4 on No. 1 Court to reach the fourth round for the second time. No. 10 Frances Tiafoe, a 25-year-old American, was among the players whose third-round contests were affected by the rain. His match was early in the third set after he dropped the first two against three-time major semifinalist Grigor Dimitrov when they were sent home for the evening. The women’s tournament also has been disrupted by the weather. The second-seeded Sabalenka, who missed last year’s Wimbledon when players from Belarus and Russia were banned because of the war in Ukraine, defeated Anna Blinkova 6-2, 6-3. Kvitova, a two-time Wimbledon champion, beat Natalija Stevanovic 6-3, 7-5 in a match that was suspended late in the second set by more than two hours because of the early showers. “It was a tough one, for sure, especially with the rain delay,” said Kvitova, who won her Wimbledon titles in 2011 and 2014. “It’s nothing easy to deal with.” Later Saturday, sixthseeded Ons Jabeur rallied to knock off Bianca Andreescu, 3-6, 6-3, 6-4, and defending champion Elena Rybakina rolled past Katie Boulter of Britain 6-1, 6-1. No. 1 Alcaraz keeps rolling, despite the rain CARLOS ALCARAZ hits a shot during his four-set victory over Nicolas Jarry to reach the round of 16. Alastair Grant Associated Press He reaches round of 16 at Wimbledon but weather still an issue. associated press D8 SUNDAY, JULY 9, 2023 SSS LATIMES.COM/SPORTS Today’s top Wimbledon matches MEN 8 No. 2 Novak Djokovic vs. No. 17 Hubert Hurkacz 8 No. 7 Andrey Rublev vs. No. 23 Alexander Bublik 8 No. 8 Jannik Sinner vs. Daniel Elahi Galán 8 No. 10 Frances Tiafoe vs. No. 21 Grigor Dimitrov (continuation from Saturday) 8 No. 26 Denis Shapovalov vs. Roman Safiullin WOMEN 8 No. 1 Iga Swiatek vs. No. 14 Belinda Bencic 8 No. 4 Jessica Pegula vs. Lesia Tsurenko 8 No. 19 Victoria Azarenka vs. Elina Svitolina 8 No. 22 Anastasia Potapova vs. Mirra Andreeva 8 No. 32 Marie Bouzkova vs. Marketa Vondrousova Matt Manning, Jason Foley and Alex Lange teamed for the first combined nohitter in Detroit history as the host Tigers beat the Toronto Blue Jays 2-0 on Saturday. Manning wasn’t upset about being pulled while pitching a no-hitter. He said he didn’t even realize it until someone told him in the dugout. “I had no idea,” he said. “I was like, ‘Well, dang.’ ” It’s the ninth no-hitter in Tigers history and first since Spencer Turnbull blanked Seattle on May 18, 2021. And, it’s the majors’ first combined no-hitter since three Houston Astros pitchers shut down the New York Yankees in June 2022. Manning (3-1) struck out five, hit a batter and walked three in 62⁄3 innings, and Foley got four straight outs. Lange came in for the ninth and struck out Bo Bichette on three pitches. Brandon Belt lined out to center field, and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. grounded out to third on an 0-and-2 pitch, setting off a celebration at the mound. Elly De La Cruz became the first Reds player since 1919 to steal second, third and home in the same inning, the latest electrifying play from the franchisechanging rookie, and Cincinnati beat the Milwaukee Brewers 8-5. ... In a battle of division leaders, All-Star Spencer Strider struck out 11 and won his seventh straight decision as majorsleading Atlanta beat Tampa Bay 6-1 for its 20th victory in 22 games. ... Philadelphia slugger Bryce Harper was struck on his surgically repaired right elbow by a pitch from Marlins starter Braxton Garrett in the third inning against Miami, forcing him to leave the game after the inning concluded. The Boston Red Sox reinstated left-handed reliever Joely Rodríguez from the 15-day injured list. ... On second thought, Tampa Bay’s Yandy Diaz will not have to try to play in the All-Star Game on the same day as the birth of his son. Diaz, the starting first baseman for the American League, initially planned to remain in Florida for the birth of his son Tuesday morning, then fly across country to Seattle to make the All-Star appearance later that night. A hectic day was to conclude with another long flight back home after the game. Well, the plan has changed. “They’ve rescheduled the Csection until Wednesday so that I can be there for it,” Diaz said through a team interpreter. ... In Seattle, Miami’s Nasim Nuñezhit a three-run double off Toronto’s Yosver Zulueta in the sixth inning, and the National League beat the American League 5-0 in the All-Star Futures Game of top prospects. COLLEGES Huggins says he never resigned Bob Huggins said he never resigned as West Virginia’s basketball coach following a drunken-driving arrest and wants his job back, according to a letter from his attorney to the university. Huggins’ Clevelandbased attorney, David A. Campbell, wrote to the university Friday that Huggins “never signed a resignation letter and never communicated a resignation to anyone at WVU,” according to the letter, which was obtained by the Associated Press. The letter threatens a lawsuit if Huggins isn’t reinstated. Huggins’ demands were first reported by West Virginia network MetroNews. Huggins was charged with driving under the influence on June 16. A breath test determined his bloodalcohol content was more than twice the legal limit. ETC. Galaxy get win over Union An own goal by Olivier Mbaizo late in the first half and a goal by Riqui Puig in the 76th minute lifted the Galaxy to a 3-1 victory over the Philadelphia Union in an MLS game at Dignity Health Park. Denis Bouanga converted a penalty kick in the 37th minute to help the LAFC forge a 1-1 tie with the San José Earthquakes at BMO Stadium. ... Orbelín Pineda converted a penalty kick in the 52nd minute and Érick Sánchez tallied in the 87th as Mexico beat Costa Rica 2-0 in a Gold Cup quarterfinal in Arlington, Texas. John Hunter Nemechek passed Justin Haley at the start of overtime and held off Daniel Hemric to win the NASCAR’s Xfinity Series race at Atlanta Motor Speedway for his third victory of the season. Haley was in a position to lead a parade of Kaulig Racing in overtime but had no help on the restart at overtime while Nemechek made his move on the outside to take his first lead of the race. ... In Silverstone, England, Max Verstappen shrugged off an unusual low-speed crash in the pits to qualify in pole position for Formula One’s British Grand Prix as teammate Sergio Pérez continued to struggle in qualifying with 16th place. ... It was a strong day for Ford as Aric Almirola won the Cup series pole at Atlanta Motor Speedway to lead another dominant day for the car maker. Ryan Blaney will start Sunday beside Almirola in another Ford. Two more Fords, Chase Briscoe and Joey Logano, will start on the second row. ... In Lexington, Ohio, Corey Heim held off Zane Smith in the final lap of the Truck Series race at Mid-Ohio, taking the checkered flag for the second time this season. With Mark Cavendish out of the picture, former world champion Mads Pedersen claimed a second career stage win at the Tour de France with a big burst of power to win a mass sprint. Defending champion Jonas Vingegaard kept the yellow jersey after the 201-kilometer (125-mile) eighth stage from Libourne to Limoges in central France. The stage was marred by several crashes, including the one that ruled Cavendish out of the race. His team said he broke his right collarbone and will need surgery. Breanna Stewart scored 25 points and Sabrina Ionescu added 20 to help the host New York Liberty beat the Seattle Storm 80-76. The Storm lost the WNBA’s leading scorer, Jewell Loyd, early in the fourth quarter to a sprained left ankle. In Atlantic City, N.J., undefeated welterweight champion Jaron Ennis knocked out Roiman Villain the 10th round of their 12- round fight for Ennis’ International Boxing Federation interim welterweight title. ... Alexander Volkanovski stopped Yair Rodriguez in the third round of their UFC 290 main event in Las Vegas to reclaim the featherweight title. Alexandre Pantoja beat flyweight champion Brandon Moreno by split decision and Hall of Famer Robbie Lawler won his final fight with a first-round knockout of Niko Price. THE DAY IN SPORTS Three Tigers pitchers combine for no-hitter wire reports FROM LEFT, pitchers Matt Manning, Jason Foley, Alex Lange and catcher Eric Haase share a moment. Paul Sancya Associated Press EUGENE, Ore. — Over and over Saturday evening, Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone insisted she has yet to decide whether she will compete at August’s world track and field championships in the 400-meter hurdles, the event she has dominated, or the 400 meters, the event she has picked up this season. “I have no idea,” she said. Yet her race to a U.S. title in the open 400 on a warm evening inside Hayward Field revealed more than an idea as to what she could achieve should she run her new event in Hungary. McLaughlin-Levrone, 23, may be new to the event but already is producing familiar results — taking the race out to a blistering pace, claiming titles and cruising to times rarely seen. In Saturday’s final McLaughlin-Levrone, who trains in Los Angeles under coach Bobby Kersee, won in 48.74 seconds to clock history’s 10th-fastest time — just behind Sanya RichardsRoss’ U.S. record of 48.70 set in 2006. She finished more than a second ahead of the formidable Britton Wilson, who entered Saturday with six of the world’s 20 times under 50 seconds this season. Wilson finished in 49.79. “I think I’m getting more used to it the more that I run it,” McLaughlin-Levrone said. “And really happy with that time.” McLaughlin-Levrone did not need to run the 400 hurdles in Eugene to make the U.S. team bound for the world championships because she owns a bye into August’s field as a reigning world champion. It was while winning that 2022 world championship that she lowered her own world record for the fourth time in less than two years until it was barely recognizable — her time of 50.68 making her the first woman under 51. The security of her place in the world championships field in the hurdles is what led Kersee and his recordbreaking athlete to consider dabbling in a second event. Her decision for what she will compete in at the world championships isn’t due for another month, as federations such as U.S. Track & Field have until Aug. 7 to submit their final entries for the event. Running in Lane 4 on Saturday, just to the outside of Wilson of Arkansas, her chief challenger, McLaughlin-Levrone made up the stagger on the rest of the field before passing 200 meters in 23.24 seconds. The start was reminiscent of her season-opening race in Paris in June, when she was instructed by Kersee to push the first half hard, and did — but paid for it in the final 100 meters, finishing second. Kersee was encouraged that the race had shown her the difference between the choreographed stride cadence required to run the hurdles and the allout open 400. Two weeks later in New York, in her final tune-up before the U.S. championships, McLaughlin-Levrone set another personal best in 49.51, off her stated goal of breaking 49. On her YouTube channel, she said the result left her content but also still searching for how to put “the pieces” of the race together. “Since the beginning of the year I feel like this year has not come easy to me, which is a good thing,” she said on YouTube. “Which is the Lord’s plan to challenge me. … I think I’m just learning to be patient.” They came together this weekend in Eugene. Even better for her was that her brother, Taylor, qualified for Sunday’s final in the 400-meter hurdles. “Obviously I want to get better, PR, put the race together properly and like I said, once I get the front half [of the race] and the back half together, that’s when that happens,” she said, “and I think today was good showing that.” She was not the only member of Formula Kersee, the coach’s Los Angelesbased training group, who demonstrated her enormous potential in a new event Saturday. Athing Mu, the reigning Olympic and world champion in the 800 meters, finished second in the 1,500-meter final in 4 minutes 3.44 seconds, behind champion Nikki Hiltz. Mu entered the meet with a personal best of 4:16 but met the standard required to compete at the world meet. She too said she is undecided what she will run in August, because of her bye into the 800 field. But she was not surprised by McLaughlin-Levrone’s familiar dominance in a new event. “Absolutely not,” Mu said. “The training that we do in Formula Kersee is absolutely insane. It’s insane. And just watching her and how strong she is and I don’t know, just seeing her every day it’s like, there’s no reason why she shouldn’t be able to do that.” SYDNEY McLAUGHLIN-LEVRONE breaks the tape in 48.74 seconds to win the women’s 400 meters national title. A hurdles specialist, she said of the 400, “I think I’m getting more used to it the more that I run it.” Ashley Landis Associated Press No hurdles on her way to history McLaughlin-Levrone runs 10th-fastest 400, just off U.S. record, after she picked up the event this season. By Andrew Greif

Ryan Pfluger For The Times MEOW WOLF HEADS TO TEXAS WITH A MISSION E2 JENNY HAN ON HOW SHE BUILT A YA EMPIRE E6 WILD DEBUT BY AN L.A. WRITER AND PHARMACIST E8 CALENDAR S UNDAY , JULY 9 , 2023 :: L ATIMES.COM/CALENDAR WSCE FOR EMILIA CLARKE, THE SKY’S THE LIMIT The actor swoops back onto TV with her eyes set on a whole new universe of stories. E8

E2 SUNDAY, JULY 9, 2023 S LATIMES.COM/CALENDAR MEOW WOLF EXHIBITION is designed to feel familiar at first. But the sensation doesn’t last. We’re soon entangled in the unknown, and asked to venture into fantastical settings that erupt into a twisted fairy tale. ¶ The goal? To challenge our perceptions. What happens when a hot dog in a boiling pot becomes a mini-diorama for a piece of pork enjoying a hot tub while wearing a cowboy hat? Or a laundry room washer and dryer become portals into wonder-filled forests? Or an arcade game asks us to think deeply about our parental relationships and how we manage emotions? ¶ All of this can be found in Meow Wolf’s fourth North American exhibition, dubbed “The Real Unreal,” opening Friday outside of Dallas inside a former Bed Bath & Beyond at the Grapevine Mills mall. The Grapevine location will be instantly recognizable to anyone familiar with Meow Wolf’s work, especially its first location in Santa Fe, N.M., for which this one takes many a cue. ¶ But Meow Wolf isn’t simply leaning on the past. Meow Wolf has arrived in Texas with a statement. ¶ Will Heron has made sure of it. Meow Wolf had surprised fans when it unveiled Dallas and Houston as its next areas of expansion after opening in Denver and Las Vegas. After all, the progressive company, rooted in the freedom of artistic expression, has made support of the LGBTQ+ community a part of its corporate identity, and Heron, tapped by Meow Wolf to be the bridge to the local art community, heard the confusion. “As we move to this red state, there was lots of backlash by people,” Heron says. “‘Why would you spend money in Texas? They hate gay people, and blah, blah, blah.’” In downtown Dallas, along a walk-friendly stretch of McKinney Avenue about a 20-minute drive from Grapevine Mills, stands a mural about 50 feet tall. The piece is largely black and white, with pointed use of rainbow colors: Alienlike cactuses sprout from murky deaths. It’s a love letter — a “beacon,” says Heron, as he notes the use of the traditional Pride and Transgender Pride flags — to Texas’ LGBTQ+ community. As Meow Wolf expands — and its chief executive talks of future locations potentially on the East Coast or abroad, as well as an impending office in Los Angeles — Texas politics is not the preferred topic of the top executives and artists who gave The Times a first look at the Grapevine location. Meow Wolf is planning to expand beyond buildings, with a mobile app, graphic novels and a role-playing game. But can the company’s tell-it-to-your-face artists maintain their ideals while actually becoming part of corporate America? “Growing out of the muddy waters of Texas, you can still bloom beautiful weird lives, which are the cactus lotus that you see,” says Heron, describing his work. Commissioned by Meow Wolf, it’s also a signal that the firm won’t arrive in Texas quietly, landing at a time when the state’s GOP-led leadership has passed or advanced bills affecting the LGBTQ+ community and the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that a conservative Christian web designer has the artistic freedom to refuse to provide services for gay marriages. “If you drive an hour in any direction outside of our metroplex, you will be faced with many interesting billboards and yard signs telling us that trans people don’t exist and gay people are a sin,” Heron says. “I don’t think Meow Wolf is scared of it. They shouldn’t be. They’re coming here for the right reasons.” Will there be backlash? Yeah, Heron says. Will there be homophobic and racist comments from people online? Absolutely. “But that’s not going to stop us from continuing to provide a safe space for employees and guests.” Meow Wolf already has received, if not a backlash, some questions. While Chief Executive Jose Tolosa states emphatically that the company is not a “political entity,” Meow Wolf throughout Pride month used its social media reach to delve into the history of LGBTQ+ activism as well as to amplify the work of a transgender education agency. The posts prompted trolling but also genuine questions from fans, such as the one who asked, “Then why are you opening a location in Texas?” Meow Wolf’s response: “Valid question.” The company explained that it is “coming to Texas to bring our support, love and adoration for those communities by supplying jobs, hosting events, supporting artists and doing everything we can to give space and time and resources to the communities of Texas facing the most backlash.” Meow Wolf added that it’s in communication with groups such as the Human Rights Campaign Dallas/Fort Worth as well as Equality Texas. “We are committed forever and ever to be a force for good.” T HE ART INSIDE “The Real Unreal” in Grapevine is decidedly individualistic and outlandishly colorful. The exhibition is, in a slight twist for Meow Wolf, deeply personal and intimate. Whereas Santa Fe’s “House of Eternal Return” and Las Vegas’ “Omega Mart” were heavily sci-fi stories with occasional nods to climate change and corporate waste, “The Real Unreal’s” story tackles more existential themes of grief and heartbreak, looking to art for its ability to heal and bring communities together. The mall location — just past a Neiman Marcus outlet and near a Denny’s — is graced with a pink mural that’s an unadulterated celebration of rainbows and artist expression. Though the piece has various meanings — contributing artist and Meow Wolf co-founder Caity Kennedy says it’s about “the living world and the spirit world folded together” — no one denies how it’ll be read. “I mean, hey, I appreciate that we’re willing to be bold and trying to be who we are,” says Meow Wolf’s chief development officer Amanda Clay. “That’s going to mean that we’re not for everyone in the places that we go, and I think that’s OK.” Meow Wolf artists can appeal to a large audience, says Martin Lewison, a theme park expert and business management professor at Farmingdale State College in New York. They create a zone that’s “disconnected from reality. They want you to leave this plane and visit another plane, something that’s so far out that you not only don’t know where you are but you never would have dreamed of seeing a place like this.” And, Lewison adds, Dallas is a large enough metropolitan area that Meow Wolf will be just fine. “If a Republican never walks into Meow Wolf, they can still have a financial success,” he says. Politics, says Clay, change. “Part of what we’re trying to do is bring immersive art experiences that help open people’s minds and get them to think about things differently. That’s needed everywhere. ... And I think it’s about finding a safe haven for employees, and feeling like they can show up at a place of business and be themselves and be respected and feel like they’re at a place that really is trying to be progressive.” Meow Wolf’s original Santa Fe location has regularly pulled in about 500,000 people per year, and “Omega Mart” in Las Vegas, which opened in February 2021, topped more than 1 million visitors in its first 12 months. Meow Wolf doesn’t release revenue figures, but it said last year that its three locations drew 2.7 million guests. The company’s rise from punk art collective in 2008 to an “experience economy” corporation has been meteoric, attracting creative talent from the likes of theme park giants the Walt Disney Co. and NBCUniversal. It is spoken of as a fearless competitor, one that believes that art and design — not intellectual property — are what draw an audience. Tolosa rattles off city after city as a possible U.S. destination for Meow Wolf, noting that the company is looking not only for sizable spaces but also landlords who are receptive to the idea of tearing them up. “We should go more coastal,” Tolosa says. “Expect us to be very aggressive in pursuing big cities, and we should be going international at some point.” But first, expect Meow Wolf to launch its story-expanding mobile app, and to begin announcing projects that bring its narratives into other mediums. The Meow Wolf design philosophy is one that’s based on active participation of the guest, a shift from more passive forms of entertainment of yore, be it a museum or the early days of theme parks. To walk through a Meow Wolf space is akin to traversing a video game, where guests have multiple paths and create their own narrative. The art is increasingly interactive. In Grapevine, you may find an ATM that’s not actually a money-dispensing device. You can uncover its secrets — if you can find the hidden password. “At Meow Wolf, we say, ‘Come here for something that’s hard to explain,’” says Dale Sheehan, the creative lead for Grapevine, who joined Meow Wolf after 10 years with Walt Disney Imagineering, the division focused on theme park experiences. “They come in and every moment along the way they are never invited to turn their brain off. They have to leave it on. Every step is another decision they have to make, a mystery to solve, a riddle to untangle.” It’s what has long separated Meow Wolf from other so-called “immersive” experiences, many of which put the emphasis on social media selfies. In fact, “The Real Unreal” is not necessarily easy to photograph. The show lighting begs users to step in closer, to hunt for and to touch hidden details — a place where a mystical winged creature in a jar is also part of a narrative puzzle. “It’s a space no one has gone into,” says Dallas-based artist Dan Lam, sitting in her wareFAIRY TALE WITH A TWIST IN TEXAS A first look at Meow Wolf’s latest adventureland, which plants the company’s progressive flag in the red state with a message that art can break barriers A TODD MARTENS GAME CRITIC GRAPEVINE, TEXAS

A TUNNEL inside a washing machine, far left, and a neon city, above, act as portals to another world in “The Real Unreal,” located in a mall outside Dallas. LATIMES.COM/CALENDAR S SUNDAY, JULY 9, 2023 E3 house studio in the city’s Tin District and surrounded by wildly colored sculptures made to look like dripping goo. Lam has created a kaleidoscope wall at Grapevine that looks fluid, a sculpture of candy hues that feels perpetually in motion. “I know there are criticisms of it, because it does step into theme park-esque. But it’s a marriage of the museum and a theme park. And there’s this idea that museums are a little stuffy, a little removed from the public. Theme parks are for everybody. Having both of those come together to create art is great — it’s for the people.” And that, says Meow Wolf veteran Kennedy, is exactly why Texas was a vital location for the collective. If Meow Wolf truly believes its art can change minds, Kennedy says, the group needs to be in spaces where it will raise an eyebrow. “We need to go to places where we will be welcomed by a really large number of the community who agree with us, politically, but we also need to go places where we will be at odds with a lot of the people there,” Kennedy says, adding that in such cities Meow Wolf “will be an incredibly welcome refuge.” “But also,” Kennedy continues, “who is in more need of having some space to potentially see themselves differently than either someone who has been ostracized and treated like they’re not welcome in their own home — their own town — or people who are so afraid of certain other people that they do that to them? If there can be space for people to feel safe and explore things they’ve never seen before, the really grandiose and possibly impossible vision for art like that is to maybe wake up a small part of someone that wasn’t awake before.” Or as Clay puts it: “You can also argue the other side of this. Texas needs us more than some other states.” S HEEHAN WAS sitting in a steakhouse, with a pianist providing a backdrop of Disney standards, when he asked a waiter for opinions of the Grapevine Mills mall, which in addition to Meow Wolf is home to two other major themepark-like experiences, Legoland Discovery Center and Peppa Pig World of Play. The server didn’t hesitate: “A cesspool.” Sheehan and a few Meow Wolf companions cringed and laughed awkwardly, but they shouldn’t have felt surprised. Meow Wolf has a history of entering unexpected places and, as documented in the myth-making 2018 documentary “Meow Wolf: Origin Story,” of recycling materials on their way to the trash heap. There’s a room in Santa Fe dubbed Trash Temple, constructed entirely out of landfilldestined objects such as bottle caps, old toys, outmoded cellphones or aluminum cans, all of it dedicated to America’s devotion to consumption. (The theme is used to wild comedic effect in the fake grocery store of Las Vegas’ “Omega Mart,” where you can take home cereal made of plastic, complete with real data on how much plastic humans actually ingest.) “The Real Unreal” continues a Meow Wolf penchant for abandoned buildings that started in 2017 with “House of Eternal Return,” which was famously constructed in a defunct bowling alley after a $3 million investment from Santa Fe local and “Game of Thrones” author George R.R. Martin. It’s not the only similarity. Like “House of Eternal Return,” “The Real Unreal” first takes visitors into a suburban home, this one belonging to a blended family that has found itself living together in a time of crisis. “Our ambition was to tell a verypersonal story with relatable characters that people could see themselves in. ... In order to pull that off, we felt that having a familiar, less sci-fi start was important,” Sheehan says. In the narrative, a father has descended into grief after the loss of his wife, and his daughter, also struggling, returns home in his time of need. While she discovers new and old passions, sadness breeds miscommunication, and a young boy goes missing. No one’s ever in any danger, but shifting generational perspectives allow for healing. In Meow Wolf’s take on a modern fairy tale, it’s not the happily ever after that draws us in as much as it is the drama that precedes a happy ending. “As far as the story of the family, they are dealing with hard topics, but we, as humans, are naturally tuned to find our people, our tribes,” Sheehan says. “Each other’s sadness doesn’t make us sad as much as each other’s struggles comfort us to see that we’re not alone. We’re seen. We’re felt. We’re not trying to tell a sad story with a bummer ending. The story has a happy ending. But the struggle along the way should make people feel that their own struggles are real too.” Beyond the house setting, Grapevine does revisit and expand upon some Santa Fe art pieces. A new interpretation of the mystical, black light forest known as the Glowquarium is drastically more dizzying, with an assortment of not-so-hidden creatures, and there are nods to Santa Fe’s “interdimensional vacation resort,” downtown district and more. Everyone at Meow Wolf strongly pushes back on the notion that the company is copying itself or seeking ways to build quickly. “For all of the surface-level similarities, there’s so much that’s been expanded upon,” says Sarah Bradley, a Meow Wolf senior creative director and story editor. “Baseline, yeah, we could call the spaces the same, but it’s very different. They all have unique art. It’s a different expression. It’s more to me like an artist returning to a theme than it is any type of repetition. ‘Omega Mart’ was not the first time Meow Wolf explored the theme of a grocery store. I don’t think anyone who has seen the Glowquarium would step into the one in Grapevine and go, ‘This is boring. I’ve seen this before.’” In an essay articulating some of the motivations behind “The Real Unreal,” Meow Wolf co-founder Emily Montoya writes that the exhibition is “a revisitation of the themes, ideas and images that inhabit Meow Wolf’s collective imagination and overflow from the realm of the imagination into the realm of the material. It’s not a remake or a sequel. It’s a deepening of the roots that reach into the realm of the collective unconscious.” Montoya adds that the very desire to “return to the past clashes with the impossibility of things ever being the same.” Kennedy is more direct: “We’re not a manufacturing process. We can’t refine it to a point where we know exactly how it’s going to go. If we do, most of us won’t bother doing this.” Longtime Meow Wolf contributor Chris Hilson, who once dreamed of being an Imagineer, is building the third iteration of his Babayaga Treehouse in Grapevine, a wooden hut inspired by Slavic folklore that’s filled with small murals, story-defining objects and maybe even some hidden doors. He notes Meow Wolf is a long way from its dumpster- diving days. “Now we’re themed entertainment,” he says, as he recuts the door of the hut to make it wheelchair accessible. “I never thought I would have an opportunity to work in the arts professionally,” Hilson says. “But I feel like it’s something we’ve all earned with every single show that we’ve done, whether it’s a larger show that does get a lot of attention or a smaller one that’s mostly forgotten and not recorded. This is a culmination of the last 15 years.” On an afternoon in which Dallas temperatures are approaching 100, Ricardo Paniagua sits before a flame in his un-air-conditioned warehouse studio. He is mid-meditation, kneeling before what he describes as a geometric representation of Hindu deity Shiva. His piece for “The Real Unreal” is a tower of reflective geometric shapes in a darkened, triangular room — a place of calming amid Meow Wolf’s typically maximalist approach. Audio is designed to get guests to slow down, and the lights are used in such a way that those who truly stop and pause may not know where the sculpture ends or begins. “I go into Hindu temples, and they’re alive with energy,” Paniagua says. “This is the first opportunity I’ve had to create a permanent, sacred space.” Other works more overtly lean into “The Real Unreal’s” story, such as Desireé Vaniecia’s painting “The Three Fates.” Her life-size work captures three figures in a lush, forestlike setting, their subtle facial expressions hinting at a metaphorical representation of the various emotions that one faces at a crossroads. “They have the answers, but they’re not just going to outright give you the answers,” says Vaniecia of the Greek mythology-influenced work, which will be sold in the Grapevine gift shop as a puzzle. Just outside the exhibit near a cafe, a wall-sized painting from Sam Lao is an arresting work of sultry poses and figures in mysterious, beakadorned baseball caps. It’s another piece that plays into Meow Wolf’s quest for personal identity, and how each of us are creatures capable of constant change. And that just scratches the surface. What immediately stands out in “The Real Unreal” is the way its winding paths, hidden nooks and relaxing huts invite guests to communicate. There is no map, and getting lost will be part of the journey. It’s a design with a mission to foster closeness, within your traveling party but also with strangers. “We build shared experiences because we need them,” Sheehan says. “It may be an oversimplification, but at one point along this journey for me with Meow Wolf, I distilled what we do down to: We create opportunities for strangers to bump into one another. It’s not just that, but there is something to that. We put you into a space where your expectations are so defied, where it brings down your normal barriers. That creates a moment where a stranger can be a friend, and a stranger can be an ally.” It’s a philosophy and a thesis that still allows for a bit of abstractness and unpredictability. And after building installations in New Mexico, Nevada and Colorado, Meow Wolf is betting that it has found a formula for scale. It’s just one that’s counting on us all being a little curious and eccentric. “There’s enough weirdos out here,” Hilson says of Grapevine. “They need a home.” Photographs by Emil T. Lippe For The Times MEOW WOLF’S new immersive exhibition opens with a tale of grief, left, in a suburban home. A hidden room, above, is among the interactive touches.

ATHY GRAYSON stares intently at several large paintings, trying to decide whether they complement one another on a vast wall in front of her. She absent-mindedly twists her light purple hair on either side of her face and ties it in a knot under her chin like a bonnet. It stays there for a moment before falling into place again on her shoulders. ¶ “I don’t know if this works,” she says of an abstract work imbued with deep gray hues. “It might be too dark.” ¶ Grayson stands on the polished concrete floor in the middle of her contemporary art gallery, the Hole, which opened an outpost on La Brea Avenue in Los Angeles a little over a year ago. This is Grayson’s third location. She opened her first in the Bowery in New York City in 2010 and another in TriBeCa in 2021. On this temperate Friday afternoon, Grayson is overseeing the installation of a group show called “Storage Wars” — a nod to the A&E auction-battle TV competition series — which is set to open the following night. A crew of about six workers bustles around the space, and the sound of screws being drilled into plaster shreds the air. The 9,000- square-foot gallery is filled with plywood shipping crates designed to hold, protect and transport fine art. These crates, however, are not meant to be carted out. Instead, they provide the literal frames for space, and it ended up giving her only a single wall. She launched a fundraising campaign to pay for a second wall. For her first show, she printed out all the emails it took to get the wall built, titling the project, “Wall With the E-trail of Its Own Making,” in homage to a 1961 work by Robert Morris called “Box With the Sound of Its Own Making.” The administration was not impressed, and Grayson says she was called in front of the disciplinary committee for publishing confidential information. The experience burnished the blossoming iconoclast inside of her, and by the time she worked as an intern for the 2002 Whitney Biennial curated by Lawrence Rinder, she had become fascinated by collectives of interdisciplinary artists who came from outside established art school settings. Groups like Forcefield, composed of artists who dropped out of Rhode Island School of Design who worked and lived at Fort Thunder, an abandoned warehouse-turnedunderground-venue featuring a refrigerator door that opened to another room. They created knitwear costumes, 3-D video art, paintings, installations and sculptures. They also played in a noise band. “That vibe became what I brought to Deitch Projects,” says Grayson of the New York gallery owned by art dealer and curator Jeffrey Deitch, which hired her first as a receptionist and quickly promoted her to curator and director when it became clear that she had a knack for selling art. Grayson stayed with Deitch until it closed in 2010 when its namesake was appointed director of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. Supported by friends and fans, including photographer and WireImage co-founder Jeff Vespa, who became an early investor, Grayson launched the Hole, naming it after a club and lesbian bar that she describes as “truly lawless.” It closed in 2004, as all truly lawless spaces eventually do. Thirteen years later, the Hole represents 25 artists, including Pedro, Alex Gardner, Matt Hansel, Caitlin Cherry and Vickie Vainionpaa. Even with its expanded footprint, Grayson says the Hole intends to stay true to its original mission: meeting artists where they work and live in order to continue building the community aspect of art-making. “Artists self-organize into interesting groups, which become movements, and the best thing as a curator is not to pick from all over the place, but to support what the artists are already doing,” she says. Grayson pauses when asked what she’s learned over the years, including from her formative years with Deitch. “Art should be for everybody,” she says, adding that she hopes to continue stripping away the aspects of the contemporary art culture that cause people to feel intimidated and unwelcome. “You should use your art gallery to broaden the audience of art. Everybody should be able to walk into a contemporary art gallery and have a meaningful experience with art. It should be as popular as music or literature.” my artists after a show.” Bulman and Grayson believe in cultivating an artistic community that is contagious in its creativity. During dinner, guests chat about their projects over negronis (stunning!) as plate after plate of food is passed. Michele Lorusso, a young artist from Mexico City, talks about an art and poetry project he is working on in conjunction with activists on Skid Row; a gallery owner confers with a collector; and painter Vanessa Prager flags down a friend she hasn’t seen in ages. “Kathy has an artist’s mindset in her curation,” Prager says. “She will make a show a work of art, and this is such a good example of that. It’s fun and it has such a good spirit to it.” B Y TURNING the Hole into a bicoastal operation, Grayson wants her gallery to match the ambitions of her artists — giving them fresh and inspiring places to show their work. Pedro says when he first showed at her L.A. gallery, he was “terrified because it was so massive.” But it presents an exciting opportunity, he says. Grayson was raised in Washington, D.C. Her parents were scientists and she attended the Sidwell Friends School, where Chelsea Clinton was her lab partner. She later enrolled at Dartmouth, starting off in pre-med and playing tennis. By her sophomore year, she switched majors and sports, studying art history and becoming captain of the rugby team. While at Dartmouth, she founded the first student art gallery. She named it “Area” because she says she had to fight with the administration off the main gallery for a celebratory family-style dinner made by Grayson’s partner in the gallery, Raymond Bulman. Bulman is debonair — a deeply personable art enthusiast who went to business school in Rome and has long made it a habit to feed artists and their friends after shows in New York. With the Hole in L.A., he now has an in-house kitchen, enabling him to take his love of hosting and his considerable culinary skills to the next level. Saturday’s menu includes focaccia with whipped ricotta, mortadella with shaved parmigiana, fregola sarda alle vongole, rigatoni amatriciana, and boneless chicken with caper, anchovy and parsley sauce. “Everyone has to be excited for these things to have energy,” Bulman says of gallery openings. “And so serving dinner is a big part of that. For me, it’s enjoyable. I get to host people and hang out with For “Storage Wars” (on view through Aug. 19), Grayson embarked on a community-building project with gallery owners, collectors and artists across the city, asking them to unbox and share one of their favorite pieces of art that has been in hiding for too long. She wasn’t sure what kind of a response she’d get but was thrilled to discover that it was generous and enthusiastic, with more than 80 participants sharing work that has rarely, if ever, been seen publicly. Collectors including Sue Hancock, Jason Swartz and Hooman Dayani pitched in, as did galleries Nino Mier, Nicodim and Gavlak, along with artists Pedro Pedro, KAWS and Lisa Anne Auerbach, who each offered a personal favorite from their own stash. By the time the show launches early Saturday evening, the gallery walls are decorated with a hodgepodge of eclectic artworks — each peeking out of the parameters of its former plywood prison. Sculptures are simply stacked on top of the crates they came in. The crowd of art lovers sips sake out of square wood boxes in keeping with the night’s theme. At a little after 8 p.m., a select group of guests wanders into the 2,500- square-foot kitchen just for the work in the show, which Grayson organized to highlight art that has long been boxed up and tucked away from admiring eyes. Individual artworks can spend an inordinate amount of time in crates — it’s the art world’s dirty little not-so-secret secret, says Grayson. It happens when pieces are out of rotation at museums and galleries; after a collector purchases a work and doesn’t have wall space for it; or while pieces are traveling between art fairs, where they are on view for only a few days before being crated up again and shipped off elsewhere. Mel Melcon Los Angeles Times LET’S SEE WHAT YOU’VE GOT TUCKED AWAY THERE THE HOLE GALLERY SPREAD THE WORD THROUGHOUT LOS ANGELES: PULL YOUR ART OUT OF STORAGE AND LET US PUT IT ON DISPLAY. HERE’S HOW THAT TURNED OUT. HOLE co-owner Kathy Grayson, top, says: “You should use your art gallery to broaden the audience of art.” Above: early ’22. The Hole E4 SUNDAY, JULY 9, 2023 LATIMES.COM/CALENDAR K BY JESSICA GELT AMANDA 1:30 4:30 7:20 REVOIR PARIS 1:00 4:00 7:00 CONTEMPTI 1:20 4:20 7:10 ZIGGY STARDUST & THE SPIDERS FROM MARS: THE MOTION PICTURE 50TH ANNIVERSARY 1:00 PM THE LESSON E 1:10 4:00 7:00 MILLIE LIES LOW 1:20 4:20 7:10 ASTEROID CITYC 1:30 4:30 7:20 PAST LIVESC 1:00 4:10 7:00 YOU HURT MY FEELINGS E 1:00 3:10 5:20 7:30 THE PASSENGERS OF THE NIGHT 4:00 7:10 ROYAL 11523 Santa Monica Blvd. West L.A. 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TWAS A hot summer day in Cousins. Jenny Han sat inside a beach house, phone in hand, splitting her attention between a million emails and texts, and the torrents of teenage life and love playing out in front of her eyes. She watched intently, searching for nuance in the scene before her. “So much of romantic stories is about the looks people give — sneaking looks at each other, being aware of them,” she said as seabirds glided in the distance, the occasional motorboat rumbled across the water and characters she dreamed up sprang to life on playback monitors. Han wasn’t in the fictional Cousins Beach. It wasn’t summer. On this balmy October morning, the author-turnedshowrunner was on set in Wilmington, N.C., bringing the second season of her Prime Video series adaptation “The Summer I Turned Pretty” down the home stretch. Last June, the first season of the show debuted at No. 1 on the streaming service; to date the hashtag #thesummeriturnedpretty has drawn 6.8 billion views on TikTok, according to Prime Video. Overnight, the cast became stars on social media and the success of the series sent Han’s novels back to the top of the New York Times bestseller list. “Summer” also marked a milestone for Han, who was already considered a rock star in the world of young adult literature — she made the transition from bestselling novelist to successful series creator. Han, 42, has been in building mode, starting her own production company, Jenny Kissed Me, and launching multiple streaming franchises from her novels in the last five years: Netflix’s “To All the Boys” films, which she executive produced; “XO, Kitty,” a spinoff series also on Netflix that she created and coshowran alongside Sascha Rothchild; and “Summer,” which she also created and co-showruns in its second season with Sarah Kucserka. It returns to Prime Video on Friday. Han smiled as the stars of the series, Lola Tung, Sean Kaufman, Gavin Casalegno and Christopher Briney, drifted in and out of the hydrangea-lined home that serves as the show’s primary set. Outside, actors Rachel Blanchard and Jackie Chung worked with executive producer and director Megan Griffiths, who is among the all-female lineup of directors for this season, including Zoe R. Cassavetes, Isabel Sandoval and Sophia Takal, that Han recruited from the indie film and TV world. E NJOYING the moment amid all the bustle, she reflected on the end of the shoot that was on the horizon. “It’s been very fertile,” said Han, who signed an overall television and film deal with Amazon Studios last year. “I’m having a lot of ideas and I’m thinking about the future. But right now, I’m very focused on landing this plane.” Han always knew that she wanted to tell stories. She’d fill notebooks with them growing up in suburban Richmond, Va., the eldest daughter of Korean immigrant parents. Like Lara Jean Song Covey, the teen heroine of her 2014 novel “To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before,” she liked baking and books and penning fanfic of herself and her friends. She considered being a librarian or a teacher before pursuing an MFA in creative writing with her parents’ blessing. “I’ve always felt confident about being a writer, and the adults in my life have always really instilled that,” she said. Han has a way of evoking nostalgia and loading big emotion into the smallest of totems: Sharing Yakult drinks and Twizzler straws. A stuffed polar bear bringing the memory of a childhood crush flooding back. The meaning of infinity. The meaning of a hatbox. The meaning of forever. “No detail is ever too small for Jenny,” said her longtime literary agent, Emily van Beek. “Every detail really matters. “She has this remarkable and unique ability to deep dive down memory lane and resurface in such authentic detail the memories and experiences of those milestone firsts that we all go through, and she brings that back up to the surface in such an immediate way,” added Van Beek, who inked Han’s first sale amid the 2000s YA boom with 2006’s “Shug,” about a 12-year-old girl coming of age in the South. Han was still in grad school when she got the call that her first novel was going to be published. “I was in my dorm room making macaroni and cheese on an illegal hot plate,” she said. “I remember thinking, ‘Oh my God, my noodles are going to get soft because they were getting overcooked!’ I was elated. I was in total shock.” Her push into teencentric YA in 2009 established her staying power with “The Summer I Turned Pretty,” the first book in a trilogy centered around Isabel “Belly” Conklin, a girl on the cusp of 16 navigating a love triangle between brothers Conrad and Jeremiah Fisher. Publisher Justin Chanda saw its breakout potential when everyone in the Simon & Schuster office picked a side in Belly’s love life after reading the first few chapters. “We were already that invested,” Chanda said. When the Prime Video series premiered last summer, the books shot back to the top of the NYT bestseller list and have stayed there ever since. Online debates rage over which “team” fans are on, with BookTok fanning the viral flames and obsessing over swoon-worthy moments. “I think a successful love triangle is one where you feel that a part of you is heartbroken no matter what,” Han said, acknowledging that it means you can never make everyone happy. Simon & Schuster saw a pop in book sales when the first “To All the Boys” movie debuted on Netflix in 2018, but no one was ready for how robust Gen Z’s demand for “Summer” would be. Ahead of its premiere, Taylor Swift shared a trailer featuring her rerecorded song “This Love (Taylor’s Version)” on social media. “Suddenly we were selling tens of thousands a week in paperback, and it didn’t let up,” Chanda said. To date, Han’s Simon & Schuster titles have sold 8 million copies, 4.5 million of which are “Summer” books. E VEN A quiet day on set sees Han in constant motion, texting and FaceTiming with her Season 2 co-showrunner Kucserka: watching takes, tweaking scripts, making calls on everything from tie-in merch to dialogue — or finding the exact moment in a song when lyrics match the emotional beats of important scenes from the books. The new season packs in these “tentpole moments” Han knows her readers are excited for as it picks up a year later, as Belly (Tung) revisits the shattering events that followed her first-season spark with longtime crush Conrad (Briney). It’s a multigenerational drama, so Han and the show’s writers also expand the world of “Summer” with new characters and scenarios, reserving the potential for surprise. “People think they want exactly what’s in the book, but I think that there’s real fun in the not knowing too,” she teased. Today Han and the production team mull whether they should get ahead of a potential weather snafu and swap an on-location moment pulled from Book 2 with an interior soundstage scene planned for the following day. She watches Griffiths direct a scene in which Briney and Kaufman branch off from the group for a heart-toheart. Then she heads down to the dock to oversee photos of the “Summer” kids in character and later, finalizes weekend plans to host a murder mystery dinner for her cast. “We’re both Virgos, so we are both incredibly organized people,” Kucserka says. “She has this natural instinct for how to run a ship. And it’s amazing to see because I’ve seen plenty of folks who come in from a different world and they are like, ‘What is this? How does this work?’ And she really has that natural instinct for it.” In some ways, producing feels like an extension of the tools Han employed as an author, taking a stake in her own marketing strategies and building a direct bridge to her readership. When she made the tough decision to skip the “XO, Kitty” premiere in solidarity with the Writers Guild of America strike, she filmed a video explaining why to her fans. She frequently fields questions from her 1.3 million Instagram followers, offering peeks into TV production, her creative choices and her close rapport with the actors. No one knows the Jenny Han universe and her constituents like Jenny Han does. Case in point: the Herculean feat of landing five surprise Swift tunes for “Summer’s” first season, which shot Swift’s 2019 album “Lover” back to the Billboard Top 40 charts three years after its original release. “The Taylor moment was one of the most special things,” said Han, who pitched to Amazon Studios execs the exact way Swift’s “The Way I Loved You (Taylor’s Version)” kicks in during the Season 1 finale. “I was like, ‘And then he stands up and we hear, duh duh duh duh ... .’ I was listening to ‘Fearless’ the album when I was writing the second and third books, and the fans have always said, ‘Can you please put a Taylor song in?’ So I was really excited to give them that gift.” The show’s inclusion of three songs from “Lover” —“Cruel Summer,” “False God” and “Lover” — helped boost the album by nearly 4 million streams in its first two weeks, while other featured artists’ music saw as much as a 6,000% spike Jane Kim For The Times E6 SUNDAY, JULY 9, 2023 S LATIMES.COM/CALENDAR JENNY HAN SEES YOU THE AUTHOR-TURNED-SHOWRUNNER EMPATHIZES WITH YOUNG LOVERS, AND THEY ADORE HER BY JEN YAMATO Amazon Prime JENNY HAN, top, has built a powerful brand with such YA books and TV properties as “The Summer I Turned Pretty,” center, and “To All the Boys.” Netflix I

LATIMES.COM/CALENDAR SUNDAY, JULY 9, 2023 E 7 in song sales, per Variety. Swift’s wistfully on-theme “August” and “Back to December (Taylor’s Version),” heard in the second-season trailers, already have fans specu- lating what Swift tracks might make their way into the new season. It was that instinct for what her fans love and the comprehensiveness of her vision that led Han to push for greater control after the first “To All the Boys” film. Now on “Summer,” Han is both boss and living, breathing show bible. Tung, who made her acting debut in the role and this season takes Belly further in determin- ing what her heart wants and deserves, says that trust goes both ways. “You can tell how much she cares about every single choice,” Tung said. “But what’s lovely too is she is so open to talking with us about those cre- ative decisions and hear- ing our input.” “She knows exactly what it looks like and how it feels — it’s her world and she knows it so well,” said Briney, who plays Conrad. “If Jenny’s happy, it gives me permission to be happy and move on [from a scene]. Because Jenny would not move on if she wasn’t happy.” Attempts had been made to adapt “Summer” over the years, but Han was firm that she wanted to write and produce it herself, and she wanted to cast an Asian American lead as Belly. Although “Shug” felt personal in other ways, it wasn’t until the first “To All the Boys” book in 2014 that Han wrote an explic- itly Asian solo protagonist in a romantic comedy whose drama did not hinge on her ethnicity. Yet even as it was being ad- apted a few years later, Han encountered resist- ance: “There were so many times when I was asked about casting, ‘Why does she have to be Asian if there’s nothing in there about her being Asian?’ ” L ANA CONDOR won the role in the Awesomeness Films and Over- brook Entertainment film as Lara Jean, a bookish teen who makes a fake dating pact with a jock, and saw her career skyrocket alongside co-star Noah Centineo. Han has now launched three streaming fran- chises anchored by young Asian American women. “I had to say no to a lot of people. But we made it and Netflix bought it, and from there it was, let’s keep going.” Anna Cathcart is a veteran of four Han proj- ects that she says “changed my life.” Cast as Lara Jean’s precocious sister Kitty in 2018’s “To All the Boys” at 14, she appeared in two sequels before stepping up to lead “XO, Kitty” this year, a rare original film-to-series spinoff for the streamer and the first Han project not directly based on a book. The show was recently renewed for a second season. “Jenny does such an amazing job prioritizing diversity, and it has such a clear impact on the sto- ries she creates,” Cath- cart said via email of the significance of Han helm- ing Kitty’s continuing story. “In ‘XO, Kitty,’ specifically, there are so many different storylines and types of characters, that there is something for everyone to relate to and see themselves in. That’s something that is so important to me as well, so being a part of a project that holds that as a core value means a lot.” A CROSS HER 11 novels, including the “Burn for Burn” trilogy co-authored with Siobhan Vivian, themes recur: first love, first heartbreak, the agonies and joys of young women taking their first stabs at adulthood. “I wish for young peo- ple specifically to be able to have more grace for themselves and to forgive themselves for those moments,” Han said. “It’s just part of being a messy human. It’s kind of the beauty of it. I think part of my process is that writing it down and sharing it makes it less scary. Be- cause if you know that everybody has those moments, maybe you feel less alone.” “She’s really honoring a younger version of her- self,” offers author and journalist Mary H.K. Choi, who became friends with Han in 2017 before the release of her own debut novel, “Emergency Contact.” “She feels things really deeply, and I think that too makes her uniquely qualified to speak on the behalf of teens. They’re like one throbbing, raw nerve navigating the world and loving for the first time, getting disappointed really badly. And I think she has that hyperaware- ness and hypersensitivity in her own life.” The uncertainty of an industry striking and in crisis, of course, now looms overhead for film and TV creatives, even as “Summer’s” second sea- son is set to make a stir when it drops its first three episodes at once. Still, Han has decided to take a next step, a natural progression in her evolu- tion as a storyteller: “I’m going to direct an episode, if and when we get a third season,” she says. As someone who has always been eager to top her latest achievement, she has more recently sat with the thought of what, in her latest chapter of media empire-building, has brought her real satisfaction. Helping rising actors launch their careers brings her joy. The prospect of empowering other authors and writers to adapt their stories onscreen is also exciting. But when she really searches for that feeling of satisfaction, she goes back to last summer. “I think that what makes me really happy is the making of it, being there in the moment on set when things are going well and it’s all coming together as a picture in my head, and you have a good day,” says Han. But there are many more stories to tell, she reminds. For her, it’s only the beginning. “XO, Kitty” is a “To All the Boys” spinoff. Han says she hopes to make people “feel less alone.” Park Young-Sol Netflix

MILIA CLARKE is no stranger to projects that attract passionate fans prone to fervent discussions of even the most minute details. ¶ The actor’s portrayal of Daenerys Targaryen, the exiled princess turned fierce Mother of Dragons on HBO’s hit epic fantasy “Game of Thrones,” has been seared into our collective conscious. Over the course of its eight-season run, audiences dissected, debated and speculated about the Emmy Award-winning series’ storylines, characters, continuity, lighting, bloopers and more. ¶ Her big-screen roles such as Qi’ra, Han’s enigmatic and deadly ex-friend in “Solo: A Star Wars Story” (2018), as well as an alternate timeline Sarah Connor in “Terminator Genisys” (2015) brought her into two of the most beloved franchises. ¶ Now, as part of Marvel’s “Secret Invasion,” Clarke has joined one of the biggest cinematic universes, and it marks her first television role since wrapping production of “Game of Thrones” in 2018. Developed for television by Kyle Bradstreet, the extraterrestrial political spy thriller is currently in the midst of its six-episode run on Disney+. ¶ Clarke is plenty animated while discussing the series late in the afternoon during a press day in June, but her exuberance as she details her love of theater and how it’s an actor’s medium is when she most resembles the Marvel die-hards explaining the supremacy of certain MCU installments and characters over others. “Yeah I get nerdy excited about it,” says Clarke as she expounds on the magic that happens both on and behind the stage. “I’m a theater kid. I’m a theater nerd.” She describes it as her “happy place,” after having grown up around the stage. Her father, Peter Clarke, was a sound designer for theaters, and she traces her love of the magic of storytelling and acting all the way back to those childhood memories with him. In 2022, she made her West End debut in Jamie Lloyd’s production of Chekhov’s “The Seagull,” which was initially postponed because of the COVID-19 pandemic. So it’s no surprise — aside from the chance to tackle something more “grounded” and “gritty” within the Marvel sandbox — Clarke cites the opportunity to work alongside her “Secret Invasion” castmates as one of the project’s main appeals. They are acting powerhouses, with innumerable credits both on-screen and on the stage. “The cast is ridiculous,” says Clarke. “Olivia Colman, Samuel L. Jackson, Ben Mendelsohn, Don Cheadle. I was like ‘where do I sign?’ ” “Secret Invasion” involves a conspiracy by a faction of the Skrull — alien refugees that have been stranded on Earth since the events of 2019’s “Captain Marvel” — to supplant humans and take over the planet. After patiently waiting for 30 years for Nick Fury (Jackson) to make good on his promise to find the Skrull a new home, the shape-shifting aliens are ready to forcefully take matters into their own hands. Unlike standard mainstream superhero fare that features a villain with clearly malevolent intentions, the show “asks the audience to make up their own minds,” says Clarke. “It’s presenting the audience with a moral quandary and a very timely question … about refugees and about whether violence and war has an understandable reason for being or whether it doesn’t.” In “Secret Invasion,” Clarke plays G’iah, Talos’ (Mendelsohn) estranged daughter who was originally introduced in “Captain Marvel” as a child. She was raised on Earth in a household that believes in coexistence and peace with humans. But after becoming disillusioned with Fury and her father’s failure to secure the Skrull a new home, G’iah rebels. “Her rebellion was much bigger than most teenagers’ rebellions,” says executive producer and director Ali Selim. Drawn to Gravik’s (Kingsley Ben-Adir) “more aggressive, direct, honest path to finding [the Skrull] a home,” G’iah chooses to join her father’s archenemy and she buys into “Gravik’s sense that his grievance can only be settled through violence.” It’s only after learning that her mother was killed that she starts to question her allegiance. “That causes her to return to her father’s side and, in the beginning, tentatively help him,” says Selim, who adds that part of G’iah’s journey is not just about figuring out her place as a warrior, but finding her way as one who is also ethical. As much as Clarke, who notched four Emmy nominations for her portrayal of Daenerys, downplays her acting skills compared with “the enormity of the amount of talent on this show,” it’s clear that her colleagues hold her in the highest regard. Mendelsohn, a self-described “Game of Thrones” fanatic who has watched the series “cover to cover” four times, says some of his greatest days on “Secret Invasion” were when he was working alongside Clarke. “I think Emilia and I can see in each other enough to be able to relax and just not know together,” says Mendelsohn on exploring their onscreen dynamic. “We just kind of let ourselves venture into a bit of a magic zone. It felt like there was an intimacy that was just allowed to be and that was very good.” Also memorable for him were the moments they shared off-screen. “We’d sit on the bench and just talk about what it was like to grow up being actors because we both started quite young,” says Mendelsohn. “We were being nice to each other and that just felt really magical in its own way.” Selim, who admits he is a bit of a Clarke “fanboy,” also loved seeing what she and Mendelsohn brought out in each other in their scenes together. “Standing on set with her, I am amazed at her ability to access what I call a human truth and bring it out in dialogue, in eyebrow raises,” says Selim. “I can’t watch her without feeling like she could do anything.” After struggling to really find G’iah on the page, Clarke and Selim collaborated on making the young Skrull warrior a fuller, stronger character. “I think we really pulled out ‘the girl’ and made her into the hero,” says Selim. “I don’t know that I could have done that with any other actor.” Clarke was just thrilled by everything she was “given to play with” G’iah, in exploring the characters’ relationships and journey. G’iah starts off on the opposite side of the Skrull uprising from her father, but it’s hinted that allegiances will shift over the course of the series. The actor admitted she has sought solace in film and theater after her long tenure on “Game of Thrones,” a series that had a massive following and was her breakout role. Clarke teases that she has many more unannounced TV projects on the way. For now, she is slated to star in two films, the biopic “McCarthy” as Jean Kerr, the wife of Republican Sen. Joseph McCarthy, and in “An Ideal Wife” as Constance Lloyd, the Irish author and activist who was married to poet and playwright Oscar Wilde. “I needed different characters,” says Clarke. “I needed different experiences. I just want to try and do as many different things as possible.” Her projects since the conclusion of “Game of Thrones” include “The Pod Generation,” which premiered earlier this year at the Sundance Film Festival (her first), and she’s even made her debut as a comic book author with “M.O.M.: Mother of Madness,” an unabashedly feminist miniseries she co-wrote with Marguerite Bennett that launched in 2021. What Clarke is seeking now is more opportunities to learn. “I just want to keep broadening and reaching for the things that I haven’t had a chance to do before,” says Clarke. “With each new experience [and] every year that passes, you have more to play with as an actor.” Clarke says she is making more intentional choices about what she pursues, prioritizing opportunities to work with directors she admires. This thoughtful consideration comes through as she discusses the real-world parallels to the political themes in “Secret Invasion,” the disparagement of the word “feminist,” the potential and perils of social media, and even the misconception that acting in front of a green screen does not constitute “real” acting. (“The stigma is that people don’t do any acting in these shows and then you’re like ‘well, then why are they asking all these great actors to do it, and why are they saying yes?’ ”) A recurring theme over the course of these varied topics is Clarke’s belief of the importance of being kind to one another. And her sincerity comes across in the energy she exudes. “As long as you’re leading with kindness and compassion, you cannot go wrong,” says Clarke, emphasizing that “true compassion” is reflected in action. It’s a kindness she’s even extending to her past self now that she’s had some space from her time on “Game of Thrones.” She says it’s an experience she is still processing, though it’s been several years, and she thinks of it regularly since it’s still a topic of conversation, especially in light of the launch of the spinoff series “House of the Dragon.” “There were times when I was really sad on that show, just simply because I was a young woman in her 20s,” says Clarke, who experienced two aneurysms as well as the loss of her father during the years she was on “Game of Thrones.” The show was also her first big job where she had to navigate the industry and sudden fame. “All of that happening while ‘Game of Thrones’ was happening, it sometimes could be very confusing.” But as more time passes, Clarke says she is able to appreciate the remarkable experience for what it was. Plus, “It’s not a shabby role to be associated with,” says Clarke. “Daenerys, I hope, is associated with a certain caliber of work, so lucky me that that’s the case. As long as people don’t ask me about nudity.” Ryan Pfluger For The Times BACK IN THE GAME Emilia Clarke returns to series TV for the first time since her breakout role as Daenerys Targaryen E8 SUNDAY, JULY 9, 2023 LATIMES.COM/CALENDAR E BY TRACY BROWN EMILIA CLARKE marvels at her “Secret Invasion” castmates, including Ben Mendelsohn. Des Willie Marvel

R UTH MADIEVSKY doesn’t seem to have a high tolerance for risk. ¶ Sitting at her dining room table in her tidy Santa Monica apartment, the author exudes serenity as she discusses juggling her job as a clinical pharmacist with her writing career while her 3-month-old infant naps in the next room. ¶ You’d never guess that the characters in her debut novel, “All-Night Pharmacy,” blaze a trail across L.A.’s bar scene under a haze of benzos, opioids and psychedelics, risking death or degradation at every turn. ¶ “Whenever I’m asked if the drug use is fictional,” Madievsky tells me, “I always say, ‘It’s fictional! So fictional!’ ” ¶ Madievsky does draw on her knowledge of pharmaceuticals to paint a realistic portrait of what it’s like to have one’s life go off the rails due to destructive drug use. In her intimate tale of two sisters, the unnamed protagonist is alternately compelled and repulsed by the toxic narcissism of her older sister, Debbie, a wild child who works in a strip club and is “so alive it was scary.” Under Debbie’s influence, the younger sister embarks on an odyssey of questionable decisionmaking — from shacking up with a guy she meets at a bar to cooking up a scheme to peddle pills scammed from the clinic where she works. The sisters haunt a club called Salvation housed in what used to be a Christian bookstore, where their favorite pastime is roping strangers into playing a game called Wealthy Patron, in which participants confess to how much money they would accept in exchange for engaging in degenerate behavior. As the novel progresses, the deeds get dirtier and the price gets cheaper. Although “Pharmacy” crackles with the energy of Hubert Selby Jr.’s “Requiem for a Dream” or Patrick deWitt’s “Ablutions,” Madievsky’s knowledge of drug lore is strictly professional. She would like you to know she has no experience dealing Class A drugs, and she has a few other misconceptions to clear up about her profession: She does not count pills, nor does she work in a CVS. She works in a clinic with patients she sees on a regular basis. Her specialties are HIV and primary care. “It’s very rewarding,” Madievsky says, “because I’m helping to make people’s lives better and it’s really nice for my writing, too, because if I have a [crap] writing day, at least I know that I did something good in the world.” She does worry colleagues might take her writing the wrong way. (Madievsky has also published a poetry collection called “Emergency Brake.”) Or, more specifically, she worries that regulators at the California State Board of Pharmacy might conflate her characters’ predilections with her own lifestyle choices. In part, that’s due to the fiction’s high level of verisimilitude — from L.A.’s dives and ratty apartments to the predictable patterns of addiction. “I really didn’t want to write about anything that either I hadn’t personally experienced or people that I was in community with hadn’t experienced,” Madievsky says, “because I feel like it’s so easy to do harm if you’re conjecturing about what a [marginalizing] experience is like.” Yet the novel is more than an L.A. drug story. The relationship between the two sisters is just one of the book’s many threads, which include the narrator’s fraught dealings with her mother, who experiences a series of mental health crises related to the horrors her parents endured in the former Soviet republic of Moldova. The novel also explores the eroticism of the narrator’s first same-sex relationship. And it takes a darker turn when Debbie goes missing. “It’s a detective novel. It’s an immigrant novel. It’s a queer coming-of-age novel. It’s a sisterhood novel. It’s just like when you go to a pharmacy,” Madievsky says. “They have everything.” Hence the title, which was suggested by a friend. Originally it was “Prescriptions,” “which I thought was so clever,” Madievsky says, “because it has a double meaning. It’s both medication and advice, and the narrator is constantly seeking counsel on how to be a person.” Despite the multifariousness, “All-Night Pharmacy” is not a shaggy dog story. It pulses with intensity as its characters struggle to find their way. The taut narrative is driven by Madievsky’s razorsharp prose, which she attributes to her background as a poet. “I bled over every word, every description,” Madievsky says, “because I feel like when you’re writing poetry, the pursuit of beauty trumps anything else. You can abandon any form, any narrative in pursuit of something that feels true, even if it destroys everything that came before.” There are passages in “Emergency Brake” that anticipate the novel. In the poem “Halloween,” the narrator endures a night out at a bar with her boss while her mind drifts like a clairvoyant Molly Bloom on benzos: “…all my life / I’ve been about as carefree as a soft peach / in a pile of broken glass, my hand / always twitching toward the Ativan bottle.” Despite her achievements in poetry and prose, Madievsky has little formal training as a writer. After she received her undergraduate degree, she enrolled in USC’s four-year PharmD program, which was followed by a yearlong residency. “I knew I was going to be a pharmacist — just like my mom — from the time I was 8 or 9,” Madievsky explains. Her parents arrived in L.A. from Moldova as Jewish political refugees when Madievsky was 2 years old. She lived in an apartment near Fairfax and Santa Monica (“in the Russian diaspora district”) with her parents, her grandparents and her great-grandmother, whose husband was murdered by the KGB. Madievsky recalls growing up in a neighborhood where shop signs were in Russian and English and old men played chess in the park. “At some point, I wanted to be a writer more than I wanted to be a pharmacist,” Madievsky confesses, but her parents insisted she get her pharmacy degree in case they had to move again and start over somewhere else. “You have to have a backup!” they told her. In this respect, “All-Night Pharmacy” is somewhat autobiographical. The protagonist, her sister and her mother are all wrestling with the knowledge that their forebears endured unimaginable suffering so that they could prosper in the United States. This incalculable debt starts to feel like a chokehold when the sisters fail to make the most of their opportunities. “I was interested in the ways that historical traumas affect people who are several generations removed,” Madievsky says, “and might not even know that they’re reacting in some way to those traumas.” Rather than dabble in the selfdestructive behavior of her characters, Madievsky has learned to channel her ancestors’ experiences as both a healer and a storyteller. Near the middle of the novel, the protagonist embarks on a journey to Moldova that has echoes of a trip the author took to her homeland. “I have mixed feelings about using them in fiction,” Madievsky says of her family’s stories, “but my prevailing feeling is I want to memorialize them somehow, especially because every time I hear them, the stories are a little different. There’s a lot of ‘Oh, everyone who remembers is dead,’ so there’s no one to ask. I felt this responsibility to keep those stories alive.” Ruland’s most recent novel is “Make It Stop.” Robert Gauthier Los Angeles Times A PHARMACIST’S WILD, DRUG-FUELED DEBUT RUTH MADIEVSKY DREW FROM HER PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE AND HER FAMILY’S IMMIGRANT PAST FOR AN L.A.-SET BOOK BY JIM RULAND LIKE a pharmacy, Ruth Madievsky’s novel has everything. Counterpoint LATIMES.COM/CALENDAR SUNDAY, JULY 9, 2023 E9 N EAR THE TWISTY end of “Pete and Alice in Maine,” the first novel by environmental writer and theater director Caitlin Shetterly, Alice sums up the lessons of her first pandemic year: “Being a family, we’re always coming in and then going back out like the tide. The real question is, can you bear the times in between?” When we meet Alice, she cannot bear any of it. It’s winter 2020. She lives with her financier husband, Pete, and their two tween daughters in New York City, where sirens are incessantly wailing and bodies piling up in FEMA refrigerated trucks. In Maine, where Alice and Pete own a seaside summer cottage, COVID-19 doesn’t (yet) exist. With classic liberal guilt, Alice acknowledges the rarefied nature of her family’s COVID experience — and thereby, the book’s limited focus on the tiny portion of the U.S. population whose resources shielded them from much of the virus’ devastation. “We can leave,” Alice tells Pete. “Our privilege is clear, almost criminal,” she thinks. “We don’t need personal protective equipment; no one is counting on us to save their lives. We must only save our own.” Oh, and Alice has another reason for fleeing. “This way my husband can’t leave me.” “I still have my job,” Pete protests. “The job that makes our money and is the thing,” Alice thinks, “...ever since he began the other thing.” Finally, reluctantly, Pete gets on the bus (metaphorically, of course; they drive). His company accepts his seemingly radical proposal to work from home. “Did he tell The Her he was going?” Alice wonders. “Did he say goodbye?” Finally, the precipitating event of the novel is named. Alice has recently discovered that Pete has been having a years-long affair with the unnamed Her. In chapters told from alternating points of view — Alice’s predominates in first person, while Pete and the girls are heard from in quieter third-person — the family’s year of living dangerously unfolds slowly, yet compellingly. If you remember 2020, and who doesn’t, you’ll recall the time warp, the blur of days, weeks, months folding indistinguishably into each other, each day’s goals the same for humans across the globe. One, don’t die. Two, don’t lose whatever and whomever you had when lockdowns began. What we see from the distance of the novel and its fundamentally earnest protagonists is that despite the boredom, fear, loneliness and despair the pandemic wrought, it also brought the potential to become the only thing we have to look forward to: the better, happier humans we aspire to be. As in real-life 2020, nothing much happens on the outside. Ingmar, the beloved cat and super glue of the family, goes missing. A shark kills a swimmer down the coast. In the most idyllic of settings, an adventurous child nearly drowns. A different nosy child reads a diary she’ll wish, for the rest of her life, she hadn’t found. Unapologetic locals sabotage the invading “New Yawkas’” access to their most basic needs. Most of the action takes place in the characters’ heads. Should Alice divorce her handsome, philandering, high-earning, devoted father of a husband? Should Pete make a break for it, give up on attaining his wounded wife’s forgiveness and find a plausible excuse to return to New York, where the comforts of money and lust await? Can Iris and Sophie forgive each other for being sisters, not the same-age friends they both need? I loved reading this book, which I gulped down in two otherwise busy days. I resisted and also relished its bizarro details of the day the world ground to a halt. Alice’s triple-masked grocery runs surfaced other, stranger pandemic memories. Quarantining the mail. Circles chalked onto public lawns to maintain six feet of distance. Chapped, bleeding hands banned from touching other chapped, bleeding hands. Hiking without touching a trail railing or a water fountain … and then, not hiking at all. Some obvious pandemic markers are strangely absent from the narrative. We don’t see a single episode of a cold or a cough triggering the debilitating terror — justified or not — of that pre-vaccine era. ThenPresident Trump gets COVID in the novel, yet not one of the book’s characters takes a test or gets sick. While Alice is as “woke” as a hedge fund manager’s frustrated wife can realistically be, reflecting often on her privileged position, she seems to experience little or no empathy for the 99% who suffer so much more than she does, even with her achybreaky heart. Before reading “Pete and Alice,” I was surprised by the dearth of pandemic novels — 9/11 yielded far more. I theorized that maybe we don’t need them, because who wants to remember, and who could ever forget? Then yesterday, in advance of visits to my 94-year-old mother and a pregnant friend, I started feeling fluish. I couldn’t remember where I’d stashed my stack of home tests, which proved to be expired, and which yielded a positive result. Rushing to my doctor in an oldfashioned COVID panic, I tested negative twice. Hugely relieved, I asked for a fresh batch of free tests for the next time(s). My doctor said Medicare wasn’t giving out home tests anymore. “Apparently COVID is over,” he said. Of course, it’s not. COVID’s effects, past, present and future, will always be with us — and especially with the less fortunate among us. While I appreciate the author’s rendering of the psychological trauma inflicted by the pandemic even on the wealthy, “Pete and Alice in Maine” left me longing to read the pandemic stories of the rest of the population. Maran lives in L.A. and is the author of “The New Old Me” and a dozen other books. THIS COVID EXPERIENCE NOT LIKE THE OTHERS BY MEREDITH MARAN A FAMILY confronts its pandemic privilege in Caitlin Shetterly’s first novel. Harper Books Daniel E. Davis

I ’VE BEEN ALL OVER the country and have interviewed hundreds of people whose lives were touched by crack, but never have I met a ‘crackhead,’ ” Donovan X. Ramsey writes toward the end of his first book, “When Crack Was King: A People’s History of a Misunderstood Era.” He continues: “Their stories were buried by that word.” ¶ The debut is an attempt by Ramsey, a former staff writer for The Times, to unearth some of those stories and put them in context. To that end, he interweaves straight historical writing with the tales of four individuals whose lives were touched by crack in its ’80s heyday: Kurt Schmoke, the former Baltimore mayor and early decriminalization advocate; Elgin Swift, a Yonkers boy with a drug-addicted father; Lennie Woodley, an exaddict and sex worker; and Shawn McCray, who co-founded the notorious Newark, N.J., trafficking group the Zoo Crew. The resulting work manages to convey the scope of history while also remaining grounded in the specific and personal. And it feels particularly relevant as America stares down another drug epidemic with no clear end in sight. Ramsey spoke by phone with The Times while taking a pre-book launch vacation in Florence, Italy. This interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity. We’re going to start at the end, because in one of the last chapters of the book, you write about how putting this book together triggered some PTSD. Why was this subject so important to you that even when it was hurting you, you felt like you had to push through and write it anyway? I grew up in a neighborhood that was hard hit by the crack epidemic. I had lots of questions about what my community was like before. Why us? And what happened to people who disappeared? It’s also something I wrote because I lived alongside people who struggled during that period, and I know that I am no better or different than them. I feel like I have to take whatever skill I have as a journalist and put it toward telling those people’s stories. Making them real. I like to think that as tough as writing [the book] was, it reminded me of how resilient I am, how resilient the Black community is. And there’s a lot we can learn from the ways that the communities hardest hit survived the crack epidemic. Many challenges still live with us today. We have an ongoing opioid epidemic that we haven’t been able to get our hands around. And there are actually lessons for that in the ways communities survived crack. What are some of those lessons? We don’t have a healthcare system that accounts for addiction, [or] for mental illness. We need those wraparound addiction mental health services. But we also need harm reduction programs that keep people alive while they’re figuring out how to get clean. Each of the characters in my book — what really kept them alive were not big programs and projects, but people doing little things. And those little things add up to something of a safety net. And lastly, I would say that we have to invest in individuals that are doing the work in their communities. Churches and activists that initiated programs on their own had tremendous impact, but it’s not where the government invested its resources. The government invested in policing and criminalization. The book looks both backward and forward — you wanted to know what your community was like before crack, but it also points to so much of what’s happened since, right? When you look at, say, mass incarceration. Well, why did that happen? Oh, the war on drugs. Yeah, and also, certain other ideas. Believe it or not, I was considered a problem kid in school. What I didn’t realize was that there was this entire apparatus built around marginalizing and criminalizing Black children. It felt like many of the educators that I grew up with, most of whom were white, believed that there was something wrong with me. And I understand now that that was a spirit of the era. People’s beliefs about Black communities, Black families, Black children, were sewn into my education. When I was a kid, I came to the conclusion that being Black is kind of like being famous, in the sense that you go places and people think they know you. The book focuses on four stories of people who in some ways were central to that time and how it unfolded. Why did you choose that structure? One of the things I really wanted to put forward is that these are people who are becoming themselves, as we all do. And they’re doing it under all of these forces. They’re making good and bad choices. But they are human and susceptible to the tides of life just like anybody else. That’s why it was important for me to include more than one personal narrative: So you can see four different people making different — and sometimes the same — choices. One of the great tragedies of the crack epidemic for me is the ugliness it unearthed about this country’s relationship to Black people, brown people, poor people. I wrote the book because I think that there’s a view from the bottom of our society that the most marginalized have that we need to appreciate, because the most marginalized people know something about us that we never take time to hear and understand. It must have been tough, hearing all of these stories of the worst parts of people’s lives for years on end. It’s really tough. I used to think of myself, in my journalism, as somebody who could alchemize people’s worst stuff and not be affected by it. But this took a lot out of me. So I’ve been pacing myself a lot — doing things like taking a break. And we can do that, right? As readers, we can pace ourselves. But also as a society, when it comes to how we care about issues. We don’t have to live in something, but we can give according to our capacity. I sound like Jesse Jackson, but I do believe that. I’m so excited for this book that I spent five years working on. I’m excited for people to read it in this moment, because I think that we are in a moment like the one that birthed the crack epidemic. People were retreating from a period of activism and investment in causes, and it was all about every man for himself. When I look around today, I see a lot of people who are getting over the devastation of COVID, and financial stuff. The political exhaustion. People want to check out. People want to escape. And I just hope this book can be an intervention to say: Let’s not do that again. Antonio M. Johnson “PEOPLE doing little things,” is everything, says Ramsey. One World HOW LESSONS FROM THE LAST DRUG EPIDEMIC INFORM TODAY’S DONOVAN X. RAMSEY PUTS THE CRACK CRISIS IN CONTEXT OF FOUR SURVIVORS’ STORIES BY ZAN ROMANOFF E10 SUNDAY, JULY 9, 2023 WSCE LATIMES.COM/CALENDAR The year’s most acclaimed talent, unscripted. Go beyond the red carpet talking points and see the awards season’s most talked-about talent open up in The Envelope Roundtable. Watch the whole series. Scan the QR code or visit latimes.com/roundtables