11/15/04

LC041115

Val Zavala>> Tonight on Life and Times --

You can't park there. A city taskforce is out to catch cheaters
who pull into handicapped spaces.

Jerome Holmes>> We've had people from all walks and they always
have an excuse. They always have an excuse.

Val>> And then, from roses to redevelopment. The history of
Pasadena in photographs taken from identical locations, but a
lifetime apart.

Those stories and more straight ahead on tonight's Life and
Times.

Life and Times is made possible through the generous support of
the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality
of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of
medicine, health, science and education.

And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg.

Val>> We're about to turn our cameras on some cheaters, able-
bodied people who park in those handicapped spaces, and the city
of Los Angeles is out to catch them. Philip Bruce went along
with a special taskforce who looks for individuals who misuse
those familiar blue handicapped placards. He saw firsthand just
how tough it can be to crack down on the lawbreakers.

Philip Bruce>> They're two guys you don't want to meet if you
plan to cheat and you never know where they're going to be.
Jerome Holmes and Ernest Dunton have a couple of likely targets
in view, so they watch and they wait.

Jerome Holmes>> You have to make sure that we're in pairs just
in case we get somebody who comes back and they become very
angry and, you know, two is better than one.

Philip Bruce>> Anger is just one of the things they might
encounter when they bust a driver for abusing handicapped
parking. Here in Los Angeles's flower district, they've got
their eye on a van that looks suspicious.

Ernest Dunton>> We're looking for the operator of the vehicle
to return. The owner of the placard is a male born in 1976, so
if a female enters the vehicle by herself, we will approach her
and identify ourselves.

Philip Bruce>> But while they're waiting, Holmes spots
something else that doesn't look right, a young, seemingly
healthy man getting into a car parked in a handicapped space.
The only trick is getting there in time to catch the violator
red-handed.

Ernest Dunton>> "I seen him. I knew him before. In the van,
yeah."

Philip Bruce>> It's just another day in the neighborhood for
Los Angeles's small but agile disabled placard taskforce.
They're job? To ruin your day if you're cheating in a
handicapped parking space.

Jerome Holmes>> "Roger. Repeat the name again."

Philip Bruce>> The flower district is a hot spot for cheaters
because it draws people from all over. A handicapped placard
allows them to park free all day long if they want just about
any place short of a fire zone. That means no feeding the meter
and no worries unless Holmes and Dunton run the placard and find
out it's a fake or belongs to someone who's not in the car, and
that's what happened here.

>> "It's my dad's. I just drove him to court this morning and
it happened to be in his car. It's not mine."

Philip Bruce>> It was all a mistake, this woman claimed. She'd
just dropped her father at the courthouse and didn't realize his
handicapped placard was hanging from the mirror when she stopped
to pick up some fresh flowers. But with the bouquet, she also
got a ticket and the officers seized her dad's placard.

>> I think it's disgusting only because now he doesn't have a
placard. I didn't even think to take the placard down just to
come over here for fifteen or twenty minutes.

Jerome Holmes>> You cannot use a placard unless the owner of
the placard is being transported. He's not here, so we're going
to confiscate the placard and issue the citations.

Philip Bruce>> How big a ticket is this?

Jerome Holmes>> It's about $375, somewhere around there.

Philip Bruce>> Each year, the city of Los Angeles writes about
thirty thousand citations for handicapped parking violations,
but that's clearly just a drop in the bucket compared to the
number of cheaters who are out there. And if we doubted that,
all it took was a cruise down Santee Street to make us true
believers.

Jerome Holmes>> That one's got a temporary, that one's got a
placard, there's a placard here, there's a placard there, that
person's got a placard, that person's got a placard.

Philip Bruce>> The 800 block of Santee has about three dozen
parking meters, but on this day at least two thirds of them have
been swallowed up by cars with handicapped placards. Could it
be that all these people are really impaired and need a free
space all day long? Doubtful, say Holmes and Dunton. They call
it a major scam and believe that most of the neighborhood is in
on it.

Ernest Dunton>> When word gets out that we're here, people call
people on cell phones and it's very hard to catch the
individuals.

Philip Bruce>> If a handicapped person needed to park here,
they could cruise the block all day long and never find a space.
Why is this street so bad? Why is Santee so bad?

Ernest Dunton>> I would say it's a lot of the merchants. Most
of these cars here, they're merchants. They can park, they
work, they don't have to put any money in the meter and they can
park all day because, looking at the vehicles, most of these are
the same cars every day.

Philip Bruce>> But your chance of catching these folks?

Ernest Dunton>> The chances of catching them are pretty slim
because they know how to get around the system.

Philip Bruce>> We asked around to see what some of the local
merchants and shop workers had to say about all of those
handicapped placards on their street, and we didn't get much.
What's with all the handicapped stickers here? Are all these
people handicapped that are parking on the streets?

>> I don't know. I have no idea about it because I park my car
in the parking. About these guys, I don't know.

>> Do you get fed up with this stuff?

>> (Laughter)

Philip Bruce>> But it's not just downtown Los Angeles. Ask
anyone who needs handicapped parking and they'll tell you that
cheaters often get there first and make life impossible for
those who are truly needy. This man told us he runs into the
problem just about every time he goes shopping.

>> Man, they misuse that like mad.

Philip Bruce>> We went with Holmes and Dunton to the Home Depot
on Figueroa. Lots of handicapped spaces in the parking lot
there and, according to the officers, usually lots of violators.
It surprises some that the officers come onto private property
to write tickets.

Ernest Dunton>> Can I see the placard, please?

Philip Bruce>> And it really surprised one man who got caught
in a handicapped space with his mother's placard.

Ernest Dunton>> Along with confiscating the placard, two
citations are going to be issued.

Philip Bruce>> But the real bombshell came when the man asked
how much the fines were.

Ernest Dunton>> The total is going to be $660.

Philip Bruce>> It took a while for that number to sink in.
$660. One fine for misusing the placard, the other for parking
in the handicapped space. But when it did, it hit the man like
a ton of bricks.

Ernest Dunton>> At times, we see individuals walk away from the
vehicle. When we approach the suspected violator, all of a
sudden the person has a very bad limp to try to fool us, but
we've done this enough not to fall for any of that.

Philip Bruce>> But among all the cheaters, the officers
occasionally encounter the real deal. One man in particular
sticks out for how he reacted after they stopped him for
questioning.

Jerome Holmes>> At that point, he became angry. He took his
right leg off and he began to shake it. "Is this disabled
enough for you?"

Philip Bruce>> There are nearly 400,000 valid placards in Los
Angeles, but authorities say there may be twice as many fakes on
the street too. Some people get them for a few bucks at flea
markets. Holmes and Dunton say they found these two impressive
forgeries inside vehicles from a major studio. The phony serial
numbers gave them away. Both were identical. You'd never see
that on two genuine placards.

Jerome Holmes>> We've had people from all walks and they always
have an excuse. They always have an excuse.

Val>> Los Angeles isn't the only place cracking down on parking
violators. Orange County is too. And in Glendale, the fine for
parking illegally in a handicapped spot is a whopping $1,200.

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Val>> He's emerged as the pre-eminent historian for the Golden
State. His books sweep across a century of California history
and Kevin Starr is also an impassioned spokesman on the forces
that have shaped California culture. Kevin Starr is also the
State Librarian. Saul Gonzalez talked with Starr about his
latest book which focuses on the 1990's and early twenty-first
century, a decade that includes immigration battles and an actor
turned governor.

Saul Gonzalez>> Kevin Starr, thank you for joining us on Life
and Times.

Kevin Starr>> Thank you, Saul, for having me here.

Saul Gonzalez>> How would you, broadly speaking, characterize
California's journey through history through the last years of
the twentieth century and the first years of the twenty-first?

Kevin Starr>> I would characterize the last thirteen years as a
time of extraordinary challenge and transformation. We are
undergoing a transformation that is leading us a different kind
of place altogether, a world community, a global culture, and a
state which, in terms of its governmental structures, is in the
process now of re-founding itself fiscally.

So I don't think that any other decade, other than obviously
watershed decades like the 1840's or early 1850's, but certainly
the decade and plus that we've just gone through and we're still
going through that process, is really giving us a new
California, the twenty-first century California. It's a time of
transformation.

Saul Gonzalez>> As we enter into the twenty-first century, what
ideals do we leave behind in the past in the twentieth century
and what do we take forward?

Kevin Starr>> I think the big ideal we're leaving behind in
California in the twentieth century is that California is in
some way a way of escaping reality. It's in some way of getting
the unearned increment or what Edmund Burt called "the unbought
grace of life", that California is the solution to all sorts of
problems.

I think we're getting a new kind of concept of California now.
California is a place of American struggle, world struggle, and
that California is not a place to lay back and to drop out. In
fact, it's a place to be on the edge, the cutting edge, the edge
of self-definition, of professional development. So I think the
state is becoming much more competitive, more gritty, more
internalizing of a tragic sense of life. It's becoming a more
mature culture.

Saul Gonzalez>> I wonder in a state this vast, so socially
fragmented with so many newcomers, do you think we have a common
sense of being Californian?

Kevin Starr>> I think today, given all that you've discussed,
the coming of new people, the multiple states of consciousness
that they represent, the languages, the traditions, the
religions, etc., we're struggling for a common sector in
California. We're struggling for a sense of the common good.
I'm very heartened by the revelations in census 2000 showing
that our under-eighteen Californians have achieved all sorts of
interconnections across racial, religious, ethnic lines and have
a growing sense of common identity that sees the differences as
part of the solution and not part of the problem.

Saul Gonzalez>> They do because, certainly in the 1990's, you
heard a lot about tribalism running amok in California, we're
becoming the new Yugoslavia. You think, what, that was too
bleak an assessment?

Kevin Starr>> No, I think we faced that gorgon in the face and
we resisted that temptation. We turned away. We didn't turn to
stone when we looked at it. We stayed human and we went on to
try and correct that.

Saul Gonzalez>> Of course, immigration has been a topic of much
concern in California over the last several years. The
controversy aside, I wonder if, speaking more widely and
historically, there's been a society that's been so transformed
so quickly by the arrival of newcomers?

Kevin Starr>> Well, I think California is on the cutting edge
of a larger -- in terms of immigration, California is on the
cutting edge of a larger American reality. This great nation of
ours between 1820 and 1920 took in one hundred million
immigrants, so immigration is in our DNA code as an American
people. In each case, newcomers who came to the east coast were
looked on skeptically, saying will they assimilate? Will they
be part of whatever this emergent American pattern is?

I think that California today is on the cutting edge of that
cycle of immigration which is reaching new intensity with the
reform of the immigration laws in the mid-1960's. California is
becoming Hispanic, California is becoming Asian, California is
becoming everything else. So I think that new experiment,
however, that Los Angeles and Southern California and California
is adding is that you don't have to surrender who you are when
you come here. You can graft onto the public culture in
dialogue with who you are.

Go to Ellis Island. You see those papers that they left behind.
I was a doctor in the old country. I was an architect in the
old country. I was an engineer in the old country. It's very
moving to see those papers because, in effect, they had to shed
that identity and, in many cases, go into -- the doctor had to
become an orderly in a hospital and the engineer had to become
maybe a brick carrier until they could re-earn their way in
American life. Today in California -- modern California because
of our global culture, because of the internet, because of
digital culture, because of our resident immigrant populations -
- you can come here and, if you're coping and if you're
functional, you can find your place rather soon because you're
needed. You're needed to do the work of California.

Saul Gonzalez>> Let's speak less about statewide issues and
look at the city where we sit here in Los Angeles. How has its
role changed in the greater California tale over the last ten or
fifteen years?

Kevin Starr>> Los Angeles is rising up now as the capital city,
the intersection of a digital technology and culture,
infotainment, the relationship between entertainment and the
formation of value, and an ecumenical experiment that a city can
simultaneously be American, thoroughly American, thoroughly
Californian, but also simultaneously be a great Mexican city, a
great Armenian city, a great Ethiopian city, a great Korean city
as well. That's the new kind of formula because it imposes
multiple levels of culture and we're getting used to handling
that now.

Saul Gonzalez>> Let's move away from grand historical trends to
a personality and that personality is Arnold Schwarzenegger. Do
you think, in the grand scheme of California history, that he's
an important figure?

Kevin Starr>> I think Arnold Schwarzenegger, if he continues to
function as governor the way he has, will go down as one of our
greatest governors, one of our two or three greatest governors.
Already he's been in office less than a year and he's more
important because he's our governor than his films. I think
Governor Schwarzenegger is an instinctive Progressive, with a
capital "P". Progressivism, which reshaped our government in
the early 1900's, is in the DNA code of public life in
California.

We have extremes of left and right in the state, but for all our
alleged wackiness and eccentricity, Californians have been, by
and large, centrist in their policies through most of the
nineteenth century and most of the twentieth century. We had
cross-filing up until the 1950's where a Republican could go
into a Democratic primary and vice versa. I think that
progressive center holds in this state. Now I'm not --

Saul Gonzalez>> -- and the governor understands that.

Kevin Starr>> He understands that and that's why he's sixty-
seven percent because he stays with that center.

Saul Gonzalez>> Let's move out of the past and away from
present concerns in looking ahead to what remains of the twenty-
first century. If we're to maintain a decent society in this
state, what challenge do we have to confront and to solve?

Kevin Starr>> I think we have to take our problems, we have to
put our finances in order, we have to manage our growth, we have
to ensure a good life for our future generations. All of our
practical avenues have to be enlivened by a sense of what a
precious gift California is, how privileged we are to live in
this community at this time under the protection of the American
Constitution and the Constitution of the State of California and
have this glorious place, this glorious heritage, this glorious
opportunity before us.

If we have that, we can argue, we can hammer out practical
decisions, etc., but the party of California embracing
Republicans, Democrats and Independents, the party of California
will be alive and well. When that sentiment is alive and well,
we'll come to solutions, sometimes brokered solutions where
there'll be losses and gains for different people. But we'll
come to California-wide solutions. California will become part
of the solution and not the problem.

Saul Gonzalez>> Kevin Starr, thank you so much for joining us
on Life and Times. It's been a pleasure talking to you.

Kevin Starr>> Thank you, Saul. It was a pleasure to be with
you again.

To send a comment or a question to our program, you can reach us
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Val>> They say the only constant is change and that's certainly
true of life in Southern California where the present often
disappears before we've had a good chance to take a look at it.
Well, now a photo exhibit at the Pasadena Museum of California
Art lets us take a good long look. They've put the past right
next to the present in an exhibit called "Cultivating Pasadena".

The Pasadena Museum of California Art is a young museum, only
two years old. Auto Club historian, Matt Roth, gave me a tour
of the exhibit which is a joint project of the Automobile Club
of Southern California and the Labyrinth Project at USC's
Annenberg Center for Communication. Okay, Matt, what are we
seeing here? This is one of the earliest pictures.

Matt Roth>> Yes. The before picture is the Ezra and Jean Carr
House. They were a well-to-do family in the Victorian period.
Mrs. Carr was one of the pioneer ornamental gardeners of the
region. She did a lot of experiments with native plants. It
eventually became the site of what is now the Norton Simon
Museum and that's the after picture, the garden of the Norton
Simon Museum.

[Film Clip]

Val>> Now this is a magnificent building. It's just beautiful.
What was it?

Matt Roth>> The Universalist Church. It's kind of a high
Victorian style. It was at the corner of Chestnut and Raymond
Streets. It's now a playground, a city playground, and I'm sure
that's a great use because kids need a place to play.

Val>> But some people would say what a loss. What happened?

Matt Roth>> Well, it is a loss architecturally. The church
moved. They went to a different location.

[Film Clip]

Val>> Now this is an example of landscaping. Pasadena went
through an incredible phase where all sorts of landscaping went
in.

Matt Roth>> Well, particularly along Millionaire's Row, as it
was called, along Orange Grove Boulevard. This actually shows
the garden behind the Augustus Busch Mansion. It was a vast
garden. It went all the way down to the arroyo. Acres and
acres and acres --

Val>> -- Busch, as in the brewing company.

Matt Roth>> Yes. Augustus Busch from Anheuser Busch. The area
was later subdivided. It's now a public street with private
residences and, obviously, it's overgrown quite a bit. We don't
know if the terracing is in there yet because we didn't, you
know, go bushwhacking, but we did find the site, thanks to a
local resident named Gary Coles who knows everything about Busch
Gardens.

Val>> Wesley Jessup is the Executive Director of the Pasadena
Museum of California Art.

Wesley Jessup>> I think people, when they see this exhibition,
are going to get an incredibly rich sense of the history of this
city, of Pasadena, which is one of the most established
historical cities in Southern California, and I think that
they'll take away with them a sense of what really does happen
over time, what happens to the land. You know, these
photographs are two photographs on a very long continuum. I
mean, we can have the show in another one hundred years and it
would tell a different story. I think it's a fabulous, fabulous
experience to see these things.

Val>> Now this is one of the most fascinating. Some people are
still around who remember Mt. Lowe.

Matt Roth>> Well, sure. It's part of the National Forest now.
It's protected land. This particular location is called Granite
Gate. Colonel Lowe, an entrepreneur who wanted to build a
resort on top of the mountain, put a trolley line up there in
the late nineteenth century actually. Pacific Electric
eventually acquired it and that's the period of this picture.
Morgan Yates, who works with me at the Auto Club archives,
contacted a volunteer who works with the fire service. He
showed him the picture and he said, "Oh, yeah. I know just
where that is."

He took Morgan and Rosemary Comella, the photographer, up there.
You know, it's protected land. You have to go through a locked
gate and then they had to drive for some time up the mountain
road. The photographer for all of these shots is Rosemary
Comella from the Annenberg Center, the Labyrinth Project at USC.
She's also a website designer who did the DVD installation of
this exhibit and, yes, she took all of these pictures including
climbing up mountains.

Wesley Jessup>> One of the things that happens in Southern
California, unfortunately, is that we do lose that sense of
history and this exhibition really captures it and cultivates
that idea.

Val>> Especially for people who haven't been here very long
because we also have a high turnover in residence.

Wesley Jessup>> That's right, that's right. People move
through quickly, so this is a great show for people who are from
Pasadena, but also from others outside of Pasadena to come and
really become familiar with this city.

Val>> Now this is a street in Pasadena everybody knows.
Colorado Boulevard, the route of the Rose Parade, and also one
time, what is that? A train going through?

Matt Roth>> Right. The historical photograph was taken in 1928
by the Auto Club engineer, Ernest East, who was documenting
dangerous traffic conditions and, where mainline railroads and
automobiles have to share the same space, it's pretty dangerous.
Of course, the rail right-of-way is still there. It's now the
Gold Line light rail transit system. It's just that it's been
put under the street.

Val>> Under there is the Gold Line?

Matt Roth>> Yes.

Val>> It's the same right-of-way as the railroad track used to
be?

Matt Roth>> Yes.

Val>> That's amazing.

Matt Roth>> This was a tough picture to take. Rosemary
Comella, the photographer, really wanted to get the right light
on it and we had to get a film permit from the city of Pasadena.

Val>> Close the street down?

Matt Roth>> Well, sort of. We had to close down the turn lane
and have the traffic diverted around us. I mean, it was a big
deal.

Val>> It looks so simple too (laughter).

Matt Roth>> We're happy the results are there.

Val>> That's great. Let's see what else.

[Film Clip]

Val>> Now here is something I had no idea ever existed. A dam?
The Devils Gate Dam?

Matt Roth>> The Devils Gate Dam. It's at the top of the
arroyo. It was built in the early 1920's as a flood control dam
to keep the runoff from the San Gabriels from flooding the
arroyo. As you can see, it's now filled up with debris; that
is, you know, rock and gravel and so forth that has flowed down
off the mountains, although people who know this kind of thing,
geologists, tell me that there is just as much water in there
now. It's just that it has saturated the solid material. The
dam is still there. It's still working.

Val>> Okay, but the water is not there much.

Matt Roth>> Well, it's just there saturating some solid
material.

Val>> That's a dramatic change.

[Film Clip]

Val>> Now this one shows dramatic change.

Matt Roth>> Another one of Pasadena's icons. Well, it's
recognizable in the contemporary view as Caltech, California
Institute of Technology.

Val>> Look at this.

Matt Roth>> Right. This is when it was Throop Institute in
1912.

Val>> You would have no idea that's Caltech today.

Matt Roth>> Well, right. It's been completely built over
through some amazing leadership by people like George Ellory
Hale established Caltech as arguably the leading scientific
research institution in the world.

Val>> Well, Matt Roth, thank you so much for this little tour
of Pasadena's past and present.

Matt Roth>> It's a pleasure.

Val>> The Auto Club has another similar exhibit in the works.
The next city they're going to is Riverside. And that's our
program. I'm Val Zavala. For everyone at Life and Times,
thanks for watching. We'll see you next time.

Life and Times was made possible through the generous support of
the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality
of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of
medicine, health, science and education.

And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg.

Val>> Next time on Life and Times --

He's a one-man detective unit on an unusual beat.

>> Art theft is one of the top four crimes worldwide. I
actually wanted to get away from the grimness of having to deal
with street crimes, violent crimes, and actually art sounded
like something that would be challenging.

Val>> That's next time on Life and Times.