Lifestyle
Jeanette Marantos, L.A. Times plants reporter, dies at 70
Jeanette Marantos, a stalwart Features reporter for the Los Angeles Times, died Saturday following an emergency heart issue. She was 70.
Marantos was key to the success of The Times’ plants coverage, making waterwise native plants a cornerstone of her reporting as drought and climate change worsened in California. She spotlighted people turning their yards into native plant oases and beautifying public spaces. She also wrote about people saving native flora and fauna, from mountain lions in need of a freeway crossing to endangered butterflies and tiny native bees. Her last assignment Friday was covering the California Native Plant Society’s conference in Riverside.
“She was the most loving person I ever met, probably to a fault in some cases. If she knew you and you were a part of her life, she was fiercely loyal always,” said her son, Sascha Smith.
His brother, Dimitri Smith, echoed his sentiment, recalling when he was in school that his mother would offer rides home to other students when they didn’t have one. “Above all else, she was genuinely the most caring person I’ve ever met in my life,” Dimitri Smith said.
Marantos, who was born on March 13, 1955, grew up in Riverside and remembered her parents doting on their 3,000-square-foot lawn. As California’s water crisis worsened, recalling the constant swish of sprinklers throughout her childhood piqued her interest in native plants.
“That was the California landscape of my youth. In retrospect, it feels like a pipe dream, given the reality of this region’s limited water and propensity for drought … a lovely memory that is no longer sustainable today,” she wrote.
Marantos also covered the effects of last year’s L.A. County wildfires on soil and gardens, the fate of Altadena’s Christmas Tree Lane after the Eaton fire, the construction of the Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing, a project that kicked off with a hyperlocal nursery, how L.A. gardeners were reacting to immigration raids, and the rise of human composting. Known formally as natural organic reduction, Marantos’ remains will undergo this process to become soil, her sons said.
Jeanette Marantos appears at the L.A. Times Plants booth at the paper’s Festival of Books on April 21, 2024.
(Maryanne Pittman)
In her role at work, she wrote the beloved L.A. Times Plants newsletter, her latest focusing on the resiliency of plants in burn areas. She also launched the popular L.A. Times Plants booth at the paper’s Festival of Books, working with the Theodore Payne Foundation, a nonprofit education center and nursery focused on native plants, and the California Native Plant Society to educate visitors about native plants. She drove the initiative to give away sunflower seed packets at last year’s booth because the sturdy plants are known to extract lead, an idea that came to her as she tested contaminated soil in burn zones.
She “was a one-of-a-kind voice for plants and the people who care about them. Through her writing, she imbued others with her infectious enthusiasm for the natural world — a gift to all of us that will continue to resonate,” according to a statement from the Theodore Payne Foundation. “Her visits to the nursery, her thoughtful conversations, and her wholehearted engagement brought laughter and insight into every interaction.”
Marantos was a dedicated reporter — she’d drive 60 miles to get an answer when no one was picking up the phone — but also devoted to her family. She cared for her husband, Steven B. Smith, who was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 2011 and died in 2021, providing readers with tips from their experiences. She spoke often of her sons and grandchildren and her dogs. She opened her December Plants newsletter, about a mother-son duo’s seed bomb project, by sharing that she had recently welcomed another “perfect” granddaughter.
“Plus I got to listen to my other perfect granddaughter read her first book and help her plant her first sunflower,” she wrote.
Sascha Smith recalled one of the last things Marantos said before going into emergency surgery Friday was sorry to his daughter Naomi, 6, for missing her birthday Sunday.
Gardens full of buckwheat, sage, vegetables, roses and treasured sweet peas surround her Ventura home. Her father, an Air Force veteran and son of Greek immigrants, introduced her to “the miracle of seeds” and to the delicious perfume of sweet peas. She remembered trailing behind her grandmother cutting roses in her garden, lugging bucketfuls of flowers and inhaling the sweetness. She added native plants to her garden because yes, they helped save water, butterflies and bees, but also because she loved their fragrance.
“These lean, scrappy plants are rarely as showy as their ornamental cousins, but when it comes to fragrance, they win every award, hands down,” she wrote.
It wasn’t just aesthetics and aroma that inspired Marantos to garden. It was the acts of digging, weeding, watching something grow and sharing the abundance with others. “On my worst days, my garden was a reason to get out of bed in the morning, and the one thing that made me smile,” she wrote.
Jeanette Marantos appears on “Los Angeles Times Today” in June 2024 with host Lisa McRee.
(L.A. Times Today)
Marantos tended to her garden like she tended to her friends. She often brought her friends along on reporting trips, from hiking up Los Angeles’ steepest staircases and visiting wildflower viewing areas to convincing one who flew in to Los Angeles from Washington state to spend a weekend volunteering at The Times’ Plants booth at the Festival of Books.
Marantos lived in central Washington for more than 20 years, working as a reporter at the Wenatchee World Newspaper and as a teacher at Wenatchee High School. She also worked for a program focused on getting at-risk middle school youth into college. “So many students … the trajectory of their lives is very different because she believed in them,” Dimitri Smith said.
Working as a community volunteer, she was also integral in developing a sculpture garden in downtown Wenatchee, Dimitri Smith said. “Growing up, I didn’t know how special that was. I didn’t know how unique that was. She wanted to be engaged in the community and make a difference always,” he said.
Marantos wrote personal finance stories for The Times from 1999 to 2002. She moved from Washington back to Southern California in her 50s to restart her journalism career, at one point interning with KPCC, now known as LAist, Dimitri Smith said. In 2015, she returned to The Times to write for the Homicide Report. A year later she started contributing to the Saturday section’s gardening coverage, which she would work on full time in 2020 when it relaunched as L.A. Times Plants. She described the two disparate beats as a way of staying balanced, her yin and yang.
Jeanette Marantos, shown around 1975, tries to grow her first garden.
(Steven B. Smith)
“Going from homicide to gardening might seem unusual, or maybe even a step away from the action. But not for Jeanette. First off, she personally loved gardening. … So the assignment was kinda like telling a kid to cover the candy beat,” said Rene Lynch, a former Times editor who hired Marantos on the plants beat. “But also, Jeanette was a true journalist, which means she had an innate curiosity about everything.”
Learning to garden took dedication. Marantos described her first attempt in her 20s as disastrous; her tomato plants grew more leaves than fruit, her sunflowers were sad, not hearty. She thought of her explainers on various plant topics as her ongoing education.
“Our family is completely grief-stricken and shocked over her loss. We’re going to have a very, very difficult time living without her,” said her brother, Tom Marantos.
She is survived by her son Sascha Smith and his daughter Naomi Smith; son Dimitri Smith, his wife Molly Smith and their daughter Charlie Smith; her brother Tom Marantos and his partner Rafael Lopez; her sisters Lisa and Alexis Marantos; and her best friends, who were like family, Leslie Marshall and Theresa Samuelsen.
The Late Show with Stephen Colbert on Monday May 18, 2026.
Scott Kowalchyk/CBS Broadcasting Inc.
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Scott Kowalchyk/CBS Broadcasting Inc.
The Late Show With Stephen Colbert comes to an end this week amid a lot of changes in the business and the country. Some of the sources of tension include the economics of late night, the approaching merger of Paramount and Warner Brothers, and President Donald Trump’s constant criticism of late-night hosts. But for Colbert’s fans, it’s the end of a friendly, funny, candid show. So we’re talking about the legacy of Stephen Colbert in late night.
Kars4Kids advertisements, like this TV commercial on a hot-pink set, feature children turning the charity’s phone number into a catchy jingle. But they do not disclose that most of the proceeds go to a Jewish nonprofit that supports programming for young adults.
Kars4Kids/Screenshot by NPR
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Kars4Kids/Screenshot by NPR
The “Kars4Kids” jingle — with its chipper melody and high-pitched, pre-tween singers — has been wedged firmly in many Americans’ heads for two decades. But it may soon go off the air in California after a judge banned it for being “deceptive.”
Judge Gassia Apkarian of the Orange County Superior Court ruled earlier this month that the ad violates California’s laws against unfair competition and false advertising because it does not disclose Kars4Kids’ religious affiliation.
The case has put the jingle — and the charity behind it — in the headlines. And it inspired us to check in on some other nostalgic favorites (more on that below).
The Kars4Kids case, explained
Kars4Kids says it gives most of its proceeds from used-car donations to Oorah, an Orthodox Jewish nonprofit based in New Jersey that provides opportunities like summer camps, adult matchmaking services and trips to Israel.
Kars4Kids makes the connection to its “sister nonprofit” clear on its website, though not in its infamous jingle: “1-877-Kars4Kids / K-A-R-S Kars for Kids / 1-877-Kars4Kids / Donate your car today.”
That omission prompted California resident Bruce Puterbaugh to sue Oorah in 2021.
According to the judge’s order, Puterbaugh testified that he donated a 2001 Volvo station wagon after hearing the Kars4Kids advertisement “over and over,” believing the money would benefit California kids in need. Puterbaugh, a self-described “not a computer person” in his 70s, said he never visited the charity’s website and only learned the truth from a casual conversation with his Lake County neighbor after the car was picked up.
“He testified that he felt ‘taken advantage of’ upon discovering — only after the donation — that the funds did not stay in California but supported a specific religious mission in the Northeast,” Apkarian wrote.
The neighbor, Neal Roberts, is a lawyer who went on to represent him in the case. Roberts told NPR that the ad — which has aired on the radio since the turn of the millennium and on TV since 2014 — is ubiquitous in California. But he said Apkarian, the judge in the case, doesn’t watch TV and hadn’t heard the jingle until it was played at the four-day trial in November.
“She heard it the first time, and then she heard it the second time, and then the rule in the court was, ‘Do not play that jingle again,’” he said with a laugh. “So I thought that gave us some idea that we might have a chance.”
According to the judge’s order, Kars4Kids’ Chief Operating Officer Esti Landau confirmed at trial that the charity’s primary function is not helping economically disadvantaged children but “Jewish kids and families throughout their lives.” She said the charity has “no functional programs in California beyond a ‘backpack giveaway’ characterized as a branding exercise,” the judge wrote.
Landau confirmed on the stand that in 2022 — among other expenditures — Oorah transferred $16,500,000 to North Africa and the Middle East, and spent $16.5 million to purchase a building in Israel. She testified that while the Kars4Kids ad features kids ages 8 to 10, the programs Oorah funds “often target young adults (17-18) and matchmaking as well as Jewish families.” And she conceded that a donor would “have to go to the website” for that information.
Neither Kars4Kids nor Oorah responded to NPR’s requests for comment. But in a lengthy statement on its website, Kars4Kids said the judge mischaracterized its work and its testimony at trial.
“Kars4Kids’ ads have one purpose: to remind listeners that Kars4Kids offers a quick and easy way to dispose of an unused vehicle,” it wrote. “The ads are targeted to vehicle owners, not specifically to people considering donating to charity.”
The charity said “helping children often means engaging parents and families as well,” and stressed that its mission and religious affiliation are prominently stated on its website.
But the judge ultimately sided with Puterbaugh, writing that “a reasonable consumer is not required to be ‘computer savvy.’” She gave the charity 30 days to stop airing the ad in California unless it is updated to include an “audible disclosure of its religious affiliation and the geographic location of its primary beneficiaries and the age of the beneficiaries.”
The judge also ordered the charity to pay Puterbaugh $250, the value of the car he donated, though acknowledged that “money cannot ‘un-donate’ a car or restore the donor’s belief that they were helping a local, needy child.”
Kars4Kids says on its website that it plans to appeal the ruling, which it said is “deeply flawed, ignores and misrepresents the facts that were presented at trial, and misapplies the law.”
The charity also called the case as “a lawyer-driven attempt to siphon off charitable funds for their own gain.” Roberts dismissed that accusation, saying the only money his client stands to gain is the $250 for the car and lawyers’ fees. The bigger win, he said, is putting Kar4Kids — and potentially other charities nationwide — on notice about the consequences of false advertising.
“I think anyone who knows the facts would think that there was wool being pulled over people’s eyes,” Roberts said.
Where are they now?
J.G. Wentworth’s catchy “Viking Opera” commercial, featuring elaborately costumed, structured settlement-winning opera singers in need of cash, has been airing on and off since 2008.
J.G. Wentworth/Screenshot by NPR
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J.G. Wentworth/Screenshot by NPR
This story sent us down a head-bopping rabbit hole of nostalgic jingles, confirming they never truly leave the depths of your brain. And it turns out, some of them are — in a sense — new again.
Remember Zoo Pals, the early-aughts, dipping sauce-friendly paper plates shaped like animals (pig, bee, frog, duck) that, per their peppy theme song, “make eating fun!”? Hefty discontinued the onetime birthday-party staple in 2014, but brought the plates back in 2023 — and has also introduced disposable cups and plastic bags in the years since. No word yet on whether the commercial might make a comeback too.
Folgers, the coffee brand, has had people humming “The best part of wakin’ up / is Folgers in your cup” since the cozy jingle first aired in 1984. Its various iterations have managed to hold viewers’ attention in the years since (the 2009 sibling version inspired a slew of parodies and fan fiction). In 2021, public performance royalties for the song — which is actually titled “Real Snowy Morning” — were auctioned off online. The winning bidder, identified as “Josh C.,” paid $90,500.
And earlier this year, the brand released remixed versions of the ad, fusing the original jingle with several popular wake-up songs spanning genres and generations (including the Everly Brothers’ “Wake Up Little Susie” and “Bring Me to Life” by Evanescence).
Just this week, comedian John Oliver parodied JG Wentworth’s Viking opera (“877-cash-now”) jingle for an episode examining the structured settlement factoring industry. Oliver’s version, warning people to be skeptical of such companies, features stars like singer Megan Hilty, actor Victor Garber and Larry David, in a nod to the original earworm’s prominent cameo in the final season of Curb Your Enthusiasm.
Sometimes a jingle outlives the very thing it’s advertising. Consider: “I’m a Toys R Us Kid,” the toy store ditty belted enthusiastically by generations of trike-riding kiddos since the 1980s. The franchise shuttered due to bankruptcy in 2018, though it has since been partially revived through a partnership with Macy’s. The jingle has staying power — much to the delight of prolific thriller author James Patterson, who helped write the lyrics in his early career in advertising.
“That’s a big moment in my life,” Patterson said when asked about it in a 2024 appearance on Live with Kelly and Mark. “That’s a fun one, and kids obviously loved it. And we do remember it, which is great.”
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