The Brief

Artist Román O’Cadiz crouches down, dips his brush into freshly poured black paint, and adds the finishing strokes to the raised letters that spell out his grandfather's name.

He takes a step back and gazes at the finished mural, the painted words “Sergio O’Cadiz” gleaming in the sunlight.

The concrete relief mural in the entry plaza of Fremont Elementary School in Santa Ana was originally created by his grandfather, J. Sergio O’Cadiz Moctezuma.

In the last month, it has undergone a much-needed restoration led by the Santa Ana Community Artist(a) Coalition, a grassroots collaborative that works to promote and preserve public art through community-driven mural arts projects. The family of the late artist, who died in 2002, was also involved.

“It's cathartic,” said Román O’Cadiz. “It alleviates some of this frustration that my family has felt, and how his work hasn't been represented or appreciated in the way that we always felt it should.”

Decades ago, J. Sergio O’Cadiz Moctezuma was a prominent artist in Orange County, where he settled in the early 1960s after moving to the U.S. from Mexico City. O’Cadiz was instrumental in creating art for several of the county’s public buildings, including Cypress College, where an imposing brutalist concrete relief mural he made for the school’s library building still stands.

He created the Fremont Elementary mural in 1973, with the assistance of community members. The concrete mural spans two walls, set back from the street in Santa Ana’s Artesia Pilar Barrio, a historically Mexican American neighborhood just a few miles west from downtown.

The mural incorporates images like the sun, pyramids, and galleons, symbols that connote Mexico’s rich history. Over the years, neglect has taken its toll — there has been natural wear and tear, like UV damage and environmental degradation, and school district staff at one point changed the original color scheme of the stained concrete design. Still, O’Cadiz’s piece remained a timeless, powerful emblem of Santa Ana’s Mexican American community.

Peeling back the layers

Maria del Pilar O'Cadiz recalled the shock and dismay she felt upon seeking the extent of the damage to her father’s mural.

“It was tragic,” she told LAist. “These murals need to be conserved for our historical cultural patrimony, and it's a crime against the humanity of this community to destroy them. So this restoration is a realization of one of my lifelong dreams, and I'm full of joy for it — but it's unfortunate that we have to do it.”

Maria del Pilar O'Cadiz, the artist's daughter, visits the Fremont Elementary mural restoration site on June 9, 2023.

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The process of removing layers of saturated acrylic paint that were applied to the mural had to be done with care. It entails applying a special solution created by MuralColors, an L.A.-based business that produces art and architectural materials. In what is known as “delamination,” the solution was gradually applied to the piece in segments. Then a pressure washer was used to remove the paint without destroying the original art.

It’s a fraught but rewarding process, said Alicia Rojas, restoration project director and a founding member of the Santa Ana Community Artist(a) Coalition.

“This restoration carries a great responsibility and it’s important to us that we honor Sergio’s brush and vision," Rojas said. "It's a process that goes beyond the individual artists and parties involved — it's about our collective work, to uplift and amplify his art.”

Now, O’Cadiz’ intrinsic deep-relief patterns — rhythmic linear arabesques, abstract geometric designs, and Mondrian-like pops of primary colors — appear as ebullient as when the mural debuted 50 years ago.

The Fremont mural is one of two O’Cadiz pieces being restored at Santa Ana schools. An O’Cadiz mural at Monroe Elementary School is earmarked for restoration next. Santa Ana Unified School District officials say they recognize the district’s lapse in stewarding the murals over the years.

“Unfortunately, we have not always kept murals that had historical significance because we didn't understand,” said Robyn MacNair, art administrator for the school district. “We want to prevent that from happening again.”

A rich artistic legacy

Not all of J. Sergio O’Cadiz Moctezuma’s works have survived over the years, but he looms large in Orange County arts history.

“His work makes OC stare uncomfortably at what it never dreamed of when it came to its Mexicans: unapologetic. Proud. Talented. Successful,” wrote Los Angeles Times columnist and author Gustavo Arellano in an essay for a retrospective exhibit of the artist’s work and legacy at Cypress College in 2019. He quoted O’Cadiz from a Times article dating to the 1970s: ‘My idea of America,” the artist told the newspaper then, “is the right to be as Mexican as I want.’”

Roman O'Cadiz, the artist's grandson, sits among the products used to wash and revitalize the 1973 mural at Fremont Elementary in Santa Ana.

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O’Cadiz’s family shared recollections of the artist and his accomplishments with LAist.

Born in Mexico City in 1934, O’Cadiz attended the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) to study architecture, and along the way studied with legendary painter Diego Rivera.

He first established himself as an architectural designer, lending his talents to some of Mexico's landmark modernist construction projects and public works. According to his family these include the Museo Nacional de Antropología (Museum of Anthropology) in Chapultepec Park, on which he worked as part of the design team.

In 1961, O’Cadiz came to Orange County to work with renowned architect William Blurock, who is credited with designing hundreds of schools and colleges in California and around the world, along with other notable buildings. O’Cadiz joined Blurock’s firm as an architectural conceptual draftsman, his family said.

Orange County buildings that O’Cadiz contributed to include the Cypress College Library, home to one of his more famous concrete murals from 1967; the Santa Ana City Hall, home to a 1972 concrete relief mural; and Century High School in Santa Ana.

Though trained as a modernist, O’Cadiz introduced his expressive forms and diverse surfaces into the brutalist architecture of the era. His diverse body of work included paintings, drawings, graphic designs, sculptures and public murals.

Whitewashing history

But over the years, many of O’Cadiz’s works have been destroyed, most recently a well-known painted mural on Raitt Street in Santa Ana that had been deteriorating; after a solo artist tried to begin restoring it without permission, the property owner had it painted over in 2019.

In 2000, part of O’Cadiz’s Santa Ana City Hall relief mural was removed for a building renovation, his family said; sculptural fountains created for Fountain Valley's Civic Center in 1962 were eliminated and replaced with a prefab fountain.

A signature reading "Sergio O'Cadiz 73" is still visible on the mural at Fremont Elementary in Santa Ana.

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Another well-known loss was a 625-foot-long painted mural in Fountain Valley’s Colonia Juarez neighborhood, which O’Cadiz painted between 1974 and 1976. With the help of community members, the artist depicted the story of Colonia Juarez’s heritage and cultural history — images that ranged from the arrival of Mexican peasants in California at the time of the Mexican Revolution to a scene of police in riot gear dragging a Chicano youth to a patrol car.

That last scene, according to the family, cost him city financial support for the mural. O’Cadiz finished the mural with his own money, but couldn’t raise enough to seal it properly. It deteriorated over time, and the city destroyed and replaced the wall in 2001.

Rediscovering art that's 'like jazz'

Cypress College held its 2019 retrospective exhibition after completing a restoration of O’Cadiz’s monolithic Library Mural, outside what is now the Cypress College Complex building.

And as his Santa Ana school campus murals are being restored, local students have been learning about the artist.

In the weeks leading up to the restoration, the Santa Ana school district’s arts program and the artist coalition invited 20 SAUSD visual and performing arts high school students to learn about O’Cadiz.

Students attended a series of workshops, including a lecture from the artist’s daughter, Maria del Pilar O'Cadiz, who works as an associate program director in UCLA's engineering school. The students created their own art at Cal State Fullerton’s Grand Central Art Center, and took in a walking tour of remaining O’Cadiz murals in Santa Ana, along with other community murals.

Local Santa Ana artists work on restoring the O'Cadiz mural at Fremont Elementary.

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The restored Fremont Elementary mural will be officially unveiled Friday afternoon.

Meanwhile, the Santa Ana Community Artist(a) Coalition is getting ready for its next O’Cadiz project — the mural at Monroe Elementary, on which work starts next year. One of those working on the restoration will be multidisciplinary artist and coalition founding member Roger Eyes R. — a former Monroe student.

Eyes recalled the first time he saw O’Cadiz’s art as a child.

“I just remember walking up to the school and going, ‘What is that?'" he said. “I had never seen art like that, it just blew my mind. It was like jazz.”

Joseph Babbitt of Springfield, Mo. has a pretty good deal when it comes to health insurance. He works as a senior financial controller for West Plains Veterinary Supply, which employs about 50 people and distributes pet food, toys and vet supplies across the region.

Like about 157 million Americans, Babbitt gets insurance through his job. Unlike most Americans, his job has exceptionally generous benefits. "Our owners are very nice — they give all of our employees healthcare and they pay for it," he says. The company offers several different plan options and covers most or all of the monthly premium cost.

So why, even with free premiums, does it still feel like health costs are way too expensive? "Everybody talks about healthcare and how much it's costing them," says Babbitt. He explains that even without monthly premiums, a high deductible can be brutal — that's the amount the patient has to spend out-of-pocket before the insurance company starts paying for doctors visits and procedures, etc.

Now age 60, he remembers a time when it wasn't so bad. "Back in the '90s, our deductibles were $250 [or] $500 — now they're $5,000," he says. "That seems like a lot."

"We are the only country on our planet that forces people into bankruptcy because they get sick," he adds.

The cost of a new car, every year

Healthcare costs are rising fast in the U.S., and even workers with solid healthcare benefits through work are feeling it, according to an annual survey of nearly 2,000 employers about their health benefits. The report was published Thursday by KFF, a nonpartisan health research organization.

"The average health insurance premium for a family of four is now $28,000, which is just a ton of money," says Matthew Rae, associate director for the Health Care Marketplace Program at KFF. "It's basically the cost of a new car every year just to keep a family of four insured." Of that total for family premiums, workers pay about $7,000 per year on average and employers pay the rest.

A glimmer of positivity is that the costs for plans isn't growing as fast as it has in years past, he explains. "We're seeing a 5% increase in family health insurance premiums, which continues a period of modest growth," he says. That increase is roughly on par with worker wages and inflation.

However, "a 5% increase on a big number is still a lot of money," Rae points out. Plus, the growth for the portion of the premium costs that workers pay was 9%. "If this is the beginning of a shift of costs onto workers, that would be a big deal in terms of affordability," he says.

"We are asking people to chip in a lot of money," Rae adds. "Many people are committing a big chunk of their income to health insurance."

The uninsured rate is rising 

Another report published Thursday demonstrates the way these high costs affect people's health. The survey, conducted every two years by the Commonwealth Fund, a nonprofit foundation that supports independent research, is entitled "The State of Health Insurance Coverage in 2026."

Even for workers fortunate enough to have health benefits, "about 43% of them said that they didn't get healthcare because of cost over the past year, and about 31% reported that they had medical debt," says Sara Collins, lead author of the report.

Another key finding was that the overall uninsured rate rose in the last two years. Collins says that's significant but not surprising, because of federal policy decisions like letting extra federal subsidies for people enrolled in Affordable Care Act plans expire, and people losing Medicaid after the pandemic emergency ended.

Federal data shows millions of people have lost health coverage already from either Medicaid or the ACA marketplaces. When work requirements take effect next year, millions more people are projected to lose Medicaid.

"There is a, I think, a strong feeling across the country that something probably does need to be done to the situation that people are facing in their health and health insurance — both on the cost side and then also on these coverage losses," Collins says.

"We asked people whether the federal government has a responsibility to ensure that all Americans have coverage and nearly three quarters said yes to that — that included about 45% of Republicans, 93% of Democrats and 76% of independents."

Copyright 2026 NPR

Mike Obedoza’s Lumpia Smash Burger begins with the flavorful marinade his mother uses for making lumpia, a crispy Filipino spring roll. He folds it into a beef patty, then tops it with a fried lumpia wrapper, creamy avocado slices and fresh jalapeño.

For Obedoza, who grew up in Carson as the son of Filipino immigrants and now resides in Tustin, the burger is more than a winning recipe. “This is me on a plate,” he said.

Fresh off back-to-back Best Burger wins at the Old Towne Burger Fest in Orange County, Obedoza has landed a residency at Grand Central Market in downtown L.A. as Banger Lumpia.

He attributes his current success to the broader Filipino American food moment happening in Southern California, from Lord Maynard Llera of Kuya Lord winning Best Chef: California at the 2024 James Beard Awards to other Filipino food business upstarts' local success, including San & Wolves in Long Beach.

Mike Obedoza works the griddle, making Filipino-American Smashburger dreams come true.

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“I’m one component of a whole movement that’s happening right now,” he said.

His residency closes this weekend as part of Filipino American History Month, capping off a whirlwind couple of months Obedoza doesn’t take for granted, especially the love he's received from his own community.

“We get a lot of Filipinos that pass by us glowing. … They’re stoked that there’s some Filipino representation,” he said.

Building the burger

Before Banger Lumpia, Obedoza’s pop-up was called Banger, and he folded Filipino flavors like sisig into tacos. Once customers learned the food was Filipino, they kept asking for the classics. “Where’s the lumpia? Where’s the pancit?” he recalled.

Since lumpia filling is marinated ground meat, a burger felt like the natural next step. Obedoza took the marinade from his mother’s lumpia recipe (onions, carrots, soy sauce and fish sauce) and worked it into an all-beef smash patty.

Back-to-back wins: Obedoza’s Lumpia Smashburger took home Best Burger at the Old Towne Burger Fest in 2025 and 2026.

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Jalapeño and avocado add a California finish. “It’s like this perfect blend of being Filipino and Californian,” Obedoza said.

The idea has deep roots in Southern California. Obedoza points to Kogi, the Korean taco truck Roy Choi launched in L.A., which Choi said drew on a kind of local terroir. “I don’t see mustard plants and sheep grazing,” Choi said in a 2014 CNN segment with Anthony Bourdain. “I see barbed wire and telephone poles.”

“It’s a representation of the soil we were raised in," Obedoza said. “I think the Lumpia Smash burger is just my version of that.”

From skater to chef

Growing up in Carson, Obedoza found his creative outlet in rollerblading, competing and filming for sponsors. His favorite skater was Jon Julio, a Filipino American legend of the sport. “That was big for someone, a Filipino growing up in America,” Obedoza said. “I can’t think of anyone else at that time that was a representation of that.”

Obedoza studied hotel and restaurant management at Cal Poly Pomona, where a broken ankle from a skate competition pushed him to get serious about cooking. After graduating in 2007, he completed an accelerated program at the Culinary Institute of America in Greystone in St. Helena. Then, in 2008, he took a trip to the Philippines with his dad that reshaped how he saw himself.

From the skate park to the griddle, Banger Lumpia’s Mike Obedoza puts his whole self on the plate.

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“In the States, I’m Filipino. But when I go there, I’m American,” he said.

Back home, he cooked at hotels including Hyatt and Terranea Resort before moving into marketing and e-commerce. In 2022, he started serving tacos at skate parks under the name Banger. He went full-time in 2023 and has been popping up in L.A. and O.C. ever since.

That same cultural tension carries over into his food. While his Lumpia Smash burger has won praise, Obedoza says some Filipino customers pick apart the more traditional dishes on his menu: the lumpia isn’t made right, they say, the dipping sauce and adobo need more sugar, the adobo isn’t dark enough or has no bone.

“I guess I win on the burgers, but I’ll never win on being Filipino enough,” he said.

He said his cooking reflects his parents’ style and their home region of Central Luzon, north of Manila on the Philippines’ largest island. If it doesn’t match what someone grew up with, he says to get it from their own family.

Despite those differences, Obedoza says that lumpia is “the gateway drug to Filipino food” and hopes that his customers will feel emboldened to try the rest of the menu. He sees the Grand Central Market residency as a test run for an eventual brick-and-mortar. Whatever comes next, he credits one choice: “I went all in on being unique.”

Julia Feinberg feels like she’s living in a sinister version of Groundhog Day. For the second year in a row, California lawmakers have made it tougher for seniors and people with disabilities to qualify for state-funded health benefits.

Feinberg, 37, who has a degenerative neuromuscular disorder, said without Medi-Cal she would be confined to a nursing home rather than living and working as a therapist in Oakland.

“We keep having to have the same fight over and over and over again,” Feinberg said. She requires a power wheelchair and about 19 hours of caregiving each day, which Medi-Cal covers.

California is cutting Medi-Cal after a decade of expansion, part of sweeping federal and state cuts that experts estimate will kick more than 2.2 million Californians off coverage in the next four years, doubling the state’s uninsured rate.

The latest cut came in June, when state leaders approved a budget that will lower the asset limit for low-income seniors and people with disabilities to $21,000 to qualify for Medi-Cal, starting in July 2027. Feinberg, who has built up emergency savings, will have to spend about $10,000 to get under the cap.

In 2024, the state eliminated longstanding Medi-Cal asset limits, but since then lawmakers have chipped away at that policy. At the beginning of this year, state leaders reinstated an asset limit of $130,000, and the June budget lowered it further.

A primary residence and one vehicle are exempt from the new limit, but people 65 and older as well as those with disabilities cannot own a second home or car, and they can’t have more than $21,000 in savings accounts, certain retirement accounts, life insurance policies or even burial plots. They must still meet Medi-Cal income eligibility limits of about $1,800 a month for a single person.

Advocates say the rules unfairly target older people and those with disabilities.

“It’s really expensive to be disabled,” said Elizabette Guéçamburu, 44, who like Feinberg has spinal muscular atrophy and requires a power wheelchair as well as daily caregiving.

Guéçamburu said she’s saving up for a used wheelchair-accessible van, which costs about $75,000. Home modifications such as adding ramps and making bathrooms accessible also cost tens of thousands of dollars, none of which are covered by Medi-Cal. Guéçamburu said those expenses would be impossible to afford if she couldn’t save.

Guéçamburu lives on her family’s farm in Patterson where they grow walnuts, almonds and alfalfa. She works part time as the farm’s bookkeeper. In 2024, doctors diagnosed Guéçamburu’s father with prostate cancer, and he could no longer act as her caregiver. The same year, California eliminated asset limits for people with disabilities and seniors — Guéçamburu cried, able to qualify for Medi-Cal for the first time.

“The timing was a godsend,” she said.

Now, her aging father is unable to take care of her should she lose Medi-Cal, and Guéçamburu is struggling to figure out what to do with money left to her by her grandmother. She’ll likely have to put it into a special needs trust controlled by a family member and give up financial independence. She also had her family strike her from inheriting any portion of their 100-year-old farm. Private home care costs thousands of dollars a month, making it hard for lower- and middle-income people to pay for it out-of-pocket.

“I have to surrender our legacy just to have medical security and have the ability to live my life,” Guéçamburu said.

Asset limit flip-flop

Gov. Gavin Newsom eliminated Medi-Cal asset requirements in 2024 after a yearslong campaign by senior and disability rights advocates. In a statement before the elimination, Newsom said he was proud of the “bold investments” his administration was making to “protect life savings and homes.”

But two years later, faced with a $12 billion budget shortfall, Newsom proposed reinstating the former $2,000 limit, arguing that more than twice as many people enrolled as previously estimated. The Legislature opposed that proposal and compromised at the current higher limit of $130,000, lowering it again to $21,000 starting next July.

Lindsay Imai Hong, California director for Hand In Hand, an advocacy group supporting families that need caregiving, said organizers are looking to the next governor for change.

“We would love to see the asset test permanently taken off of the chopping block,” Imai Hong said.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton said in a statement to CalMatters that he opposes asset limits. He criticized the state for extending other Medi-Cal benefits beyond what it could afford, including coverage for immigrants without legal status.

“Seniors and people with disabilities shouldn’t lose their coverage because they’ve managed to save some money. They’ve done the responsible thing. Why punish them for it?” he said.

Democratic gubernatorial candidate and front-runner Xavier Becerra did not answer specific questions about the asset limit policy, but a campaign spokesperson blamed the Trump administration’s federal cuts for “squeezing” California’s Medi-Cal program.

Becerra will be “focused on protecting access to care and demand savings that are real, measurable and sustainable,” spokesperson Johnathan Underland said. On the campaign trail, Becerra has called himself California’s next “healthcare governor” and has previously floated raising taxes to reverse Medi-Cal cuts, but has not released detailed health policy plans.

Camille Nguyen, an attorney with the Legal Aid Society of San Mateo County, said most people who struggle to stay under the limit have little financial security.

“They have all of their life savings in cash savings instead of a house. That's their retirement. That is the amount they are expecting to live off of for the rest of their life,” Nguyen said.

State data shows about 600 people lost Medi-Cal when California reinstated the $130,000 limit. Advocates expect many more to lose Medi-Cal at the lower limit, but the state never released budget estimates before lawmakers approved the $21,000 limit. If the state reinstated the much lower $2,000 limit, the Department of Finance estimated 62,000 seniors and people with disabilities would lose Medi-Cal over two years.

Limit fuels anxiety, anger among people with disabilities

Feinberg said the prospect of losing Medi-Cal is especially scary because she would also lose access to a special disability program that pays for extra caregiving hours and has a multiyear waitlist. Caregivers help Feinberg get in and out of bed, dress and prepare her meals.

Before the limit was erased in 2024, Feinberg said she checked her bank account every day to make sure the balance was low. At the time, Feinberg was a graduate student and did not earn very much money. Now, as a licensed therapist Feinberg has been able to squirrel away some money.

“I don’t want to spend down that money. I want to save that for retirement, maybe buying a house in the future,” Feinberg said. “The prospect of not being able to have a nest egg is very unsettling.”

Guéçamburu said she’s angry and frustrated that the state views services for people with disabilities as expendable.

“It’s exhausting to have to justify your existence every legislative cycle,” she said.

Supported by the California Health Care Foundation (CHCF), which works to ensure that people have access to the care they need, when they need it, at a price they can afford. Visit www.chcf.org to learn more.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.