The Brief

Growing up in a multicultural household, my brother and I attended a Spanish Saturday school known as Escuelita. It was there that I first celebrated Dia De Los Muertos. I remember learning about the holiday and building my first altar, made from cardboard. We filled it with pan dulce, different types of fruits, and Mexican chocolate, the potent scent still remaining part of my core memory.

We made sugar skulls, too, and licked the frosting from our fingertips during the decorating process and debated whether you could eat them. (You can but I wouldn’t advise it. Too hard, plus many skulls are reused since the sugar doesn’t go bad.)

Back then, it was all about the sweets. But as I’ve grown older and gained more perspective, as with most things, the celebration has taken on a great significance.

In our fast-paced world, celebrating Dia De Los Muertos gives us the time and space to reflect and collectively mourn those who have passed. It teaches us not to fear death and dying but to embrace it as part of life.

And in a post-pandemic world with a never-ending news cycle of suffering, remembering the dead has never felt more vital.

When I talked to Laura Martinez, the owner of East Los Sweets, who started her sugar skull-making business tucked away in the corner of her family’s bakery, La Central Bakery in East L.A., she said something that resonated with me.

"I didn't grow up making altars," she said. Her interest was piqued when she attended a Day of the Dead celebration in Los Angeles years ago and became fascinated with the skulls that are perhaps one of the most immediately recognizable emblems of the holiday.

Laura Martinez, of East Los Sweets, decorates sugar skulls in preparation for Dia de Muertos.

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Samanta Helou Hernandez

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LAist

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Sugar skulls created by Laura Martinez of East Los Sweets.

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Samanta Helou Hernandez

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The following year, she began making her own skulls, putting her own artistic spin on them. She quickly realized how her work became a person's story: Customers who purchased them were so grateful, pouring out memories of their loved ones, she said.

Don't call it 'Mexican Halloween'

When we lose our loved ones, we often look for ways to connect with them, and Martinez's work serves as a connective link in the chain of life.

Day of the Dead or Dia De Los Muertos, the Mexican celebration that dates back thousands of years, combines indigenous celebrations and Roman Catholic traditions connected to All Saints Day and All Souls’ Day.

One thing it is not is Mexican Halloween.

The celebration occurs between Nov. 1 and 2, where legend tells us that the spirit world and the living are connected. Believers call on their loved ones who have passed to return from the land of the dead and visit, even for a moment, easing their grief and encouraging healing with happy memories.

Finding a way back home

Favorite food and drink is left out to lure and offer guidance to our loved ones so they find their way back to the homes of their living relatives.

A national holiday in Mexico, the Day of the Dead’s reach is now global. And of course there’s the 2017 release of the Oscar-winning Disney film Coco, which brought the festival and the traditions to a wider audience. Today, you can buy Day of the Dead decorations at Target, and Mexican skeleton iconography is found on everything from beer cans to children’s T-shirts.

Why it's different in L.A.

While cities across the U.S. celebrate the Day of the Dead, I’d argue that no one has embraced it quite like Los Angeles, which is the perfect setting for celebrating a holiday of mixed cultural practices.

After all, we are a city of diverse traditions that co-exist next to each other, an area familiar with paying homage to the past while embracing the future.

Day of the Dead is a product of colonization, a mash-up of European and Indigenous traditions. Los Angeles, in its current day, is representative of the struggles associated with it.

I wanted to use this opportunity to learn more about the traditions surrounding the celebration, breaking down some of the key elements. As Dia De Los Muertos drew nearer this year, I reached out to a sugar skull maker and a master altar maker. These two different artists ’ involvement in the holiday ranges from casual to fiercely devoted, which I felt was an accurate representation of how many in Los Angeles celebrate the holiday and was something I could also relate to. While I grew up learning about Dia De Los Muertos, I'm always looking to learn more — and share what I learn.

The art of sugar skulls

Sugar skulls remain a central aspect of the holiday. The skulls themselves represent an important person who has passed. Traditionally, each skull carries the name of the loved one on its forehead. A key feature is “coronas,” or flower crowns made from colorful frosting and pieces of foil placed over the eyes and other parts of the skull to give it character.

Martinez uses plastic molds to make her sugar skulls, in several different styles. However, the most popular feature is her flower crown design, made from brightly colored frostings, pink, blue, red, yellow, and orange. The skulls range in various sizes from slightly larger than a sugar cube, to her largest, about the size of a softball.

When she was doing a skull-decorating workshop at Grand Park last year, a 5-year-old boy wandered by and she asked if he wanted to decorate one.

“Oh yeah, we learned about this for Dia de los Muertos,” he exclaimed, and while he had no cultural connection to the holiday, “he gave this whole little speech to my mom. And my mom was like, ‘Wow,’. And I told her growing up, ‘I was never taught any of this.’ This has evolved massively compared to when I was growing up.”

Her sentiments are definitely something I can relate to. Growing up in the ‘90s, it felt like you had to seek out opportunities to learn about Dia de los Muertos, whereas now it feels like it’s everywhere.

A tray of pan de muerto at La Central Bakery in East Los Angeles, which has been in Laura Martinez's family since 1984.

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Samanta Helou Hernandez

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Martinez' first experience with sugar skulls came as a child, attending a Day of the Dead celebration at Self Help Graphics in East Los Angeles (the community-based creative arts organization, which hosts one of the longest-running Dia De Los Muertos celebrations in the U.S., now in its 50th year). Her family was there to sell their bakery’s pan de muerto, a sweet bread associated with Dia de los Muertos. But the skulls on display caught Martinez’s eye. She felt inspired to make her own. Purchasing the molds, she started making her own the following year. She sold them in the bakery case in the front of the bakery for 25 cents.

Soon, Martinez sought to design the sugar skull independently, experimenting with different iconography, such as Hello Kitty skulls and Frankenstein — images that Martinez herself, as a millennial, gravitated toward, and, as it would turn out, others would too.

Since then, their popularity has grown. She has also expanded into making sugar cookies featuring her Dia de los Muertos designs and Hello Kitty characters. Her work has been featured with the Dodgers at their Dia De Los Dodgers event, where her work was displayed throughout the park, as well as at Self Help Graphics and Grand Park, where she teaches workshops with her mother.

Building Ofrendas

Another person who shared their story with me is Aldo Cruz, the Oaxacan-born master altar maker whose work has been featured at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery’s popular Day Of The Dead festivities for the past 17 years.

Aldo Cruz, a master altar builder, poses next to an in-consturction altar at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery.

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Samanta Helou Hernandez

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Day of the Dead is celebrated throughout Mexico, but according to Cruz, Oaxaca remains the most fiercely devoted to its traditional practices.

“It’s not Halloween,” he said. “Halloween is a festival where everything is horror, monsters, and costumes; this is imaginary. The Day of the Dead, for us Oaxacans, the celebration centers around the idea of love, affection, and respect.”

Cruz grew up close to the area known as San Pablo Villa de Mital, which, according to indigenous culture, is where the dead go to rest.

Dia De Los Muertos celebrations were always part of Cruz’s legacy. He grew up loving culture and the arts. During high school, he became fascinated with the iconography celebrating the remembrance of the dead. His mother was involved in their community's Day of the Dead celebrations, despite not always having much money to build altars and buy sugar skulls. After witnessing his mother's devotion to the craft during his early teens, he fell in love with altar making and decided to make his own — and started winning contests for his work.

Searching for a community

Cruz came to the United States in 2005 at age 25. He searched for his community and attended various Oaxacan cultural events around Los Angeles. At a Guelaguetza, an Oxacan cultural event at Normandie Park, he first heard about the Dia De Los Muertos celebration at Hollywood Forever. In the 15 years since participating in the celebration at the famed cemetery, Cruz has become one of the most renowned altar makers in the city.

Aldo Cruz, at left, and a co-worker construct an altar for the upcoming Day of the Dead event at Hollywood Forever Cemetery.

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When asked about what elements are required, Cruz has much to say. Showcasing that love begins with building an altar or ofrenda, which is central to remembering the dead. The ofrenda must reflect the elements of water, wind, earth, and fire.

Cruz’s altars are all-out elaborate affairs. Piled high with rows and rows of fresh produce — such as oranges, bananas, apples, and pumpkins — alongside a bottle of mezcal, sugar skulls, and religious statuettes, all swimming in a sea of orange marigolds

Cempasuchil, also known as marigolds, are a core element to the ofrendas built during Dia de Muertos.

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Samanta Helou Hernandez

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Food is central to the offerings. “Fruit, bread, ceramic objects, and candles are the common features that the earth offers us,” he said.

Placing favorite dishes such as tamales and plates of chicken mole on the altars is commonplace. Also, pan dulce and mugs of hot chocolate or atole, a masa-based drink, are usually featured. These offers are meant to entice our loves to visit us and have sustenance when traveling from the spirit world.

The meaning of photographs, flowers

Photographs of loved ones play an essential role, which lets the spirits of our loved ones know that presence is wanted in our homes. Flowers, specifically marigolds, or cempasúchitl, as they're known in the Nahuatl language, with their bright color and scent are meant to attract loved ones. They are said to have natural pesticides that keep the insects away from your food offerings.

This will be Aldo’s first Dia de los Muertos without his mother.

Elements for an altar Aldo Cruz is building at Hollywood Forever in preparation for the upcoming Day of the Dead event.

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Samanta Helou Hernandez

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She passed away right around last year's celebration. It’s an emotional time for him. When I ask if the celebration takes on a special significance for him, he tells me that it's been challenging to focus on due to the amount of work he has to do.

With each passing year, the celebration of Dia De Los Muertos takes on a great significance. As we age, people pass away, so the act of remembrance and the passage of time allows for a period of deeper reflection. Yet, now more than ever, I find myself drawn to the celebration's rituals to better understand myself and where I come from.

The legal tug-of-war centers on a two-panel work called “Adam” and “Eve.” The life-size paintings depicting the biblical characters were created around 1530 by German artist Lucas Cranach the Elder.

The Nazis stole the two paintings, and many others, from Jewish art dealer Jacques Goudstikker in Holland in 1940. After the war, the Dutch government sold these two works to a Russian aristocrat, who sold them to the Norton Simon in Pasadena in 1971.

“By pursuing the recovery of the Cranachs, we are seeking to reverse a great injustice perpetrated by the Nazi theft of a Jewish family’s property,” Rabbi Noah Farkas, president and CEO of Jewish Federation Los Angeles, said in a written statement.

The Federation is plaintiff in a lawsuit filed on Monday in L.A. Superior Court that names the museum and two related foundations as defendants. Cranach the Elder’s work has sold for millions of dollars.

Goudstikker’s only living heir, Marei von Saher, gave the Federation the authority to file the lawsuit. If the lawsuit is successful, the Federation pledges to use the majority of the net proceeds to care for impoverished Holocaust survivors living in the L.A. area.

Adam and Eve, painted around 1530 by German artist Lucas Cranach the Elder.

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Courtesy Norton Simon Art Foundation

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Von Saher has spent years trying, unsuccessfully, to get these paintings back. But this lawsuit is different. It’s filed under a 2024 California law that gives people the ability to petition to recover cultural property “that was taken or otherwise lost as a result of political persecution,” according to the law.

Stolen painting

Responding to the lawsuit, the Norton Simon Museum did not challenge that the painting was looted by the Nazis.

“After decades of litigation, court after court including the United States Supreme Court has confirmed that the Norton Simon Art Foundation has proper title to 'Adam' and 'Eve,'" the museum said in a written statement.

The museum is referring to a 2018 ruling by the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which said that since a foreign government sold the artwork, the court could not declare that sale illegal. The U.S. Supreme Court let that decision stand without reviewing it.

The Norton Simon has been pressured to negotiate with the heirs to return the work, even from the founder’s grandson.

“In my opinion, it's immoral and unethical because they don't have good title,” said Joel Greenberg, founder of the nonprofit Art Ashes, which helps families of Holocaust survivors recover art looted from their ancestors.

It’s not the only high-profile case of Nazi-looted art in the region. The late Los Angeles resident Maria Altman recovered a work by Gustav Klimt that was looted from her family by the Nazis in Austria.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A motorist was arrested on murder charges after authorities say she slammed her SUV into a city bus in Los Angeles, killing at least two people and injuring six others in a prelude to a second deadly tragedy: the fiery crash of a TV news helicopter that was covering the collision.

Bailee Lynn Rios, 36, of Simi Valley, was arrested Tuesday night and is being held at a Los Angeles jail with bail set at $4 million, police said Wednesday. The case is being forwarded to the district attorney’s office, which will decide whether to file the charges in court or pursue different ones. Information on a lawyer who could speak on her behalf was not immediately available.

The helicopter, which was used by NBC and Telemundo, crashed about two hours after police say Rios drove her 2004 Ford Expedition the wrong way down a busy avenue, ran a red light and struck a vehicle before hitting the bus. One passenger was fully ejected from the bus and another was partially ejected, police said.

Rios’ mother, Cindy Rios, said she was shocked and saddened by the string of events. She said she had not spoken to Bailee Lynn since her arrest and had not been contacted by law enforcement.

“It’s just horrible,” Cindy Rios told The Associated Press in a phone interview Wednesday. “The fact that my daughter was involved and was the cause of it is just extremely disturbing.”

“If anything, I’m sorry for the other families,” she added. “My daughter’s alive. People lost their lives.”

Chopper crash killed a reporter, a pilot and a man on the ground

NBC4 Los Angeles reported that two people aboard the helicopter — reporter Eliana Moreno and pilot George Marciniw — were killed when the chopper went down Tuesday in the Chatsworth neighborhood in the San Fernando Valley north of downtown.

A person on the ground, identified as 29-year-old Edy Gutierrez Mejia, died in a parking lot, the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner’s Office said. He was from Guatemala, the country’s consulate confirmed.

The crash happened as news crews were reporting on the collision involving the SUV that slammed into the bus.

There were no immediate details on what caused the helicopter crash, but an alarm could be heard sounding inside the helicopter’s cockpit as it lost altitude in the final seconds of video the crew broadcast before the crash.

Just after the beeping noise starts, a woman’s voice says “uh oh.” The helicopter moves quickly away from the bus crash site and starts losing altitude. The woman says “You can’t pull up?” before the video stops as the chopper nears the ground.

“That video is probably the most important evidence that we have discovered so far,” National Transportation Safety Board investigator Fabian Salazar said Wednesday at a news briefing.

Salazar said the sounds were consistent with the helicopter’s engine changing speed, as well as what he said were likely advisory tones for the pilot. The NTSB said it is also investigating the bus collision.

The helicopter, a Eurocopter AS350, went down near a large storage facility. At least four cars and two storage containers burned after the helicopter caught fire. NBC4 reporter Robert Kovacik was at the bus scene and saw black smoke and rushed to the helicopter crash site.

Anchor and reporters pay tearful tributes to deceased colleagues

Moreno was a familiar voice for NBC4 and Telemundo 52 during the station’s aerial coverage. She and Marciniw were both were employees of Angel City Air, which operated the chopper for the station.

Moreno, born in Orange County, joined Angel City Air in 2010, the same year she earned a broadcast journalism and political science degree from Chapman University. She reported for several news outlets and began flying with Marciniw in 2023, the NBC4 website said.

Marciniw grew up in Southern California and graduated from Burbank High School in 1974.

“I think a lot of us are still trying to process what happened, this terrible loss,” NBC4 reporter Lauren Coronado told viewers early Wednesday as she stood near the crash site. A hazmat crew was cleaning up jet fuel, she said.

In a tribute to Moreno and Marciniw, the newscast referred to them as “the team in the sky,” saying Moreno would often post videos from her job and was in awe of the view. Anchor Lynette Romero held a colleague’s hand and wiped away tears after hearing Moreno’s voice when one of her posts was played.

In an interview with the station, Esteban Jimenez, a pilot, said he had known Marciniw since the 1990s. He said Marciniw had been his instructor.

“I just talked to him on Sunday. We were talking about the aviation business and retiring,” he said.

Expert talks about what may have caused the crash

Aviation safety expert Jeff Guzzetti said the alarm sounding in the helicopter’s final video sounds like the low rotor RPM warning horn that signals the main rotor is no longer spinning enough to keep the helicopter in the air.

“It just has all the earmarks of a potential loss of engine power and a dangerous decrease in the main rotor speed,” said Guzzetti who used to investigate crashes for both the NTSB and FAA.

Guzzetti said the pilot appeared to be trying to perform an emergency maneuver to use the wind to force the rotor to spin again much like a breeze turns a windmill. Doing that can create a bit of lift that could help cushion the impact, but Guzzetti said there would have been little opportunity to do that because the helicopter had been hovering at a low altitude beforehand.

There are risks to news helicopters particularly in a major city like Los Angeles where multiple helicopters respond to an incident, but the pilots all coordinate closely over the radio to ensure they maintain a safe distance from each other. The industry also shares best practices to help keep these news flights safe.

“It’s a very unique form of flying. And the community is very good about lessons learned,” Guzzetti said. “And so because of that, you don’t hear about too many of those accidents. So they’re rare, but they do occur, just because the mission is a risky one.”

Other crashes involving news helicopters

The station said this is the second aviation tragedy in its history.

In 1977, a KNBC news helicopter crashed when it ran out of fuel while returning to the station after covering a wildfire in Santa Barbara, killing the pilot and camera operator. The pilot, former U.S. Air Force officer Francis Gary Powers, had been in the news years earlier when he was shot down and captured while flying a U-2 spy plane over the Soviet Union for the CIA, an ordeal portrayed in the movie “Bridge of Spies.”

There have been at least eight fatal crashes involving news helicopters in the U.S. since 2000, killing 16 people, according to a review of federal accident records and news accounts.

They include a 2023 crash in a New Jersey forest that killed the pilot and a photographer aboard a helicopter used by Philadelphia station WPVI and a 2022 crash beside a Charlotte, North Carolina, interstate that killed a pilot and meteorologist during a training flight for WBTV.

A 2007 midair collision in Phoenix of two TV news helicopters that were covering a police chase led the NTSB to recommend that news helicopters have at least two people in the cockpit so the pilot can focus on flying while the reporter focuses on the story.

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Golden reported from Seattle, and Collins from Hartford, Connecticut. Associated Press writers Josh Funk in Omaha, Nebraska; Olga Rodriguez in San Francisco; Kathy McCormack in Concord, New Hampshire; and Allen Breed in Raleigh, North Carolina, contributed.

Federal and county law enforcement announced charges Wednesday against three people in a widening investigation of homelessness services fraud in the L.A. area. Prosecutors previously charged three other people and said they plan to bring “many more” cases.

In Wednesday’s announcement at a news conference, authorities alleged a bribery scheme built on "ghost" clients illustrates a yearslong problem.

"Nobody was minding the shop," the region’s top federal prosecutor, Bill Essayli, told reporters in response to a question from LAist. "There's no vetting. There's no auditing. There's no accounting. It was just a rush to push as much money out the door."

What are the charges?

Authorities arrested Michael Young — founder of the Culver City nonprofit Home At Last — and accused him of using shell companies and fake bids to misappropriate $12 million in taxpayer funds. The allegations include siphoning $1 million into a high-end nightclub, a nearly $50,000 trip to Tahiti and a $140,000 restoration of a vintage Chevy Impala.

Michael Young, 46, of Baldwin Hills

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Courtesy Department of Justice

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A headshot of Alex Soofer shared by a federal prosecutor on X.

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First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli via X

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Scott Turner, the U.S. secretary for Housing and Urban Development, said Young's group received more than $118 million in public dollars for homeless housing since 2019 — over $75 million of it through the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, or LAHSA.

The new cases allege about $12 million in misappropriated funds — almost all of it by Young.

The bribery charges are against Lakiya Malone, an employee of the nonprofit Special Service for Groups, or SSG, who was responsible for referring homeless people to LAHSA-funded housing. Prosecutors say Malone took roughly $180,000 in bribes from Alexander Soofer, head of the now-defunct nonprofit Abundant Blessings, and in exchange steered him "ghost" participants — so he could bill for services never rendered.

Lakiya Malone, 48, of South Los Angeles

Donye Mitchell, 55, of Orange

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Courtesy Department of Justice

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“She was supposed to guard the money, and instead she took bribes,” Essayli, the first assistant U.S. attorney for the Central District of California, said.

In a statement, SSG said it has been working with federal prosecutors “to ensure that any responsible individuals are held accountable” and has strengthened its “protocols and compliance.”

Charges against Soofer were announced in January. Authorities announced Wednesday that he has agreed to plead guilty to wire fraud and money laundering. Soofer admitted in his plea agreement to the alleged bribery scheme.

According to prosecutors, Soofer also admitted to "pocketing at least $2 million in taxpayer money for his own personal enrichment and for businesses unrelated to homeless housing," and that he has agreed to forfeit the money to the U.S. government. Prosecutors previously alleged he diverted a much larger amount: at least $10 million.

An LAist investigation found LAHSA kept awarding millions in contract renewals to Soofer’s group even after LAHSA’s own compliance team labeled it "high-risk" for, among other things, billing for services while reporting no enrolled participants.

The third defendant announced Wednesday is Donye Mitchell of the nonprofit Big Blue Umbrella. Mitchell is accused of lying about his experience to land a $1.2 million county-funded grant, receiving $315,000 and using those funds for personal expenses, including bail for a domestic violence arrest and video games. Officials said he's believed to be in Las Vegas and hadn’t been arrested as of Wednesday morning.

Mitchell is “a convicted fraudster, by the way,” Essayli said. He was convicted in 2011 of defrauding California unemployment benefits, according to the criminal complaint in the new case, and was ordered in 2012 to compensate the state $6 million.

The county funds he’s accused of stealing were awarded by a county vendor in 2024 — well after his fraud conviction.

LAist has left phone messages for Young's and Malone’s lawyers inviting their response to the charges and will update this article if they respond. It is unknown if Mitchell, who has not yet been arrested, has a lawyer.

Prosecutors' critique 

Essayli and L.A. County District Attorney Nathan Hochman criticized what they called a glaring lack of oversight of massive spending on homeless services. Hochman cited a court-ordered 2025 report that found L.A. city officials failed to properly track $2.3 billion in homeless funds, largely by outsourcing to LAHSA — which the review found failed to collect accurate data on its vendors and hold them accountable.

"We have not seen the results you would expect for billions of dollars being spent," Hochman said.

“This is the beginning of these prosecutions,” he added.  ”Many more” are expected in the coming months, he said.

Continuing trouble for LAHSA 

The new charges were announced the day after LAHSA's governing commission decided to give up its responsibility for federal dollars, including applying for roughly $240 million a year in federal homelessness funding and running the annual homeless count.

Also on Tuesday, Mayor Karen Bass skipped a congressional hearing on LAHSA's fraud problems, calling it a "politically motivated" attack.

LAHSA, now led by Interim CEO Gita O'Neill, said in a statement Wednesday that it has "zero tolerance for fraud, waste, or the exploitation of public resources" and commended prosecutors’ action.

The agency said it terminated its contracts with Young’s nonprofit in June after evidence of wrongdoing emerged, and is pursuing recovery of cash seized from Young. The statement added that LAHSA fully cooperated with the federal task force and that no LAHSA staff are implicated — only "external provider executives and outside contractors.”

Essayli was asked Wednesday whether LAHSA's past or current leadership has been culpable.

"That's actually a very difficult question to answer," he said.

"It is not against federal law to be incompetent, unfortunately. I wish it were,” Essayli said. “So just because the people at the helm did not do a good job, that does not give us the authority to arrest them."

“ I assure you, if anyone in power engaged in violation of federal law, we will not hesitate to charge them.”