The Brief

The day after the fire broke out in Tustin, some students at Heritage Elementary were given plastic bags to collect and bring home charred pieces of the historic hangar that had floated onto school property, according to several parents.

One parent, who asked to remain anonymous in order to protect her family's privacy, told LAist that on Nov. 8 her fifth-grade daughter brought home a Ziploc bag with a small piece of black debris from the fire.

Her daughter told her she had picked it up with her bare hands. The parent said "the teacher was fully aware."

That same day, air quality authorities reported that debris from the fire contained up to 37% asbestos. The school sits less than a mile from the 7-acre hangar that was destroyed by flames.

The parent said she immediately threw the bag with the fire debris away. The material her daughter had collected, she said, was "paper-light" and easily breakable. Asbestos is most dangerous when the individual fibers are released into the air and can be inhaled and get trapped in the lungs.

A second parent posted a photo on social media of a plastic bag full of large black and gray pieces of debris, according to a screenshot shared with LAist by another parent of a Heritage student. The parent who posted the photo wrote in the post that their son had brought the bag home from Heritage.

In response to an interview request, Heritage principal Courtney Smith referred LAist to district communications officer Rina Lucchese. Lucchese and other Tustin Unified officials have not responded to repeated requests for an interview.

Tustin Unified board member Allyson Muñiz Damikolas told LAist she didn’t have a response to reports from parents about the incident and added that district leaders responded to public health warnings and "reacted to the information as soon as we received it."

The fire debris incident is one of what parents describe as several missteps taken by Tustin Unified School District during its early response to the fire. And this week, as hundreds of students return to Heritage and Legacy Magnet Academy — the two schools closest to the fire that had been closed for testing and cleaning — private test results in adjacent neighborhoods are raising new concerns about toxic fallout from the fire. The findings are heightening concerns among some parents about whether the newly reopened schools are truly safe from potentially toxic fire debris.

The historic hangar in Tustin caught fire in the early hours of Nov. 7. The massive World War II-era wooden hangar was built to house military blimps based in Southern California.

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Jae C. Hong

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What happened at Heritage Elementary after the fire

Classes continued as normal at Heritage for two days after the fire began.

A photo shared with LAist by a parent shows Heritage students sitting on the blacktop on campus. It was taken at 8 a.m. on Nov. 8, according to the metadata. Meanwhile, Heritage principal Courtney Smith told parents in emails reviewed by LAist that were sent on Nov. 7 and Nov. 8 that students would remain indoors during recess and lunch. The email on Nov. 8, stated that school leaders continued "to minimize student and staff time outdoors."

In the same Nov. 8 email, she told parents that "the minimal debris that has been found on campus has been safely removed by our custodial staff."

Later that evening, Tustin Unified officials announced that all school campuses would be closed following testing by the South Coast Air Quality Management District (AQMD) that found asbestos in fire debris.

In the days after the fire broke out, asbestos-laden debris was detected at Tustin schools as far away as Hicks Canyon Elementary, which is about three miles from the burn site, and at Tustin High School, which is two miles from the site, according to the county's initial report of the incident to state authorities.

Most schools in the district were reopened by Nov. 15 after receiving clearance from the district-contracted asbestos consultant. Students at Heritage and Legacy were dispersed at schools across the district by grade level until this week.

Tustin school board member Jonathan Abelove, whose district includes Heritage and Legacy, did not respond to an email request for comment. LAist was unable to reach him at several listed phone numbers.

For one parent, regrets and worries

The parent whose daughter brought home fire debris said she regrets sending her two children to Heritage on the two days after the fire broke out. "That's eating us alive to this day," she told LAist in a phone interview.

She said she and her daughter developed a bad cough a week after the fire broke out. The family ended up leaving their Tustin home for a week to stay in Newport Beach in order to limit their exposure to potential toxins while the fire was still heavily burning.

The fire was finally declared extinguished by Orange County fire officials on Dec. 1.

"The saddest part," the parent told LAist, is how distraught her fifth-grader became when she found out that she had been exposed to a potentially dangerous material, asbestos. "She was asking, 'Am I going to get cancer?'" the parent added.

Cranes were needed to safely lower the entrance doors to the hanger, which remained after the rest of the structure went up in flames.

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LAist

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What did school officials know?

It's unclear whether school officials were initially aware of the likelihood of asbestos and other chemicals present in the massive blimp hangar that burned to the ground. But some parents said the district should have erred on the side of caution considering the circumstances.

Building fires are generally more toxic than wildfires because of the widespread, and often unknown, presence of toxic materials in homes and businesses. The hangar was widely touted as one of the largest wooden structures in the world — 180-ft. tall, three football fields long and one football field wide.

It was built in 1942, when asbestos and lead paint were widely used in construction.

Documents on the city of Tustin's website note the extensive use of asbestos-containing materials and lead paint in the building's construction.

According to a 2000 report commissioned by the Navy, asbestos was present in roofing materials, wall panels, pipe insulation and floor tiles. Some of this asbestos was "friable," meaning it breaks or crumbles easily and therefore poses a greater risk of being inhaled, which can cause long-term health consequences.

A 2020 report from the Orange County Grand Jury also noted that hazardous materials, including "asbestos, lead, biological contaminants, and groundwater contaminates," had been identified in the hangar's nearly identical twin hangar, which also sits on the 84-acre former military base in Tustin.

According to Chris Dunne, a Navy spokesperson, samples of treated wood from the hangar had been analyzed in the past and found to contain "detectable concentrations of aluminum, arsenic, boron, barium, calcium, cadmium, cobalt, chromium, copper, iron, potassium, magnesium, manganese, sodium, nickel, phosphorus, lead, silicon, and zinc."

Dunne told LAist the Navy had not communicated directly with the school district about potential public health concerns after the fire broke out. "The city of Tustin is the lead agency for cleanup efforts, interagency coordination, and public communication," Dunne wrote in an email.

Tustin Mayor Austin Lumbard, who has three children at Heritage, told LAist that he didn't know "in an official capacity" that there was asbestos and other toxins in the hangar building until he was alerted to the test results by the South Coast Air Quality Management District on Nov. 8. Still, "we all knew there was something in there," he said.

"I think the community that lives out here was aware that these were constructed in the ‘40s and that there was material used in that construction that potentially is not used now," Lumbard said.

The mayor also said people had wandered onto the property for years. In 2019 firefighters had to rescue a teenager who had climbed onto the roof of the hangar.

Asked whether he was concerned about the school district's initial handling of the fire response, Lumbard said: "I know the school district is taking this very seriously and they're leaning on and relying on information that they're getting from the Navy and from the Orange County Health Care Agency."

Regina Chinsio-Kwong, who heads the county health care agency, told LAist she first learned there could be toxic materials in the burning hangar that could pose a health risk when a consultant for AQMD called her on the evening on Nov. 7.

"I didn't have a full report, it was more of a verbal concern," she said.

Chinsio-Kwong said she had a call with AQMD staff the following morning to better understand the concerns. AQMD issued a smoke advisory on Nov. 7. It wasn't until Nov. 8 that they issued an advisory noting the presence of asbestos in testing results of ash and debris from public areas near the hangar fire.

Jeff Lawrence, whose daughter attends Heritage, emailed district and city officials twice on the morning the fire broke out, urging them to immediately start testing the air and soil for toxins.

The hangar building contains "all sorts of potential hazardous materials raining ash all over our neighborhood," he wrote. In one of the emails, he also excoriated school officials for keeping Heritage open "when you have literally zero idea if it is at all safe."

In an interview with LAist earlier this month, Lawrence said "the county and everyone had these reports,” referring to the Orange County Grand Jury report and documents on the city's website.

“From a logical perspective, as soon as you knew that that thing was burning, [toxic material] was going all over the place," he added.

Lawrence was livid that kids were outside while the fire burned, and that the school allowed kids to touch and take home debris from the fire. He said he blames the school district for not ensuring that students were kept inside and away from potentially toxic material.

"Ultimately, the buck stops with them," he said. "They made the decision to keep these schools open. They did not insist that the principal at [Heritage] keep all the kids inside."

Lawrence said he wished the district had immediately closed Heritage and offered distance learning instead. At nearby Legacy, school officials canceled in-person school when the fire broke out on Nov. 7 and instead held virtual classes.

Public health experts weigh in

LAist reached out to public health experts to better understand the risks associated with asbestos. Richard Castriotta, a pulmonologist at the University of Southern California's Keck School of Medicine, said reports of children handling asbestos and potentially bringing it into their classrooms or homes were "concerning."

"We don't really know what a safe level [of asbestos] is," he said.

But, he added, "in order to be dangerous, the asbestos has to be in a form that people can inhale." He said large chunks of asbestos-containing material, if disposed of properly, are less dangerous.

Tustin Unified recently released the results of surface and air testing done in November at Heritage and Legacy that showed no asbestos was detected on either campus. The testing was done in high-traffic areas including the main office and gym at Legacy and the administrative office and several kindergarten classrooms at Heritage.

Orange County Public Health Officer Regina Chinsio-Kwong said her office had also tested for lead at Legacy and Heritage on the heaviest days of smoke and did not detect elevated levels. She said as a whole, the official results from air quality and surface testing in the community nearest to the fire had been "reassuring." (Private testing has shown otherwise, as we explain below.)

In a Dec. 13 letter to Lumbard, the Tustin mayor, and the rest of the city council, Chinsio-Kwong said testing by multiple agencies, including the EPA, "suggests that the main concern for asbestos exposure was from bulk debris while asbestos fibers in the air played a limited role."

Chinsio-Kwong also wrote that environmental experts on the fire's emergency response team had concluded that testing indoor spaces "is not necessary, thanks to reassuring test results from nearby facilities," including public schools, local parks and community centers.

Nevertheless, Tustin officials announced Wednesday evening that they plan to sample soil and interior spaces for toxins from the fire.

"The City appreciates [the O.C. Health Care Agency]’s scientific conclusion that interior residential testing is unnecessary based on the extensive available data," Lumbard said in a news release. "However, in a collective effort to go above and beyond what is required to address lingering community concerns, the City is moving forward with performing exterior soil and interior air/dust sampling for asbestos and lead.”

He said the timing and location of sampling was being developed in consultation with the EPA and would be shared in the coming days.

More than 600 disaster remediation workers have been dispatched to clean up fire debris tainted with asbestos on the former military base and in surrounding neighborhoods.

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John Balmes, an air pollution expert and physician member of the California Air Resources Board, echoed Chinsio-Kwong, saying the reported results from air and surface tests at Tustin schools were "pretty reassuring."

"If they tested several classrooms a week after the fire started when smoke was the highest concentration, that's probably good enough in terms of the schools," he said.

Balmes said the people most likely to be exposed to dangerous, airborne asbestos fibers were the firefighters who responded to the fire, not children attending a nearby school weeks after the fire burnt out.

Disaster experts contracted by the city of Tustin have sealed in place the dust and debris immediately around the former hangar site with an adhesive substance.

Work to take down the hangar doors and adjacent structures — which Chinsio-Kwong had recommended be completed before schools reopened — was finished on Monday, according to the city's latest update.

The Navy announced this week that it had finalized a $6 million contract with a remediation company to clean up and dispose of debris from the fire. But Navy officials said they don’t know when the work will actually start.

“Before we can take action, debris removal plans must be reviewed and approved by state and federal regulatory agencies to ensure the safety of both the community and the environment,” said Gregory Preston, who directs the Navy's base closure program, in a news release.

What happened as students returned to Heritage this week

In an email last week to parents announcing the reopening of Heritage and Legacy, school district officials said both schools would undergo extra cleaning, including of ducts, carpets and rugs, "out of an abundance of caution and in response to potential concerns within our community."

Tuesday was Heritage students’ first day back on campus following a more than month-long closure due to the fire.

During afternoon pick-up, Heritage students streamed out of the school gates carrying handmade ornaments and construction paper Santa Claus cutouts. Ravi Chilakapati, who was picking up his kindergartener and third grader, said he had had some concerns about the school reopening but felt good about the information he had received via school emails detailing extra cleaning that would take place before students returned.

"At least for now, we are happy to be back," he said, adding that the past weeks of dropping off and picking up his kids from far-away school sites was "kind of horrible."

Still, he said he wished school leaders had closed Heritage as soon as the fire broke out. "We would have zero concerns if that had happened," he added.

Peter Thok, who also has two kids at Heritage, said he was "really happy" that the school had reopened and he no longer has to drive his kids to alternative campuses. He said he was satisfied with the school's asbestos testing and cleaning protocols.

"They took extra precautions, which is good," he said.

But he echoed Chilakapati in saying he thought the school should have been closed during the first two days of the fire.

"That's when the fire was raging the most," he said. "That's when it felt like we had the most debris in our house so for sure, it should have been closed."

Heritage students returned to campus on Dec. 19, more than a month after a fire broke out and consumed a massive World War II-era hangar less than a mile away.

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Thok and Chilakapati were both unaware that students at Heritage were allowed to bring home debris from the fire until they were asked about it by LAist.

Thok said, across the board, communication and direction from local authorities has been poor throughout the fire response.

"You could've had guidance that let the teachers know and the parents know what not to do and what we can do," he said.

Nearby homes test positive for asbestos and lead

Sean Storm, who has a child at Legacy and another at Heritage, told LAist he was concerned that authorities hadn't done enough testing at the schools and hadn't tested for a full range of heavy metals. He also said he and other parents would like to see the results of the lead testing Chinsio-Kwong said her department had done at the schools in November. "I just want to know it's safe," he said.

On Wednesday, Storm shared with LAist and school and district officials the results of testing done earlier this month in his neighborhood, which is across from the hangar burn site and about a mile from Heritage. The tests, conducted by AQS Environmental Services and paid for by a local homeowners association, found asbestos and lead in all 20 samples of suspected fire debris collected from buildings throughout the community.

Federal public health officials say even low levels of exposure to lead can damage children's health and development.

Storm also shared testing ordered by his insurance company and conducted on the inside and exterior of his home that showed lead levels in soot on his windowsills exceeded the EPA’s lead hazard levels in dust by at least 14 times.

The testing also found elevated levels of arsenic and barium. The report recommended that the family move out "until all cleaning is completed."

The EPA is monitoring air quality around the perimeter of the former military base and in multiple locations in the surrounding community.

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The test results left Storm uneasy. If his home less than a mile from the burn site wasn’t safe to occupy, he wondered how the school could be safe for kids.

"Were the tables power washed and clean?" he asked. "There are gazebos that cover the picnic tables [students] eat off of. Was that cleaned? I just want to know …is the school truly, actually clean?"

Tustin’s fire clean up costs over $45 million so far

Balmes, the air pollution expert, said public health officials could do additional testing of outside areas on local school campuses for arsenic and lead, the two heavy metals initially detected in smoke plumes from the fire, to "assuage parents' fears." "That's not unreasonable," he said.

Balmes added that the rain this week should wash away much of the remaining ash and soot from the fire in the community, significantly reducing people's likelihood of exposure.

According to the latest update from Tustin officials, work to remove potential asbestos-containing fire debris from homes near the former hangar is about 85% complete. In a news release earlier this week, city spokesperson Stephanie Najera said Tustin’s clean up costs for the fire total over $45 million.

The Navy owns the property where the fire took place and has committed $11 million to the clean-up thus far.

Najera said the total cost of recovering from the disaster could exceed $100 million.

MacArthur Park got an unexpected guest Tuesday: Justin Bieber, who joined several members of his band for an impromptu performance.

Social media videos show Bieber, 32, sitting on the grass, playing percussion and singing as people gather around. He performed several songs to a handful of people, including his 2025 hit “Yukon,” according to videos from the impromptu performance.

A source close to Bieber told E! News that he visited the park to distribute gift cards and other resources to unhoused people. A spokesperson for the singer could not be immediately reached for comment.

Bieber, who headlined Coachella earlier this year, played a stripped-down performance with his band. Some people in social media video walked by the set, while others recorded the set.

His surprise appearance adds a different kind of attention typically focused on MacArthur Park. In the last several months city officials, law enforcement and community groups have taken different approaches to addressing conditions at the park and activating the space.

For Brenda Aguilera, director of the Community Transformation Collective, the reaction to Bieber’s visit is part of a larger conversation about the changes at the park. 

Her organization has been working with a neighborhood volunteer group of about 60 MacArthur Park-area residents since March. The group includes parents, caregivers and vendors who meet regularly to identify neighborhood priorities and work with city agencies and community organizations.

Residents involved with the group have reported greater awareness of available services and said they feel safer in the park, Aguilera said. But she added that the people who live in and around the park should be at the center of any assessment of how conditions are changing.

“They’re not in the park. They don’t live in those neighborhoods, so they have to speak to the local community members to hear about their perspectives,” Aguilera said, referring to elected officials.

On Tuesday, Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman and First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli pointed to Bieber’s performance as a sign of progress at the park.

Bieber performing an impromptu set at the park is “a testament to the progress we are achieving to take back the park from drug dealers and enliven it for families,” Hochman wrote on X.

Essayli wrote: “Bieber in MacArthur Park. That’s progress. Amazing what can happen when criminals and drug dealers are removed from public spaces.”

Over the summer, the Los Angeles Police Department and federal agents carried out a multi-phase operation targeting drug activity in and around the park, including a June operation that resulted in 13 arrests. Hochman also held a picnic at the park over Labor Day weekend after saying he would return with his family if he believed it was safe enough.

Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez’s office, however, pointed to a longer history of work at the park in response to Bieber’s visit.

“We’re excited to see Justin Bieber enjoying MacArthur Park, just as countless other Angelenos do every day, experiencing what nearly four years of sustained investment and community partnership have made possible,” said Naomi Roochnik, a spokesperson for Hernandez.

The councilmember has invested more than $27 million in the park, including Peace Ambassadors, round-the-clock clean teams, overdose response, street medicine, youth programming, arts and culture and infrastructure improvements, according to Hernandez’s office.

“MacArthur Park’s progress belongs to the residents, workers, promotoras, outreach teams, and community organizations who do this critical, lifesaving work every single day,” Roochnik said.

Community Transformation Collective’s promotoras are among those working directly with residents, Aguilera said, helping connect them with services and providing what she described as “warm handoffs” to organizations that can offer support.

For Aguilera, that community perspective matters when officials assess what is happening at the park.

“It’s not up to us or these elected officials that are in these government bodies to just speak on behalf of our communities,” she said. “They could speak about their efforts, but they can’t speak about the entire perspective. It’s really those that live there that could share that perspective.”

The post You better Beliebe it. Justin Bieber played a set at MacArthur Park appeared first on LA Local.

Michael Angel Alvarez made headlines earlier this year when he was arrested while working as a peace ambassador for the nonprofit Healing Urban Barrios in MacArthur Park. Federal prosecutors alleged Alvarez was “leading a violent street gang, while claiming to be a gang interventionist for the City.”

But they didn’t charge him for violent or gang-related crimes.

He spent three months in custody under a different charge: illegally possessing body armor. He pleaded not guilty, and a trial date was set.

Alvarez was released from custody this month, nearly a week after a federal judge dismissed his case on Sept. 9, ruling that a juvenile court finding that Alvarez killed a man while a minor could not be counted as a violent felony conviction that would make owning body armor illegal.

Alvarez spoke with LAist after his recent release, saying he believes the case against him was politically motivated and shows a lack of understanding about what it takes to intervene with gang members to reduce violence in communities. He acknowledged gang affiliation, but said he was not a gang leader and had not committed any crimes since being released from prison in 2024.

Federal prosecutors told LAist in a statement they are looking into options to appeal a federal judge’s decision to dismiss the recent indictment against Alvarez. No one from the U.S. Attorney’s office in L.A. has responded to LAist’s requests for comment about Alvarez’s assertion that the case was politically motivated.

Before the federal prosecutors filed their case against Alvarez, the L.A. County District Attorney’s office filed a separate case against him on May 20 in Los Angeles Superior Court also based on possessing body armor. A preliminary hearing in that case is set for Oct. 27. He pleaded not guilty. A spokesperson for the District Attorney’s office did not comment on whether they intend to continue pursuing the case now that the federal case has been dismissed.

Why the federal case was dismissed

Alvarez was a minor when he was found guilty of a gang-related murder in 2002. At 15 years old he was charged and tried as an adult. He was convicted of first-degree murder for shooting and killing a man in Pico-Union. He was sentenced to 50 years to life. But after a change in state law increased the age at which minors could be sentenced as adults to 16, Alvarez’s case was sent back to juvenile court and he was released in 2024. At that point, he had served about 24 years.

On Sept. 9, U.S. District Judge Anne Hwang found that same law that led to Alvarez’s release also bars the court from considering him to have been convicted of the killing, because juvenile court determinations are not criminal convictions. Without a violent felony conviction, Alvarez is not prevented from owning body armor by state or federal law. She dismissed the federal prosecutors’ case against him.

What Alvarez is saying following his release

In an interview with LAist last week after his release, Alvarez said he thinks federal prosecutors wanted to score political points by targeting community violence intervention work, not because he posed any risk to public safety.

“ I almost got killed as a result of trying to change the community for the best,” said Alvarez, who showed photos to LAist of what he described as stab wounds in his abdomen and arms that were taken in February 2025. He said that assault took place while he was working in MacArthur Park. “ And for whatever reason you had the individuals who are part of the Republican Party who went after me because of the Democrats, the people that I worked for.”

Alvarez’s former employer, Healing Urban Barrios, has not responded to LAist’s requests for comment since the case was dismissed. Christina Navarro, the nonprofit’s founder and executive director, said in a statement to LAist back in May of this year that Alvarez was innocent until proven guilty and that the organization was continuing its work despite the allegations against him.

“We are not stepping back,” Navarro wrote in the statement. “We are doubling down.”

Healing Urban Barrios was contracted to work at the park by Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez, who is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America’s L.A. chapter. Her office says community violence intervention workers have been effective for decades in interrupting cycles of violence in ways traditional law enforcement cannot.

Naomi Roochnik, a spokesperson for Hernandez, told LAist in May they were not aware of allegations against Alvarez before his arrest and that peace ambassadors are employed and supervised by community-based organizations.

Alvarez was removed from the peace ambassador program earlier that same month, she said.

“We will always take misconduct seriously and hold our partners to high standards, but we will not allow an individual case, or efforts to politicize it, to undermine proven community-based public safety work,” Roochnik said Friday in an emailed statement.

First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli, who heads the office that brought the case, has been critical of the city’s gang intervention program.

Federal prosecutor Bill Essayli heads the U.S. Attorney's office in L.A.

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“The hardworking tax payers of Los Angeles deserve better than to see their money shelled out to a convicted gang murderer,” Essayli wrote on social media on May 29, the day his office announced the charge against Alvarez.

Essayli was appointed by the Trump administration to lead the U.S. Attorney’s office in L.A. and was previously a Republican member of the California State Assembly, where he represented part of Riverside County.

Spokespersons for the U.S. Attorney’s office in L.A. have continued to speak out against Alvarez since the body armor case was dismissed. In statements sent to LAist via email by spokespeople Ciaran McEvoy and Shawn Lewis, the department called Alvarez ”a convicted murderer and a documented member of the 18th Street gang” who was indicted by grand jury on the body armor charges.

“These facts are not in dispute. It is unfortunate that he now benefits from a California law that effectively allows him to erase his murder conviction, something his victim cannot do.”

Adding: “He has no legitimate role serving as a ‘peace ambassador’ in a public park or receiving taxpayer-funded compensation.”

The department said they are currently considering their options to appeal what they called “a narrow technical legal issue.”

About the case

Most people can legally own and wear body armor in the United States — it’s typically worn as a vest, either made of durable fibers like Kevlar or with steel or ceramic inserts designed to stop bullets. It becomes illegal to own or possess body armor under federal and state law if a person has been convicted of a violent felony.

But U.S. District Judge Hwang agreed with Alvarez that he did not have a violent felony conviction on his record.

Alvarez admits he shot and killed 22-year-old Mauricio Miguel Masis on Aug. 17, 2000.

He told LAist he was 15 and in a gang when he and a 13-year-old friend, who was not gang-affiliated, were approached by what he described as three older gang members. Masis was one of the men, he said.

“ They're already in their mid-20s and tried to kill both of us,” Alvarez said. He told LAist he shot Masis, but claims it was to defend his friend and himself.

Convicted as an adult in 2002, he could have spent his entire life in prison after being found guilty.

“ I was 17 years old when I was walking Supermax,” he told LAist, “level four maximum security prison.”

In 2018, Senate Bill 1391 passed in the California legislature, to only allow minors 16 years and older to be considered for adult court.

The new law gave Alvarez a way out of prison, allowing his case to be resentenced in 2024.

By then he’d served about 24 years. Because of his age at the time of the killing, under the change in the law his case was sent back to juvenile court where his adult conviction was set aside and he was declared a ward of the court — or under its supervision and control.

Alvarez was released from prison and put on probation for two years.

The following year he was also sentenced to two years of probation for a separate felony offense in November 2023 that was considered non-violent — possessing a weapon while in custody.

Alvarez acknowledged having the weapon while he was in prison, and told LAist that most people had hidden weapons there, often as a deterrent from being attacked.

“Of course I had a weapon,” he said. “You would have one too if you were there. You're trying to do everything in your power to survive.”

In early 2025, Alvarez began working for Healing Urban Barrios as a peace ambassador.

“ They wanted individuals who had the respect, I suppose, of the streets [and] in prison,” he told LAist.

Alvarez said gang members are more willing to talk with someone from their own background than with police officers or city officials, and he said he was able to speak to them to avoid violence and other safety issues around MacArthur Park.

“There's hundreds — if not thousands — of gang members who flow through that area due to the fact that a lot of them are addicts now,“ Alvarez said.

He told LAist he believed the peace ambassadors in the area had made a difference in reducing the number of people using drugs, fighting and lighting fires in the park since he started working there in 2025.

“ There used to be a lot of fights,” he said. “ We're able to talk to the guys right there and be like, ‘Look, work something out with each other.’"

Alvarez showed LAist photos of people he said he had given CPR while on the job to prevent them from dying of drug overdoses and a woman he said he identified to authorities as a missing person and helped get to safety.

Federal agents arrested Alvarez in May, after LAPD officers found two body armor plates in his car during a traffic stop earlier that month.

Alvarez told law enforcement officers after his arrest that the plates were for an art project, court documents show, and his lawyer argued in court that Alvarez did not have a vest to wear the armor in.

Prosecutors argued in court documents that he could have used the armor plates without a vest, and that he may have had a vest for the plates elsewhere.

Alvarez told LAist he was planning to use his laser engravers to write poetry on the plates and his cousin was going to paint them with graffiti to get the attention of the youth he served.

“With youth, especially youth that are in gangs, you gotta show them some different type of art,” he said. “  It would've hit them hard, you know?”

The U.S. Attorney’s office charged Alvarez with possessing body armor. But they made additional allegations against him apart from the charges, which they have not proven in court.

For instance, prosecutors claimed in court documents that Alvarez was “leading a violent street gang, while claiming to be a gang interventionist for the City,” and that they were investigating him for additional crimes that would carry “great sentencing exposure.”

Prosecutors alleged in court documents that members of the 18th Street gang described him as a leader of the gang in recorded jailhouse phone calls. Alvarez claimed the way the prosecutors described the conversations wasn’t accurate. He told LAist he was never a gang leader and, instead, was using the respect he had with the 18th Street gang to prevent further violence.

No one from the U.S. Attorney’s office in L.A. responded to LAist’s questions about whether they intend to pursue other charges.

LAist asked Alvarez to clarify whether he was an active member during our interview last week.

“ When you're a gang member, for the most part, you're always a gang member, you know?” He said, “There's two types of ‘actives.’ There's active where you're actively involved in the violence and all that stuff, but there's also being active when you're actively involved in your community, and that's what I've been doing.”

Alvarez said he hopes to continue working in gang violence reduction programs now that the federal case against him has been dismissed.

“I know that what we did was good,” he said, recalling how parents of children he had worked with around MacArthur Park reached out to thank him while he was in federal custody as his recent case was ongoing.

“It'd be nice to have the support all the way around and not have, especially, people who are pushing politics,” Alvarez told LAist.

Councilmember Hernandez’ office and Healing Urban Barrios have not responded to questions about whether they would consider allowing Alvarez to return to his position as a peace ambassador.

After the Palisades and Eaton firestorms in January 2025, one story captured how Los Angeles County’s emergency management system seemed to have failed. Anthony Mitchell Sr., an 80-year-old man who used both a prosthetic and a wheelchair, and his 35-year-old son, Justin, who had cerebral palsy, died in their Altadena home waiting for evacuation assistance.

Anthony Mitchell had called 911 twice, identifying himself and his son as disabled, and was assured help was coming.

Of the 31 people killed in the fires, 27 were over 65, and at least six had mobility issues, according to news reports.

The tragedy led California and L.A. County to consider adopting “disaster registries,” an emergency management strategy used around the country for assisting people who might require additional help in emergencies due to their age, disability or other health conditions.

The California Commission on Aging issued a report in November that noted evacuation centers lacked data on older and disabled residents who would need assistance. That led to a shortage of equipment and expertise to address the specialized needs of those residents. The commission recommended that the state consider implementing a statewide registry.

Even before the commission’s recommendation, Los Angeles County supervisors had directed its Aging and Disabilities Department to study the feasibility of a registry.

But neither initiative has moved forward.

“We have not seen much movement on exploring a disaster registry,” said Patrick Smith, the state Commission on Aging’s legislative director.

The Los Angeles feasibility study was “paused” last year while the county reviewed its emergency operations with the McChrystal Group, said Liz Odendahl, a spokesperson for Supervisor Janice Hahn, who co-sponsored the resolution authorizing the study.

The arguments against registries

Some advocacy groups in California and the state Office of Emergency Services have argued against registries, Smith said. In fact, OES’ official guidance on registries is that “jurisdictions should not use them.”

Registries typically are voluntary, and registrants are responsible for keeping their information up to date. Because of that, they are unreliable sources of information, which is one reason some emergency managers and many advocates for older and disabled people oppose them.

They also point out that registries could give a false sense of security to people, who may assume assistance is guaranteed when it is not.

“This false assumption is dangerous and can lead to an overall decrease in personal disaster preparedness,” the California Office of Emergency Services says on its website.

Registries are hard to keep current, the office notes, and the personal information people provide may be challenging to safeguard.

Why some places have registries anyway

With data showing older people far more likely to die in natural disasters — and climate change making disasters more frequent and severe — several states have taken the opposite approach, establishing registries to better assist older adults and people with disabilities in emergencies.

Florida’s statewide Special Needs Registry is often cited as a model because it connects the state’s Health Department with emergency management in all 67 counties. Florida also requires its counties to establish shelters for people with special medical needs.

Delaware, New Jersey, North Dakota, Rhode Island, Texas and Utah also have statewide registries, as do many municipal emergency offices across the country.

In California, three of 58 counties have registries — Mono, Siskiyou and Butte.

Butte County’s registry was in place in 2018, when the Camp Fire killed 85 people, 67 of whom were seniors. Emergency managers can’t say how many or if any of the older adults who died in that fire were on the registry.

But they say the registry remains a useful tool.

“If we didn’t have the list, we wouldn’t have had any idea at all who needed extra assistance evacuating,” said Butte County Emergency Manager Angie Mannel, who was a 911 dispatcher during the Camp Fire.

Older adults, like many Americans, are not prepared for disasters. A 2023 AARP survey found that under one-third of older adults have a comprehensive plan for natural disasters, and only 10% have opted into apps or text notifications that alert people to emergencies.

“You can’t just throw a bunch of information out there and expect everyone to be able to act on it,” said Lindsay Peterson, a gerontology researcher at the University of South Florida. “Some people just can’t.”

Her research has shown that technology can be a barrier for older adults, especially those living independently but with limited technological skills and income.

While acknowledging that “registries are controversial,” Peterson said state and local governments must find ways to ensure the most vulnerable older adults will be protected.

Florida’s Special Needs Registry

That’s what Florida set out to do with its Special Needs Registry. But it does not guarantee emergency assistance, which the Health Department notes when people register. Still, the Florida Division of Emergency Management advises older adults needing this assistance to register, because registries can be useful planning tools and may save lives, even if they are incomplete.

Each of Florida’s county emergency management offices decides how it will use the registries to provide assistance. Seminole County, in eastern Florida, offers transportation assistance to registrants who request it. Three days before a tropical storm or hurricane is expected, the county Office of Emergency Management calls registrants about the approaching storm and advises them to evacuate. They must agree to leave at that time in order to receive transportation, said Steven Lerner, division manager.

“We’re like Enterprise; we’ll pick you up,” he said. The county uses a fleet that includes school buses and ADA-compliant vans.

Lerner’s main concern about Seminole’s registry of 1,700 people is who is not on it. He focuses his outreach efforts on new residents who may never have experienced a hurricane season, and those aging at home who may overestimate their ability to evacuate themselves.

In Lee County on Florida’s western coast, the Office of Emergency Management used public transportation to help evacuate people when Hurricane Ian hit in 2022. More than half of Lee County’s 800,000 residents were ordered to evacuate a day before the hurricane made landfall. Many were forced to weather the storm at home or in shelters, as 10 inches of rain inundated areas, winds gusted up to 140 mph and storm surge reached 15 feet. The storm killed 149 Floridians, including 72 Lee County residents. Most of the fatalities were people over 65.

County spokesperson Betsy Clayton wouldn’t say how many registrants emergency crews helped to evacuate during Hurricane Ian. But she said the county has assisted about 1,000 registrants in each major storm Florida has experienced in the past two decades, providing paratransit and ambulance services.

A California example

In California’s Butte County, emergency managers believe the registry will save lives if a disaster on par with the Camp Fire strikes again.

After igniting on Nov. 8, 2018, the Camp Fire grew rapidly, overwhelming the county’s emergency management plans and destroying its communication systems. It incinerated Paradise, a town of 27,000 people, in four hours.

The California auditor’s 2019 after-action review of the county’s emergency plans recommended Butte use registry data in evacuation planning, so emergency responders know who will need help before a disaster.

Tiffany Rowe manages Butte’s Special Needs Awareness Program, which notifies registered people of emergencies and evacuation orders and assists in evacuating them if needed.

The voluntary registry pinpoints who will require assistance in particular evacuation zones and what they’ll need. Most warnings are automated, but if the emergency is expected to affect 10 or fewer registrants, Rowe calls them herself.

After the pandemic and the busy fire seasons of 2022 and 2024, the number of Butte County registrants increased by over 50%. Today, around 2,200 older adults and people with disabilities are registered.

“Being a disaster-prone county,” said Mannel, Butte’s emergency manager, “our perspective is always focused on the safety of our citizens.”

Timothy Lane is a writer with the Investigative Reporting Program at the UC Berkeley Journalism School and covered this story through a grant from The SCAN Foundation.

Insurance companies are starting to write new policies in California again after years of holding back as wildfire risk climbed higher.

The state Insurance Department says that means outgoing Commissioner Ricardo Lara’s new regulations, intended to boost insurance availability, are working. Each time a company declares its plans to sell policies again, the department touts it as a win. But the state has not released the number of new policies the companies have written so far.

Enter Consumer Watchdog, the advocacy group that often butts heads with the department. It released an estimate of new policy commitments: 12,189 since January 2025, when Lara’s so-called sustainable insurance strategy went into effect. The strategy allows insurers to use catastrophe modeling, which they say more adequately takes risk into account because it includes forward-looking models, and to factor in reinsurance costs when setting their rates.

Consumer Watchdog, whose numbers come from combing through insurance companies’ rate filings, says that number is low, considering insurers have requested or secured $571 million in rate increases under the new regulations.

The insurance department disagrees with the group’s analysis, saying it intends to release its own data and analysis, and discounting the group’s numbers as “incomplete and premature.”

Ben Armstrong, Consumer Watchdog’s actuary, is tracking voluminous but publicly available rate filings. He looked at insurers’ statements about the number of new policies they promise to write, and compared the new filings with each company’s previous rate filings. Armstrong told CalMatters it’s “not an exact science” because the filings mention commitments, not actual sales, and in some cases don’t include an exact timeline.

The new rules allow insurers to factor in catastrophe models and their reinsurance costs as long as they commit to increasing sales in high-risk areas. Of the 10 companies that requested rate increases under the new rules, only five have committed to selling more policies, the group’s analysis shows.

The regulations call for insurance companies to choose one of these options: Write 85% of their market share in high-risk areas; grow their policies 5% in such areas; or increase their number of policies 5% by taking customers out of the FAIR Plan. Some of the companies that have requested or secured rate increases claim they already meet the 85% threshold.

“What we’re looking at is the reality right now for Californians who have been saddled with rate hikes for the promise of more policies in the future,” said Carmen Balber, executive director of Consumer Watchdog.

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