The Brief

Today is Día de los Muertos. It’s a time when people celebrate the lives of those who've passed on and remember family members, close friends, pets and even strangers.

The holiday holds a special place for many people as a way to grieve those who have died and keep their memory alive. People usually celebrate with an ofrenda that has photos of their loved ones, their favorite meals, marigolds, pan de muerto, sugar skulls and other items that have meaning to those being remembered.

In celebration of the holiday, LAist asked readers: What is a memory of a loved one you would like to share for Día de los Muertos? We heard from people across Southern California about those favorite moments, and this digital ofrenda is meant to highlight those memories.

Remembering loved ones

Joanne Pineda of Monterey Park has made a tradition of celebrating Día de los Muertos with her family. She said she’ll always remember the time when her dad asked her mom to dance to Neil Young’s “Harvest Moon” in the living room.

“Thinking about it now really brings me tears because it just brought them so much joy. It brought them close together,” Pineda said. “For me to be there, to see that, how special it was to them I just think about it all the time.”

Joanne Pineda's parent's photo sits on an ofrenda to remember their lives.

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Courtesy of Joanne Pineda

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Joanne Pineda currently has an ofrenda in her home where she has photos of her parents, family members and a pet who have since passed away.

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Courtesy of Joanne Pineda

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She currently has her own ofrenda where she has photos of her late parents, family members and a pet. She plays "Harvest Moon" for her parents every year on Día de los Muertos and hopes they’re still dancing.

Araceli Guillen remembers her father, Antonino Raúl Guillén Álvarez, who passed away earlier this year. “Papa te extranaremos mucho”

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Courtesy Araceli Guillen

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For Dia de los Muertos, Araceli Guillén-Tuerpe is remembering her father — Antonino Raúl Guillén Álvarez — who died earlier this year. Her father came from Mexico to the U.S. about 50 years ago and settled in the San Fernando Valley. He instilled in his children the need to get an education, but Guillén-Tuerpe said her father always filled her childhood with music. He played the guitar and violin and sang all the time, especially classic mariachi songs like “Cielito Lindo” by Pedro Infante.

“He was in a retirement music group, so he was playing music until the very end with his group,” said Guillén-Tuerpe.

One of her fondest memories of her father happened during the pandemic. She was celebrating her daughter’s 10th birthday over Zoom, but the distance didn't keep her father from making the day special when he hopped on the call and sang “Las Mañanitas".

Sheena Kadi said this November will be two years since her chosen mom — Lucille Ruibal Rivera — died. On Kadi’s ofrenda, there are photos of Lucille, souvenirs from their travels together, candles, her favorite bottle of tequila, a pair of sunglasses and a feather from a hat she wore often.

“All these feathers kept falling out of it. So everywhere she went where she wore it, she would leave a trail of feathers behind,” Kadi said.

Sheena Kadi says this was her chosen mom’s favorite photo.

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Courtesy Sheena Kadi

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Kadi met Lucille on Christmas Eve of 2018 after Kadi’s family had disowned her because she's queer. Kadi’s friend invited her to spend the holiday at their house. Lucille, her friend’s mother, asked Kadi why she was spending the holiday there, and not with her family. When Kadi explained what happened, Lucille immediately hugged her and said, “You are my daughter and if anyone has questions, they can come and talk to me.”

Kadi remembers Lucille as someone who was bold, a healthcare leader, a Chicana artist and a fierce advocate for her community, including the LGBTQ+ community.

“She used to say if you have a seat at the table, be sure to pull up a few more chairs and bring more folks with you,” Kadi said.

She wants Lucille to know that she’s still carrying the lessons she taught her.

“Honoring your ancestors isn’t just about blood family, but also chosen family,  I'm going to do everything that I can to continue to honor and remember her," Kadi added.

Mario Aguilera is remembering his mom, Amanda, this Dia de los Muertos.

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Courtesy of Mario Aguilera

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For Día de los Muertos, Mario Aguilera is remembering his mom, Amanda, who recently died. She came to Los Angeles in the 1980s from El Salvador and was a proud Angelino for more than 40 years.

Aguilera, who grew up in Boyle Heights, remembers his mom being a hard worker, having cleaned houses for more than 20 years. She’d frequently ride the bus to and from work all around the city, and he remembers going on bus rides with her — sometimes for work, sometimes to find things to do around town.

Aguilera said his mom taught him the importance of exploring, getting out of your comfort zone and discovering new places and communities.

“It’s one of my favorite memories I have of her,” he said.

Remembering loved pets

Mischa Armada is celebrating the life of her 9-year-old Frenchie, Butters, who died Oct. 16. Butters was her best friend, constant companion and dog son who traveled with her after she got him in the Philippines. A memory she has of Butters was when they visited Mexico City in 2022 during Día de los Muertos and dressed him up as a little taco to visit the Zócalo. He was the only dog in costume that day.

Mischa Armada and her nine and a half year old Frenchie spent months in Mexico City in 2022, and celebrated Día de los Muertos at the Zócalo.

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Courtesy Mischa Armada

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“As we were walking along the Zócalo, all we heard was ‘Mira! Hola perrito!’ and people were just taking photos,” Armada said. “He was loving every minute of that.”

Families approached asking if they could take pictures with Butters, or Mantequilla as he was called there. She said he smiled the whole time.

Amy Breyer is celebrating her cat, Dwayne "the cat" Johnson, this Día de los Muertos. She said Dwane was “very much a little person in a fur suit.” She said Dwayne, who died Oct. 17, would greet them with a "meow-moh" that she swears he was trying to imitate the sound of "hello" when he walked into a room.

Amy Breyer is remembering her cat, Dwayne "the cat" Johnson, who passed away on Oct. 17.

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Courtesy of Amy Breyer

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She said Dwayne would sit on a kitchen chair to keep them company while they ate lunch and stand on her laptop when he decided it was time for Breyer to stop working for the day.

“We feel privileged that we could give him the foundation to become his fully-realized little furry self,” said Bryer in an obit about Dwayne, “even though right now there’s a Dwayne-shaped hole in our hearts.”

Topline:

Why now: Making, Keeping, and Losing Friends author McCabe joined LAist’s AirTalk with Larry Mantle to share her friend-making advice with listeners, and we heard from listeners on how they make friends.

The local angle: With geography, jobs and traffic all making the act of “hanging out” a challenge, listeners shared their friend-catching tips.

Matt in Eagle Rock said, “It takes two people to make that friendship work; you have to put the effort into it. That is the harder part as you get older. I started in an adult dodgeball league, which I had never done in my life. Now I’ve been doing comedy, it's really about getting to know the people.”

Priyanka in Orange chimed in, "As I have grown older and moved from college in training for so-called adult life, it’s become harder to find friends that you find relatable and who are as invested in the friendship as you yourself are. The new thing I have discovered is Bumble for friends… and so far it's been a good experience.”

Sydney in Koreatown said, “Transitioning from a gay male to a transwoman, I have lost some friends from transitioning, but I have also gained some deeper friendships. It has been a profound and absolutely amazing experience finding common ground, and finding other gay males that support my transition, and finding other trans women that I have a deepening relationship with too.”

Raul in Long Beach also weighed in, saying, “You don't need social media. No matter what anyone says, it really is not necessary to meet new people. When you’re not on it, it motivates you to talk to people in person, it commits your attention to them face to face.”

Listen to the full segment to hear McCabe’s advice on finding and maintaining friends.

Laura Terry dreamed of having kids — a family she could call her own. But there was one challenge: She wasn't interested in dating, marriage, or partnering up.

So, she came up with an idea for an unusual present to give herself.

"For my 39th birthday, I bought a vial of donor sperm," says Terry, who lives in Nashville, Tenn., and works at a top management consulting firm.

She started the process of having a baby via in vitro fertilization, or IVF, soon after. This path hadn't occurred to her initially, even though she has a Ph.D. in cell and developmental biology. There just wasn't anyone in her orbit who had done it. Her epiphany came from a book in which the author described her own journey with IVF.

"I had never heard of being a single mom by choice before that," says Terry, who is now 44. "It was like a light bulb went off."

That light bulb is going off for a lot of single women. Today, 44% of women in America are unpartnered; finding someone and settling down has become less of a priority when they're in their 20s or even 30s. And when some of them are ready to have kids, they aren't letting singlehood deter them.

Who gets to be a parent is being reshaped by increased access to IVF

The nation's first IVF baby was born in 1981, when the process was such a novelty that she was referred to as a "test tube baby." Since then, its use has surged in the United States, and today, IVF accounts for almost 100,000 births each year. That's up 50% from 10 years ago.

With IVF, which accounts for around 2% of births in America, a woman's eggs are retrieved from her body and fertilized with sperm in a lab. The resulting embryo is then implanted in her uterus, with the hope it will lead to a pregnancy.

This process has opened the door for many people who couldn't otherwise conceive children and reshaped who gets to be a parent, including more LGBTQ+ couples.

It has also become a big driver in the number of older single mothers in the U.S. at a time when the country's overall birth rate is declining. The number of unmarried women in their 40s who are having babies has grown by 250% in the last 30 years, according to data from the government. A portion of these women have partners, but many don't.

There are many reasons for this rise, says Rosanna Hertz, author of the book Single By Chance, Mothers by Choice. Increasingly, she says, young women are pursuing higher education, focusing on their careers, or fulfilling personal goals such as traveling around the world or buying homes.

And when they're ready to partner up in their mid-30s, "there's no one to settle down with," says Hertz, a sociologist with a focus on gender and family at Wellesley College. "So, am I going to spend my time waiting for somebody to come along?"

Hertz says her research shows most women who want a family would rather do it with a partner. For them, IVF is Plan B. But as their reproductive windows narrow with age, some decide to move forward by themselves.

A framed photo of Laura Terry with her mother, Jo, holding baby Eleanor.

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Jessica Ingram

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Becoming a mother is a marker of adulthood for them, Hertz says.

"There is a sense that I'm now ready to do something that is selfless, that involves the care and nurture of another human being and be part of a broader community," she says. "What a child does is tie you into a community."

Do I really want to have a baby? How do I choose a donor?

Terry saw that care and community in her own sister's family, when it drew her to Nashville to spend time with her nephews.

Once she knew she wanted to be a mom, she started mapping out her path through the language she understood, which is spreadsheets and PowerPoints.

"I made a decision tree," she says.

The root of that tree was a fundamental question: Did she really want a child? It branched from there to examine how she would become a mother and which path would give her the best chance of having a baby. It led her to IVF.

Soon enough, she was faced with another decision: choosing a sperm donor. Faced with an array of choices, she resorted to another spreadsheet "that was like 30 rows long and 30 columns wide."

In it, she started by listing factors like race, height, ethnicity and education. Then she narrowed it down to a few that really mattered to her: "I cared about some physical attributes to look like me. And I cared about family health history."

Terry was extremely lucky with her IVF process: She got pregnant on her first try. She gave birth to Eleanor in 2021 and Margaret came two years later.

"I should be quite grateful for what my process was," Terry says. "The results were beyond what you statistically expect."

Terry actively tries to find ways to engage her kids. Sometimes she buys a "decoy cucumber" so that when she's prepping dinner, 4-year-old Eleanor can peel it and feel helpful. Terry says, "It's a great use of 75 cents for an extra cucumber."

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She's right: The odds of conceiving a child with just one try of IVF are below 50% after a woman turns 35. And the chances drop rapidly each year after that. Many women try multiple cycles of IVF with no guarantee that they'll get pregnant.

Pregnancies at an older age can also carry health risks for both mom and child, with a high chance of miscarriage. All of this can take a huge physical and emotional toll.

Women with higher education are the top users of IVF

When Kate Snyder, who lives in northern New Jersey, was ready to have a kid, she looked for the right guy. "And, you know," she says, "it didn't happen."

Snyder was already in her 40s when she started thinking of IVF.

Kate Snyder and her 2-year-old daughter get ready for day care at their home in northern New Jersey. An interior designer and artist, Snyder made the decision to undergo IVF when she was in her 40s.

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Thalia Juarez

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"Once I came to terms with the fact that the father of my child doesn't have to be the person I end up with, and you separate the two, it's very freeing," she says. "And it just took the pressure off."

Now 48, she is the mother of a 2-year-old daughter, who loves to talk and fills their home with chatter. "She comes home from day care with gossip," says Snyder, who is an interior designer and artist. "She's telling me who pooped their pants and how the teacher had a lollipop today and this person got out of her cot."

Snyder says Google, her former employer, covered a small portion of the cost of freezing her eggs. But she paid for the IVF process herself.

Each time a woman tries to get pregnant via IVF, the cost can range from $15,000 to over $30,000. It's why IVF is out of reach for many.

Snyder wasn't prepared in her mid-40s for the amount of carrying her baby needed in the first two years, whether it was up and down the stairs or getting her in and out of the car.

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Thalia Juarez

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It's gotten the attention of President Trump. In October, he announced proposals to help reduce the cost of the drugs necessary for IVF. He also encouraged employers to offer broader infertility coverage directly to workers.

Some people go into debt, while others like Snyder use up their savings. Some women, like Terry, have theirs covered by insurance. Even that is not common — only 1 in 4 companies with more than 200 employees pays for a part of the process.

Women with higher education — especially master's degrees, doctorates or professional degrees — are more likely to use IVF than those with less education, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

These women, on average, have higher incomes. All that gives them the agency to start and support their own family.

"My knees hurt"

Both Terry and Snyder were financially comfortable enough to step off the career treadmill and create time and space for their new families. Snyder now works four days a week. Terry took a pay cut for a different role that was less intense — it allowed her to work from home and requires less travel. Neither has qualms about it.

"It's so physical being a mom. I don't think I expected that," says Snyder.

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Thalia Juarez

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Still, parenting in your 40s is hard.

"It's so physical being a mom. I don't think I expected that," says Snyder, thinking back to her first two years of motherhood and carrying her daughter up and down the stairs or getting her in and out the car. "Motherhood in your 40s, you know, my knees hurt and there are things that are starting to fall apart."

For Terry, one of the hardest parts of being a single mom is not being able to take a break. "If I'm tired or had a rough day at work or I'm frustrated, I'm feeling overwhelmed and I want to step away from my kids, I often can't," she says. "I have to meet their needs first and meet my needs later. And that's hard."

And then there is the weight of decision-making. She discusses her choices with her friends and family, "but ultimately all of that rests on me and that feels really heavy," she says.

Saturday mornings are music class days. Being silly with her kids has helped Terry loosen up and relate to them in a different way. They sing all the time. Her kids make up nursery rhymes on their way to day care or bath time or even while brushing their teeth.

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Jessica Ingram

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"Was he sorry I didn't have a husband?"

Even though there are more families like Terry's and Snyder's today, they're still rare. And society hasn't quite caught up with them.

Like when Terry moved to her new home in Nashville, she introduced herself and the girls to a neighbor, who asked what her husband did for work. Terry explained that they were a "mom and kids family" with two cats. The response took her aback.

"He said, 'Oh, I'm so sorry,'" she recalls. "Was he sorry I didn't have a husband? I still don't know to this day. But there is very much like a moment of feeling other and different — and that's often an uncomfortable feeling."

Terry worries about how her daughters will handle such questions. She prepares her oldest child by role-playing with her. But even then, sometimes it doesn't quite play out the way they've practiced.

Recently, she recalls, one of her daughter's classmates said, "'Hey, Eleanor, is that your mom?' And she said, 'Yes.' And they said, 'Well, where's your dad?' And Eleanor just froze in that moment."

But more often than not, the tenderness of motherhood triumphs over such unsettling interactions. Terry treasures the sweet moments she shares with her kids, like when they climb onto her bed in the morning to wake her or when they sit next to each other on the couch to read before bedtime.

"I love moments where they say, 'Mama, I need a snuggle.' Just holding them for a minute or two and seeing how that calms them is really, really powerful."
Copyright 2026 NPR

Terry reads to her daughters as they snuggle with her on the couch.

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Jessica Ingram for NPR

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Over his nearly 50-year career, Burbank-based attorney Dennis Block has built a reputation as a fierce advocate for Southern California landlords seeking to evict their tenants.

But disciplinary charges filed against him last month by the California State Bar raise questions about his treatment of clients.

Block faces charges involving a series of clients over a span of years. According to the 10 counts against him, Block allegedly collected payments wrongly described as “non-refundable,” failed to account for his fees and didn’t return a client’s property in a timely manner following termination of his employment.

In one case, Block allegedly failed to pay court sanctions on time. In another, he allegedly created a conflict of interest by representing both a tenant and her landlord.

When LAist asked Block how he responded to the charges, he told us to reach out to his defense attorney Erin Joyce. In a statement, Joyce said, “While we cannot comment on the specifics of the case, we believe the matter will be resolved in Mr. Block’s favor prior to trial at the settlement conference.”

The ultimate penalty in California State Bar Court is disbarment, which would prevent Block from continuing to practice law. Lesser punishments could involve a brief suspension or an order to complete an ethics exam.

Should fees have been ‘non-refundable’?

This isn’t the first time Block has faced repercussions for alleged ethical lapses in recent years.

In 2023, LAist reported on a filing Block’s firm submitted in an eviction case that contained multiple references to fake case law. Legal experts told us the filing, which led to court sanctions, was likely produced through misuse of AI.

Legal ethics experts said the new charges against Block are serious.

“The worst thing a lawyer can do is steal a client's money,” said Scott Cummings, a law professor at UCLA. “This is effectively what the bar is saying Mr. Block has done here in roughly half a dozen cases.”

Many counts involve Block allegedly charging up-front fees described by his firm as “non-refundable.” Bar rules state such fees must constitute a “true retainer,” meaning money paid to reserve an attorney’s availability for a specific case or period of time.

LAist previously reported that former clients have complained about poor communication and a lack of availability from Block and his associates.

Richard Zitrin, an emeritus lecturer with UC Law San Francisco, said the rules may sound esoteric, but the bar takes violations seriously.

“When you get right down to what's going on under the surface, it looks like the accusations are that this guy could not do the work for these various clients,” Zitrin said. “If it's one time, it could just be an honest mistake. But if he's doing it repeatedly, serially, of course that's of more concern.”

Representing both sides?

In one case, Block’s firm is accused of taking on a tenant who was in a dispute with her roommate. A few months later, while still representing the tenant, Block’s firm allegedly took on the tenant’s landlord. Block’s firm then sent a letter threatening to evict his own client, according to the charges.

“Lawyers cannot represent opposite sides of a particular case because they owe their duty of loyalty and confidentiality to each client,” said Laurie Levenson, a law professor at Loyola Law School. “It's very likely that one side or the other will feel that the lawyer sold out to the other client.”

Despite the severity and the number of allegations, UCLA’s Cummings said Block’s disciplinary record — which shows no infractions so far — could help him avoid disbarment.

“Suspension seems like — if these facts were all proven to be true — definitely an appropriate sanction in this particular case,” Cummings said.

It’s not yet clear what the charges could mean for Block’s firm, which prides itself on handling a high volume of cases at any given time. Block once reportedly described himself as “a man who has evicted more tenants than any other human being on the planet Earth.”

A status conference in Block’s case is set for Feb. 9.