The Brief

Joel Ruano was raised by his grandparents in Lamont, a community made up of about 14,000 people, a few miles from Bakersfield.

Growing up, college was not in Ruano’s plans. And though he loved watching movies, he never envisioned a career in filmmaking.

After earning his diploma, Ruano worked at carrot factories. Then, he operated heavy machinery at a distribution center before landing a job at an electric vehicle company. For years, he believed his future lay at the industrial warehouses that surround his old neighborhood.

But when the company went bankrupt in 2023, Ruano decided he wanted a change. Encouraged by his loved ones, he enrolled in Glendale Community College’s film, television and media arts department, which now offers coursework in documentary filmmaking and the chance to study abroad.

For students like Ruano, these opportunities have been transformative.

Los Angeles is home to renowned film schools like USC, UCLA and the American Film Institute. But their cost of attendance can be an obstacle for some students. Community colleges offer affordable alternatives.

“This is my career path now,” Ruano told LAist. “I just love holding the camera and seeing through the monitor and getting the first taste of what the audience is going to see. And I get to control that vision.”

Making up for lost time  

At Glendale, department chair Geri Ulrey makes it a point to keep in touch with students after they graduate. She also hosts alumni mixers and pings former students when she has something to share that may be of interest.

That’s how Ben Do found his way back to Glendale. He earned his associate’s degree at the height of the COVID pandemic, so most of it was done on Zoom. As a result, Do graduated with no in-person film experience, something he always lamented.

Ulrey messaged him years later, inviting him to consider the school’s new documentary film production courses.

Soon, Do became part of Planet Story Lab, a course that provides mentorship from professionals and the chance to do fieldwork.

Do also appreciates the chance to hear directly from people in the field, who are often guest speakers. This includes documentary director Laura Nix.

“Just hearing how she approaches talking to people about the process of what a documentary is” has been helpful, Do said. “People think it's a very educational thing and very straightforward, but there's a lot more creative and emotional liberties that come with it as well.”

Glendale Community College students spend two weeks in Baja California. Their filmmaking work involves learning from and interviewing locals.

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Jerry Henry

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Finding the 'freedom to be unsure'   

Redd Davis came of age in Burbank, with the Warner Bros. Studios looming in the background. Celebrities were a common sight. Still, even though Davis knew a career in film was possible, they were scared to take the leap. Their uncle is a screenwriter, and Davis knew how hard it was for him to break into the field.

“My grandma came here from Mexico when she was 13,” they said. “She had to build a life for herself and be able to support my mom.”

The way Davis saw it, they’d been given a “really rare opportunity to make a stable life.”

“And I was really nervous to mess with that,” they said.

Davis was determined to earn a living, but they were not sure how. After high school, they enrolled at Glendale and, as a treat, signed up for a course called “Beyond Hollywood: Race, Gender and Sex in Movies,” taught by Ulrey. Davis figured there was no harm in exploring film just a little, just for fun.

But the course drew them in.

“It felt almost like an English literature class,” they recalled. “It was a lot of conversation and writing and just dissecting ideas. I became very interested in anything that [Ulrey] was teaching, so I just kept taking classes with her."

Still, when Ulrey mentioned documentary filmmaking, Davis wasn’t very interested.

“I thought that I just wanted to do narrative work,” they said.

But David trusted Ulrey. So when she brought up the opportunity to learn documentary production in Mexico — including underwater filming techniques — Davis thought it best not to forgo the opportunity.

And so, last summer, Davis became part of a camera crew at Bahía de los Ángeles, a coastal region in Baja California, with a population of almost 800.

After prepping on campus for two weeks, a small group of Glendale students set out to the field station in Mexico, accompanied by Ulrey and cinematographer Jerry Henry. Students majoring in biology, geology and oceanology also joined them.

In Bahía de los Ángeles, students use specialized cameras for underwater filmmaking.

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Jerry Henry

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As soon as Davis stepped off the bus, the heat in Bahía de los Ángeles was overwhelming.

“We didn't sleep in rooms,” they said. “We pulled out cots and would lay down at the beach. We would literally sleep under the stars.”

Come morning, the film students would gather their gear, confer with Ulrey or Henry, plan out their day, then spend the bulk of the day filming.

On occasion, the students got to go on boat rides, hiking or swimming in the sea.

Davis had read about Mexico in their mom’s journals, but this was their first time in the country. “It was special,” they told LAist, a chance to create connections and memories of their own.

The trip also enabled Davis to cultivate a professional relationship with Henry, who’s provided opportunities for them to work on set as a production assistant. These experiences have helped Davis see that filmmaking involves a wide array of work, including — but not limited to — being an actor, writer or director. As an example, Davis noted that people who work in greenery departments devote themselves to providing plants for film sets.

Davis still doesn't know what they want to do once they graduate, but they are navigating the uncertainty with joy and confidence. “I feel more freedom to be unsure,” they said.

The trip to Baja, Davis added, “really shattered any doubt or hesitance I had left” about a future in filmmaking.

In the past, a voice inside would always ask: “How are you going to be able to afford a car, and then an apartment? Your groceries and your utilities?”

After Baja, Davis determined to figure it out. "I'm completely in love with this," they said.

Recovering a lost passion  

For 36-year-old David Shuck, the documentary filmmaking courses have enabled him to recoup and hone something he loves.

As an undergrad at Bowdoin College in Maine, he studied abroad at the Czech National Film Academy; but, at the time, “there was no practical film production offered at my college,” Shuck said. “I was pretty much all self-taught.”

Time passed. And life took Shuck in different directions. Still, the love of film remained.

To refresh his skills, learn new techniques and meet like-minded people, Shuck also enrolled at Glendale.

For one recent project, he created a documentary about his wife, who’s an immigration attorney.

“I wanted to be able to communicate the Kafka-esque nightmare of bureaucracy ... that [undocumented] people have to navigate once they've been abducted,” Shuck said.

The shooting took Shuck about about six weeks. During this time, he followed his wife to and from the Adelanto Immigrant Detention Center in the Mojave Desert, repeatedly. Shuck filmed her working later hours and captured her frustration. After one particularly hard day, he documented her treating herself to an ice cream sandwich and a few episodes of Malcolm in the Middle.

In his documentary class, Shuck learned that it's "more compelling to see what people are doing in the moment rather than rehashing what’s been done already.” Ultimately, he turned 13 hours of footage into a 15-minute video.

“It would be really nice to be able to earn a living doing this. But I am just excited at the prospect of being able to make the next project and being able to make it sustainably through the community college system,” he said.

He’s told Ulrey and his other professors: "I'm going to kick around until you kick me out of here."

Last summer, a group of students made a film about a local woman named Alejandrina Díaz Oleta, a restaurant owner and chef.

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Nurturing the next generation of filmmakers  

Currently, Ruano is part of a team of students working on a documentary about future firefighters in the L.A. area.

This work has enabled him to get hands-on training in every part of filmmaking, including pre-production, shooting and post-production, he said.

At Glendale, Ruano has learned that “being organized is very, very crucial.” He’s also learned that “having great communication” is key to creating something with a group of people.

Most importantly, he’s learned he’s capable of academic success.

“Coming back to school was very stressful for me,” he said, remembering the challenges he faced in high school. “This was sort of my moment to redeem myself.”

In June, Ruano became a first-generation college graduate. Come fall, he will continue to pursue filmmaking at Cal State Northridge — one of the many universities where he was admitted.

In the short term, Ruano is set on earning his bachelor’s degree and then maybe going into a master's program.

In the long term, he wants to find a way to bring art and filmmaking to Lamont, where he grew up.

“I'm only one of thousands of people who have really great stories to tell,” he said.

Los Angeles Dodgers owner Mark Walter and multiple insurance companies he owns have been sued, alleging they failed to disclose an ongoing federal probe to customers while directing policyholders’ money into Walter’s other companies.

The lawsuit lists Walter, Delaware Life Insurance Co., Clear Spring Life and Annuity, TWG Global Holdings and Walter’s Guggenheim Partners investment firm as defendants.

Ira Rosner, a 67-year-old Florida man, brought the class-action lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Miami on Wednesday. He purchased a policy from Delaware Life in April and he had until late May to withdraw his money without penalty. However, the company did not disclose the investigation to him until June,

Rosner is seeking a jury trial in the lawsuit that seeks damages for negligent misrepresentation, breach of contract and aiding and abetting fraud.

TWG Global didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on the lawsuit.

Walter has been under investigation since last year by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Manhattan and the Securities and Exchange Commission following a whistleblower complaint regarding alleged misrepresented loans made between companies within his business portfolio.

TWG Global Holdings is the holding company through which Walter controls Delaware Life, Clear Spring Life and Annuity Co. and his stake in Guggenheim Partners. TWG Global denied any wrongdoing involving the probe in a statement last month.

Walter and co-owner Todd Boehly sold their stakes in English Premier League club Chelsea this week. Last month, Walter agreed to sell the Los Angeles Lakers in a surprise move less than a year after buying the NBA franchise from the Buss family. The deal is under review by the league.

The Dodgers have been adamant that Walter has no plans to sell the baseball team.

Compton Unified Superintendent Darin Brawley has won a national education prize recognizing his leadership in improving student achievement in the district.

Brawley will receive the 2026 Harold W. McGraw Jr. Prize in Education, which includes a $50,000 award, at a ceremony in New York City in November.

The McGraw Center for Education Leadership at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education, which administers the prize, cited the “extraordinary impact” of Brawley and the two other recipients. Brawley won for his work in K-12; prizes are also awarded for higher education and lifelong learning.

“At a time when schools and communities are confronting profound educational challenges, three visionary leaders are demonstrating what meaningful change can look like,” the McGraw Center said.

With about 20,000 predominantly low-income Black and Hispanic students, Compton was singled out nationally for test scores in math and reading that did not fall back during the COVID-19 epidemic and continued to exceed the national and state averages since.

The center noted that Compton’s graduation rates increased from 58% to 94%, and college acceptance rates exceeded 95% during Brawley’s 14 years as superintendent. It also highlighted the district’s expanded college and career pathways and innovative industry and community partnerships.

Last year, EdSource detailed an unusual drama program at Compton’s Dominguez High. Another EdSource article this year highlighted the inclusion of student-centered “calming corners” and learning stations in school renovations.

The McGraw prize, named after the CEO of the McGraw-Hill education publisher, has been awarded since 1988. Other recent California recipients have included Debra Duardo, Los Angeles County schools superintendent; Jody Lewen, president of Tamalpais College, who introduced academic programs at San Quentin Rehabilitation Center; Stanford University professor and researcher Roy Pea; and Sol Khan, creator of a worldwide free online education and tutoring platform.

The higher education prize went to Shai Reshef, who founded the University of the People, the first nonprofit, tuition-free, accredited online university, and the lifelong learning prize was awarded to Michael Webber, a nationally recognized professor of mechanical engineering and public policy at the University of Texas at Austin.

This story was originally published by EdSource. Sign up for their daily newsletter.

This story first appeared on Long Beach Post.

Inside three water tanks in a tucked-away room at the Aquarium of the Pacific, biologists are tasked with bringing back a population of frogs that once thrived across the state’s mountainous streams but has since reached the brink of extinction.

It’s a program that’s nearly closed out its fifth year with a major milestone: more than 1,000 frogs raised and released into the wild.

That’s more than five times as many mountain yellow-legged frogs — named for the lemon-hued streak along their hind legs — believed to be in the wild when last recorded in 2019, reduced to small pockets of wild streams in the San Gabriel, San Bernardino and San Jacinto Mountains. By the time the frog was listed under the federal Endangered Species Act in 2002, fewer than 100 adults remained in Southern California. A count in 2020 put the number at about 188 in the wild, though biologists say that figure has almost certainly shifted since.

The species’ collapse is tied to a compounding list of threats: wildfire, mudslides, pesticides, fungal disease, habitat loss and the appetites of non-native trout, bullfrogs and crayfish. It’s a decline so severe that biologists consider the species among the rarest vertebrates on Earth.

Staff at the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach are working to change that math, one tadpole at a time.

In the latest release, about 653 of the endangered frogs were returned to their native mountain habitat by staff from the Aquarium of the Pacific, the Los Angeles Zoo and the U.S. Geological Survey. Of those, 394 had been head-started at the aquarium — its largest release of the species yet, bringing its total to 1,032.

The frogs were bred at the Los Angeles Zoo’s breeding program, then transferred to Long Beach as tadpoles, where aquarium staff reared them through metamorphosis into froglets and frogs. The process typically takes one to two years, though the species can remain in its tadpole stage for up to five years, making a given frog’s age something of a mystery even to the people who raised it.

A tadpole chills by the rocks in a tank at the Aquarium of the Pacific, where it is being raised before being released into the local mountains, Tuesday, Sept., 15, 2026

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Thomas R. Cordova.

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Inside the aquarium, the water is engineered to mimic the mountains it’s standing in — kept near 60 degrees in summer, the temperature currently found in the streams the frogs call home, and cooled to around 52 degrees in winter, with reduced UV exposure to simulate the season’s shorter, dimmer days.

The aquarium’s involvement began in 2021, in the aftermath of the 2020 Bobcat Fire, which tore through the central San Gabriel Mountains and destroyed an estimated 95% of the frog’s remaining usable habitat.

“They had salvaged some tadpoles from the fire-impacted areas, and they ended up bringing a handful of them here,” said Erin Lundy, with the aquarium’s conservation team. “And then we also had some captive-bred ones from the L.A. Zoo that year, and that was our first group.”

Since then, the team has expanded to include the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the U.S. Forest Service and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, which help monitor populations and oversee releases.

Erin Lundy from the Aquarium of the Pacific looks into a tank at frogs as she gets them ready to be released into the local mountains Tuesday, Sept. 15, 2026

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Thomas R. Cordova

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As the aquarium’s tadpole numbers have grown, some are now sent to the Santa Ana Zoo each October to continue growing until they’re ready for reintroduction. Frogs are carefully separated by genetics and population of origin, so each can be released back into its native range and preserve healthy genetic lines.

“I think that we have some responsibility to give the animals the best chance that they could possibly have,” Lundy said, “but this is certainly a species that without a good amount of human intervention would not exist to this day.”

Much of the aquarium’s work is now focused on an even more elusive threat than fire: chytrid fungus, a microscopic pathogen that attacks the keratin in amphibian skin, blocking the salt absorption frogs rely on and eventually causing cardiac arrest. It has driven amphibian populations to collapse worldwide, and mountain yellow-legged frogs appear especially vulnerable to it.

“Some amphibian species over time have developed a resistance to chytrid, and so part of the intention of growing so many animals is hoping to find what gene that is that introduces some chytrid resistance,” Lundy said. Researchers are testing whether frogs can be inoculated before release, or whether introducing different microbes to their skin might help them fend off the fungus on their own.

Tadpoles swim in a tank at the Aquarium of the Pacific as they are raised before being released into the local mountains, Tuesday, Sept., 15, 2026

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Thomas R. Cordova

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Long Beach Post

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Lundy has now been on three of the aquarium’s release trips, watching frogs she has cared for — some for years — carried up into the mountains and set loose into the streams they were bred to repopulate. It is, she says, a strange kind of joy.

“It’s a little bittersweet because, oh no, I’ve been taking care of you for so long, but that is the point, so it feels a little bit like Christmas Day,” Lundy said.

Not every frog leaves the same way. Some, she said, shoot off into the current without so much as a pause. Others linger at the water’s edge beside her for a few minutes before finally disappearing beneath the surface.

“Almost feels like they’re saying goodbye,” she said.

Keno’s Restaurant in Anaheim Hills is a family-run business with a vintage feel — and a 15-pound burrito on the menu.

General Manager Shauna Reyes joined Austin Cross on AirTalk, LAist 89.3's daily news show, to talk about what customers can expect at the decades-old steakhouse that has a cafe twist.

About the owners

Vintage photos of Keno's, back when it first opened, and was a 24-hour restaurant.

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Courtesy Greg Rogers

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Keno's originally opened in 1972, gaining enough popularity to expand into a small chain of restaurants. Gus Cooper helped build and operate the Anaheim Hills location since its opening in 1980. The Anaheim Hills location eventually changed hands to Gus' nephew, Steve Cooper, in 1993. Steve Cooper and his family have been running Keno's ever since.

What it's like being a Keno's customer

Photo of Keno's lounge and steakhouse section.

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Courtesy Greg Rogers

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According to Reyes, the ambiance and customer connections are what set Keno's apart.

You can experience the cafe, with a bustling diner feel, or step into their steakhouse, which has a fireplace Reyes says was inspired by the Peppermill in Las Vegas.

Restaurant details

• Keno’s has a live event schedule that includes solo acoustic sets and a Frank Sinatra cover artist.
• In addition to the 15-pound burrito, you can also find a 32-ounce Tomahawk steak on the menu.

Menu items we tried

• The Lumberjack Breakfast
• Monte Cristo
• California Chicken Sandwich
• Tomahawk Steak
  

What should we try next?

What should we try next?