The Brief

Elizabeth Hill saw going to college as her way out of poverty. But 26 years later, she is still paying back student loans, with around $145,000 still left to go.

“I've been able to stay afloat, but I do not have $145,000 to give them,” Hill said. “My debt-to-income ratio has impacted my ability to do things because I've got this six-figure loan just sitting there on my credit report.”

Hill is a therapist who specializes in care for Black, brown, indigenous, queer and trans people. And as an autism assessor, she was relying on an Obama-era plan to have her loan forgiven. She said she signed up for a consolidation plan, and if her loan was in good standing for 20 years, her loan would be forgiven.

That option has ended, though, which means she is looking at a lifetime of repaying her debt.

July 1 brings a plethora of changes to student loans as the Trump administration’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act goes into effect. It ends the Biden-era SAVE plan, where monthly payments were calculated on income and family size, so now borrowers have to look into new repayment plans. And if you do not transition to a new plan, you will be automatically transferred to a plan. Some of the plans on offer could increase monthly payments by a couple of hundred dollars. And the new changes also set limits for how much prospective students can borrow — and could force them to seek out costly private loans.

California could feel those effects deeply. An analysis by the California Policy Lab found that around 11% of borrowers in the state were 30-plus days late on their monthly payments last September. That number was around 3.7% when the pandemic began. Around 10% of Angelenos were delinquent on their loans. Per an analysis from Protect Borrowers using federal data, the total student debt in the SoCal region was $70.7 billion, with over half of that number owned by women.

Trying to do good, at personal cost

Hill had a Pell Grant — financial aid from the federal government that does not need to be paid back — and work study to complete community college in Oregon. Then, at the age of 18, she took out loans in her name, as well as under her mother’s name, to attend San Diego State University for undergrad.

After she graduated, she tried to stay afloat and keep her loans in good standing. But to become a therapist, like she wanted to, she said she needed a graduate degree to increase her earning potential.

“I come from a family that didn't have any money, and the only way to go to school was to take out these loans,” she said. “There was no advisement — this is what the interest is going to be; this is how much you're going to pay back. I'm 18 years old, just signing stuff so I can get into school.”

As a therapist, Hill said, she works with “the most marginalized populations because that's where my heart is, that's where I feel the most comfortable, and I'm a member of those populations as well.”

But that means she has to also work on a sliding scale.

“So the folk who can afford to pay the fee are almost essentially sponsoring the other ones who can't, if that makes sense. It's almost like a system of mutual aid,” Hill said.

Despite doing this work helping uplift marginalized communities for around 25 years, Hill said, there is no reward for it.

“I'm still expected to come up with over six figures to pay back the government,” she said.

No job plan, just a repayment plan

Sara Alsheikh took out student loans to attend the University of California, Riverside.

College, she said, was a confusing time. She thought she wanted to pursue a career in psychiatry but then pivoted to linguistics.

“ It focused on language, etymologically, and then also, I love anthropology, I love culture, I love people, I love to travel, so linguistics seemed like the perfect match for me,” Alsheikh said.

When she graduated, she didn’t have a plan. But that did not stop the loan repayment.

“ I'm not really seeing the fruits of my labor, and immediately, I got to start paying my loans. So, it kind of felt like, did I make the right decision?” she said. “I think I'm still kind of in that limbo, where like, OK, I went to school, I was proud, and I was happy that I did this, but I don't know.”

She’s still uncertain whether she made the right decision to go to college, she said.

Alsheikh graduated in 2023 and the total loan amount then was around $25,000. Three years later, that number is still the same. She made some payments but had to take a break when she lost her job.

Alsheikh said she only had a “vague understanding” of what she was signing up for.

“ It was just packaged up nice, like, take loans because you need to go to school, and then you can get around it. There will be options for you,” she said.

Those options haven’t materialized. Instead, Alsheikh said, she and others have been “left to the wolves” to figure out a “suffocating and quite complicated” process.

And the upcoming changes mean her monthly repayment amount is set to jump from $50 to around $150 — and this is after she called up her loan servicing provider to figure out her options.

College, Alsheikh said, is encouraged and portrayed as a way to improve your financial standing. But now, she said, she feels like “money is at the center of education.”

Helping new students learn from her experience

Shirley Portal, a nurse turned financial professional living in Los Angeles, gets triggered every time she hears the term student loans.

“Everybody in my position that went to school had to deal with it, whether it's federal or private loans. I feel like there's a lot of miseducation, or actually no education at all on the subject,” she said. “When I went to school, I went to the office. I wanted to ask how to start, how to pay. The first thing they did is literally shove the name of the company they work with, the loaner, and they just recommended it, and that's it.”

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act ends the Biden-era SAVE plan, where monthly payments were calculated on income and family size, so now borrowers have to look into new repayment plans.

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Maria Grejc for NPR

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Portal took out a student loan with an 11% interest rate to pay for nursing school, a rate she said was “inhuman.”

And after graduating, despite a padded resume with volunteer work and high test scores, she still couldn’t get a job.

“I had to go back to work an office job just to pay those loans,” Portal said. And even then, she considered living out of her car to pay off the loans just because of how high her payment was.

And then came COVID-19, “a slap in the face,” she said.

“They begged us to work, which means I worked 20 days in a row. There was no equipment. I have pictures of me wearing trash bags as gowns that we cut, and there were no masks, so I worked the same mask for 14 days,” Portal said.

The overtime had a silver lining, though: It meant she could finally pay off her nursing school loans, which amounted to over $50,000 plus interest.

But all that overtime also meant she had to pay more taxes.

“ I realized that I'm paying a lot more taxes than I should because I simply worked overtime. I worked holidays while everybody else sat at home and got paychecks,” Portal said.

It was at that moment that she decided to switch careers.

“I'm done being used and abused. This job is already hard mentally, physically, and then after COVID, there was zero appreciation,” she said.

Now, Portal works as a finance professional helping borrowers navigate student debt and taking hold of their finances.

And as borrowers reckon with the changes to their monthly payments because of the Trump administration’s One Big Beautiful Bill, she’s on hand to help.

How should students navigate the new loan changes?

Celina Damian is California’s student loan ombudsperson, appointed by the state to investigate complaints into loan service providers.

With the incoming changes to federal student loans, she said, it might lead to prospective students and families turning to riskier types of financing: private loans.

These have “higher interest rates, they don't have the forgiveness, discharge programs, the repayment forbearance options that federal loans do.”

Damian added that private loans would also require established credit worthiness, which might force students to look for co-signers. She hopes prospective students understand the implications of taking these loans and how it could impact their financial standing in the future.

“You really have to be making good decisions on the front end because then we're seeing this at the back end where I am, right, and I hear many borrowers that have regrets,” Damian said.

Damian advised prospective students and their families to understand their debt they could potentially be taking on. They can start by going to the California Student Aid Commission. Damian said they will help students fill out their FAFSA and help them determine the real cost of attending a school.

And if they are in school and run out of money, Damian asked students to really shop around and understand their options and understand things like fixed-interest rates vs. variable interest rates.

 ”There's scholarships everywhere, through your parents' employment, through the banks, through McDonald's,” Damian said. “But it does require work. It does require someone to start in the 10th grade sometimes, trying to get those scholarships.”

This story first appeared on The LA Local.

Depression increased 36% and anxiety increased 22% among patients seen at AltaMed after the Lineage warehouse fire, according to a new report released Thursday.  

The report, released nearly 100 days after the Lineage fire broke out, compares the patients treated within a 5-mile radius of the Lineage warehouse since June 17 with patients treated in the same period in 2025. The clinic estimates about 40,000 patients were seen during that period. 

The numbers also revealed a 27.8% increase in gastrointestinal concerns, a 24.2% increase in eye and throat irritation and a 19.9% increase in respiratory diagnoses within the same timeframe. 

“On their own, the data do not establish that the fire caused each of these increases, but they definitely help us identify trends,” said Dr. David Escobar, regional medical director for AltaMed, at a press conference Thursday at Lou Costello Recreation Center. 

“Patients were coming to me frequently with headache, throat irritation, eye irritation, and traumatic stress,” Escobar said. 

A majority of patients who were evaluated for behavioral health issues were treated through talk therapy and trauma therapy, Escobar said. 

Chronic stress and depression have disrupted Elizabeth Lopez’s daily life in the months after the fire. Lopez lives in the Estrada Courts housing complex and said she experienced the smoke, smell and physical symptoms after the fire, including eye irritation and ongoing asthma attacks. 

The inability to leave her home during heat waves over the summer and having to endure the horrible smell left her feeling defeated and with no motivation, Lopez said. Her doctor prescribed her antidepressants. 

“I’ve never been on depression [medication],” Lopez said. “I didn’t have that energy that I used to have. I had always been a very active person…and I just wasn’t.” 

Lopez is a health promoter for AltaMed and said she referred her neighbors to AltaMed mobile health clinics to get treated for similar symptoms. 

Since June 23, AltaMed has deployed its mobile health unit at Lou Costello Recreation Center, Pecan Recreation Center, and the Robert Louis Stevenson Branch Library, providing clinical evaluations, respiratory care, medication access, and connections to social support to help residents navigate recovery.

Escobar emphasized that the needs of the patients he cared for in Boyle Heights did not end when the fire was knocked down on June 24. 

“Even when the fire was out, patients were still coming to me in my clinic personally with ongoing new or recurring symptoms…which tells me clinically there’s still exposure happening of some kind or another,” Escobar said. “What concerns me the most as a physician clinically is that I still do not know exactly what my patients were exposed to.”

Escobar told Boyle Heights Beat that the vast majority of AltaMed patients in Boyle Heights and East L.A. have Medi-Cal and Medicare. The health provider also serves residents without insurance and offers sliding scale fees. 

In August, a St. John’s Community Health report also revealed the physical and mental toll that the fire had on patients seen at its mobile clinics. Of the 1,306 patients seen between June 17 and July 31, 36% had serious health problems attributed to smoke and toxic chemical exposure, including acute upper respiratory infections, eye disorders and asthma exacerbation. Dozens of patients were prescribed anxiety and/or sleep medication to treat acute stress after the fire.  

After a fire scorched more than a third of Santa Rosa Island this spring, the race is on to protect what remains of a beloved grove of rare Torrey pines.

The fire sparked in mid-May after a sailor wrecked his boat on the island’s rugged southeastern shore. It grew to more than 18,000 acres, becoming the largest fire ever recorded on the Channel Islands.

The island’s grove of Torrey pine trees, a subspecies found nowhere else on the planet, bore much of the worst damage. Early surveys estimate as much as 80% of the rare trees will perish. Experts with the Santa Barbara Botanical Garden are working on a more complete analysis.

Now, the biggest worry is how intense El Niño-driven rains may erode soil in the charred remains of the grove.

Restoration ecologist Michelle Gados holds Torrey pine seeds gathered from the burn scar.

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“ It keeps me up at night,” said Michelle Gados,  a restoration ecologist with the California Institute of Environmental Studies and a lead on the restoration effort. “I just hope it's not as bad as they predict because this would just be really bad timing. … If you get too much too fast, then all that soil could slide down the slopes.”

The pines released thousands of seeds during the fire — more than 14,000 have been collected by Gados’ team, park staff and other partners since the fire, while thousands more seeds remain in the charred soil.

“ So we're really concerned about all that seed being washed out to sea,” Gados said.

She said keeping the soil intact in the grove is key to supporting surviving trees and to planting hundreds of Torrey pines after the rainy season. The goal is to plant 300 to 500 Torrey pines annually over the next four years.

To prevent erosion, biologists, fire crews and dedicated volunteers have been racing for nearly four months to build 500 wattles — essentially 18-foot cigars of rolled-up biodegradable material. The fiber cylinders can be bought pre-made, but on the island, they have to be built from scratch to avoid introducing any nonnative plants. They’re made of a tightly rolled coir blanket, or coconut husk fiber, around five layers of jute fabric. The wattles will be installed in some of the most erosion-prone areas identified in the Torrey pine grove.

“This is kind of a make-your-own option that we have developed through other projects that have been ongoing for about a decade and have worked really well,” said David  Mazurkiewicz,  a wildlife biologist with Channel Islands National Park, and the implementation lead for the post-fire response on Santa Rosa.

He said they expect to have all 500 rolled and installed by the end of October, just as the official rainy season begins.

The charred grove of Torrey pines on Santa Rosa Island as seen from a boat this week. Early surveys estimate 60% to 80% of the trees will perish from the fire. Some trees are showing new growth today, but it's unclear how they'll fare long-term.

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Volunteers are key to the effort

Originally, the park was planning to work with fire crews from across the state and country, but a busy fire season across the West pulled those crews elsewhere, Mazurkiewicz said. So dozens of dedicated volunteers have stepped in.

The latest volunteer cohort of about 20 went to the island this week, where for several days they’ll camp and spend their days rolling wattles.

David Rush of Riverside was there for the second time since the fire.

“The Torrey pines, they're the most endangered pine on the planet, so it's a worthy cause,” he said. “We're killing the earth, and just doing, in my own little way, something to help, it's cool.”

Hundreds of wattles will be installed in the Torrey pine grove on Santa Rosa Island to help prevent erosion during winter rains.

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LAist

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Volunteers prepare to roll a wattle made of a coir blanket and five layers of jute on Santa Rosa Island.

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Erin Stone

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Volunteers, including CSU Channel Islands student Carlos Cruz, right, complete the rolling a wattle on Santa Rosa Island.

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Carlos Cruz, a first-year student at Cal State Channel Islands, joined this round, too. With Indigenous roots in Oaxaca, Mexico, he felt called to the work to honor and restore land that for millennia was home to and tended by Chumash people.

“ I think that it’s important to understand and … see, as folks residing on spiritual lands, how we could come together,” he said.

On Wi'ma, Santa Rosa Island

The fire is just the latest moment of upheaval in the island’s long history. Birthed from shifting tectonic plates and volcanic lava flows more than 15 million years ago, then eventually named Wi'ma and inhabited by Chumash people for millennia, the island as we know it today was reshaped by European settlers. Experts say the recent fire was made worse by nonnative grasses that have covered it since ranching began here in the mid-1800s, after European settlement.

Nonnative livestock and game species such as feral pigs, cattle, horses, deer and elk destroyed the island’s forest of native oaks and bishop pines, as well as over 75% of the island's native vegetation.

It’s only been in the last decade-and-a-half that, thanks to conservation efforts since the islands became a national park in 1980, native plant and animal life have begun to return, including the once-nearly extinct endemic Santa Rosa Island fox. Mazurkiewicz said officials have not found many carcasses of the foxes in the burn scar, and expect their population to remain stable despite the fire.

A Santa Rosa Island fox.

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Park officials have also been working for more than a decade to restore an ancient oak and bishop pine forest, or “cloud forest,” named for the trees’ ability to catch heavy ocean fog and harvest its water, which then condenses and drips to the chaparral below their branches. That ecosystem, essential habitat for native species, is slowly being restored, and was largely untouched by the recent fire.

In areas that were once just dirt, there are now native shrubs like toyon, sage scrub, lupin and lemonade berry. And in recent years, in the absence of nonnative mammals, Torrey pines have actually been growing beyond their traditional footprint on the island as well — some of those seem to have survived the fire.

Cause for hope

In the burn scar, other signs of hope are sprouting. On a recent afternoon,  Mazurkiewicz pointed to light green grass emerging from the charred hillsides.

“All that green is actually native vegetation, and it just was waiting for a little breathing room,”  Mazurkiewicz said.

In some ways, he said, the fire may prove beneficial — by clearing out the invasive nonnative grasses that have choked much of the island’s flora.

A dusting of light green on this burned hillside are native grasses sprouting where invasive, nonnative grasses once dominated.

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Erin Stone

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LAist

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David  Mazurkiewicz,  a wildlife biologist with Channel Islands National Park, and the implementation lead for the post-fire response on Santa Rosa, describes the importance of installing wattles in the island's charred Torrey pine grove.

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Erin Stone

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LAist

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Native plants like the endemic manzanita — which hasn’t done so well since the fire — as well as other native shrubs, grasses and trees are propagated at the island’s nursery. A newly-built shade house will soon be the home of Torrey pine seedlings that will eventually be replanted in the burn scar.

But for now, how the Torrey pine grove will fare is unclear. One factor that could play a big part in its future is how severe the upcoming rains will be.

“We don’t know  until we get some rain, and we can see whether the trees that are pushing back out are going to hold,”  Mazurkiewicz said. “The grove was heavily impacted. … A lot of those trees are not going to make it. But there's also outliers that look a little more encouraging.”

Pour yourself a cup of ambition. It’s Dolly Parton Day.

Across the world, communities are dedicating Friday to honoring the beloved country singer. The day is falling on Sept. 25, a wink at Parton’s hit song “9 to 5.”

Parton, who died of cancer last month at age 80, built an impressive legacy over the decades as a singer-songwriter, actor, philanthropist and entrepreneur — leaving big and small ways to honor the icon.

So whether it’s dusting off your rhinestones, donating a book or throwing back a pink-themed cocktail, here’s how you can celebrate Dolly Parton Day.

Join a celebration

In the U.S., a growing number of state and local leaders are establishing Sept. 25 as an annual Dolly Parton Day from California to the borough of Manhattan in New York City. The proclamations highlight Parton’s successful career and stress her lifelong commitment to promoting literacy.

In Nashville — where Parton had lived since she was 18 — the city will honor the singer with pink lights and posters and give away stickers, buttons and bookmarks. Meanwhile, Southwest Airlines announced that it would hold a Parton-inspired karaoke Friday for travelers and employees. Tennessee state and local officials are currently in the process of renaming the airport after Parton.

“Dolly Parton’s impact on Nashville will be felt for generations, through the music she has given us, the people she has helped and the example she continues to set,” said Nashville Mayor Freddie O’Connell in a statement. “She has shown us that caring for a community means showing up for one another.”

Over in New Orleans, the marching group Krewe of Dolly will lead a parade through the city’s French Quarter to honor Parton.

And in San Francisco, organizers are planning a public event in the heart of the city, called “Dolly Day,” designed to be a celebration of life that will include “singing loud, dressing up, and being a little kinder than usual in her honor.”

Donate a book to Imagination Library

For those chained to their actual 9 to 5 job on Friday, sneaking away for an event may be challenging. Instead, you can channel Parton’s giving spirit.

Parton made it her mission to improve literacy through her Imagination Library book giveaway program. The program has quickly expanded, resulting in more than a million books sent out each month to children in the U.S., Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland and Australia.

The Imagination Library is encouraging the public to give directly to their local Imagination Library Partner on Dolly Parton Day, or help establish a new program in their community.

Don’t know where to start? The Dollywood Foundation is directing people to ImaginationLibrary.com, where a ZIP code search can find nearby programs.

“For Dolly, giving was always personal and from her heart,” said Jeff Conyers, president of The Dollywood Foundation, in a statement. “She believed deeply in helping people, especially children, and she always felt if you are in a position to help, you should help.”

Get inspired by Parton’s style and songs

The Queen of Country was known for her over-the-top style, proudly wearing sequins with big hair and plenty of fringe in her signature color pink.

Parton especially adored butterflies, singing that “love is like a butterfly, as soft and gentle as a sigh.”

Dig into your closet and throw on something extra flashy, shiny or sparkly. Feeling adventurous? Some tattoo artists are offering Dolly-inspired tattoos on Friday, but a butterfly clip will also work.

Of course, there’s no easier way to celebrate Parton than by playing one of her many, many albums throughout the day.

Known for her hits “9 to 5,” “Jolene,” and “I Will Always Love You,” Parton’s catalog runs deep, and there’s room to discover new favorites.

It was Parton’s wish that her songs would have a lasting impact, and that in turn, she would be remembered for trying to make the world a better place.

“I hope that a lot of my songs may last that long. And I hope I’ll be remembered as somebody that tried to do some good in the world and left, you know, a few good things,” she told The Associated Press in 2024.

Long Beach Airport will hold an emergency preparedness drill Friday night that will include smoke, along with lights and sirens from emergency vehicles.

The drill, which will happen from 9 to 11 p.m. on Friday, is required by the Federal Aviation Administration every three years and “will test the speed and effectiveness of first responders” and airport staff in an emergency situation, according to the airport. As part of the drill, volunteer actors will play injured victims.

It will not take place near the terminal or the drop-off area, but may be visible to some people at the airport, said airport spokesperson Darrick Lee.

No roads will be closed near the airport, and the drill is not anticipated to impact any aircraft operations, Lee said.