The Brief

California wildflower blooms aren’t expected to be as big this year, but there’s an easy action you could take to help other native plants grow around you.

A new study from researchers at UC Riverside found that raking away thatch — a tan layer of dead plant debris produced by invasive plants like grasses — can be an effective way to increase biodiversity of native plants.

Why it matters

Advyth Ramachandran,  now a doctoral biology student at the University of Colorado Boulder, was a co-lead on the study. He grew up in Northern California with an interest in learning about the plants that make up our grasslands.

“ Almost none of these species are actually indigenous to California,” he said. “There’s been this huge replacement. It was a real shock to me.”

Invasive plants are slowly squeezing out native plants, and could be made worse by the climate crisis. Over the next 100 years, it’s estimated that 66% of the state’s native species will shrink in numbers.

But the mechanism of how that happens has not fully been understood.

On grass, thatch typically shows up at the base of grass blades.

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Courtesy Izhamwong via Wikimedia Commons under CC BY-SA 3.0

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That’s why Ramachandran and a team of students and professors at the university decided to look into it.

“One of the thoughts is that the reason that these invasive species have been able to outcompete the native species and replace them is because these invasive species produce these layers of dead matter," Ramachandran said.

Invasive grasses, such as the commonly used Bermuda grass, are a large producer of this thatch.

He said the idea is that thatch drowns out native species by smothering them — essentially preventing them from getting light, germinating and growing.

What the research showed

Over three years, the team set up multiple plots on a hill at UC Riverside where thatch was raked away in some, and not in others. Then, they measured what kinds of plants grew afterward.

“ What we found was that indeed the plots in which we removed those dead layers of grass had higher biodiversity,” he said.

A raked plot being surveyed for plant biodiversity in March 2022. In this raked plot, the removal of thatch exposed the soil, which is thought to help native wildflowers to grow.

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Courtesy Advyth Ramachandran

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A plot after it was raked to remove thatch in October 2022.

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Courtesy Advyth Ramachandran

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The results pointed to a specific type of increase. While the raked plots did have more types of species present (by a small amount), the real benefit came from how many of the native plants there were overall.

“ Not necessarily new species appeared,” Ramachandran said. “[But] there were more of them. They could grow bigger.”

How you can apply it

Lupinus truncatus, a native wildflower, at the project site in March 2023.

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Courtesy Advyth Ramachandran

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Ramachandran said the research has big implications for restoration efforts and park management, but that it can apply to residences, too.

The changes you see could vary depending on your land, moisture level and location. But it could be easier than hand-weeding non-native plants and safer than using herbicides.

For example, if you have a landscape with invasive grasses that are producing thatch, particularly if it’s not irrigated, raking the litter away could promote the native species if you have ones already there.

“I’ve done it in my garden,” he said.

So come this spring, get ready to rake a leg in exchange for some beautiful native flora.

As she runs for re-election, L.A. City Attorney Hydee Feldstein Soto faces turmoil and claims of unethical behavior from career prosecutors in her office who have accused her of favoring political donors in criminal cases and questioned her administrative decisions and demeanor.

The allegations have been laid out in emails and a memo obtained by LAist, as well as a sworn declaration to a court.

In emails to colleagues earlier this year, two supervising prosecutors questioned the city attorney’s directive to drop a price gouging case against a major campaign donor. One claimed it’s part of a pattern by Feldstein Soto.

“This latest instruction now to dismiss an active case fully supported by the evidence showing not just probable cause, but a high likelihood of conviction by a jury at trial is improper and unethical,” wrote Dennis Kong, who leads the unit handling price gouging prosecutions, in a Feb. 3 email to colleagues. “Especially in light of the fact that we have confirmed that the parties involved are campaign donors."

Kong did not respond to requests for comment. Office policy prohibits him and almost all other City Attorney staff from speaking to the media.

In interviews with LAist, Feldstein Soto denied ever allowing money or personal relationships to affect her decisions.

“That’s not how I roll,” she said. Instead, Feldstein Soto said her decisions were based on a policy she put in place to follow the Constitution.

In the memo, sent to higher-ups in the office in December, a different group of supervising prosecutors pushed back on Feldstein Soto’s decision to delete criminal case data that’s more than 10 years old.

Feldstein Soto told LAist deleting the older data was a prudent step to make sure sensitive information from older criminal cases — which is confidential under state law — doesn’t fall into the wrong hands. Her office later said the older data will be kept on a physical backup, with prosecutors' access restricted. It’s unclear whether that’s been followed through on.

While Feldstein Soto has dealt with these criticisms from career staff, a whistleblower retaliation lawsuit from a different, former senior prosecutor — alleging misconduct by Feldstein Soto — has been working its way through the courts.

Among other things, that case — filed by the former chief of the prosecutions branch under Feldstein Soto — alleges the city attorney illegally ordered prosecutors to drop a case in order to help her friend and a major donor. The plaintiff, Michelle McGinnis, alleges she was fired in retaliation for opposing and disclosing unlawful actions by Feldstein Soto. The city attorney and the city’s lawyers in the suit have denied the claims, saying Feldstein Soto disciplined her for legitimate reasons.

A judge has allowed that lawsuit to proceed, finding the city’s evidence “falls far short” of proving Feldstein Soto had legitimate reasons to discipline McGinnis.

From the evidence, the ruling states, “a reasonable trier of fact could conclude plaintiff’s protected activity was a contributing factor in defendant’s adverse employment actions against her.”

L.A. Mayor Karen Bass and six of the 15 L.A. City Council members have endorsed Feldstein Soto in her bid for re-election in June. She lost the endorsement of the main LAPD officers’ union over the handling of a massive data breach that exposed confidential files about officers. The police union and county District Attorney Nathan Hochman are endorsing a challenger.

Feldstein Soto told LAist the pushback from the criminal branch of her office is in response to her efforts to reform the City Attorney’s Office.

“I came into this office under a cloud of corruption. Twenty percent of our City Council [members] were indicted or in jail. Six lawyers in this office were under investigation,” Feldstein Soto said. “I was elected to change the status quo. I’m still doing that. And people who benefited under the old status quo have a different agenda.”

Wildfire price gouging case

In the wake of last year’s devastating wildfires, the City Attorney’s Office has filed four criminal cases alleging price gouging, which makes it illegal to spike prices more than 10% during an emergency.

In February, Feldstein Soto directed prosecutors to drop two of those cases.

Scott Marcus, the city attorney’s criminal branch chief, informed prosecutors about that decision in a Feb. 3 email.

Feldstein Soto, he wrote, was concerned the defendants did not receive cease and desist letters before the charges, did not think there was enough evidence to charge people who manage the company and did not believe the cases were an appropriate use of the office’s “limited resources.”

Marcus wrote that Feldstein Soto agreed with his suggestion to dismiss the cases after they “verify that any victim of illegal price increases received restitution and was made whole.”

Kong, a supervising attorney in the criminal branch, responded via email that the order was “improper and unethical” because the case was strong and one of the defendants had donated to Feldstein Soto’s campaign.

“It is safe to say that a pattern has now emerged of the City Attorney's personal interest in protecting her donors,” Kong wrote. “We cannot have that.”

The case Kong was referring to involves the Paddock Riding Club in Atwater Village. In December, prosecutors at the City Attorney’s Office charged PCAM LLC, which does business as the riding club, and three members of the family that runs the business with “price gouging animal boarding services.”

Publicly available court records do not detail the allegations against the riding club, but the company was accused on social media of more than tripling its normal boarding prices to evacuees of the Eaton Fire. The Paddock Riding Club apologized after online backlash and said it was working to rectify the situation.

The City Attorney’s Office confirmed that one person paid the riding club about $1,900 at the higher rate and was later refunded.

The lead individual defendant’s first and last name, birthdate and address corresponds with Alex Chaves Sr., who stewards the property and lives there, according to the Paddock’s website. When reached for comment, his son — also named Alex Chaves — told LAist that the Paddock is “my dad’s place.” Karen Richardson, a spokesperson for the city attorney, said Feldstein Soto’s office does not know if the father or son is the defendant.

Chaves Sr. and defense attorneys in the case have not responded to requests for comment.

Campaign finance records show Chaves Sr., his wife, son Alex Chaves and daughter-in-law each gave maximum-allowed campaign contributions to Feldstein Soto on the same day in December 2024, totaling $7,200.

Around the time they filed the Paddock case in early December, prosecutors also filed price gouging charges against another horse boarding business — Gibson Ranch in Sunland — and its owner. Feldstein Soto told prosecutors to also drop that case when she ordered the Paddock case dropped.

The Gibson Ranch defendants do not show up as donating to Feldstein Soto in campaign contribution searches.

That case was dismissed this month. Their defense attorney, Greg Yacoubian, said the price gouging law did not apply in the Gibson Ranch case because it compared prices charged by a new owner with those from the previous owner at that location. (The price gouging law is specific to a particular person or business selling, or offering to sell, something for a price that’s over 10% higher than they charged just before a declared emergency.)

The arraignment hearing for the Paddock case has been postponed twice since Feldstein Soto’s early February directive to dismiss it, and is now scheduled for June 18.

“We have not moved to dismiss because the Office is confirming the evidence in the case in accordance with appropriate practice, policies, and procedures,” said a city attorney spokesperson.

Scott Marcus, chief of the city attorney’s criminal branch, at a Feb. 26 court hearing in the Paddock case, where he told the judge the arraignment was being postponed.

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Nick Gerda

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LAist

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Feldstein Soto called claims of favoritism “nonsense,” telling LAist she knew who the Paddock defendants were but not whether they donated to her campaign.

She said she wanted to dismiss the two price gouging cases because prosecutors failed to follow a policy she put in place in 2023 — to only prosecute company leaders for the actions of their business if they were actively involved in committing the act or failed to fix the problem after being put on notice they could face charges.

A spokesperson for Feldstein Soto’s administration said the City Attorney’s Office has sent warning letters to almost all of the roughly 1,100 potential price gouging defendants from the wildfires as a way to achieve “compliance and restitution without having to file criminal or even civil charges.”

The goal of regulatory prosecutions, she said, “is to achieve compliance and to get restitution for the victims.”

In follow-up emails forwarded to colleagues who advise on ethics compliance, Kong and another supervising prosecutor in his unit expressed alarm at Feldstein Soto’s directive. Kong called the Paddock case "righteous" and described an “ethical conundrum.”

“I do not want to place our supervisors, our line deputies, or myself in a position where they will be compromised in any shape or form or worse, an accessory to unethical conduct,” Kong wrote. He also noted the law does not require warning letters before filing price gouging charges.

[Click here to read the emails.]

The McGinnis declaration

In a sworn court declaration last year, McGinnis — the former criminal branch chief ousted by Feldstein Soto — alleged a range of ethics violations by the city attorney.

Among them, McGinnis wrote that Feldstein Soto told prosecutors to dismiss a building safety prosecution where the defense attorney was a friend whose wife was a maximum donor to her campaign. That case — against Zenith Insurance and its then-CEO Kari Lynn Van Gundy — alleged 14 criminal violations of building safety laws, including around fire safety and exit doors. Court records show Feldstein Soto’s office dropped the charges against Van Gundy in January 2024, followed by dropping the case against the company in September 2024.

Campaign finance records corroborate the donation described in the allegations. Defense attorney Ben Reznik’s wife gave a maximum campaign contribution to the city attorney in 2022, per campaign filings. Feldstein Soto said she knows Reznik’s wife through social circles.

The city attorney “simply wanted her donor/friend’s case dismissed,” McGinnis wrote in her court declaration, which was filed as part of her whistleblower retaliation lawsuit.

The city attorney denied friendships or donations have ever had anything to do with her decisions.

“ I've prosecuted tons of cases,” Feldstein Soto said. “I've filed cross complaints against all kinds of people, including donors who have called me up spitting and yelling, OK?”

Reznik told LAist that Feldstein Soto’s recommendation was to dismiss only the charges against the then-CEO — Van Gundy — but not against the company itself. The CEO “had no clue” about the building matters that the case was about, he said.

“There was absolutely no basis to name the individual [CEO] of the company” as a defendant, Reznik said. The case, he said, was about “very minor infractions” regarding building codes like fire doors, some of which he said did not apply to the building in question.

After fixing the issues that were cited and getting clearance from the fire department, the charges against the company were dismissed, Reznik said.

In another case, McGinnis wrote, Feldstein Soto pressed hard — “without evidence” — to McGinnis and LAPD leaders for charges to be filed against an activist she thought had protested outside the home of another major donor. In that case, McGinnis wrote that LAPD commanders demanded a meeting with city attorney managers to object to Feldstein Soto’s pressure. The city attorney says she later declined to file charges.

Feldstein Soto’s office says that allegation has “no truth.” As for the alleged meeting with LAPD leadership, her spokesperson said: “We have no knowledge of how the meeting came about and what happened at the meeting.”

“In no uncertain terms, the City Attorney did not and would not pressure a client on any issue,” added the spokesperson. (In addition to overseeing the city’s prosecutors, the city attorney is the top lawyer representing and advising city officials about their official duties.)

Following the judge’s ruling that the city’s evidence “falls far short” of proving Feldstein Soto disciplined McGinnis for legitimate reasons, the lawsuit is scheduled to go to trial in early 2027.

Data deletion memo

In December, three senior prosecutors in the City Attorney’s Office wrote a memo objecting to what they described as a plan to “purge all data” older than 10 years from the office’s text-only database of criminal case details, known as the Criminal Case Management System, or CCMS, as it migrates to a new system.

City attorney policy has been to destroy physical paper records of criminal cases, while the database of case information has been kept for decades, except for specific types of cases where deletion is required by law.

The memo was from three supervising prosecutors: Stacey Anthony, who directly supervises about three dozen criminal prosecutors, and two of her deputies.

They warned that deleting the data would harm victims and defendants because it’s often the only remaining source of crucial information.

“In many instances it would result in a miscarriage of justice,” states the Dec. 12 memo, a copy of which was obtained by LAist.

They wrote that the older data is used daily for a variety of crucial tasks — including strengthening rape and murder cases, evaluating the history of criminal defendants, generating letters for employment and immigration purposes that no charges were filed against an arrested person, and vetting criminal histories for police officers and others seeking licenses, credentials and firearm permits.

The supervising prosecutors wrote that it’s crucial that the older information be made readily accessible to prosecutors on a daily basis. The info is used for up to 50 requests per day to their part of the criminal branch alone, according to the memo.

[Click here to read the memo.]

Feldstein Soto and her office spokesperson initially confirmed the plan to delete the data altogether.

“I wanted to purge everything older than three years…but 10 years seems to be the consensus for how long we need to keep anything,” Feldstein Soto told LAist in December.

Feldstein Soto said deleting the data was a prudent step to make sure information doesn’t fall into the wrong hands. Her office said it does not have any evidence the database has been misused.

She said she’s looked in the database just once, looking up herself and seeing information about an old DUI case against her, which she pleaded to reckless driving.

“This came up in my last campaign. It was all over the place,” said Feldstein Soto.

During her 2022 campaign, information about her 1997 DUI case was posted on social media by an advocacy group. The post shows a public printout from the court summarizing the charges, without the kinds of detailed info that would be in the office database.

In January, a spokesperson for Feldstein Soto’s office said the plan is to keep the older case data on an encrypted hard drive that will be more restrictive for prosecutors to access. She and her spokespeople have not answered questions in recent weeks about whether case data has already been deleted, nor whether they’ve developed the specific policies for prosecutors’ access.

Feldstein Soto told LAist she had to learn quickly about criminal law after being elected in late 2022 as the top elected boss above the city’s prosecutors.

“You realize, I had no criminal [law] background. So this was all learning on the job,” she said. Her experience before being elected was in bankruptcy and corporate law.

“It was baptism by fire,” she said, “to start in this office without a criminal background.”

After the Eaton Fire burned across Altadena a year and half ago, an unusual sight reappeared up amid the ashes and debris: a giant werewolf wearing a large T-shirt, with a big rainbow-colored heart that said, “I love Altadena.”

“Where he sits on that hill, the sun behind him when we were there in the evening, the sun was setting and the clouds were perfect. It was just such a weirdly hopeful thing,” said Taylor Jennings, who was visiting from Fresno last summer when he saw Norman standing over the fire-torn intersection of Lincoln Avenue and Mariposa Street.

“All around there’s devastation, and there’s an 8-foot [tall] werewolf. At that point, I realized how Altadena is feral, and he just seemed like the perfect mascot,” Jennings said.

Norman Jr., as the werewolf is affectionately known, appeared on this burned-out corner lot in West Altadena just days after the fire, replacing a previous werewolf that popped up on the property a few years earlier.

Both belong to Jubilee House, a large sober living home for men operated by the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles. One of the residents bought the original werewolf just in time for Halloween a few years ago and named him Norman — a nod to the home’s eerie resemblance to Norman Bates’ house in the 1960 classic slasher film Psycho.

Courage Escamilla hams it up with Norman Jr. on a recent weekday afternoon.

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Steven Cuevas

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House manager Brian Woodruff said trick-or-treaters would never stop by the house.

“Every year I bought candy, every year,” Woodruff said, laughing, as he stood on the cleared lot near Norman Jr. “And I always ended up being the one eating all the candy!”

That changed after Norman appeared on the front lawn. The trick-or-treaters came in droves, lured by the werewolf’s grinning fangs and gnarled outstretched arms. They’d stop and take pictures with Norman and leave gifts and thank you notes. So, the guys at the house decided to keep him up year-round and started creating new outfits for Norman to mark the changing of the seasons.

“Summer was coming up, we can get the Big-and-Tall catalog, we can order him a tank top,” Woodruff recalled. “And then I went online, and I found some oversized sunglasses,” he said, chuckling at the memory.

Then came the fire. All ten residents of Jubilee House got out safely, but the place burned to the ground. Among the debris lay the mangled pieces of Norman’s metal limbs.

“The first time I came up, I didn’t expect to be so disoriented, you probably experienced this, too,” said Pastor Tim Hartley, the director of the Jubilee House program. “I didn’t know where I was.”

A few weeks later, hoping to boost morale, Hartley started shopping for and found a replacement: Norman Jr.

“Once we put up that werewolf, it became this landmark [after the fire] that people could use for where they were in Altadena, as well as this source of hope for people,” Hartley said.

That’s what Norman Jr. came to symbolize for longtime Altadena resident Courage Escamilla.

“He’s kind of a symbol for people in town who for their whole life have struggled to ever feel like they fit in because they’re eccentric or different or stand out,” Escamilla said.

Rigoberto Gonzales runs through the extensive menu of his Mexican food truck.

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After the fire, he became an advocate and community booster, helping to organize rallies and fundraisers. Escamilla’s hard to miss, usually pulling up to community events on his motorcycle, sporting a red durag, with a raccoon tail dangling from the back of his waistband.

“You feel like you’re now in a community that embraces the weird, the unusual, and so for me, Norman represents the message that we embrace and appreciate the strange and unusual in this town,” Escamilla said.

After all, he said, fictional “monsters” are often just misunderstood.

“They’re often unfairly targeted, and I always felt like I related to that on some subconscious level and have always loved monsters for the fact that they can be loved,” Escamilla said.

“Symbols of things that were previously seen as repugnant are now seen as something that represents love and acceptance, and I find that rather special.”

Norman Jr.’s main character was another Altadena resident who lost her home. She stepped up to the task, creating new seasonal outfits and making sure he stayed upright when it was stormy.

On a spring day, she draped the werewolf’s plastic and metal body and articulated limbs in a form-fitting fake fur suit with a big red heart on its chest, hand-stitched for his frame.

With everyone from the sober living home scattered to new locations, Hartley welcomed her help.

“She honored this space in a way that I just appreciated,” Hartley said. “And then she’d say, he’s a little rickety, so I’m going to put out the word to have people come help me secure him, and these strangers would all gather to help, which I just loved.”

Norman Jr.’s caretaker declined to be interviewed and asked that we not use her name. But she did explain how Norman’s corner became a refuge for her after losing her home in the fire.

Pastor Tim Hartley shows off a Norman Jr. T-shirt, hand-screened by a local artist, to commemorate the Eaton Fire.

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Steven Cuevas

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Photos of the wolfman wearing the outfits she created started blowing up on social media, and life started returning to the neighborhood, with the pace of rebuilding picking up speed.

That’s when the little green taco truck from the San Fernando Valley appeared.

Behind the wheel was Rigoberto Gonzales. Also, a plumber who moonlights doing work on home rebuilds around town, Gonzales saw a need for food options that could appeal to the growing army of construction workers.

Knowing nothing about Norman’s story, he parked his lime green truck beneath the giant oak tree that shares the same corner. Norman’s caretaker was not happy. She asked Gonzales to move, even though his vehicle didn’t disturb or block access to the werewolf.

“Every time I see her, she was so mad, for no reason,” Gonzales said, as he took a break from the truck on a recent afternoon.

“Then she later tells me what’s the reason. She just doesn’t want me to be here.”

The conflict simmered for weeks. Gonzales said he felt unfairly targeted. He said he asked her why he needed to move.

“I mean, give me the reason [why] I have to move? And she only walked away,” he said.

The caretaker quit caring for Norman, claiming she felt unsafe. Gonzales insisted that not he, nor any of his staff or customers, ever harassed the caretaker in any way.

Then, a group of fire survivors, who never bothered talking to Gonzales or the property managers, rallied behind the caretaker. They accused Gonzales of exploiting a vulnerable, traumatized community and ruining the sacredness of Norman Jr.’s corner.

Then, it escalated. A disgruntled resident posted Gonzales’ license plate on social media.

Others threatened to call the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department or LA County Public Health. In a community forum on Facebook, one person “joked” about putting nails under his tires. Another person suggested setting off “stink bombs.”

Local therapist and activist Melissa Lopez said a few people tied to that same Facebook group later showed up to hassle Gonzales in person. After that confrontation, they appeared to have backed off.

“That hurts, to see some of these violent reactions, to say they were going to bring a truck and wall off the area to him,” Lopez said. “People are gathering up pitchforks, and [it’s] scary.”

Things eventually cooled down, but not without some sore feelings. Norman’s caretaker still hasn’t returned.

But Norman Jr. continues to be looked after by his community of admirers — including Lopez, who just got a colorful Norman Jr. tattoo on her calf.

Lopez said she found some similarity between the friction over Norman Jr. and a recent monster movie, director Guillermo del Toro’s 2025 Frankenstein film. In the adaptation, she said, the scientist gives Frankenstein’s creature a voice, and the creature tells his story.

“It’s so beautiful because of that, because you get to see that he’s been dehumanized, that we created a monster,” Lopez said.” And I think that’s so true of society. We create the monsters, and how quickly we go to ostracize, to condemn people.”