The Brief

"I sought out community college to grow my nascent interest in art and journalism."

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Bonnie Ho / LAist

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I had been thinking about making my own career change for over five years.

Some friends and I formed a group to discuss the book “Designing Your Life.” In that moment, our past decisions would no longer dictate our lives. We brought the design concept of iteration into practice, ready to learn from trial and error.

It took me time. I was terrified of leaving a respectable job and financial stability, even though I had lost a sense of vitality in my work. I sought out community college to grow my nascent interest in art and journalism.

I could be a student again — make mistakes, ask dumb questions, and dare to imagine a different future.

This is a project about six people, who by way of community college have made — or started — a leap of faith.

A leap of faith.

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Investment banker > aspiring dietician

Rita Kwan worked in investment banking for 15 years. People in Hong Kong considered it a good job for the salary and the benefits.

Buildings and cuisine in Hong Kong

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"I didn’t really like that at all, the so-called ‘money-making’ industry.”

She was busy with work and she didn’t have the time to think about her future.

She thought it was “normal to suffer in my job, in my life.”

Kwan’s dad was fighting cancer and she thought his poor diet might have hurt his health. In Hong Kong, she saw people eating unhealthy junk food.

She realized the importance of what one consumes.

“We have to protect ourselves by raising our awareness of what we put into our bodies.”

In Hong Kong, the opportunity to make career changes seemed limited right after high school.

Kwan came to the U.S. and took an English as a second language class at Mt. San Antonio College, where she took a personality test. Her result pointed toward a “helping” career, like a teacher or a counselor.

"If they want to garden, they can garden. They have the health to do that, instead of staying in bed all day long."

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“I feel like I am a living person, instead of a person who doesn’t have a dream or who doesn’t know what I want to do.”

After taking nutrition courses at Mt. San Antonio College, Kwan plans to work full-time to afford the cost of a master’s degree in nutrition.

“Life is not about how long you live. It’s about the quality, when somebody’s healthy and able to do whatever they want to do. Like if they want to garden, they can garden. They have the health to do that, instead of staying in bed all day long.”

Khaokham enjoyed being a jeweler, having her own creative line and her artistic pieces in galleries.

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Jeweler > geography student

Candace Khaokham enjoyed being a jeweler, having her own creative line and her artistic pieces in galleries. “It was really rewarding and fun stuff, but it’s very taxing on your body and your eyesight because everything is so small.”

She realized she wasn’t earning enough.

“I’m getting older. I need to start thinking about a regular health care plan and savings.”

“I was looking at where people are needed in the future, you know?” A friend said there was a demand for people in the geography profession.

Khaokham attended Pasadena City College “without really knowing what I wanted to do when I started. I took my cultural geography class. I was like, ‘I love this class.’” She liked how geography is a study of “where we are, who’s around us, and how we got here.”

1939 Home Owners Loan Corporation color-coded and rating system of Los Angeles neighborhoods

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At community college in her early 40s, Khaokham excelled with a 3.9 GPA. “I wasn’t a great student in high school or my early teens, but this time I was like I’m gonna do good in school.”

“I wanted to have a job to be kind of helpful too, like if I could make a map that would help with land reclamation, a project on the history of redlining, redistricting, or gerrymandering.”

Adrián Huerta, education professor at University of Southern California

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Truck driver > aspiring occupational therapist

Before he had a stroke, Bladon was working as a truck driver for seven years. The job was stressful. He was working 14-hour days, five days a week, and he neglected his health.

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Before he had a stroke, Barri Bladon was working as a truck driver for seven years. The job was stressful. He was working 14-hour days, five days a week, and he neglected his health. “I ended up ballooning to like 330 pounds.”

“I didn’t have an education beyond high school. Being a truck driver was what I could do to make a decent salary.”

After the stroke, the doctor painted a bleak future for Bladon, pointing to statistics for African Americans. Bladon felt like the doctor was insensitive — his words causing more harm than good. Instead of feeling defeated, Bladon determined to get better.

During his rehabilitation process, he “met some incredible occupational therapists,” and decided to become one himself, starting with going back to school.

After his stroke, during his rehabilitation process, Barri “met some incredible occupational therapists,” and decided to become one himself.

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“I was afraid that I wasn’t gonna be able to make it through school because I hadn’t been in years, especially having a lesion on my brain.” Bladon hadn’t taken a standardized test in years. He had no idea how many courses he might need.

“Once I got through my first semester at El Camino, I felt more confident. I would get confident with each semester.”

He also found confidence by testing out other classes, like in radiology. He says, “Don’t be afraid to try something if you think you might be interested in it, especially at the community college level.”

Bladon wanted to complete his education as fast as possible. He recommends prospective students “do your own research” on what classes are required to transfer to a university — meeting with the university counselor, for example, can help. He met with a few different guidance counselors, but found only one who was particularly helpful, who saved him from taking unnecessary courses.

Bladon’s goal is “as a practitioner, I want to show people of color that there is representation in the field because the majority of the patients that we serve are Black and brown.”

Pamela Hsiung

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Wealth management client associate > aspiring UX/UI designer 

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Pamela Hsiung, who had been working for a wealth management company for seven years, began to work from home.

Pamela started by taking the Sketching for Design class at Pasadena City College.

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“When you’re working remotely, you’re really reduced to just the essence of the work you do. You really just sat with the work.”

“I realized all the fun parts of work were with my co-workers.” Hsiung says she had to make a career change.

As the eldest daughter of immigrant parents, she felt family expectations led her to study finance. Hsiung wanted to pivot and pursue a more creative career in design.

“I did my homework,” she says. “I realized a lot of professors at accredited universities were teaching at community colleges for a fraction of the price.”

She started by taking the Sketching for Design class at Pasadena City College. “In the beginning everyone is really lost, but maybe the second, third week you start to get the handle of thinking a little more creatively. That’s when I realized that as long as I break these steps down into bite-sized pieces, I’ll be able to digest them and inch forward.”

“I was doing something that I really enjoyed and I had never felt that when I was working in finance.” Hsiung liked creating something of her own. 

If Hsiung wasn’t being cautious, “I would love to be in something that was just purely art related.” She says the design field she’s pursuing is “still a business job.”

“I think it’s still scary. I’m not done with my portfolio, and I am moving into a completely different field. I know the tech industry isn’t great right now. I just have to persevere, and I will eventually make it.”

Physical therapy student > chef

“Career change is pretty evident for especially my generation of millennials. We all grew up kind of like on ‘you’re supposed to do this career, stick with it for like 40 plus, 50 years, retire and then that’s it.’ People are realizing you can do so many different things.”

Marie Manalo graduated from Cal State Northridge in kinesiology — the study of human movement — and began a physical therapy program.

“We were doing water exercises with clients. I was standing there holding my client in the water and I was like, ‘wow, I really don’t want to do this. I either make this change now or I commit and figure it out later.’”

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“We were doing water exercises with clients. I was standing there holding my client in the water and I was like, ‘wow, I really don’t want to do this. I either make this change now or I commit and figure it out later.’”

Manalo’s dad had been a sous chef and her grandma’s cooking had a strong influence on her, so she decided to look into culinary school.

Someone told her that L.A. Trade-Tech has a top culinary program. “And I wasn’t going to spend a crap ton of money going to Le Cordon Bleu or something private.”

Manalo’s dad had been a sous chef and her grandma’s cooking had a strong influence on her, so she decided to look into culinary school.

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“It’s really brave to change your career,” Manalo says, adding that not all families encourage people to change course when they choose. Manalo’s mom supported her doing what would make her happy.

The “culinary (industry) is pretty freaking intense, like mentally and physically,” Manalo says. Every day someone would shout or scream at her.

She said she was so focused on learning that she had a set of blinders on and did not notice the inappropriate behavior. She also worked 14 to 16-hour days and went three years without taking a vacation.

Manalo has stepped away from the restaurant industry now. She feels burnt out. “I think people need to understand too as you grow older the way you feel about life is gonna change.”

While the journey was worth it, along the way Manalo learned something about herself that is informing her next steps.

“I thought I was gonna regret changing, but once I was in it, I was in it. Now it’s like 10 plus years later and I still don’t regret.”

“I’m trying to find that, like, unicorn job that has everything — work-life balance, intensity, passion, like all that wrapped into one. And it’s really, really hard right now to find something like that.”

Archaeologist > nurse

Jane Mitchell worked as an archaeologist for nearly a decade.

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“I loved archaeology but I needed to make more money so that I could support myself and the family that I wanted to have one day,” Jane Mitchell says. She worked in the field for nearly a decade.

She considered continuing in archaeology in different ways. Getting a master’s degree and teaching and publishing, or working in a museum, for example.

She weighed the potential outcomes of different routes. Then, she decided to become a nurse.

For her, nursing was “the most practical, stable job you could probably find.” She said she would go from studying human remains to the living.

Making the change was “like jumping off a cliff into the water. ‘Am I really gonna start making this change? Start telling people that I’m totally turning my life around. What am I doing?’”

Making the change was “like jumping off a cliff into the water."

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Classes for nursing can be in high demand, but she enrolled in physiology and anatomy prerequisites at Pasadena City College.

Jane Mitchell

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Mitchell said she was closer to her professor’s age.

“I had to drop any amount of pride I had to ask people sometimes younger than me, ‘how do you do this?’”

At the same time, her life experience gave her confidence to ask questions. “I feel like a lot of students don’t ask questions at all. Maybe they’ll text a question.”

Mitchell says she did tons of research on how to become a nurse.

“Do your research. Make sure you have a clear path of how you’re gonna do it, how long it might take you so you can just be ready for it and not get stressed out about surprises along the way.”

How we made this story

This story was originally written and illustrated as a physical zine. The zine includes everything captured in this story: Advice from career counselors, questions to ask yourself when considering a career change, and hand-painted illustrations.

Want to learn more about how we put this together? Check out our Medium post.

If you have any questions about the project, or would like to learn about other print products related to higher education we have available, please reach out to associate engagement producer Adriana Pera at apera@scpr.org.

A new NASA space telescope launched Sunday from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida that will help scientists probe the nature of dark matter, dark energy and other mysteries of the universe.

The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, which is about the size of a tour bus, lifted off at 4:26 a.m. PT on SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket. The 18,000-pound spacecraft is now on a million-mile journey that will take it to its new home in space.

"What a glorious dawn launch," NASA's Jackie Townsend, Roman telescope project manager, said at a press briefing soon after liftoff. "The ride was magnificent. It put us right where we wanted to be."

More good news came shortly after launch as the telescope began deploying its solar panels and other instruments. "Ground controllers at NASA Goddard have been receiving telemetry data from Roman, and apparently all systems are nominal," said NASA administrator Jared Isaacman.

The journey to Roman's new home

Roman has an unusual origin story: Initially designed as a spy telescope for the National Reconnaissance Office, the spacecraft was donated to NASA instead. The new telescope is named for Nancy Grace Roman, NASA's first chief astronomer who was known as the 'Mother of Hubble' for her championing of the iconic Hubble Space Telescope. Her namesake telescope will have the sharpness of Hubble but a field of view that is at least 100 times larger, allowing it to image huge swaths of the sky at once.

Before it can do that, the Roman Space Telescope will have to get to its new home in the sky about a million miles away. Roman will live at the second Sun-Earth Lagrange point known as L2. There, the competing gravitational pulls of the Earth and the Sun help the telescope keep a steady orbit while using minimal fuel. The James Webb Space Telescope orbits at this point, which gives the spacecraft an unobstructed view of the sky.

"It takes us a good three-plus months to get out there, and we're spending that time checking everything out and doing a whole bunch of calibrations and making sure everything is working the way we know it can," said NASA's Jeremy Perkins, an integration and test scientist on the mission. "It's basically like our time to kick the tires and just make sure that the focus is right, the pointing is right."

Uncovering cosmic mysteries

Roman is on a kind of ghost hunt, searching for more evidence of dark matter — mysterious, invisible stuff whose gravitational influence appears to hold galaxies together and define the overarching structure of the cosmos. Roman will study how gravity subtly affects the path of light along great distances throughout a massive survey of the sky. By doing this, the telescope will help map both normal and dark matter, giving scientists a better understanding of just what this elusive substance might be.

Astronomers will also use Roman's observations to uncover dark energy, the strange force that is believed to drive the expansion of the universe. Scientists' understanding of dark energy comes from observations of a kind of exploding star known as a Type Ia supernova. These supernovas appear to shine at known and predictable brightness throughout the cosmos, giving them the nickname "standard candles." By cataloguing even more of these supernovas, scientists hope to develop a better understanding of how dark energy works, which could fundamentally change the way astronomers view the universe.

Roman will also search for planets outside our solar system. Since astronomers confirmed their existence in the 1990s, more than 6,000 exoplanets have been identified. With Roman, NASA expects to identify more than 100,000 of them by identifying dips in starlight caused by a planet passing in front of its own star. The telescope also hopes to find some 1,000 through microlensing — a technique that searches for tiny changes in background starlight caused by the gravity of a far-off planet.

"Why do we care so much about exoplanets? Because one of our main goals at NASA is answering the question: Are we alone in the universe?" Nicky Fox, NASA's associate administrator of the science mission directive, said at the Sunday morning briefing.

The spacecraft is poised to bring scientists a step closer to answering that question: It will demonstrate technology that can take a picture of a planet by selectively blocking out the light from its home star.

"We are going to make this giant leap forward with the coronagraph technology that is going to allow us to look at these distant worlds and start to really resolve the atmosphere around them to let us know if they could be habitable," she said.

A deluge of data

The telescope will beam back 1.4 terabytes of raw science data each day, using a refrigerator-sized high-gain antenna. The data will be available immediately to scientists and the public.

"Roman's database at the end of its prime mission after five years is going to be bigger than your standard music streaming platform," Perkins said.

Because of the massive amounts of data, NASA is making it available to anyone through a cloud-based system called Roman Nexus. For Perkins, that's what makes this mission unique — anyone can look at the raw data and find new discoveries.

"It's all the things that we are not expecting to see," he said. "It's all these one-in-a-million things that we're going to be able to see with Roman that really excites me."
Copyright 2026 NPR

Gov. Gavin Newsom on Saturday backed off his proposal to reduce costs for electrical utilities after their equipment sparks wildfires, agreeing instead to a narrower deal after homeowners, insurers and fire survivors argued his original plan would have shifted those costs onto them.

Instead, Newsom and Senate and Assembly leaders agreed on a narrower package of wildfire policies, including prohibiting private equity groups from investing in wildfire claims and denying utility CEO bonuses in the years their companies cause fatal fires.

The deal is a victory for lawmakers who refused to reduce damages to victims and shift costs away from utilities. Opponents included insurance companies, consumer advocates and survivors of the January 2025 Eaton Fire caused by Southern California Edison equipment that killed 19 people in Altadena.

Under the agreement announced Saturday, the state would create a “fast-pay” program for survivors’ property loss, pain and suffering in the wake of a utility-caused fire. It would include deadlines for determining which claims are valid within 60 days of receipt, and settlement offers within 30 days after that, but survivors could still pursue the long process of suing utilities if they choose.

The state also commits to improving its local wildfire mitigation efforts and sharing more data on insurance coverage in areas with fire risk.

The final agreement, which lawmakers will vote on in Senate Bill 492, caps a contentious series of closed-door negotiations between Newsom’s office and legislative leaders on how much utility companies should pay after fires.

Newsom wanted utilities to have to pay less to insurance companies, some wildfire survivors, local governments and corporations claiming damages after a fire. His administration is concerned the mounting costs threaten investor confidence in the state’s three major for-profit utilities: Pacific Gas & Electric, Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric. He said that could lead to higher borrowing costs for the companies and higher electricity bills for Californians.

Newsom also argued his plan would prioritize paying survivors who lose their homes. In past fires, investors have funded lawsuits or claims have been sold to hedge funds, increasing the number of third parties seeking to profit from wildfire payouts, Newsom’s office has said.

SB 492 does not include most of the proposals Newsom wanted and does not substantially change how much utilities must pay after fires they cause. California’s $18 billion wildfire fund that utilities draw from to pay fire damages — and which would fund claims in the fast-pay program — is funded 50-50 by utility customers and shareholders. Proponents of Newsom’s proposals remain concerned that another catastrophic fire could drain that money, leaving utilities facing a mountain of costs and another round of potential bankruptcies.

Nine of the state’s 20 most destructive wildfires were caused by electrical equipment or power lines.

“This system needs full structural reform — not a partial one,” Newsom said in a statement Saturday morning. “I urge the Legislature to build on this progress next year and finish the work we started to secure the Wildfire Fund’s long-term durability, stabilize electricity rates, and ensure fire victims are never again turned into unsecured creditors in a bankruptcy proceeding.”

Negotiations may resume next year

Sen. Josh Becker, a Menlo Park Democrat who was closely involved in the negotiations, acknowledged that lawmakers would likely have to return to the issue of utility liabilities under a future governor.

“What I heard very clearly, certainly from senators, from the Assembly and even from all the stakeholders was that they’re willing to do that,” he said. “They’re willing to start getting around the table and looking at some of those structural issues. But that takes time. We ran out of time in this session.”

“We certainly stood with fire survivors,” said Sen. Ben Allen, a Democrat who represents Palisades Fire survivors. “Challenges with affordability of electricity (remain). That’s not going away.”

The utilities agreed and said there needs to be a long-term solution.

“While we appreciate the efforts made, we are disappointed that the state couldn’t develop comprehensive wildfire reform,” said Southern California Edison spokesperson David Eisenhauer.

San Diego Gas & Electric would not comment and referred questions to Wildfire Victims First, the utility-backed campaign whose priorities aligned with the governor’s wish list.

Campaign spokesperson Nathan Click said the state still needs to make urgent structural reforms “to ensure a fair recovery system.”

PG&E spokesperson Lynsey Paulo said the company is reviewing the bill and is “focused on helping wildfire survivors recover faster, making communities safer, and protecting customer utility bills.” Company stocks tumbled Friday after reports of a potential agreement that did not include any utility cost-shifts.

Senate President Pro Tem Monique Limón, the Santa Barbara Democrat whose caucus opposed Newsom’s cost-shifting proposals, said in a statement the agreement “supports survivors in their recovery, curbs Wall Street practices that increase costs on consumers, and mitigates the destruction of these wildfires in the first place.”

Assemblymember Cottie Petrie-Norris, an Irvine Democrat who led negotiations for the Assembly, in a statement called the deal “an important step forward.”

“We held the line to protect the people who needed it most,” she said.

The biggest sticking point was the governor’s insistence on eliminating subrogation, which allows insurance companies to sue utilities to recoup their costs for wildfire claims. Lawmakers were staunchly opposed to eliminating that avenue out of concern that it would disrupt the state’s fragile insurance market, raise premiums and cause insurers to flee the state, and they rejected it.

“This outcome keeps costs with the parties responsible for wildfires and helps protect the progress California is making in stabilizing its insurance market,” said Denni Ritter, a vice president at the American Property Casualty Insurance Association.

While the deal is a win for the insurance industry, a senator who represents Eaton Fire survivors said it’s important to also hold insurers accountable.

“We know that in many cases, insurance companies delayed and denied fire survivors’ claims and payments, delaying recovery,” said Democratic Sen. Sasha Renée Pérez. “We need all industries to come to the table in a real way.”

State lawmakers also resisted the governor’s effort to limit survivors’ non-economic damages, an important victory for the Eaton Fire survivors who relentlessly campaigned against the proposal.

Fire survivors and consumer advocates credited the Senate, especially Limón, for pushing back on Newsom.

“In the face of extraordinary pressure from some of the most powerful interests in our state, they centered survivors and California families,” said Joy Chen, executive director of Every Fire Survivor’s Network.

Advocacy group Consumer Watchdog, which worked in concert with fire survivors, called the negotiations “an exercise in the democratic process.”

“(The Legislature) told (Newsom) they wouldn’t bend in closed-door negotiations,” said Jamie Court, president of the group.

Pérez commended survivors for pressuring lawmakers over the past couple of weeks.

“The fire survivors have shaped this entire conversation,” Pérez said. “They made a tremendous impact.”

For many millennials, '90s Nickelodeon shows such as Hey Arnold!, Doug, and Rocko’s Modern Life represent a golden age of animation, with theme songs and music scores often just as weird and offbeat as the characters and storylines.

Take the theme song of Hey Arnold! — an earworm that introduced a generation of young TV viewers to acid jazz, funk, hip-hop and more, even if they didn’t realize it at the time.

Hey Arnold! composer Jim Lang is taking the show's music on tour, with a few stops in SoCal.

LAist’s Robert Garrova caught up with Lang to talk about the show’s endearing music legacy.

On whether he and the other musicians on the show set out to introduce young people to new musical genres

Lang:  I wish I could take credit for being that intentional about it. But we weren't really hoping to introduce anybody to jazz. That was just a wonderful kinda side benefit of the way the show played out.

Was the music too good for a kids' show? Take for instance the theme music for the fan-favorite Pigeon Man episode

Lang:  I don't think there's any such thing as music that's too good for a kids' show. I think children have the hugest imagination for absorbing things that they've never seen before, for being delighted by the unusual.

Those things [music scores] all work because the writers and the animators and the background artists and everybody did such an incredible job before it ever showed up at my studio. That's it. You just kind of shut up and get out of the way and let the image kind of play through you in a way.

On what it felt like being at Nickelodeon in the '90s when the bosses were saying, 'Hey, yeah, let's do some acid jazz on a kids show'

Lang: Well, the women that started Nickelodeon and that ran that company in that era were a really unusual breed, and they were super adventurous. They didn't discourage, you know, people doing crazy stuff.

On what fans' reactions are at the live shows

Lang: Oh, it's just such a love fest. It is nostalgic. The music is meaningful to them because the show, after five seasons, there was a sound to it, and people found it relatable. So getting to hear a band actually play that stuff live, it sounds familiar to the audience in a way that I think people were just thrilled by.

Before the 1980s, tribal leaders of the Yuhaaviatam of San Manuel Nation were struggling to care for their people. That’s when, like many tribes, they decided to open a bingo hall on their reservation in San Bernardino County.

The enterprise eventually became the powerhouse Yaamava’ Resort & Casino, a place famous across the Southland for its snappy “you in?” slogan and roster of concert billboards, featuring the likes of Pitbull, Stevie Nicks and the Jonas Brothers.

The tribe is celebrating 40 years of gaming. But in between the high-limit gaming rooms, intimate performances and the  biggest gaming floor in the West — with over 7,500 slot machines — you’ll find a story of self-determination in the face of California bureaucracy.

A brief history

The Yuhaaviatam’s homeland is the San Bernardino mountains, valleys and high deserts. They were previously known as the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians, but recently reclaimed their ancestral name, Yuhaaviatam (yu-HAH-vee-ah-tahm), which means “people of the pines.” According to the tribe, the community was forced to leave after decades of violence, colonization and displacement.

One big change came in the mid 1800s when a San Bernardino militia killed Native people. The Yuhaaviatam’s leader at the time, Paakuma, who was known outside the tribe by his Spanish name of Santos Manuel, led the couple dozen remaining members out of the mountains.

The tribe moved around the region, but the federal government eventually placed them on the San Manuel Reservation in 1891. Johnny Hernandez Jr., the Yuhaaviatam’s vice chairman, told LAist it was a time of hardship.

“ We were put up against the hillside there with non-fertile land and really in an area where people probably didn’t think that we were going to survive,” he said.

The Yuhaaviatam had to rebuild largely on their own. The tribe got by financially with apricot orchards and other small ventures. When members needed money, they’d sell some of their livestock or hold bake sales. Hernandez said it wasn’t enough to fund what people needed.

The bingo hall origin

The entrance of San Manuel Bingo.

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Courtesy the Yuhaaviatam of San Manuel Nation

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By the ‘80s, other tribes across the United States were in a similar predicament. Looking for ways to generate other forms of revenue, some turned to bingo halls, often outside the jurisdiction of states’ gambling regulations, as their economic springboard.

Under the leadership of tribal chairman Henry Duro, the Yuhaaviatam proposed opening a high-stakes bingo hall. According to newspaper reports, they faced immediate opposition.

Local officials feared the operation would disrupt nearby neighborhoods and foster illicit activity. One critic was San Bernardino City Councilmember Steve Marks, who reportedly instructed city officials to find “every legal way possible to stop the project.”

“ I think from the community, there was a lot of concern about having gaming in their backyard,” Hernandez said, who’s Duro’s nephew. “Everybody understands that gaming can lead to issues with not only the person, but the families …  so we really take that responsibility seriously.”

City leaders tried to push the bingo hall off the reservation and even tried to delay construction in court. The Yuhaaviatam had talks with San Bernardino to find a solution, but according to reports in October 1985, that effort broke down.

San Manuel Bingo could hold 2,500 players at a time.

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Courtesy the Yuhaaviatam of San Manuel Nation

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A view of San Manuel Bingo in its heyday.

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Courtesy the Yuhaaviatam of San Manuel Nation

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Ultimately, the Yuhaaviatam moved forward with building San Manuel Indian Bingo on the reservation, which opened on July 24, 1986. It was a hit. They had sold out nights.  People even climbed over the back walls to play.

“A funny story that my chairwoman Lynn always tells is that those ones that really were against [the bingo hall] and had the biggest concerns were the first ones in line to go into the bingo and to game,” Hernandez said.

He grew up next door to the bingo hall and would sit outside to watch the stream of people go in and out. He said the building looked like a box compared to the casino they have now. But inside, hundreds of hopeful bingo winners packed rows upon rows of tables.

“ They would have costume contests and everything, and it was real lively,” Hernandez said. “I remember a lot of people were excited to be there.”

When the bingo hall opened in 1986, it soon became popular.

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Courtesy the Yuhaaviatam of San Manuel Nation

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Employees at the bingo hall.

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Courtesy the Yuhaaviatam of San Manuel Nation

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As controversial as the bingo hall was to some, it was also a source of employment for San Bernardino. Kenneth Shoji, the tribe’s spokesperson, told LAist how when the hall opened, much of the area around was in an economic downtown.

“ The air base had closed. Kaiser Steel was closing. Santa Fe [Depot] had down-scaled significantly,” Shoji said. “Many people who came to work here were coming from those industries.  In fact, many tribal elders … also came from those businesses.”

The rise of tribal gaming

San Manuel Indian Bingo opened the door to financial stability, but tribal gaming enterprises still faced trouble in California. State and local leaders wanted to shut them down.

One fight ended up in the U.S. Supreme Court.  Two Native reservations, Cabazon and Morongo, ran bingo and card games in Riverside County, which began a few years before the Yuhaaviatam’s enterprise. Officials argued the state had the right to ban tribal gaming to discourage gambling.

The Supreme Court ended up siding with the tribes in part because California already permitted multiple forms of gaming, like horse racing, card games and a state-sponsored lottery.

The ruling led to the creation of the  Indian Gaming Regulatory Act, a landmark piece of legislation that Congress signed into law in 1988. It paved the way for tribal nations to run more profitable forms of gaming, like craps and slot machines.

Casino games at Yaamava’ Resort & Casino.

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Cato Hernández

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LAist

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The act established regulations that split gaming into three classes and created a system where tribes would have to make agreements with states before offering the highest level.

Randall Akee, a professor of economic development in Indigenous communities at Harvard University, told LAist it took awhile for California to get on board.

“Tribal gaming really as an industry, larger scale in California, took off in the post-2000 era,” he said.

That came with the passage of Prop. 1A and Prop. 5, which permitted compacts for Class III gaming on tribal lands in California. The deals have been moneymakers. According to the National Indian Gaming Commission, California and northern Nevada (which are calculated together) lead the nation in gross gaming revenue, bringing in $12.6 billion in fiscal year 2025.

Akee said the Yuhaaviatam people have created a large gaming footprint in California despite their small population and geographical size. Overall, the tribe is one of San Bernardino County’s top employers with nearly 8,000 employees, according to Shoji.

A miniaturized version of Yaamava's tower.

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Cato Hernández

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LAist

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A display celebrating 40 years of the Yuhaaviatam's gaming enterprise.

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Cato Hernández

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LAist

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They’ve also expanded their gaming enterprise into new, larger buildings. When San Manuel Casino (as the bingo hall was later named) opened in 2021, it was rebranded to Yaamava’ Resort & Casino. The $760 million expansion, with a 17-story hotel tower and 432 rooms and suites, brought their footprint to over 700,000 square feet. A parking structure now stands in place of the former bingo hall.

Hernandez said tribal gaming has helped his community thrive. They use the revenue to pay for critical resources, like supplying medical care to elders, hiring teachers for schools and buying generators to curb power outages. The tribe has also donated over $450 million to local communities.

“  I think the thing that people always forget or don’t understand is that every time we buy a piece of land, we’re just going to throw a casino there,” Hernandez said. “First and foremost, we’re a tribe. We have the needs for our people, and [want to] protect our cultural resources.”

The Yuhaaviatam of San Manuel Nation is a financial supporter of LAist. Like other funders, the tribe has no influence on our coverage.