Mariana Dale
explores and explains the forces that shape how and what kids learn from kindergarten to high school.
Published March 29, 2024 5:00 AM
Robert Quintana painted this mural of Octavia E. Butler outside the school library in 2020. Among Butler's writing on the wall is the phrase "So be it. See to it." which has becomes the school's unofficial motto.
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Topline:
Late science fiction writer Octavia E. Butler started to imagine the worlds that would become best-selling books while a Pasadena public school student. Washington Junior High School was renamed Octavia E. Butler Magnet in 2022, 60 years after she graduated the eighth grade.
More than a name: Butler’s legacy is alive in the school’s science-focused curriculum and in the annual SciFi writing contest and festival. “I want [students] to realize that their ideas matter,” said school librarian Natalie Daily. “I think that Butler is a testament to that, you know, she was writing stuff and thinking about really, really deep ideas when she was a student here.”
Butler’s middle school life: At Octavia E. Butler Magnet’s library, students can see her picture in the 1961 yearbook, her eighth grade promotion certificate, assignments, even report cards from her time at the school. There’s also a ranked list of her favorite movie stars. “It just really shows that she was a middle school kid just like any other middle school kid,” Daily said.
An inspiration to students: “I did hear that she wasn't very talkative either, and she'd write a lot, so I felt like that's something we had in common,” said eighth grader Dayana Diaz. “People didn't believe in her,” Dayana said. “But she still made it either way and that's what I would like to do as well.”
Late science fiction writer Octavia E. Butler started to imagine the worlds that would become best-selling books while a Pasadena public school student.
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A School Renamed For Octavia E. Butler Is Trying To Live Up To Her Legacy
Butler’s portrait gazes out at the students from murals above the library, in a second-floor hallway, and from the front of the school. Her legacy is alive in the school’s science-focused curriculum and in the annual SciFi writing contest and festival.
“I want [students] to realize that their ideas matter,” said school librarian Natalie Daily. “I think that Butler is a testament to that, you know, she was writing stuff and thinking about really, really deep ideas when she was a student here.”
Thanks to the author’s meticulous archives, which include her journals, early writings, and even her homework, students learn not just about the award-winning writer’s list of adult accomplishments, but the awkward adolescent who walked the very same halls.
“I did hear that she wasn't very talkative either, and she'd write a lot,” said eighth grader Dayana Diaz. “I felt like that's something we had in common.” Dayana's short story about the cost of war between humans on Mars and Jupiter won the school’s 2022 science fiction contest.
“People didn't believe in her,” Dayana said. “But she still made it either way and that's what I would like to do as well.”
Brock St. James with his daughters, Kobe Arnold, 2, and Guinevere Arnold, 7, inside the Octavia E. Butler Magnet library on March 22, 2024. The space is stocked with hundreds of books, board games, puzzles, and craft supplies.
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It started with the library
Octavia Estelle Butler was born June 22, 1947 in Pasadena, a city shaped by policies and practices that limited where Black, Latino, and Asian people could buy houses, receive health care, eat at restaurants, and attend school.
“I'm a writer at least partly because I had access to public libraries,” she wrote in a 1993 column sounding the alarm about the shrinking access to public literary spaces. “I'm Black, female, the child of a shoeshine man who died young and a maid who was uneducated but who knew her way to the library … At the library, I read books my mother could never have afforded on topics that would never have occurred to her.”
I'm a writer at least partly because I had access to public libraries. I'm black, female, the child of a shoeshine man who died young and a maid who was uneducated but who knew her way to the library.
— Octavia E. Butler
Butler was almost 6 feet tall by the time she was 12 and as anyone who has ever attended middle school knows, being different is not always greeted with kindness.
“She knew what it was like to be what she called the out kid, like the kid on the margins,” said Ayana Jamieson, a scholar of Butler’s life and assistant professor of ethnic studies at Cal Poly Pomona, as well as the founder of the Octavia E. Butler Legacy Network.
Butler’s professional writing career was inspired, in part, by the idea that she could do better than Devil Girl From Mars, a “terrible movie” she watched as a kid.
“I was very lucky to be born just in time for the space race to build public support for education,” Butler said in a 1998 MIT speech. “All of a sudden there were plenty of supplies, for instance, for science education.”
Students can see Octavia E. Butler's yearbook picture in the library.
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Mariana Dale
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A George Washington Junior High School certificate of promotion given to Octavia E. Butler in 1962. Butler graduated from John Muir High School in 1965.
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Courtesy the Octavia E. Butler Papers
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The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens
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Butler worked and took classes at Pasadena City College.
“I wrote and wrote, and sent things out, and collected rejection slips until I realized that collecting rejection slips was masochistic,” Butler said in the same speech. “And I took the drawer and threw them all out.”
Butler sold her first short story at 23 and when she died in 2006, she’d created a dozen books and several short stories. Her narratives often center on humans trying to figure out how to navigate a dire future that is frightening in its familiarity, rather than its foreignness.
But Jamieson said there is hope in her stories.
“No one has the right answers, but we just have to do our best ... what we can, at the time when we have to make the decisions,” Jamieson said. “I think that's really powerful.”
Changing the name
The board approved the naming of the Octavia E. Butler Library in 2020. Former principal Shannon Malone, who wrote the proposal with librarian Natalie Daily, said it was a “no brainer.”
The reaction from parents was so positive Malone and Daily started to explore changing the school’s name. Institutions everywhere were reckoning with who is memorialized in public spaces and who is not.
“The context of the time made it more important for us to have a school named after someone whose genius started here in the halls,” Malone said. “To recognize someone who represented the community.”
“The idea is to have the exposure to a lot of different things so you can see yourselves in that science diaspora," said former principal Shannon Malone, of Octavia E. Butler Magnet's curriculum.
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The school’s existing name carried nearly 100 years of history. Washington Junior High School opened in Northwest Pasadena in 1924. Jet Propulsion Laboratory founders Jack Parsons and Edward Forman and baseball player Jackie Robinson are among the school’s earliest alumni.
The school was also at the center of a 1961 lawsuit, in which a judge eventually ruled that district leaders had created boundaries “for the purpose of instituting, maintaining, and intensifying racial segregation at Washington.”
“Part of changing the name of the school was to almost give a reboot to that space for people to remember that, oh, great people have walked through here,” said Malone, who’s now a district administrator overseeing schools from transitional kindergarten to high school.
Education at its best enables us to adapt in creative, positive ways. Education at its best teaches us to go on learning, and thus to deal with whatever the future brings.
— Octavia E. Butler
Leira Ruperto graduated from what was then Washington Junior High in 2000. Her family still lives within walking distance and her oldest son is in seventh grade this year. She anticipates her three younger sons will follow.
“The schools have changed dramatically from when I was going to school,” Ruperto said. “There's a lot more resources, there's a lot more help for the kids, they do a lot more activities for the kids.”
The school's full name is Octavia E. Butler Magnet, a dual langauge STEAM Middle School. The acronym stands for science, technology, engineering, art, and math.
“All that you touch You Change. All that you Change Changes you. The only lasting truth is Change.”
— Octavia E. Butler
Ruperto said the new name can help teach students a subtle lesson.
“It's good for them to know like, ‘OK, things don't always last forever,'” Ruperto said. “Sometimes some kids kind of struggle with change.”
Ruperto’s answer recalls the gospel in Parable of the Sower: "All that you touch you Change. All that you Change Changes you. The only lasting truth is Change.”
Learning from Butler
When Butler died in 2006, she left 398 boxes and 18 oversized folders of journals, manuscripts, notes and other ephemera to the Huntington Library, including many artifacts of her childhood.
At Octavia E. Butler Magnet’s library, students can see her picture in the 1961 yearbook, her eighth grade promotion certificate, assignments, even report cards from her time at the school.
Daily showed them to a student whose grades matched Butler’s at the time— Bs, Cs, and Ds.
“She just goes ‘Well this is very inspiring,’” Daily said. “That's what we're supposed to think. Like just the idea that somebody, she didn't have it all together in middle school yet. Look what she did.”
Ayleen Medina, 12, puts on an astronaut helmet prop during the Octavia E. Butler Library Science Fiction Festival in Pasadena on March 22, 2024.
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Daily also said the reports prompt questions about how educators evaluate student success.
“What was she being graded on? Was that appropriate? Was she being graded on the things that made her shine?” Daily said. “Was what she was capable of valued? I think those questions are just as valid.”
There’s also a ranked list of “Favorite Movie Stars.” Nick Adams, was her top-ranked actor— five stars— for his role in the TV western series The Rebel.
Looking For Sci-Fi Recs For Middle Grades?
We asked students at Octavia E. Butler Middle School to name some of the books that got them hooked on science fiction.
“It just really shows that she was a middle school kid just like any other middle school kid,” Daily said.
There are drafts of short stories Butler wrote on her own time.
In “Evolution,” dated in July 1962, the month after she graduated from middle school, a woman finds a baby in a post-war landscape.
“It had two small hard lumps on its shoulders,” Butler wrote. “Probably some new kind of disease brought on by that war.”
The lumps grow and feathers emerge.
“It was time she thought of something to call it. Years before it would probably have had a name on the day of its birth. Now names did not matter much. There was no time for making friends,” the story continued. “A child with wings though. Such a child. deserved a name. There had been mutations before, but none like this.”
"Something that we really want our students to be able to do is have a sense of agency," said librarian Natalie Daily. "[Butler's] a really great model of someone who did exactly that."
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Daily visited the archives at the Huntington and said there’s about a dozen versions of the story.
“There's a lot going on in a kid's mind,” Daily said. “We really need to explore it with them and encourage them to keep pulling those threads.”
A new generation of explorers, creators
Octavia E. Butler Magnet educators are encouraged to weave the author’s work into their classrooms.
Eighth grade English teacher Roslyn Terré, a science fiction lover and aspiring writer, recently assigned students a poem based on one of Butler’s.
“They were able to say things like, ‘I am my power,’ ‘I am great,’ ‘I have skills,’” Terré said. “They each talked about their different talents and then how those talents would take them into the future.”
There's been a lot of like, feeling like I'm not Black enough, if that makes sense. Or like, I'm not enough of what I am. I don't fit into any of the boxes. And so in a lot of Octavia's works, it's quite often about characters who don't really fit into a box.
— Brooklyn Roffman, eighth grade
Eighth grader Brooklyn Roffman started exploring Butler’s work after the library was renamed: First, the graphic novel adaptations of her work, then “the real thing.”
In “Speech Sounds,” a disease wipes out much of humanity and those left struggle to communicate.
“I get a lot of social anxiety, and sometimes I don't really have the right words,” Brooklyn said. “So that, I don't know, felt personal to me.”
Brooklyn describes herself as a mix of African American, Irish, and Ashkenazi Jewish heritage.
“There's been a lot of like, feeling like I'm not Black enough, if that makes sense. Or like, I'm not enough of what I am,” Brooklyn said. “I don't fit into any of the boxes. And so in a lot of Octavia's works, it's quite often about characters who don't really fit into a box.”
"When you go out and like meet a mushroom, I recommend smelling them," said Aaron Tupac (left), 32, a mycologist at the Octavia E. Butler Library Science Fiction Festival on March 22, 2024. "Some smell like farts, some smell like uh, apricots, some smell really sweet, some smell like things that you never smelled before. There's over 300 different mushroom smells."
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Daily organizes an annual science fiction contest to honor students’ short narrative, poetry, art, and graphic fiction.
“We don't want them to just be consumers of sci fi, which is awesome,” Daily said. “We also want them to be creators of it.”
Each year, every submission is collected into a book for the students.
The school also holds an annual Science Fiction Festival. This year students could make space-inspired art, code robots, and compete in a cosplay contest.
“It's just ways for kids to be engaged in both science and art, and creation,” Daily said. “To see themselves as part of all of it.”
In the spring of 2020, the library was re-named the Octavia E. Butler Library. “Something that I really try to provide as a space for the library to just kind of be a central location,” Daily said. “[I] try to keep it at the heart of the school so kids want to keep coming back.”
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Butler, "La Autora," is part of a lotería mural created by Jen Swain in 2023 on the school's second floor.
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In one classroom, mycologist Aaron Tupac laid out an array of dried mushrooms for inspection.
“Have ya’ll ever met any mushrooms in your neighborhood?” they asked.
Grayson Schnnitger watched as Tupac zoomed in on the spores of a Turkey Tail specimen with a microscope.
“I haven't ever learned about [mushrooms] before,” Grayson said. “So it was something new.”
Just one example of the middle school exploration, many students were eager to tell LAist about.
Eighth grader Maxine Molnar joined the musical theater club. She’s portrayed Linus in You’re A Good Man, Charlie Brown and a friend to Jasmine in Aladdin.
“I've explored more of, like, what I enjoy doing,” Maxine said. “What I'm really good at and things that I also need to work on.”
Arturo Nuño has learned to code robots in an after-school club — a discovery preceded by an earlier failed after-school experiment. “This is actually a funny story,” Arturo said. “First my mom put me in Glee, but I didn't really like it.”
Sixth grader Naila Walker recently dissected a chicken leg — “It was really gross, but really fun at the same time.”
Fresh Air: Octavia Butler— A Butler, in her own words, describes how she wrote herself into Science Fiction in this 23-minute 1993 interview. (NPR)
Octavia’s Parables— Each episode analyzes a chapter of Butler’s work “offering listeners guiding questions for applying the lessons in their own lives and community work.”
Visit
Octavia E. Butler’s Pasadena— From the library to her elementary, middle and high schools, these are the places that shaped Butler’s early life. The Huntington Library guide includes a suggested 2.5 mile walking loop.
Los Angeles Public Library’s Octavia Lab— A “a do-it-yourself makerspace” in downtown’s Central Library with 3D printers, a recording studio, laser cutter and other digital tools.
Octavia E. Butler: Seeding Futures— Take a roadtrip to visit this exhibit of Butler’s early life at San Diego’s New Children’s Museum through the end of 2025.
This billboard, pictured in October 2025, resets every January 1 at midnight.
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Topline:
An anti-smoking billboard has become a gathering point for L.A. people to celebrate the new year. The American Cancer Society says when it comes to raising awareness about getting screened for lung cancer, the more the merrier.
When the tradition started: It’s not clear exactly when, but the reports of it go back to the 2000s. It even earned a writeup in the L.A. Times in 2012, back when it was more of a neighborhood gathering. The billboard itself dates back to 1987.
How’s it grown: After going viral this decade, the tradition has only grown. Videos on social media show the block full of revelers, though not too many smokers.
Read on… for more on what the sponsors have to say.
It’s been a beloved Los Angeles tradition for well over a decade. On New Year’s Eve, a crowd of people gather around on Santa Monica Boulevard and Veteran Avenue in West L.A. to celebrate at midnight.
The crowd isn’t waiting for a ball to drop, or for a bell to toll — not in L.A. Instead, the crowd is waiting for the exact moment that an anti-smoking billboard resets. Its message warns of the dangers of lighting up by showing the number of people who’ve died that year due to smoking.
For one beautiful moment, the billboard shows that not a single American has died from lung cancer or other smoking-related illnesses in the new year. (Of course, there’s no way to know this for sure — the counter is based on previous estimates and statistical averages.)
The billboard has grown from a neighborhood gathering, as the L.A. Times reported in 2012, to a packed viral celebration in the 2020s. Some Reddit users even loosely planned this year’s meetup, and it’s now cemented as a mainstay of how this beautiful, occasionally smoky city rings in the new year.
What’s the origin story?
The billboard dates back to 1987. William E. Bloomfield Sr., an ex-smoker, anti-smoking advocate and Redondo Beach resident, put it up to make the effects of smoking feel more real, according to the L.A. Times.
“I want to do what I can to get even a few people to quit, or at least think about it,” Bloomfield told the Times back then.
Drumroll: What do the sponsors have to say?
LAist reached out to the billboard’s sponsors to get their take, and long story short: They’re fans of the tradition.
“Seeing the social media response of Angelenos counting down the New Year alongside this billboard is a powerful example of how impactful public awareness can be,” said Jen Maduko, the American Cancer Society’s senior executive director in Los Angeles, in a statement provided to LAist. “Lung cancer continues to claim more lives than any other cancer, and smoking remains the leading preventable cause.”
The ACS also said that they hope that the billboard’s viral status will encourage smokers to quit, or at least make current and former smokers consider getting screened for lung cancer. You can find more info on that from the ACS here.
“Although we appreciate how it brings renewed attention to the effects of smoking, we hope that it encourages action throughout the year,” Maduko added.
So there you have it. The sponsors behind the smoking deaths billboard have given Angelenos the blessing to ring in the new year on the side of the road in West L.A.
Who knows, one day this billboard might become even more iconic than the more traditional celebrations at places like Grand Park in downtown L.A. and the Queen Mary in Long Beach — or even make it to a national telecast.
LAUSD's revamped Winter Academy has fewer students
Mariana Dale
explores and explains the forces that shape how and what kids learn from kindergarten to high school.
Published January 5, 2026 4:18 PM
Middle school students watch a paper flower unfold in a pan of water in a lesson on surface tension at the Sherman Oaks Center for Enriched Students.
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Topline:
On the first day of Los Angeles Unified’s Winter Academy, enrollment is 14% lower than last year with about 64,000 students signed up for a week of credit recovery and enrichment camps.
The backstory: Winter Academy started in 2022 as "acceleration days,” meant to help students make up for lost learning time during the COVID-19 pandemic using winter and spring breaks. Enrollment has ranged from 71,000 to 74,000 students, with an average attendance of 55% to 60%, according to a statement provided to LAist by a district spokesperson.
New this year: The district moved the program to start in January this year, ahead of the second semester, rather than keep it in December at the end of the first semester, as in previous years. And it is now a full week instead of three days.
Why it matters: “Bringing kids in earlier, particularly students who actually need it, giving them a bit more of … a ramp into the second semester makes a great deal of sense to all of us,” Superintendent Albert Carvalho said Monday. He said that while enrollment is lower, he hopes overall attendance will be higher than previous years.
On the first day of Los Angeles Unified’s Winter Academy, enrollment is 14% lower than last year with about 64,000 students signed up for a week of credit recovery and enrichment camps.
The district moved the program to start in January this year, ahead of the second semester, rather than keep it in December at the end of the first semester, as in previous years. And it is now a full week instead of three days.
“ I believe that even though the enrollment is a bit lower, attendance hopefully will be higher,” said Superintendent Alberto Carvalho on Monday.
Families can still sign up
When is Winter Academy? Mon., Jan. 5 through Fri., Jan. 9.
Where is it?319 sites spread throughout the district and online.
How do I sign up? Fill out a paper application and take it to a participating school site.
The program started in 2022 as "acceleration days,” meant to help students make up for lost learning time during the COVID-19 pandemic using winter and spring breaks.
Enrollment has ranged from 71,000 to 74,000 students, with an average attendance of 55% to 60%, according to a statement provided to LAist by a district spokesperson.
Variations on winter recovery
Sherman Oaks Center for Enriched Studies is one of 319 campuses offering Winter Academy. About 200 students attended the school’s enrichment camps, which in addition to STEAM programs (science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics), included focuses on writing and math.
Middle schoolers at SOCES on Monday crowded around lab tables to watch folded paper flowers bloom when placed in a pan of water, a display of “capillary action”— the movement of sticky water molecules through a porous material.
Norman Goss keeps a foil ball aloft with the power of static electricity as classmate Catherine Galvez, left, watches, on the first day of SOCES' Middle School STEAM Camp during Winter Academy.
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Seventh grader Catherine Galvez said her dad signed her up for the camp because she wants to be an astronomer.
“We're trying to find STEM programs that are like, inviting, but also, like, easy to get into,” Galvez said.
Teacher Riley Leary said unlike the traditional Winter Academy, the Middle School STEAM Camp is not focused on replacing work from the school year.
“This is based on curiosity. This is based on wonder,” Leary said.
Across campus, seventh grader Sophia Bezgubenko's wonder is limited to whether she can bring up her grades in health and science. She's one of the 300 students who are signed up for credit recovery. Bezgubenko is here at her mom’s urging.
“ I'm a little annoyed, but it’s alright,” she said of having to get up early during the last week of winter break.
The Algebra II students in Raymond Toleco's Winter Academy classroom review linear functions and absolute value functions.
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A few doors down, 31 of 35 students enrolled showed up for Raymond Toleco’s Algebra II class.
Toleco said the additional days of Winter Academy give him more time to review with students instead of just assigning them work to complete on their own over the break.
“Mostly I have hardworking students and some of them wanna improve from D to hopefully a B,” Toleco said.
Keep up with LAist.
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Nick Gerda
is an accountability reporter who has covered local government in Southern California for more than a decade.
Published January 5, 2026 4:14 PM
Crews work on storm damage in Wrightwood on Christmas Day.
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Eric Thayer
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Los Angeles Times via Getty Images
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Topline:
Santa Ana winds are expected in Southern California this weekend, which forecasters say could topple trees in soil soaked by weeks of heavy rains that broke records in some areas.
What’s expected: Forecasters expect dry weather for the next couple of weeks, with moderate Santa Ana winds arriving this weekend. That carries a risk of downed trees, said Rich Thompson, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service’s regional office for L.A., Ventura, Santa Barbara and San Louis Obispo counties. “The soil is still so saturated from all this rain that it'll be easier for trees to be blown down and things like that from the stronger wind,” he said. One positive from all the rain is that fire risk is now minimal in the near term, he said.
How heavy was the recent rainfall? The storms over the last several weeks have been “very impressive,” Thompson said. “ Some areas pretty much smashed their daily records in terms of rainfall.” Santa Barbara saw 4.5 inches of rain on Christmas Eve, setting a new daily rainfall record for Dec. 24. Downtown L.A. saw its fourth wettest time period since records began nearly 150 years ago, going back to 1877.
A couple weeks without rain expected: “Hopefully enjoy this next dry couple of weeks,” Thompson said. “Because we're still early into the season — we're not even halfway through the rainy season, so we’ve still got potential for more storms in the future. But right now just enjoy the next couple weeks, things should be dry.”
Gab Chabrán
covers what's happening in food and culture for LAist.
Published January 5, 2026 3:29 PM
Little Flower Candy Company owner Christine Moore was described by her children as "the heart and guiding force of Little Flower and our community."
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Courtesy of Little Flower Candy Company
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Topline:
Christine Moore, founder of Little Flower Candy Company in Pasadena, has died. Her children announced her passing Monday, describing her as "the heart and guiding force of Little Flower and our community." Moore built the beloved café over nearly two decades, most recently making headlines when she fed fire evacuees despite being displaced herself.
Why it matters: Moore's death is a significant loss to Pasadena's culinary scene. For nearly two decades, she was more than a business owner; she was a community anchor who built lasting relationships.
What people are saying: Community and industry tributes poured in, celebrating Moore as a "beacon of light" who fostered welcoming spaces. Pastry chef Nicole Rucker called her "the best of the best." Many highlighted her role as a champion for women in business and a steadfast supporter during the Eaton Fire crisis.
Read on... for more on Christine Moore's life and impact on the Los Angeles culinary scene.
Christine Moore, founder and owner of Little Flower Candy Company in Pasadena, has died. Her children announced her death on Monday in a post on the cafe’s Instagram describing her as "the heart and guiding force of Little Flower and our community."
Moore founded the beloved candy company nearly two decades ago from her home kitchen in Highland Park, where she pioneered what would become her signature sea salt caramels and handmade marshmallows.
In 2007, she opened Little Flower at 1422 W. Colorado Blvd. The cafe transformed her candy business into a neighborhood gathering place known for its French-influenced pastries and seasonal fare.
Moore built her reputation on what Pulitzer Prize-winning food critic Jonathan Gold described in her acclaimed cookbook “Little Flower Baking” as food that makes you "feel happy and well served by life." Moore also published her cookbook “Little Flower: Recipes from the Cafe”.
She trained in Paris under award-winning chef and baker Nancy Silverton, at the former Campanile restaurant in Mid-City.
Along with the cafe, Moore opened Lincoln restaurant in 2016 inside a restored 1920s machine shop in northern Pasadena. It closed permanently during the pandemic in 2020.
Moore’s family made headlines when her 17-year-old son, Colin, fought to save their home from the Eaton Fire as it swept Altadena last year.
Despite being displaced herself, she immediately opened Little Flower to feed evacuees and first responders with her staff of 27. The service embodied what Moore had long championed: "We have 200 chances every day to make someone happy."
Christine Moore was described by her children as "the heart and guiding force of Little Flower and our community."
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Courtesy Little Flower Candy Company
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"She was a beacon of light and hope for me and our Braeburn pod after the fires, like she was for so many others in our community. That's just who she was," wrote Olivia Gutierrez.
"Christine was warmth itself. She welcomed people, remembered them, celebrated families, and built a true community at Little Flower," wrote Rachel Bitan.
Artist Anna Chotiner recalled a recent conversation with Moore: "We talked about how special [Little Flower] is. We were both in tears in the middle of the store as she radiated love and pride for the legacy she built. She talked about how all she wanted was for LF to be a place where anyone can come in and feel loved and cared for and feel just a little better about the world."
Pastry chef Nicole Rucker wrote, "They better have their sh*t together in heaven cause if not Christine is gonna bust em up! The best of the best."
Moore is survived by her three children: Maddie, Avery and Colin. The family requests that in lieu of flowers, donations be made to Camp Conrad Chinnock, a nonprofit diabetes camp for children, in her memory.
Little Flower is temporarily closed until Tuesday, but service is scheduled to resume on Wednesday, according to the family.
