The Brief

Warning: This story includes graphic images of bodily injury. 

For years, Vanessa Perez has presented pictures of her son's severely bloodied face at gatherings of Los Angeles County officials. At the Board of Supervisors, the Sheriff Civilian Oversight Commission and sheriff’s community meetings, Perez displays the disturbing images of her son, Joseph Perez, with his battered face on T-shirts, printouts and pictures on her phone.

With these images in hand, Perez continues to call attention to a July night nearly five years ago, when her son was severely beaten by a group of at least five L.A. County Sheriff’s deputies. Perez alleges the beating took place just hours after she informed the department that her son lived with mental illness and needed psychiatric help.

“At the time, I thought they were there to help,” Perez said. “What I know today is totally different."

After the beating, a doctor closed up lacerations on Perez’s scalp and face with 17 staples and 19 sutures, medical records show. Deputies alleged Perez was resisting arrest, attacked them and that they too were injured in the scuffle, according to partially redacted Sheriff’s Department records. He was charged with resisting arrest and assaulting deputies, and spent roughly two years incarcerated in L.A. County jail.

Vanessa Perez goes through photos of her son Joseph after his encounter with sheriff’s deputies.

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Brian Feinzimer

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Perez believes that her son was the victim of excessive force at the hands of deputies. The Sheriff’s Department has released some records explaining their actions that night, but more than a dozen pages are fully redacted and do not include any documentation of an internal investigation to determine if the deputies acted appropriately. With the help of a local civil rights attorney, Perez filed a lawsuit in January alleging her son was “violently confronted and unjustifiably detained” by the deputies. The complaint seeks unspecified damages.

Now, Perez’s case is at the center of a legal battle between the Sheriff Civilian Oversight Commission and the Sheriff’s Department. The commission plans to file a separate lawsuit seeking records relating to Perez and two other cases. The commission wants the full, unredacted use-of-force report and other records, including witness interviews, summaries, exhibits, body camera footage, text messages and photographs or video recordings for all three cases. But so far, the Sheriff’s Department has not supplied the information.

The Perez case shows how people living with severe mental illness can fall through the cracks in systems that are supposed to offer help, leading to criminalization, criminal justice reform advocates told LAist. It also demonstrates the difficulty many families face in seeking law enforcement accountability, especially if they don’t have an attorney. If the commission is successful in its demand for additional records, the Perez case could also have implications for accountability moving forward.

In an emailed statement, the Sheriff’s Department said it “remains committed to working in good faith to support oversight efforts while upholding the legal protections established to ensure the privacy and rights of all individuals involved.”

The department also said its asking a court to decide whether the commission’s interpretation of the law is accurate.

“Should the court agree with the [Sheriff Civilian Oversight Commission], the materials will be disclosed,” the department said. “Without judicial guidance or legislative amendment, disclosing confidential peace officer records could expose the Department to serious legal consequences — including potential civil or criminal liability — and, most critically, could erode public trust."

Robert Bonner, outgoing chair of the Sheriff Civilian Oversight Commission, told LAist that without being able to review full reports like this, commissioners “cannot provide effective and meaningful oversight of the Sheriff’s Department.”

“The kind of oversight, by the way, that the public, the voters, clearly said they want,” Bonner added.

What happened the night of the beating 

Sheriff’s Department records obtained by LAist tell the partial narrative of an arrest attempt turned violent.

According to sheriff department records, at around 2 a.m. on July 27, 2020, two deputies arrived on scene in the neighborhood of East Valinda, near the City of Industry. They were responding to a call reporting a possible car burglary.

That’s where they allegedly found Joseph Perez tampering with a car and tried to detain him.

Deputies claimed Perez tried to run away. After they tried to detain him, Perez allegedly began kicking and punching one of the deputies. According to a Supervisor’s Use of Force report, the ensuing fight caused one of the deputies to “severely injure his leg.”

Ultimately, six deputies arrived on scene, with five delivering dozens of blows to Perez’s face, head and torso. Deputies alleged they commanded Perez to stop fighting several times.

Perez said he felt like the deputies ganged up on him unnecessarily.

According to the complaint filed by Perez’s attorney, deputies “put him face first on the ground and began to climb on his back.” The complaint further alleges that “at all times during this encounter... [Perez] believed that he was going to die.”

Vanessa Perez goes through video of her son Joseph after his encounter with sheriff’s deputies.

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Vanessa Perez said her son was left with facial scars, ongoing pain and has suffered seizures lasting up to two minutes since the incident.

Perez questions why the arrest happened this way, especially since she claims she called the Industry sheriff’s station, where Joseph was being held just two days earlier for being under the influence of methamphetamine. Perez alleges she informed the station that her son lives with a serious mental illness and needed to be hospitalized in a psychiatric facility.

But hours later, Joseph was released anyway.

“There’s no way that those officers did not know who my son was,” Perez said.

Michele Infante, a criminal justice reform advocate formerly with the group Dignity and Power Now, said that after her extensive review of the case, she believes the deputies used excessive force.

She called the deputies' actions “horrific.”

“Everything about this whole case is completely wrong,” said Infante, who now works as a private consultant and has presented the Perez case to the Sheriff Civilian Oversight Commission. “This case is not just about the Sheriff’s Department beating Joseph terribly the way that they did. It’s about mental health."

Serious mental illness falls through the cracks 

Vanessa Perez said Joseph, now 27, started to show signs of serious mental illness shortly after he was hit by a car when he was 12.

Before the accident, Perez said Joseph had plenty of friends and hung out at a skatepark near their home in West Covina.

After the accident, Perez said he became more and more isolated. Over the years, Perez said Joseph suffered multiple bouts of psychosis, forcing her to call for help from local mental health crisis teams. He was diagnosed with multiple serious mental illnesses, including bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, Perez said.

Once Joseph turned 18, Perez said, the Department of Child and Family Services said that, due to multiple disturbances in the home, Joseph could no longer stay with her and her two minor daughters.

Perez said she had no choice but to file a restraining order on Joseph if she wanted to keep her other two children with her.

“It was the hardest decision I’ve ever had to make... And Joseph ended up on the streets,” Perez told LAist.

She said Joseph, who was unable to care for himself, would come to her home and bang on the doors, asking to come inside.

“And it broke me. It broke me to pieces. Trying to explain to him, ‘you can’t be here,’” she said.

Perez remembers looking for Joseph on the streets every night, trying to make sure he had a meal.

Just two weeks prior to the beating by sheriff’s deputies, Perez said her son was placed in a psychiatric ward. Just days later, he was back on the streets and attempted to light himself on fire, she said.

“I would have gave anything just for them to help me put him in a home,” Perez said.

But instead, he was released without access to supportive services, only to be arrested and incarcerated after the July 2020 incident.

Last year, thanks to the county’s Office of Diversion and Reentry, Joseph was living in supportive housing and trying to get his life back together.

Last September, sitting next to his mom at Magic Johnson Park in Willowbrook, Joseph said he was working toward getting permanent housing, a job and a driver's license.

Vanessa and Joseph Perez.

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Robert Garrova / LAist

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As for the incident in 2020, Joseph, a soft spoken man of slight build, said he didn’t think he was treated fairly and hopes the deputies who beat him will be reprimanded.

“Because this is beyond what they should do,” he said. “Basically they just dog piled me and got on top of me and started hitting me on top of my skull... I was bleeding."

'Not set up to help them' 

Criminal justice experts told LAist Perez’s case is indicative not only of the struggles vulnerable people living with mental illness face in getting the proper treatment, but also how difficult it is for families like his to pursue any recourse when they feel like law enforcement uses excessive force.

“People with significant mental health issues are both deeply vulnerable and also incapable, often, of responding to the commands of law enforcement,” said Eric Miller, a law professor at Loyola Law School. “And when they don’t, [law enforcement] then escalate the use of force into physical violence."

Miller also regularly visits the county’s carceral facilities as a member of the Sybil Brand Commission, which is tasked with monitoring jail conditions. He said he checked in on Joseph when he was incarcerated at the request of Perez’s mother.

“If they are treated in this brutal manner and want to gain some measure of justice, the system, especially the oversight system, is not set up to help them,” Miller said.

Oversight bodies, like the Office of Inspector General and Sheriff Civilian Oversight Commission, aren’t tasked with representing individuals. These oversight groups are typically addressing systemic issues like deputy gangs or jail conditions, Miller said.

Finding an attorney willing to represent someone in Joseph’s situation can prove very difficult, he added.

Joanna Schwartz, a professor of law at UCLA, said that in her research, it's often only through a lawsuit that evidence is truly tested to see who was at fault in cases like this.

“Our law enforcement agencies are pretty uniformly miserable at capturing and making publicly available data about what their officers do,” Schwartz, author of the book Shielded: How the Police Became Untouchable, told LAist. “When there’s not a lawyer who has taken on the case and not a lawsuit that’s been filed, we have no idea how many people there are in his situation and in his mother’s situation."

But thanks to Perez’s persistence in getting her son’s story in front of officials, a local civil rights attorney has recently taken up Joseph’s case.

Vanessa Perez goes through documents related to the case of her son Joseph’s encounter with sheriff’s deputies.

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Jamon Hicks, a partner at Douglas Hicks Law and a current member of the Sheriff Civilian Oversight Commission, filed a complaint in January against the county alleging “serious and unreasonable force” at the hands of sheriff’s deputies.

“I’m really curious to know what it is that the police are saying he did to warrant that kind of force being used to where he looks like that,” Hicks said. “It is incredibly painful to look at [the photos of Joseph] and to wonder what could possibly have happened to justify that level of force.”

Hicks added that he will first have to convince a judge to allow the lawsuit to move forward since filing deadlines were missed years ago.

Why the Sheriff Civilian Oversight Commission plans to sue 

By way of an official subpoena filed in March, the the Sheriff Civilian Oversight Commission demanded the Sheriff’s Department produce the full, unredacted use-of-force report package, including any body cam footage, witness interviews and text messages related to the Perez case.

The commission has also demanded records in two other incidents.

In the case of Emmett Brock, a teacher who was beaten by a sheriff’s deputy in a 7-Eleven parking lot, the commission is also seeking use-of-force reports, body-worn camera and bystander footage as well as witness statements. According to the subpoena, the deputy pleaded guilty in federal court to using unconstitutional force against Brock during the 2023 incident.

The commission is also seeking investigative reports and witness interviews in the case of Andres Guardado, a 23-year-old killed by a deputy in June 2020.

But so far, the commission has been unsuccessful in getting the additional records it requested.

In an emailed statement, Max Huntsman, L.A. County’s Inspector General who is tasked with promoting transparency and constitutional policing within the Sheriff’s Department, said the department's custodian of records failed to appear in response to the commission’s subpoena, “which mirrored conduct from the Villanueva administration and was deeply troubling as such a failure to appear is not justified by the assertion of privileges as to some items subpoenaed.”

Huntsman added that the Sheriff’s Department “has always been strongly resistant to oversight.”

“I do not think it is likely that will change any time soon,” Huntsman said.

Commission chair is dismissed 

Amid the commission’s efforts to enforce the subpoenas, the outgoing chair, Bonner, told his colleagues at their last meeting that Supervisor Kathryn Barger dismissed him “without so much as a phone call.”

In a letter dated April 18, County Executive Officer Edward Yen stated that Bonner’s term had expired.

“If you are interested in being considered for reappointment to the Sheriff Civilian Oversight Commission, please submit your resume within one week...” the letter states.

In an emailed statement, Barger said she appreciated Bonner’s service and contributions to the commission.

“I'm committed to broadening the diversity of voices and expertise represented on the Commission and believe it is important to provide others with the opportunity to serve," she said. "My decision reflects my desire to continue cultivating public trust in the oversight process by introducing new perspectives that support the Commission’s vital work."

At its most recent meeting, the commission said it still plans to take legal action demanding that the Sheriff’s Department supply in closed session the records it requested in the three cases.

“There are photos taken shortly after the arrest by Sheriff’s Department deputies that show that he was pretty severely beaten in the face,” Bonner, a retired U.S. District Court judge, told LAist in April. “The photos, by the way, are quite bloody. And his mother, who has appeared before us, has asked the commission a number of times — as the body that’s been given oversight over the Sheriff’s Department — to find out why there was no internal investigation."

The commission, Bonner said, thinks it can receive and review the confidential reports in closed session.

“The Office of the County Counsel has fully supported the COC, as an advisory body to the Board, in its efforts to seek the information it needs to play a powerful oversight role on behalf of L.A. County citizens,” L.A. County Counsel said in a statement. “This includes assisting with a declaratory relief action that will hopefully bring judicial clarity to the commission's ability to obtain the information it seeks and also drafting an ordinance to allow the COC to meet in closed session."

Bonner said he believes the commission will eventually get the Perez records.

L.A. County residents, he said, gave the commission this oversight power when voters overwhelmingly passed Measure R in 2020, empowering the body with the authority to directly subpoena the department.

“This power is meaningless unless we can actually get access and review things like use of force reports and death review reports,” Bonner said.

During public comment at the oversight commission’s May 20 meeting, Vanessa Perez thanked commissioners for trying to move forward with the subpoenas.

“The people voted for this commission to have subpoena power so it could get to the bottom of cases like Joseph[‘s] and make sure deputies are held accountable for their actions,” Perez said. “I encourage you all to do whatever is necessary to get this information.”

A slew of Medicare Advantage plans are disappearing for next year, leaving seniors in many areas with fewer options. In 193 counties across the country, no plans are offered at all.

Medicare's annual open enrollment period kicked off October 15 and runs until December 7, and seniors enrolled in those privatized Medicare plans that are closing in certain markets should carefully review their options.

Medicare Advantage means private insurers run Medicare for older Americans who choose it over traditional Medicare, where the federal government itself administers the program. More than half of the 70 million Americans in Medicare choose Medicare Advantage. It's popular because it covers services like vision and dental, often with lower premiums than traditional Medicare. It also often folds in the "Part D" drug benefit, simplifying that decision.

But a downside of Medicare Advantage is that companies can pick and choose where they offer plans. If a certain community is not profitable, a company can leave that market. And that has been happening on an increasingly large scale the last three years, according to research published in JAMA.

Who is affected

Big swaths of rural America are losing Medicare Advantage choices and so are some major metro areas.

Last year, 2.9 million seniors were in Medicare Advantage plans that closed up shop, according to JAMA. This year, an analysis of insurance company announcements by An Arm and A Leg podcast, shows at least 2 million people will be affected. Other preliminary estimates range from 3.2 million to 5 million seniors. About 35 million people are enrolled in Medicare Advantage.

According to an analysis of federal data by the health policy research organization KFF, the 193 counties that will have zero Medicare Advantage plans are mostly rural. Last year that number was about 120 counties without a plan offered.

KFF's numbers also show that there will be far fewer plans offered in some metro areas. Dallas, Minneapolis, Seattle, Houston and Portland all have between a quarter and a third fewer Medicare Advantage plans for seniors.

What happens next

If your plan is ending, and you don't choose another, the insurance company will assign you to another Medicare Advantage plan or the government will enroll you in traditional Medicare — but without a supplemental or drug plan.

If you want to switch from Medicare Advantage to traditional Medicare and your plan is ending, you can enroll in a Medicare supplemental plan — also known as Medigap — without the same restrictions that you would normally have. If you have a pre-existing condition that has prevented you from enrolling in Medigap before, that could be good news.

Another wrinkle this year is that insurance companies can cap enrollments on some of the Medicare Advantage plans that they do offer.

Which means: If you wait to sign up, a plan you want might already be full.

The companies are supposed to enroll people on a first-come, first-serve basis — and not cherry-pick customers based on health conditions, age, or demographics.

Another reason not to delay is that with so many people on the hunt for new plans, it may take longer than usual to get help.

How and where to find help

Here are some tips for navigating Medicare open enrollment this year:

• Find out if your plan is still offered: First, check your mail. Medicare Advantage plans that are closing should have sent letters the first week in October. You can also log in to your account on Medicare.gov to check your plan's status for next year.
  
• Try calling your SHIP: There's a State Health Insurance Assistance Program — known as a "SHIP" — in every state to help seniors with Medicare. The name's not easy to remember or particularly descriptive, but it's free, mandated by the federal government, and the staff and volunteers are required to give you unbiased information on all available options. Find your state in the directory at shiphelp.org. Your county may have a specific number that you can find on your state's SHIP website.
  
• Look for local Medicare counseling services: Friends, family, leaders at your place of worship, and the constituent services of your local elected officials may have the scoop on where you can get one-on-one help. The nonprofit Medicare Rights Center also has a national helpline, and a well-organized library of online guides.
  
• Brokers can be helpful, but be savvy: You want a broker who's going to talk with you about all your options — including switching to traditional Medicare and a supplemental plan. Ask if they sell plans from all available insurance carriers. And ask if they answer questions about your plan year-round, because insurance never stops being confusing.
  
• Double check what you see on Medicare.gov: Medicare's Plan Finder allows you to search plans online. But lists of doctors and drugs that are covered can sometimes be wrong. To be safe, double check with your doctor's office or a SHIP counselor, broker, or other Medicare assistor.
  
• Don't share your personal information with services you find online: Be careful where you share your personal information like your phone number. Some online agencies will sell your information, leading to spam calls and potentially even scam artists.
  
• Be mindful of the deadlines: Open enrollment for Medicare runs October 15, 2026 through December 7, 2026. The coverage starts January 1, 2027. If your plan is ending, you qualify for a "special enrollment period" to give you a little more time — until February 28, 2027. (For coverage that starts January 1, 2027, enroll by December 31.)

Emily Pisacreta is the senior producer for An Arm and a Leg, a podcast about the cost of healthcare produced in partnership with KFF Health News and distributed by KUOW, Seattle's NPR member station. 

Copyright 2026 NPR

Federal prosecutors sent letters to county registrars across California on Friday demanding that local officials set aside and verify ballots that the Department of Justice said may belong to noncitizens, according to the Los Angeles County registrar and a letter obtained by The Associated Press.

The letters are the latest escalation in a legal battle between California and President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice, which has recently focused on the state in its efforts to root out noncitizen voting ahead of the midterm elections. Data shows illegal voting by people who aren’t U.S. citizens is incredibly rare, difficult to prove and has not been shown to change the outcome of races.

Earlier this month, the federal government targeted Los Angeles County and the California Secretary of State’s office in a lawsuit that aimed to block them from counting the votes of roughly 20,000 people who are “likely” noncitizen voters. A hearing on the case is scheduled for Tuesday.

The Trump administration asked the 9th Circuit court of appeals to rule on the lawsuit barring a decision from the district judge assigned to the case. They set a deadline for Saturday.

Now, according to the LA County registrar’s office, at least 18 counties across the state have received similar letters. They have been given a 48 hour deadline to provide identifying information corresponding with ballots that the federal government believes were sent to noncitizens illegally registered to vote. The letter requests that county officials also sequester any ballots where citizenship cannot be verified.

“Any election official who knowingly processes the ballot of a noncitizen is opening themselves to legal jeopardy,” said First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli.

The Justice Department is asking counties to send information about the voters it suspects are noncitizens including social security numbers, ID information, a copy of their registration and more.

That information can help the government and state quickly assess each person suspected of illegally registering to vote, said the letter sent to San Bernardino County voting officials. The letter says the government’s list of suspected noncitizen voters includes 1,133 people from the inland Southern California county.

California’s secretary of state and the Los Angeles County registrar have opposed the federal government’s demands. In legal filings, lawyers for California say the request threatens to delay the certification of the vote and undermine the legitimacy of the November midterms. They have also argued that the federal government’s data is unreliable and that their demands risk disenfranchisement of citizens.

Voting is underway in California, with the state’s more than 23 million registered voters receiving ballots in the mail earlier this month. The state said in legal filings that over 330,000 mail-in ballots have already been counted.

The letters on Friday came on the heels of statewide sweep by federal authorities earlier in the week, where 28 people from the list of 20,000 were charged with illegally registering to vote. Some were also charged with illegally voting and lying on naturalization paperwork. Those charges could lead to years in prison.

The California State University faculty union is asking its members to authorize a strike, as negotiations with the California State University system remain stalled.

This summer, the California Faculty Association declared an impasse after 16 months of negotiation with the CSU. The union’s president said university officials negotiating with the union have “not been honest agents.”

If a majority of members approve the strike authorization, voting from Oct. 26 through Nov. 19, CFA leadership would be authorized to call a strike.

The union, which represents 29,000 professors and other university employees, is seeking salary increases, changes to faculty workloads and protections related to the use of artificial intelligence.

In recent weeks, CSU has reached tentative agreements with three unions: the Statewide University Police Association, the United Auto Workers Local 4123 and Academic Professionals of California. Together, the agreements cover 14,000 university employees.

The tentative agreements, which must be approved by union members and CSU’s Board of Trustees, include an 8% salary increase over two years, along with one-time raises negotiated by each bargaining unit.

It can be tough to be tall. I am 6 feet, hear me out.

And yes, complaining about being able to see over a crowd may sound silly. But height can be a love-hate relationship for many people, particularly towering women and children who feel like they just don’t fit in.

Well, that’s where a worldwide social club for tall people comes in, but whether it’ll reach its 100th birthday is in question.

Tall Clubs International is an organization spanning more than a dozen states and several countries that offers tall adults a chance to connect and commiserate. The original chapter, founded in Los Angeles in 1938, is called the California Tip Toppers.

To get into the L.A. group, men have to be 6 feet 4 inches or taller, and women have to be at least 6 feet. One of the tallest members of the organization is 7 feet 2 inches, and honestly, I couldn’t help but perk up at the opportunity to feel short for once in my life.

At 13, I was still growing at 5 feet 10, towering over almost every kid in my freshman high school class. One of the first questions people still ask me is whether I played volleyball or basketball, and I’ve learned to laugh at the look they get when I say I preferred theater.

“People see how tall you are, they expect ‘Oh, you're going to be great on the basketball court,’” said Michele Cripps, a 6-foot-1 member of the California Tip Toppers, who joined in 1996. She's married to William Walter Wiseman II, a fellow member. “Well, I'm sorry, white girls can't jump sometimes, and I'm one of them.”

Some of the tall club members are generational, encouraged to join by their parents or older relatives, which has started to pose its own problems as the chapters get older.

What’s the big deal anyways?

William Walter Wiseman II and Michele Cripps at the 2026 Tall Clubs International convention in Hollywood.

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Courtesy Michele Cripps and William Walter Wiseman II

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The chapters became a way for tall people to trade practical tips, like which stores sold pants that actually covered your ankles or shoes that didn’t need to be specially made.

“I was always being kidded about my pants being too short or my clothes not fitting correctly,” said Wiseman, who's nearly 6 feet 9 and also wasn’t much of a basketball player. “And as I grew as an adult, people are a little bit afraid to approach people that are tall.”

Wiseman has a good sense of humor about his height, cracking jokes that I’ve added to my arsenal when answering “how’s the weather up there?” But he doesn’t gloss over the pain points either — Wiseman can’t fit into cars or roller coasters, hotel beds are never long enough, and airplanes can be an expensive nightmare.

“It's not just the socialization of being tall, but it's also the physicality of it,” he said. “It's almost a handicap to be tall.”

Members of the Tall Club of Orange County at the 2026 convention.

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Courtesy Michele Cripps and William Walter Wiseman II

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Cripps said she was a skinny kid, but she couldn’t help but feel “huge” growing up a head above everyone else, which hurt her young self-esteem and made dating more difficult.

The clubs gave them both a chance to see eye to eye with a room full of people for the first time, and potentially even find a partner. Wiseman’s parents met in the Dayton Altitudians tall club in Ohio, decades before Wiseman and Cripps met through their own California clubs.

“The people that married inside the club stayed married,” said Wiseman, who lives in Torrance with Cripps. “The people that married outside of the club got divorced.”

A Dayton Daily News clipping of William Walter Wiseman II's father measuring tall teens in the Dayton, Ohio area from November 19, 1958. 

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Courtesy William Walter Wiseman II

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Future of the club in question

But now, the California Tip Toppers is having trouble bringing in new, younger members — a recruitment crisis that’s essentially dissolved groups in other areas, Wiseman said.

Members of the California Tip Toppers at the 2026 convention.

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Courtesy Michele Cripps and William Walter Wiseman II

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“We're facing the same challenges like all other clubs,” Cripps and Wiseman said, jumping in to finish each other’s thoughts. “Some of it could be generational. Some of it's that since COVID, the clubs have not been quite as active as they used to be. Some people [don’t have] homes to open up anymore … and we're all getting older.”

The club is at a crossroads: Get new members on board or fade away. The couple seems to have made it a mission to rejuvenate the California Tip Toppers, but Cripps was frank when she said they’re not sure how to get more people involved, whether it's fresh events or outreach opportunities.

At the end of the day, they’re hoping the club and the community it fosters can help others learn how to “stand tall” and be proud.

The clubs crown a new Miss Tall International at a formal pageant held during the annual convention. The former Miss Tall Clubs International that were at the 2026 convention from left to right: Susan Hopkins, 2019, from the Tall Club of Orange County, Martine Whitford, 1959, from the Los Angeles Higher Ups, Norma Forrest, 1996, from the Tall Club of Toronto and Mary Eleman, 2022, from the Central Arizona Tall Society.

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Courtesy Michele Cripps and William Walter Wiseman II

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Members of the Tall Clubs International convention committee.  From left to right: Barry Umbs from Milwaukee, William Walter Wiseman II from the California Tip Toppers, Jim Nelson from the Paramount Tall Club-Chicago and Michele Cripps from the California Tip Toppers.

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Courtesy Michele Cripps and William Walter Wiseman II

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“It’s a challenge, but it’s something that was given to us,” Cripps said. “I say as I've aged, I should have listened to my mother, I should have stood up tall.”

Moms everywhere, mine included, rejoice.

“Everybody wants to be something different than they have,” Cripps continued. “So, try and embrace what you have. Life is too short, and it goes too quick.”