The Brief

Insane hours, the toxic work environments, low pay and stringent standards — plenty of ink and film have been spent lately rehashing the stressors that come with working in the culinary industry.

Yet, for the most part, the culture has dictated that workers suffer silently, placing their well-being — and their mental health especially — on the backburner.

But after the back-to-back deaths of two prominent figures in the local L.A food scene, a couple of seasoned food pros have decided that this status-quo doesn’t cut it. They’re determined to get food-and-beverage workers into the therapy chair.

For Alyssa Noui, 38, a leading L.A. food stylist, and Kristel Arabian, 41, a food and beverage recruiter and former chef at a Michelin Star restaurant, the last straw came in February. First it was Jonathan Whitener, the celebrated chef and partner at Here’s Looking at You and All Day Baby restaurants. Whitener died at home from a drug overdose.

A couple of weeks later, Jered Standing, the popular butcher and founder of animal-conscious Standing’s Butchery, killed himself.

Noui and Arabian both had known Whitener and Standing. Their deaths, at 36 and 44, respectively, hit hard with “my elder millennial generation of people in the food space,” said Noui, a veteran of shows like Master Chef, Guy’s Grocery Games, etc.

Whitener was a “big loss to the food world,” she noted, adding how his menu items altered the foodscape. “Like, we're seeing things on that page, which were familiar but were never put together, like the chicken-fried rabbit,” a favorite from his days at another restaurant, Animal.

Meanwhile Standing’s Butchery was a once-a-week stop for Arabian, either to pick up something to cook for dinner or for a Sunday social burger. Noui called him a “dear friend.” By all accounts, Standing, a former vegetarian, was changing how chefs and insiders went about animal sourcing. He was readying a second location in Venice.

Noui said it was one of those friendships where 10 years later you laugh trying to place how you knew each other. Was it Lindy and Grundy or Salt's Cure?

“He checked all the boxes you’re supposed to, to be successful,” Noui said, adding “he was a good-looking dude with great people around him.”

“But if you're not right in your mind, you’re not right in your spirit—what do you really have?”

Channeling grief into gathering

When news broke about Standing’s death, weeks after Whitener’s, “It’s almost, you know, when someone tells a bad joke or something and the room gets quiet, and you're like, ‘Oh my God, who's going to say the next thing?’”

Arabian had met Noui through the Santa Monica farmers’ market network some years back. She remembers speaking to Noui about how their grieving community needed support.

She made a passive comment about 'everyone needing a hug', Arabian said. "'I'm like, yeah, how do we do that?"

The two organized an event which they’ve since dubbed the “F+B Community Check-In” and took over the back patio at Tabula Rasa, the Hollywood wine bar and industry hangout whose name translates to a “blank slate.”

Rather than just creating another customary eulogic Instagram post, “I channeled my grief into gathering,” Noui said. Tabula Rasa, which has a “dark, grown and sexy feeling,” is responsible for putting a lot of first-rate L.A. pop-ups on the map, including Burgers by Standing and Broad Street Oyster, according to Noui.

It was a nice place to bring out “our people” who spend most of their time in the back of those type of places, she said.

The next event was held at the quaint and cozy Now Serving, the Chinatown cookbook store run by Ken Concepcion, a former Wolfgang Puck chef at Cut. The store, which “gives cottage vibes with a sick library,” is also a haven for public discussions and meeting places for local makers and creatives.

Alyssa Noui and Kristel Arabian

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For that first event, Arabian created a flier in Canva and went through her contacts looking for sponsors willing to donate food. But they didn’t want it to be just a grieving party, so Noui and Arabian sought another angle.

They found the Southern Smoke Foundation, a Houston-based nonprofit offering free “Behind You” therapy sessions specifically for food and beverage workers. Currently operating their mental health program in ten states, the foundation's sessions are administered locally by grad students at California Lutheran University, seeking to fulfill their curriculum hours. The non-profit also offers emergency relief grants for industry workers. The only conditions are that they work a minimum of 30 hours a week — across multiple jobs, if necessary — and that they’ve worked in the industry for at least six months.

After Noui and Arabian went through the Southern Smoke Foundation offerings at the first meeting, a fishbowl was put out where attendees could share anonymously anything they felt compelled to bare, Arabian said. One person wrote, "I know that the food matters, but when will I start mattering?"

"It f—ing crushed me," Arabian recalled. Others used the opportunity to bounce around career concerns: questions related to pricing, tipping, and other ways they could come together to improve the industry or support one another.

Noui doesn’t need the Southern Smoke offerings herself. She has motion picture insurance as part of a local craftsperson union and has just a $5 copay for counseling. She couldn’t afford it otherwise, she said. Now the question is, “how do I hold the door open for more people to have access to it?”

Cutting through the stigma

Southern Smoke founder, the Houston-based, James Beard Award-winning chef Chris Shepherd, 51, says if you talk to any cook they’ll tell you the same thing: “I still hear the ticket machine in my head at night. You know, you can hear that, geeegeee, geeegeee sound. It doesn't stop.”

The foundation was originally conceived through a Houston festival intended to raise money for Multiple Sclerosis. Shepherd was trying to help a sommelier friend battling the disease. The participating chefs and organizers started speaking about opening up the mental health dimension before the 2018 festival, right after the suicide of superstar TV chef Anthony Bourdain.

Within a few days of the celebrity chef’s death, a friend of one of the festival chefs also had taken his own life. So, “with twenty-something of the best chefs in the country coming in,” Shepherd said, there was a special opportunity to have that conversation.

The profession will always be a high-pressure one, but that doesn’t mean we can’t mitigate harm where possible, he said. Beyond the obvious barriers of accessibility and affordability, there’s also the built-in cultural stigma around asking for help. Since the Southern Smoke therapy sessions are conducted via telehealth, “nobody needs to know,” he said.

Kait Leonard, 28, a freelance chef, producer and co-owner of BOH Creative, a marketing agency that works with restaurants and their staffs, decided to attend the second Check-In event at Now Serving, although she wasn’t sure if she was in the right headspace beforehand.

In 2023, a couple of months after cofounding her company, Leonard fell into a deep depression and admitted herself to the ER with suicidal ideation. She wasn’t sure if she was up for attending the meetup, but decided her presence could help someone else.

“Like 'I went to the ER for, you know, I really didn't want to be here. And that's okay'.” Ultimately, her hope most importantly was that these meetups would be a positive outlet and tool for her clients, to help create a healthier workplace. “I wish something like this existed when I was first starting to work in kitchens,” she said.

Brandon Gray, 38, chef and founder of Brandoni Pepperoni, the Los Angeles inspired pizza pop-up, has attended multiple Check-In events thus far. “A lot of trauma bonding,” took place at said events, he said, adding “everyone there has their own story, there’s a lot of overlap”.

“It’s about just figuring out how to be better,” he said. “Because it needs to be better—the people who have been cooking as long as I have, it's not fun anymore.”

Checking in about mental health

The “hospitality industry is excessive,” says Noui. But it’s important to remember that those who are drawn to it, either back-of-house or front, are those who naturally, or are conditioned to, put themselves second. It’s those inherent “masochistic qualities that everyone has,” the same ones we see “romanticized in shows like the Bear” that come “out of service — out of wanting to serve."

At Kitchen Culture Recruiting, the company she started, Arabian says she makes it a point to check in with potential hospitality candidates about their mental health, “but it’s not something you can hit chefs over the head with,” she said. “It takes trust,” from someone who’s been through it. But there are limits, she says. “I’m not a psychologist.”

Arabian remembers her first time working in the kitchen as a cook, after feeling pushed by her family to become a pharmacist. For the first time, it felt like she was doing what she was supposed to be doing. She’d go on to work back-of-house for approximately ten years reaching the level of executive chef. In her last chef role she was working as executive sous chef at a bakery and pizzeria. But after working in front of a wood-burning stove for as much as 110 hours a week, 14-16 hours a day, seven days a week, she developed a chronic illness and had to leave. The safety net just wasn’t there.

While any job can be anxiety-producing, “cooking is one job that has so much “machismo and bravado” around it that physically, “when you become ill, it is life-changing,” she said. Rather than seek out another chef job, she became a front-of-house and back-of-house recruiter. She remembers saying, “Until I find a really great job for myself, in the meanwhile, I'm going to make sure that chefs are taken care of.” Fourteen years later, she says, "I’m still trying.”

Noui has been workshopping her own community resource tool. She bought a phone number that she’s calling the “My Chef” line, 855-My-Chef-8, which she also had printed on pens. This hotline can be used for everything from finding someone to fill a job, like a chef, stylist, or dishwasher or for accountability checks.

Ultimately, Shepherd says it's important for people to know there is help. He's not a fan of all the emerging depictions of extreme kitchen conditions put out there today. “There's these new TV shows that glorify this [toxic workplace elements] when an industry is trying to get away from it…I think it’s wrong. Unless at the end of it you say, ‘hey, you know what? Therapy is available.’”

California Secretary of State Shirley Weber, who made history in 2021 as the first Black person to hold the office, is seeking a second four-year term.

As the incumbent and the only Democrat in the field, she will almost certainly cruise to victory in November. She faces only one serious challenger: Orange County Supervisor Don Wagner, a Republican. No Republican has won a statewide race since 2006.

During her tenure, Weber has faced criticism for California’s slow ballot-counting process — so slow that projected winners of state legislative races are often sworn in before Weber’s office certifies the results. Under state law, county election officials have 30 days to count ballots and conduct audits. Critics, including Wagner, say the time frame undermines voters’ trust in the state’s election integrity.

In an interview with CalMatters, Weber dismissed the concerns as an issue President Donald Trump drummed up to pick on California. She argued it’s important to count every ballot and that most outcomes are known before she certifies the results anyway.

“I know the value of being fast for some folks,” she said. “For me, accuracy is far more important.”

Wagner criticized Weber for doing little to lobby state lawmakers to speed up the ballot count. He said he would roll back the practice of sending universal mail-in ballots to every voter, which the state made permanent during the COVID-19 pandemic, though that would require legislative approval. He said he’d also support legislation to move up the deadline to certify election results.

“Rather than wait 30 days, let's make these changes that are right now causing people of all parties and no party to question: ‘Geez, is that really a fair election?’” Wagner said.

Weber, a former San Diego assemblymember, was appointed to the position by Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2021 and later won a full term in 2022. The daughter of Arkansas sharecroppers who fled the Jim Crow South, Weber drew on her family history and campaigned on expanding voter access and boosting voter turnout.

Over the past five years, Weber has overseen the administration of contentious elections that drew the national spotlight, from the recall against Newsom in 2021 to the congressional redistricting fight last November. She said she has focused on expanding voter outreach to rural corners of California and encouraging voter registration on high school and college campuses — something she said she would continue to focus on in her second term if she is re-elected.

Weber has been in court several times defending California election laws. She has sued local governments for violating election law while also defending the state’s election administration against legal challenges from both Democrats and Republicans. She most recently fended off a lawsuit by Trump’s Department of Justice seeking voter registration data in California.

Weber said she fought to defend Californians’ voting rights. “If we were giving (voter information) away like candy, who would trust us … to protect their records?”

Weber has also faced criticism from advocates who say the state hasn’t done enough to make voting accessible. Disability advocates sued her in 2024 — albeit unsuccessfully — over state election laws that do not allow voters with disabilities to return their ballots electronically.

Former Assemblymember Don Wagner, a Republican from Irvine, is running for secretary of state.

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Wagner, the Republican challenger, wants to present an alternative to Weber, even though he acknowledged that a GOP upset would shock even himself. But if he were elected, Wagner, who also served in the state Assembly, said he’d garner enough national attention to use the office as a “bully pulpit” with the Democratic supermajority in the state Legislature. He said he would require voters to display ID while voting, which also would require a new law. A GOP-backed voter ID ballot initiative on Friday qualified for the November ballot.

Wagner argued that the goal is to restore voters’ trust in state elections.

“I am not one of those Republicans who is going to be out there telling you that unless a Republican wins, the election got stolen,” he told CalMatters. “What I am saying is I believe folks on either side of the political aisle and in the middle question the integrity.”

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

Sometimes, Gloria Gajownik wishes people acted more like bald eagles.

Bald eagle families don't yell at each other (except for the occasional squawk), they don't criticize, and they seem kinder at times than humans, she said. And Gajownik, 71, would know. She has spent the last 15 years watching hours upon hours of bald eagle nest cameras.

Starting in 2011, Gajownik has logged on to the livestream of a Decorah, Iowa, nest after dinner and been glued to the screen until she goes to bed. Now, she monitors a chat room, answering questions and helping track every movement of "mom and dad Decorah" and their two eaglets. She worked for years in the insurance industry, where some people loved their cars more than their families, so, Gajownik said, this is her passion.

"Eagle people — we're different," she said.

Gajownik's immediate family members have died, but she is never alone with her bald eagles and her fellow eagle lovers. "Between the eagles and the people in the chat rooms, I feel like I have a big … extended family," she said.

Spring is primetime for bald eagle nests. Depending on the region, eagles mate and lay eggs sometime in late winter or early spring. If the eggs hatch, the eaglets will fledge around 12 weeks later and start their own lives.

The livestreams allow anyone, anywhere, to watch the birds at any time. They are on screens in DMV waiting rooms, hospitals, workplaces and schools. Diligent eagle monitors, like Gajownik, track every movement of the birds, from their PS (poop shoots) to their feedings to couple-esque moments between the parents.

Gajownik is one of millions of people who watch the more than 50 bald eagle nest cameras across the U.S. and who share countless photos, videos, memes and updates on Facebook groups and in chat rooms. The fans are the backbone of these nests, donating small-dollar amounts to keep some running and tracking every movement of the eagles and their eaglets. It's a dedicated and fiercely loyal group that sees the eagles just as much a part of the online community as the humans who run that community.

And, yes, most of the eagles and their eaglets have names.

"One of the most important aspects of the chat rooms and watching the eagles is that we're sharing it together," Gajownik said. "We watch through thick and thin."

A little bit of bald eagle history

After World War II, extensive use of the insecticide DDT was catastrophic to eagle populations, according to U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. By 1963, only 417 nesting eagle pairs could be found in the U.S.

They were virtually gone from states in the northeast and southeast, said Tina Morris, author of the memoir Return to the Sky: The Surprising Story of How One Woman and Seven Eaglets Helped Restore the Bald Eagle.

In 1976, Morris, then a graduate student at Cornell University, started the first bald eagle reintroduction program in New York, using one of the first eagle cameras to monitor the birds. "Eagles are hard not to be involved with," Morris said. "They're majestic, they're powerful, they're resilient."

Their resilience is an attribute that many camera watchers love. Jenny Voisard, the media manager at Friends of Big Bear Valley, located in the San Bernardino National Forest in Southern California, said the valley's eagles, Jackie and Shadow, have taken over her life. Jackie and Shadow average thousands of livestream viewers daily, including over 30,000 on a recent Monday morning.

"Watching this couple … you're reminded of resilience and how to move forward and kind of how to get through your own life," Voisard said.

Two eaglets at the Big Bear Valley nest look out across the horizon. The nest is famous for the eaglets' parents, Jackie and Shadow.

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Since the reintroduction work, the bald eagle population has soared in the Lower 48 states, with an estimated 71,400 nesting pairs in a 2020 population report, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

"I think back to 1782, when they picked it to be the national symbol. They picked the right bird," Morris said.

So, how do you get a camera into a bald eagle nest? 

"There's no way you're going to get a better look at a bald eagle's nest than on the eagle cam itself," said Randy Robinson, an instructional systems specialist for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Robinson works at the National Conservation Training Center in West Virginia's Shenandoah Valley. The camera there follows Scout and Bella and their two newly hatched eaglets.

The camera lets Robinson observe the eagles up close throughout the spring, provide educational opportunities for kids and biweekly "Live! From the NCTC Eagle Nest" chats for the public, and make observational discoveries about the eagles. The nest cameras across the U.S. have a variety of uses, some for research purposes and others for pure curiosity.

To place the camera, a "knuckle-boom" truck with a 100-foot crane lifts a climber equipped with a harness about 95 feet aboveground, Robinson said. The climber, suspended in the air and attached to a rope at the end of the crane, reaches out to put a small security-like camera into the nest.

A climber, about 95 feet in the air, uses a crane to access a bald eagle nest.

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Today, the more than 50 cameras across the country range from high up in a tree to the edges of ragged cliffs. Placing a small, unnoticeable camera can be tricky and, for some nests, requires a helicopter.

The real citizen scientists

The people flocking to the livestreams have turned them into massive communities, which, at times, save the eagles from potential disaster.

Deb Stecyk, who lives in Alberta, Canada, has monitored eagle nests for over 20 years and focuses most of her free time chronicling the West Virginia eagles' movements in a daily spreadsheet and running a Facebook page.

Stecyk has the camera running on a computer in her house, and she records at night. In April of last year, for the first time in 22 years, the wind ripped the huge nest in West Virginia from its perch. All three of the 4-week-old eaglets died. Stecyk was the first one to tell Robinson.

Heartbroken community members mourned together in the chat rooms. One YouTube commenter said: "this absolutely destroyed me."

This year alone, eagle-eyed viewers helped save an eaglet in Pennsylvania after it swallowed a fishing hook. Fans also alerted the Institute for Wildlife Studies, a nonprofit that runs multiple eagle cameras on islands off the coast of Southern California, that a Fraser Point eaglet fell out of its nest. The eaglet was safely returned to the nest after a heroic rescue operation.

Wildlife experts approach human intervention with extreme caution. Brian Hudgens, the institute's vice president, said the team uses a minimalist approach and considers a variety of factors before intervening.

Robinson, who monitors the West Virginia nest, said that eagle parents will accept eaglets back into the nest after human interaction, despite popular myth. Staff will intervene if there is a human-caused problem, like an eagle swallowing a fishing hook. Humans going into a nest typically scares away the parents and could allow a predator to grab an eaglet, and the disruption could cause an eaglet to fall out of the nest.

Next year, the Institute for Wildlife Studies will ask the citizen scientists watching the cameras to track the prey the birds bring to the nest. "You have this many observers, and watching so closely. It's something we really want to take advantage of," Hudgens said.

"It's like watching a soap opera"

The draw of the cameras includes the inevitable tragedies, dramatic turns, and joyous occasions that happen each year.

A newly hatched baby eaglet in the Decorah, Iowa, nest.

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"It's like watching a soap opera, " said Morris, the author of Return to the Sky. "Except they're birds."

There are cheating scandals, fertility struggles, early deaths, poisoned raccoons, snowstorms and fights with other birds. Most of the excitement revolves around the eaglets' struggle to make it out of the nests alive.

"As soon as you start watching those eagle cams, you recognize that the eagles are very similar to humans," Morris said. "They're monogamous. They're very loyal to their nest sites. They're incredibly good parents."

John Howe, the executive director of the nonprofit Raptor Resource Project, which runs many raptor cameras, including the one observing the Decorah eagles, said: "It's impossible to look at these cameras and not project your own family experience."

Voisard, the media manager at the Big Bear Valley nest, describes Jackie and Shadow lovingly, calling them "an old married couple."

Voisard said she hears dozens of stories about why people are so invested in the livestreams: Some viewers are stuck in an urban jungle with no nature. Some are recovering from tragedy or illness. Some are grandparents hanging out with their grandkids.

"It's very meaningful and emotional," she said. "It's very deep."

Voisard has six computer monitors around her house playing the livestream, so she doesn't miss a second. "It's a little ridiculous," she said, smiling.

But more than just watching the eagles, it's a community. Jackie and Shadow have 2.6 million followers across their official social media platforms. Some 35 contractors and volunteers watch the nest 24/7 to keep track of the birds. Right now, the fans are attempting to raise millions of dollars to keep a development from springing up less than a mile from the nest.

Gajownik, the eagle superfan, lives in Tennessee miles from the rural Iowa eagles she watches. Every year, she goes on a four-day trip to see the birds in person and meet up with her chat room friends.

Gajownik plans to attend the meetup this July. In the meantime, she will continue meticulously watching the eagles, "probably until I die," she added with a chuckle.
Copyright 2026 NPR

This story first appeared on The LA Local.

Inglewood police will get drones, automated license plate readers and body-worn cameras after the City Council approved purchasing up to $6.3 million in new tech. 

The Inglewood City Council unanimously approved the tech package during its meeting Tuesday, clearing the way for city staff to finalize a contract with police tech company Axon. Mayor James Butts said the city’s public safety has come a long way in recent decades, but that the new equipment will help the city modernize.

“We have to continue to move to the future. We are an international destination,” Butts said.

Inglewood will host a string of international mega-events over the next few years, including this summer’s FIFA World Cup, the 2027 NFL Super Bowl and 2028 Olympic Games. Butts told The LA Local the tech package is the result of months of city research and negotiations with potential tech suppliers dating to last summer. 

The introduction of police body cameras, though, follows a more local controversy: Bryan Bostic’s still-unexplained March 10 death in Inglewood police custody. 

Activists have redoubled calls for body cams in Inglewood since Bostic died; unlike other L.A.-area police agencies, Inglewood officers are not outfitted with cameras. 

Bystander video from Bostic’s arrest shows police forcibly pinning him to the street after a traffic stop, but it remains unclear what caused his death. Investigations by the L.A. County District Attorney’s office into the police use of force during Bostic’s arrest and by the L.A. County Medical Examiner’s office are ongoing. 

Marie Darden, Bostic’s aunt, said after the council meeting she believes the city only moved the tech package forward because family and activists have pressed the issue.

“They’re doing this to try to silence us,” Darden said. 

Darden and others in Bostic’s family spoke during the Tuesday meeting — as they have for weeks — and asked the city to share more information, including the names of the officers involved in Bostic’s arrest.

Butts replied in his own comments during the meeting that the city is still waiting on the county medical examiner’s findings.

“No one wants to know more than I and the council do, what was the cause of death,” Butts said. 

Here’s the new gear Inglewood police will get

Axon will kit out Inglewood police officers with body cameras as well as new Tasers. The department has 186 sworn officers, according to the city. 

Cameras will also be installed in twenty-five vehicles. The Fleet 3 devices have capability to automatically read and look up vehicle license plates. 

The Automated License Plate Recognition, or ALPR, tech will also be rolled out via 98 stationary cameras mounted on light posts and in other locations. The devices Inglewood is purchasing also have livestream video capability, according to Axon’s website.

Stationary ALPR devices scan the license plate of passing vehicles and log their location at a given time. Police tout the ability of ALPR networks to rapidly locate stolen vehicles or fleeing suspects. Critics say they lack oversight and that their data can be too broadly shared, including with federal immigration agents.

In a statement on Tuesday, local activist Najee Ali called on the city council to create protections for the public before putting the new equipment into use.

“There are no guarantees that body camera footage will be released. No independent oversight. No clear rules about who controls the data or how it will be used,” he said. “You cannot expand surveillance without expanding accountability.”

Axon will also provide the city with seven camera drones, including the Skydio 10 and its indoor-focused cousin, the Skydio R10, as well as a suite of software to manage it all. 

Inglewood Police Chief Mark Fronterotta said the tech package puts Inglewood cops on “the cutting edge” and that the tech is expected to roll out between this summer and the end of the year. 

Councilmember Gloria Gray — who attended the meeting remotely — said she hopes the council and community members will get a chance to discuss police training and policy connected to the new systems.

“Technology alone does not create public trust,” she said.