California
A cross, a bracelet and a body: Who was the woman found in a California creek?
The San Diego River was less than 3 feet deep at sunrise.
By noon, the depth was 10 feet and growing as rainwater roared in from culverts and pipes and the sky.
Forester Creek meets the river from the east. Part of the channel is wide and unobstructed, but other areas are dense with foliage, including one stretch in Santee around the Olive Lane Bridge.
A little before 4 p.m. on Jan. 22, someone passing the creek’s southern border looked down and thought they saw a body.
***
It was briefly believed that no one had died during the historic storm that hit San Diego in January.
Then officials found a man whose car had crashed into debris in Lemon Grove. Another drowned in the Tijuana River while crossing into the United States. In both cases, the moments leading up to their deaths seemed clear.
The woman in the creek was a different story.
She had no identification. If this was a suicide, there was no note. Was she a visitor camping too close to the water? Had she gotten drunk and stumbled into the current? Was anyone else responsible?
Ligia Ceja, an investigator with the San Diego County Medical Examiner’s Office, arrived on the scene a little after 5 p.m., according to a report she wrote later. Sheriff’s deputies and members of the Santee Fire Department had already pulled the woman out of the brush and set her on a sidewalk. A disposable blanket lay on top.
Ceja stepped through the rain and lifted the sheet. The woman was White and appeared to be middle aged. Her eyes and hair were brown, although the latter, still damp and matted with leaves, looked gray at the roots.
The investigator spotted a handful of personal items, including a chain necklace with a metal crucifix and a bracelet engraved with the date “4/21/2006.” On the woman’s right leg was a tattoo of a dolphin with butterfly wings.
On the same leg, Ceja helped attach a yellow tag with two words: “Jane Doe.”
***
Faith Angle’s first act was to make her mother miss church.
On an October Sunday in 1977, Charlene Angle was headed to a service in North Park when the contractions ramped up. She made it to the building, dropped off her oldest daughter, and then drove south to the Naval Medical Center. Faith Angle was born within the hour.
Her father was in the U.S. Navy, so the family’s time in San Diego was followed by stays in Long Beach and Mountain View, and Vancouver, Wash., according to relatives.
As a kid, Angle enjoyed accompanying her older sister to video game arcades (Galaga was a favorite) and later liked waking that same sibling to borrow a prized Guns N’ Roses T-shirt. (Hope Angle said she was more likely to say “yes” to the second request, if only so she could go back to sleep.)
Faith Angle’s favorite hymn was “I Am a Child of God”:
Lead me, guide me, walk beside me,
Help me find the way.
Teach me all that I must do
To live with him someday.
At the same time, there were signs something was off. A younger brother said Angle sometimes seemed like a deer in traffic, wide-eyed and still.
One day, after arriving at middle school, Angle refused to go inside. She wouldn’t even leave the car. Her mother eventually walked onto campus herself.
“I brought her,” Charlene Angle recalled telling someone from the school. “Now you get her out.”
A staffer approached the vehicle. Faith Angle still would not budge. Her mother finally climbed back in the driver’s seat and drove to a psychologist.
***
Around a dozen people filed into a Kearny Mesa conference room the morning after January’s storm.
The Medical Examiner’s Office holds daily meetings to discuss recent deaths, and the list that Tuesday included the body in the creek. The group looked at photos from the scene and reviewed the few facts they knew. First responders had received reports during the flood that up to three people had been washed away, and it seemed likely this woman was one.
Steven Campman, the chief medical examiner, thought she might have been homeless, he said later. Yet his hypothesis was complicated by the woman’s jewelry. In Campman’s experience, people living outside often ended up selling their necklaces and bracelets.
An autopsy was conducted the same morning. Some of the woman’s skin was scraped and bruised, but examiners didn’t see signs of foul play, nor were there needle marks on the arms. A toxicology report similarly found no traces of alcohol, fentanyl, methamphetamines or a host of other drugs.
“Based on the autopsy findings and the circumstances surrounding the death,” a deputy medical examiner wrote, “the cause of death is drowning, and the manner of death is accident.”
Investigators still didn’t know how the woman ended up in the water. Nor were they any closer to getting a name.
A staffer made copies of the woman’s fingerprints and walked them across a parking lot. A nearby office had access to CAL-ID, a system that can run prints through multiple databases.
Perhaps one of those could identify the woman.
***
The psychologist believed Faith Angle needed a hospital.
The girl was eventually diagnosed with bipolar and schizoaffective disorders, according to her family. There was also post-traumatic stress: Angle had been abused by a relative.
Sometimes hallucinations led to screaming, crying and cutting, said her brother, Joseph Angle. “She would be saying, ‘The voices are talking again.’”
Medication gradually brought stability. Angle finished high school through a special education program in San Diego County, moved into a group home and then an assisted living facility.
That’s where she met Curtis Harper.
“She kind of felt like she was unlovable, and that maybe it wasn’t in the cards for her to find somebody,” said her sister, Saray Angle. “So when she did, she grabbed and held on as tight as she could — and he became just about her everything.”
Harper was tall, nearly 20 years older and a fan of fixing up mountain bikes, according to public records, social media posts and a friend of the couple. The two met on April 3, 2006, and were engaged the next year. It doesn’t appear they ever formally married, although Angle would refer to Harper as her husband. One photo shows the couple beaming in front of a Christmas tree, Angle’s head nestled into Harper’s neck.
Money was tight. Angle didn’t work and they lived off disability and Social Security payments. But her older sister, Hope, whose married name was now Webber, lived nearby and Webber’s husband became Angle’s payee, meaning he managed her finances. The couple was able to land their own apartment in El Cajon.
Angle loved making jewelry with beads, watching Disney’s animated “Cinderella” and reading Harry Potter. One online quiz confirmed that, had she attended Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Angle would have joined Hufflepuff, the house for the patient, loyal and overlooked.
All the while, living in San Diego County was becoming increasingly expensive. By 2022, Webber had had enough. Her family needed to move somewhere cheaper, perhaps in the Pacific Northwest.
She asked Angle and Harper to join them.
***
The Medical Examiner’s Office got a response within hours of submitting the woman’s fingerprints to the CAL-ID system.
She wasn’t there.
Ceja, the investigator who examined the body by the creek, sent prints to the FBI and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. They, too, found nothing. The office then uploaded what information they had to NamUs, the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System run by the federal government and open to just about anyone.
Investigators could not, however, check with the California Department of Motor Vehicles. Searching the DMV’s database required more than a set of fingerprints.
Everyone knew the clock was ticking. If the woman had a weekly routine, say, buying groceries at a certain store, people she interacted with would be more likely to notice her absence immediately afterward. The longer somebody stayed missing, the easier it became to forget.
One day passed. Then two.
Ceja’s supervisor decided to broaden their scope. She wrote up an email, attached a photograph of the woman’s face and hit “send.”
***
Faith Angle initially agreed to move north.
Her older sister found a house in Colville, Wash., not far from the Canadian border. Angle and Harper could take the basement while other members of the family, including their mom, would live upstairs.
Then Harper and Hope Webber, Angle’s sister, had a falling out and living all together was no longer an option. Angle didn’t want to leave the man she’d been with for years, so in the summer of 2022 she helped her mom and sister tape up boxes and said goodbye. Much of the family headed to Washington. Angle stayed in El Cajon.
Things fell apart within months.
Angle and Harper, now in charge of their own finances, stopped paying rent. A friend, James Farmer, later said their apartment had black mold the landlord wouldn’t fix, and it’s possible the couple directed what little money they had toward repairs.
As Christmas approached, Angle created a GoFundMe campaign online. “We need help this holiday season with relocating,” she wrote on Facebook. “Any donations would help.”
If they did raise money — the campaign is no longer active — it wasn’t enough. Sometime during the first half of last year, Angle and her partner lost the apartment.
***
PJ Puterbaugh opened her email to find a photo of the drowned woman.
Puterbaugh is a freelance forensic artist for agencies around the country. From a home studio in Carlsbad, she studied the picture in front of her. The woman’s facial muscles had relaxed in death, leaving the eyebrows raised and eyes closed. Puterbaugh needed, she would say later, to “wake her up.”
The artist pulled the image into Photoshop. Since the woman’s hair was wet, Puterbaugh Googled pictures of comparable cuts to create a new head of hair. Muscles were tightened. The eyes opened.
Within two hours, Puterbaugh had a black-and-white image of a smiling, middle-aged woman.
A county spokesperson then took the finished sketch, attached photos of the woman’s bracelet, crucifix and butterfly tattoo and sent them all to hundreds of reporters and law enforcement officials around Southern California.
The accompanying press release began with a plea: “Do you know this woman?”
***
More than 1,200 people countywide became homeless during January of last year.
It’s not clear if Faith Angle was represented in that statistic, since the Regional Task Force on Homelessness can only track people who interact with certain organizations. Regardless, Facebook messages show Angle was living in a motel that same month. Soon she and Harper were on the streets of El Cajon.
The couple looked for a place to sleep. Angle messaged Dave Spaeth, a friend from childhood, and asked to set up a tent in his yard. The friend sent back resources, including a crisis phone number and information about San Diego’s safe sleeping sites, but Spaeth said later that he wasn’t comfortable with someone camping outside his home.
Angle launched a second GoFundMe. “We need out,” she wrote online. Nobody donated.
Her health worsened. Angle had asthma and sometimes called an aunt, Joyce Welsh, in a panic. “Breathe through your nose,” Welsh would say, “and out your mouth.”
Months passed. Angle turned 46.
She became familiar to others living outside, and several people later remembered her generosity. One man, Everett Palmer, said Angle once bought him a burger and fries from Jack in the Box. A woman, Shana Bingham, grew close enough to call Angle her cousin.
Relatives helped when they could, and the younger sister drove Angle to a hospital when she appeared to have pneumonia. But although Saray Angle lived in the area, her home was a converted garage that couldn’t accommodate more people.
In Washington, Angle’s older sister was nauseous knowing what had happened.
Sometimes Hope Webber was in the room when their mom got a call from Angle. Good, Webber would think. She’s alive. Then the conversation would end and the pressure inside her started to build back up.
In El Cajon, Angle developed a new plan: She and Harper would move in with Welsh, her aunt. Welsh had an apartment in Beaverton, Ore., just west of Portland, and she loved the idea of living with her niece. They could make lasagna together. Hand-made pizzas. Welsh rounded up winter boots, a dresser and a twin-sized foam topper.
The couple needed around $300 for train tickets. They sold a bicycle to save up. The aunt further believed that Angle had qualified for a Section 8 housing voucher, which can help cover rent and boosted the odds that Angle and Harper might again secure their own place.
While they waited and saved, the couple worried about citations from police, according to James Farmer, the friend from their apartment days.
He made a suggestion. Farmer had spent years living in stormwater tunnels and knew of one channel behind a Jerome’s Furniture store. Why didn’t they move underground?
***
The rains came. The river rose.
On the day of the January storm, emergency dispatchers received a call at 10:32 a.m.: At least two people appeared to be in a waterway by an El Cajon auto body shop, not far from a furniture store.
A truck from East County’s Heartland Fire and Rescue Department sped out, followed by a second, third, fourth and fifth. A Heartland pickup turned onto the road too, along with an ambulance, bringing the number of first responders to about 20 — and that was from just one agency.
The caravan split up along Forester Creek. Austin Strand, a firefighter and paramedic, got out by North Marshall Avenue, pulled on a helmet and helped a colleague saw through a chain-link fence.
The pair squeezed through the metal toward the water. A nearby fire captain thought the current below looked like it was traveling, what, 30 miles an hour? Forty? Eucalyptus trunks and debris the size of dinner tables whipped by.
Lines of rope held the team to a light pole. Rescuers gripped more rope to throw in the water the moment somebody surfaced. Everyone stood in the downpour, watching and waiting.
Angle’s family waited, too.
Welsh, the aunt, grew nervous in the days that followed. Why hadn’t Angle called? Welsh reached out to Angle’s mom, only to learn she hadn’t heard anything either. Yet the family was used to radio silence. Phones are easily lost, stolen or drained on the street.
Meanwhile, the sketch of the smiling woman ricocheted around the Internet.
A few people called the Medical Examiner’s Office to say her face looked familiar, including a psychic who reported that the woman was homeless, officials said. One advocate for homeless people suggested a name that turned out to be wrong.
The sketch made it as far as Pennsylvania, where it was seen by Summer Allen, whose sibling, Farmer, had suggested living in the tunnels. Allen later said the “Do you know this woman?” plea hit a nerve, as her own mother had similarly died homeless and unidentified.
Furthermore, Allen thought the woman looked like someone her brother knew.
Allen found Angle’s older sister on Facebook and sent a message. Hope Webber saw the note but didn’t recognize the sender, so she ignored it until a brother called about the sketch.
“Damn,” Webber thought when she finally saw the image. “That kind of looks like me.”
She showed the picture to her mom. Her mom began to cry.
The family got on the phone with the Medical Examiner’s Office and offered up Faith Angle’s name. That same day, the homelessness advocate who’d previously suggested an incorrect identity called back to additionally identify Angle as the missing woman and provide a possible driver’s license number.
Investigators could now check with the California DMV.
But when the fingerprints were finally scanned, DMV officials said they weren’t high enough quality. It appeared the woman’s skin had wrinkled too much in the water. Investigators took more prints and sent them over Feb. 15, more than three weeks after the storm.
The next day, the family received confirmation that Angle was dead.
***
The body of Curtis Harper, Angle’s partner of almost 18 years, was eventually found in a different part of Forester Creek, records show. A friend who’d been living near them, Manuel Andres Perez, also drowned.
They were, at minimum, the 29th, 30th and 31st homeless people to die in the county during January of this year, according to preliminary public data. They joined the 1,755 known to have died throughout the last three years from fentanyl and hypothermia and an array of other causes. That total is almost certainly an undercount.
Webber, the older sister, is angry that Angle was allowed to take over her own finances and that she wouldn’t move north alone. But Webber simultaneously feels a small sense of relief now that she doesn’t have to worry about her sister every moment of every day.
Welsh, Angle’s aunt, recently tried looking through text exchanges with her niece. It was hard to finish.
Farmer believes the deaths are partially on him. He’d been living in an apartment and wasn’t underground when the storm began. “I should have been there to pull them out,” the friend said.
But Farmer also thinks there’s broader culpability. “Society doesn’t want to see the homeless, so what do we do? We try to get out of sight,” he said. “It’s everybody’s fault why they died.”
Some questions remain unanswered. Members of Angle’s family don’t know the significance of the date on her bracelet, but since April 21, 2006, fell just weeks after she met Harper, it’s possible the day was significant to their relationship.
The full story behind the dolphin-with-butterfly-wings tattoo is similarly unknown, although Angle had long loved butterflies.
She told an aunt that monarchs sometimes flew into her campsite. Hummingbirds, too. A few even swooped in toward Angle’s face.
If she didn’t move, each might stop to hover a few inches away. Then they were gone.
Originally Published:
California
Candidates scramble, one quits, after redistricting shakes up California’s congressional races
Two years after Huntington Beach residents voted to effectively ban Pride flags from being displayed on city property, the conservative coastal city could be represented by a gay member of Congress and outspoken critic of President Trump — Rep. Robert Garcia.
That twist of fate came after last year’s unprecedented mid-decade rejiggering of California’s congressional districts.
Voters in November overwhelmingly approved Proposition 50 — Gov. Gavin Newsom’s plan to neutralize Republican gerrymandering in Texas — to help Democrats win control of the House this November and put a meaningful check on the Trump administration.
The political tremors triggered by the ballot measure already have reshaped California’s political landscape.
Veteran Republican Rep. Darrell Issa of northern San Diego County, an incessant thorn in the backside of President Obama, has called it quits. Northern California Rep. Kevin Kiley has shed his GOP label to run as a political independent. And two Republican congressional incumbents find themselves in a political death match in a newly crafted district straddling Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties.
The new 42nd District remains anchored in Garcia’s home base of Long Beach. But under the new lines, it has swapped out Southeast L.A. communities such as Downey and Bell Gardens for the more MAGA-friendly cities of Huntington Beach and Newport Beach.
“I say that every time a district crosses the L.A.-Orange County border, a Democrat gets its wings,” said Paul Mitchell, the redistricting expert who drew the new lines for Democrats. “Drawing the Long Beach district to go down to Huntington Beach meant that you’re giving Robert Garcia a community that, in its elected City Council, has been real anathema to who he is as a person, being an out gay member of Congress.”
The change means Garcia’s district shifts rightward with a lot more Republican voters, but still has a Democratic majority. Former Vice President Kamala Harris would have still won the new district in the 2024 presidential race by 13 points, making Democrats confident that it’s still one where Garcia could win.
As the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, Garcia is poised to win more power in pushing back against the Trump administration if historical precedent holds and Democrats win back the House majority in November.
Garcia was unavailable for an interview, but many of the new voters he will have to court are represented by Rep. Dave Min (D-Irvine), who won the closely divided Orange County seat in 2024 and now faces a slightly bluer voting base in his newly configured district.
“I have a lot of voters to introduce myself to,” said Min, who described himself as “progressive for Orange County” because he cares about protecting civil rights but often aligns with law enforcement and small-business interests.
“The message [to new voters] is that you may not always agree with me, but that I will try my best to do what I say. I will fight to deliver on the promises I make, I will fight for the values that I represent myself as caring about. And I listen to my constituents,” he said, noting that he recently held his seventh town hall since he was elected.
In a neighboring Orange County district, Republican Reps. Young Kim and Ken Calvert are going to battle for control of the region’s only safe Republican seat post-Proposition 50. That district also crosses county lines — into Corona, Chino Hills and other parts of western Riverside and San Bernardino counties.
Republicans may be dismayed to see the two popular party leaders battling it out in what promises to be a brutal and expensive election.
Republican “primary voters are looking for how to distinguish between two of the same flavor,” said Rob Stutzman, a Republican political strategist. “Republican voters are going to like both of them, so how do you make that judgment?
“Often, it comes down to who their friends are,” he said, noting that endorsements from interest groups and other elected officials are usually more valuable in primaries than general elections.
A handful of Democratic candidates have also declared for the seat, which campaign strategists said could split the liberal vote and allow both Calvert and Kim to advance to the general election ballot.
Issa bids farewell, Kiley drops GOP label
Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Bonsall) listens to testimony from witnesses during a House Oversight Committee hearing entitled “Reviews of the Benghazi Attack and Unanswered Questions,” in the Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill in 2013 in Washington.
(Drew Angerer / Getty Images)
Issa’s decision to forgo a run for reelection came as a surprise Friday, even though speculation has swirled about his future after the newly drawn congressional districts put him in a seat where Democratic voters outnumber Republicans. That was a major downgrade from his current district, which swallows up right-leaning eastern San Diego County and the conservative pockets of Temecula and Murrieta.
“This decision has been on my mind for a while and I didn’t make it lightly,” Issa said in a statement. “But after a quarter-century in Congress — and before that, a quarter-century in business — it’s the right time for a new chapter and new challenges.”
Democrats celebrated the departure of Issa, who helped fund the successful 2003 recall of California Democratic Gov. Gray Davis, and led the congressional investigation of the 2012 attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi during the Obama administration.
“After over two decades of disastrous representation, Darrell Issa is once again running for the exits — and good riddance,” said Anna Elsasser, spokesperson for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
Several Democrats had already announced plans to challenge Issa, including San Diego City Councilmember Marni Lynn von Wilpert.
Proposition 50 also split the sprawling district held by Kiley, a Republican from Rocklin, into six pieces, leaving the Northern California congressman and frequent Newsom critic with few good options.
Over the following months Kiley posted on social media to announce — like the dating show “The Bachelor” — where he would not run until it came down to two districts: a safe Republican seat that would force Kiley into a primary with longtime Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Elk Grove) or a district with a 9-point Democratic registration advantage.
Kiley chose to avoid challenging McClintock and delivered his final rose to the new 6th District along with a twist: On Friday the congressman announced he would run as an independent candidate rather than a Republican.
Rep. Kevin Kiley (R-Rocklin) in his office in Washington in 2025.
(Richard Pierrin / For The Times)
In a lengthy social media post and accompanying video, Kiley said he has become “frustrated, sometimes disgusted, by the hyper-partisanship in Congress” and that he answers to constituents, “not party leaders.”
But without a political party behind him, Kiley’s campaign is “entirely his burden,” said Republican strategist Matt Rexroad. “He’s not going to get the party endorsement. He’s really on his own.”
Without a letter denoting a political party next to their name on the ballot, independent candidates have historically gotten lost in the mix.
One other candidate, a Christian author named Michael Stansfield, confirmed Friday that he filed to run for the seat as a Republican, giving Kiley automatic competition for conservative votes.
Several Democrats have already announced campaigns for the seat — which lumps conservative suburbs of Sacramento with liberal-leaning ones closer to the capital city — including former state Sen. Richard Pan, Sacramento Dist. Atty. Thien Ho, West Sacramento Mayor Martha Guerrero and Lauren Babb, a public affairs leader for Planned Parenthood clinics in California and Nevada.
The race could revive a pandemic-era rivalry between Kiley and Pan, who tussled over vaccine and public health rules while serving in the state Legislature.
New districts, new challengers
For some longtime Democrats such as Rep. Brad Sherman, the addition of new GOP voters could help them fend off challenges from younger progressive candidates.
Half a dozen Democrats, mostly younger progressives, have filed paperwork to challenge Sherman (D-Sherman Oaks), 71, who has represented parts of the San Fernando Valley for nearly 30 years.
The 32nd District remains solidly blue post-Proposition 50, but a nearly seven-point swing to the right “makes it less likely that two Democrats go to the general, which makes it less likely that [Sherman] would get beaten,” said Mitchell.
It’s a similar story for Reps. Doris Matsui (D-Sacramento), Mike Thompson (D-St. Helena) and John Garamendi (D-Walnut Grove), who are all in their 70s and 80s and facing younger, more progressive challengers.
While gaining more conservative voters may help some incumbents avoid facing another Democrat in November, the threat of such a faceoff is pushing them to be more active on the campaign trail, Rexroad said.
“You’re seeing more activity by Doris Matsui and Mike Thompson and John Garamendi as a result of them being challenged, because they like their seats and they’d like to hold on to them,” Rexroad said.
Times staff writer Seema Mehta contributed to this report.
LOS ANGELES — The southern California teenager whose home laboratory sparked a nearly weeklong investigation from the FBI last week is speaking out, stating that he’s just a “kid who’s interested in science.”
Last Monday, Irvine Police Department officers were called to a home near Cartwheel and Iluna in a gated Irvine neighborhood after learning of “suspicious materials” discovered by the property’s landlord.
As the investigation continued, both Orange County Fire Authority and FBI investigators were called to the scene after it was determined that the materials were possible indications of chemical nerve agents, according to a source familiar with the investigation. They said that the substances, paired with writings found at the scene, were concerning.
While investigators say that 17-year-old Amalvin Fritz, a pre-medical student slated to graduate from Univeristy of California, Irvine, in the coming months, and his family have cooperated with their investigation, the family still hasn’t been able to return home.
“You know, it’s almost been a week since I’ve been out of my home, and I really want to go back,” Fritz said.
He says that he’s unsure exactly what investigators found that triggered such a chaotic series of events.
“I gave my full cooperation and gave them my phone, and I gave them as much information as possible, but I’m not sure exactly what materials inside the home they would be suspicious about,” Fritz said. “I hope that they can conclude their investigation and we can continue to put this behind us.”
As the investigation progressed, the National Guard’s Weapons of Mass Destruction Civil Support Team was deployed to the neighborhood to assist with the handling of the materials and ongoing probe, which continued over the weekend.
Video from the scene shows FBI personnel dressed in hazardous materials suits and breathing apparatus as they walk to and from the home through the garage. They still haven’t commented on exactly what they discovered as their investigation develops.
Fritz dreams of becoming a doctor one day, according to his attorney, who spoke with CBS LA on Monday. He has posted a few of his home experiments on his YouTube channel, which were also conducted at his home lab.
While he says that anyone can purchase chemicals like acetone online and that he was safe throughout the process, a chemistry professor from California State University, Long Beach, says that his YouTube videos also show his use of isopropylmagnesium chloride and other compounds in an unsafe and inappropriate setting.
“Those experiments needed to be done in a proper lab facility,” said professor Elaine Bernal. She says that acetone is highly flammable, and that the compounds Fritz used would require proper storage due to the risk of a fire or explosion. She also expressed concern over how the chemicals were disposed of, and the escape of gases during the experiments.
“There’s a big environmental and safety concern that I think was worth of investigation. I get that the FBI was there, hazmat was there. I think it’s also important to think of it as the safety of the local community since it’s tight quarters,” Bernal said. “The chemicals that he mentioned are very flammable. My concern is that whatever gases that are emitted, that folks with respiratory issues, sensitive respiratory issues, can be affected.”
Fritz said that his experiments are focused on new therapeutics for cancer and Alzheimers disease, and that he insists nothing he was doing was dangerous. He hopes to enroll in medical school after graduating from UC Irvine.
The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.
OAKLAND — Betty Yee knows what people are thinking. She’s heard what they’ve said and read the many emails she’s gotten.
The former state controller has been running for California governor longer than just about anybody in the cheek-by-jowl field. And yet the Democrat is bumping along near the bottom, a blip in polls and a laggard in the money chase.
But no, Yee said, she has no intention of quitting the race, as she’s been urged, and no fear that, by staying in, she’ll help two Republicans advance to November’s runoff, locking Democrats out of the governor’s office for the first time since George W. Bush was president.
“I just don’t see it,” Yee said, given the way Chad Bianco and Steve Hilton, the top GOP contenders, are smacking each other around, hoping to emerge as the undisputed Republican standard-bearer.
Beyond that, she said, it’s not as if anyone’s running away with the contest; most polls have shown the leading candidate — which depends on the survey — standing atop the pile with around 20% support.
That isn’t exactly landslide territory.
“The public is still shopping,” Yee said. “In the next month or so, we’re going to try to get [a TV ad] on the air, basically make our case and hope that can spread as voters are getting more focused on the race.”
Which is not to say Yee is delusional.
“As a candidate, I make that assessment every day about whether we’re going to be viable or not,” she said last week, just before stopping by the Alameda County voter registrar‘s office to file paperwork for the June 2 primary.
“Right now, it’s less than a 50-50 chance,” Yee said, suggesting it’s her job to boost those odds by getting voters to appreciate what she offers, which amounts to unvarnished talk about the challenges facing the next governor and the ways Sacramento — which has been run for years by fellow Democrats — isn’t working.
“ ‘Accountability’ has kind of become a dirty word … where it’s about who we’re going to throw under the bus, rather than stepping back and saying, ‘What have we gotten for the dollars that we spend and, if we’re not getting those outcomes, how do we do better?’ ”
Yee served two terms as controller, in effect the state’s chief financial officer, and 10 years before that on the Board of Equalization, which oversees property tax assessments. She’s isn’t trying to buy the governorship, like billionaire Tom Steyer, or leverage her political celebrity, like cable-TV fixtures Katie Porter and Eric Swalwell. Instead, Yee is running a grassroots campaign, visiting nearly all 58 California counties and holding as many face-to-face meetings as humanly possible.
“I’m in the trenches,” she said. “I knock on doors every election cycle because to me, that’s the reality check of where people really are in terms of their lives.”
Which is certainly an admirable approach, albeit a rather idealistic strategy in a state of nearly 23 million voters, spread over roughly 800 miles from north to south. It would take more than two years of round-the-clock campaigning just to give each and every one a quick handshake.
The most notable feature of Yee’s candidacy is her message. She’s not selling barn-burning populism or viral take-downs of President Trump — “I don’t have any gimmicks, I don’t swear, I don’t have a reality-TV show personality” — but rather practical know-how and a deep understanding of state government.
It’s almost quaint in today’s theatrical political environment.
Seated at a sidewalk table outside a coffee stand in downtown Oakland, Yee focused on California’s stretched-thin budget, which happens to be her area of expertise.
“People ask what would you do in your first days as governor, if you have the privilege of serving,” Yee said, as her butterscotch latte sat cooling. “I’d come clean with the voters about where we are fiscally.”
After years of surpluses, she said, the state is spending more than it can afford. Facing a structural deficit, the next governor will have to cut programs and raise taxes, not just one or the other, with corporations and California’s richest residents being forced to cough up more. (She’s dubious, however, of a proposed November ballot measure imposing a one-time 5% tax on billionaires, questioning whether it would stand up in court.)
Sacramento’s credibility, Yee suggested, is on the line.
Before any expansive new programs can be implemented — and she has some notions for how to make life more affordable, increase access to healthcare and create jobs — Californians have to be convinced their tax dollars are being well spent and delivering proven results. “I would really insist on and invite stricter accountability of what we do with our money,” Yee said.
She’s not beyond criticizing the current administration.
“I mean, I’ve been termed out as controller since January 2023. I still get calls from companies in the [European Union], Canada, even Mexico about how we want to do business with California. Who do we talk to?” Yee said. “So I’ll send them over to the governor’s Office of Business Development and they tell me, ‘Well, we try to call people, but nobody’s answering our call.’ ”
(In response, a spokesman for the Office of Business and Economic Development touted California as “a premier hub for international business” and described foreign trade and investment as major drivers of the state economy.)
As for Gov. Gavin Newsom, while she supports his teenaged trolling of Trump, she said it shouldn’t be done through official channels, , or on the taxpayers’ dime.
“We have to focus on making the state work,” Yee said, “and that’s where I’m more focused on because people … want service delivery. They want government to be responsive to their needs. Somebody just pick up the damn phone on the other line to help them.”
Tough medicine, as she described it, and “stabilization” — which is “kind of my theme” — won’t make a great many hearts go pit-a-pat. But Yee hopes that straight talk and her distinct lack of ornamentation will count for something with California voters.
“The climate now is that people are very drawn by the performative approaches,” she said. “However, I think that will change. I want to give [voters] credit, because I do think they are very discerning when they’re ready to mark their ballot.”
The coming weeks will test that premise. And Yee is staying put.
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