The Brief

At the 30-minute mark of her weekly radio show, Kennia Camacho strings together a list of events that are triggering her anxiety and stress.

The teenage daughter of an immigrant made clear in a late January broadcast that the president’s executive order to end birthright citizenship, the tech billionaires front-and-center at the inauguration and talk of dismantling the United States Department of Education have made her feel terrified and confused. She feels powerless to prevent the possible deportation of family, shocked by the ease of TikTok’s disabling — and then its sudden return — and unsure if she will continue to receive financial aid to attend college. Sharing her feelings and those of others has become the hallmark of her show, Crisis Communicator.

Camacho then switches to her listeners’ concerns. She reads aloud their names and worries, or what she refers to as their multifaceted “crisis” — a broken phone, family drama and, literally, spilled milk. She laughs, but never dismisses what anyone shares. That’s the point.

Crisis Communicator has become a place for Los Angeles teens to share how they cope with anxiety, stress and depression. This hour-long broadcast is one way of helping California youth through what has been called a mental health crisis.

Young women, and Latinas in particular, more frequently experience anxiety, depression and stress than their male counterparts. In California, girls are 1.5 times more likely than boys to report feeling nervous, hopeless, restless, worthless, depressed or that everything feels like an effort, according to a UCLA study. Nationwide, in 2021, three in five girls felt persistent feelings of sadness and hopelessness — double the rate in boys, according to a 2023 CDC study. Adult Latinas are less likely to receive support for mental health needs than whites, according to research by private health providers and government agencies.

Teenagers in California have told mental health experts they want therapists in their neighborhoods and schools who look like — and understand — them. These young people want to empower friends to support one another. They also want an end to phone hotlines that lead to transferred calls instead of help. Sharing their feelings of anxiety, stress or depression with people who can offer solutions, guidance and help is also important to them.

That’s what Camacho’s show tries to offer.

The format of Crisis Communicator, which first aired in August 2023, is simple, Camacho explained. The show begins with a song or two. She prefers upbeat music — like Harry Styles’ “Late Night Talking” or “POV” by Arianna Grande — and avoids sad music. When the music concludes, Camacho talks about what’s been going on that week in her life. At the 30-minute mark, Camacho plays Brenda Lee’s “Emotions,” a downbeat, orchestral pop song released 46 years before the teenager was born. The lyrics underscore why Camacho wants to talk: “Emotions/What are you doin?/Oh don’t you know/don’t you know you’ll be my ruin.” The song signals the transition to talk about what Camacho calls this week’s crisis — what is triggering her anxiety, causing stress or even depression.

Camacho's guests include friends, family and radio station staffers, recently including Calista Piñeda, KQBH archivist and programming intern.

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Isabel Avila

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Capital & Main

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Crisis Communicator can be silly and irreverent, like when Camacho described her period feeling like her uterus was falling out. That she’s often giggling and laughing eases tension among guests and listeners, said Stephanie Monte, youth programming director at the Boyle Heights Arts Conservatory, a visual and media arts center that provides workforce development training. The Conservatory runs KQBH-FM (101.5), the low-power radio station home to Camacho’s show.

“There’s a joy that breaks up the sense of crisis, and it carries through with her and her guests being supportive,” said Julian Montenegro, program coordinator at the Conservatory.

Mental health experts highlight the value of young people having constructive conversations about anxiety, stress and depression to release some of those feelings. Monte, at the Conservatory, notes that “there’s tons of value in a one-hour expressive outlet. ... She’s using the tools we have and helping other people.”

Crisis Communicator didn’t begin as a tool for teen mental health. The show’s title is a confession — Camacho said she felt, at the time, that she was always in crisis. She also likes to talk. So Crisis Communicator seemed like a good radio handle. But after the show’s first transmission, Camacho discovered that airing her feelings of being overwhelmed was a good way to assuage them.

The night of her first show, Camacho’s grandmother Clara was hospitalized. She died the next day. The following Friday, Crisis Communicator became a tribute to Clara. The station signal reaches only about 10 miles, but episodes stream online too. Family members in Mexico City, where her grandmother is from, listened live. Amid their collective grief, it was cathartic, according to Camacho.

She often hosts guests, including friends, family and radio station staff. They talk about their week, gossip and laugh. In August, Camacho and three friends commiserated over high school classmates leaving town to attend college elsewhere. They comforted each other, noting that the friends who remained in Los Angeles are still together. When one casually mentioned feeling like a loser for not having friends at work, the others responded with a positive affirmation: “Look in the mirror and say, ‘I’m not a loser.’”

The same year Crisis Communicator debuted, a survey and report on youth mental health was commissioned by the California Health and Human Services Agency and the Children and Youth Behavioral Health Initiative, a one-time $4.6 billion investment to improve mental health services for young Californians. Youth at the Center is based on interviews conducted at nearly 50 meetings across the state. Young people in places like Los Angeles, Monterey, Oakland, San Diego, San Francisco, Santa Clara County and Central California suggested how adults and mental health professionals might help. Comments from meetings with more than 600 people were condensed, in the report, into 12 distinct calls to action. They include reducing stigmas around mental health, improving access to therapy and support for young people and their parents.

Three themes are presented in the report: shifting thinking around mental health, reimagining services and transforming mental health systems. Important elements include providing young people more choice in their own treatment, and doing so in their neighborhoods and communities. There is also an emphasis on doing this with people they can relate to, and in ways that avoid certain types of judgment — much like on Crisis Communicator.

Camacho's show, Crisis Communicator, broadcasts locally on KQBH-FM and is streamed live online.

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Isabel Avila

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Capital & Main

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Camacho said she went through a four-month bout with depression that ended in December. She tried to avoid feeling numb by focusing on her classes, work and staying out late — “constantly moving,” as she explained.

But Camacho grew exhausted from trying to avoid her feelings, and her mother, Erindida, told her she was increasing her stresses by running away from them. Since then, she has been resting at home when she’s not at school or work. Camacho climbs into bed by 6 p.m. and watches "Bridgerton," a Netflix soap opera with lots of teen characters and courtship drama that she calls her “telenovela,” even though it’s not a Spanish-language show.

On Friday, Jan. 24, Camacho reflected on her week instead of sharing about her recent bout with depression. Her aunt lived in an apartment less than one mile from the Eaton Fire and fled to a hotel to evacuate. Within a few days, Camacho’s tía returned to her apartment despite having no power or water, and the intense stench of smoke. The family spent a weekend cleaning, but they couldn’t get the smell out of the walls. She worried about her aunt’s health. Separately, immigration raids had begun across the country that week. She has family members who are undocumented. She’s afraid they’ll be deported.

Those stories and feelings are Camacho’s, but they also reflect the concerns of many young people across Los Angeles, California and the United States. Holding onto such feelings won’t help her or her family, so she’s glad she has a way to try to process them.

“For me, it’s been my outlet,” Camacho said.

For others, Crisis Communicator can be an outlet as well.

This article was produced as a project for the USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism’s 2024 California Health Equity Fellowship.

Copyright 2025 Capital & Main

Early every Saturday for the last three and a half years, William Campbell, 61, leaves his Silver Lake home to be at the Angels Flight station for the first ride at 6:45 a.m.

Campbell is one of a team of operators behind the proverbial wheel of the two near-identical funiculars — named Olivet and Sinai — that go up and down a 33% angle slope from Hill Street to Bunker Hill in downtown Los Angeles.

“You’re a part of living history,” said Campbell, who is dressed in an orange and black waistcoat and bow tie, and wears a bowler hat with a monarch butterfly on top. There’s a reason for that, he said mysteriously.

Angels Flight on Bunker Hill.

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James Bartlett

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LAist

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Today, I am the first rider. Soon after, I am joined by a family visiting from Texas.

“I was just looking at a local tourist place, and I just saw this small, cute railway,” said Michael Nguyen, who was alongside his mother and sister. “I was like, oh, this looks interesting. And I saw that you can actually go on it. I was like, OK, that’s pretty dope.”

Masterminded by lawyer, politician and engineer Col. James Ward Eddy, the Angels Flight “hillevator” opened on New Year’s Eve 1901 as a way for people to travel up and down Bunker Hill, which was then the place where the city’s wealthy population lived.

The journey took them down to the streets and stores below and from 1917, Grand Central Market, with the first passengers paying just a penny fare for what was billed as the “shortest railway in America,” traveling just 298 feet.

When he’s not working his weekday full-time day job investigating animal cruelty and abuse, Campbell spends his spare time looking through online newspaper archives for any information about Angels Flight.

Angels Flight Railway.

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James Bartlett

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LAist

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Angels Flight Railway.

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James Bartlett

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LAist

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Originally located by the 3rd Street Tunnel — at the end of the block from where it is now — the train has been through several changes, as has Bunker Hill itself.

“All the wealthy people moved to Beverly Hills, and Brentwood, and Bel Air, and beyond. And all their wonderful Victorian mansions were turned into boarding houses, and it attracted a lower income, more diverse population, which resulted in blight and crime — at least according to the city,” Campbell said of Bunker Hill's transformation.

City officials authorized Bunker Hill to be all but razed in the 1950s and '60s, and Angels Flight was put into what was promised to be temporary storage for a year or two, despite protests from singer Peggy Lee and others.

The year was 1969. And it took nearly three decades for its return. Angels Flight welcomed passengers again in 1996 to its current location after test runs were made with cases of beer and soft drinks weighing 9,000 pounds. The cable cars were rebuilt exactly as before, but with modern safety requirements, such as Sinai having wheelchair space.

A 2001 accident in which one person died and seven were injured saw another long closure until 2010, and there was a derailment in 2014, which saw another short shuttering. But Angels Flight has been running ever since 2017, save the odd mechanical problem.

William Campbell.

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James Bartlett

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LAist

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Angels Flight keepsakes made by William Campbell for riders to take.

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James Bartlett

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LAist

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Campbell describes himself as a cheerleader for Angels Flight, and you can easily see why. During his shift he pins up a 1904 photo of the city’s landscape taken from an 80-foot-high observation tower at the original location, so people can compare it to the skyscraper skyline of today.

“At one time you could see all the way to Catalina,” he noted.

There is also a display about near-forgotten Bunker Hill folk artist Marcel Cavalla, and Campbell gives away Angels Flight bookmarks, stickers and maps, all of which he researches, designs and prints out of his own pocket.

One of his projects, old advertisements from 1901 to the 1940s, is displayed in the panels above the seats, and was installed a couple of months ago.

Interior of Angels Flight, showcasing old advertisements from 1901 to the 1940s that Campbell installed.

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James Bartlett

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LAist

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One of the vintage ads for Catalina Carrier-Pigeon Service.

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James Bartlett

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LAist

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There's everything from old Market Basket supermarket ads, to Barbara Stanwyck shilling for Lux toilet soap, to a standard power mower from John Bean manufacturing, to one for the Catalina Carrier Pigeon Service, which operated from 1894 to 1902, taking messages from Avalon to Bunker Hill.

And the monarch butterfly on his hat? That’s related to his Angels Flight “holy grail,” the one question he can’t definitively answer: why were they painted orange and black?

With that, Campbell grabs his binoculars and sees there are passengers waiting for a ride up, so I get into Olivet and wave goodbye as I travel down to Hill Street.

A group called Neighbors Helping Neighbors has been clearing overgrown weeds for free on fire survivors' empty lots in Altadena.

They’ve finished 10 with many more to go. They’re keeping at it not just to keep things tidy, but to avert another disaster as the region enters fire season — and their efforts are spreading. More than 200 homeowners have signed up, after hearing about the group from its Facebook page and through word of mouth.

“I'm 5 feet 2 inches tall, but there were weeds 6 and 8 feet tall,” said Antoinette “Toni” Bailey-Raines, the ringleader. She is also a co-founder of Altadena Talks Foundation, a nonprofit started in the wake of the Eaton Fire.

Bailey-Raines lives in San Dimas but grew up in Altadena. Her parents and sister all lost their homes in the Eaton Fire.

“I went to my parents' lot one day,” she said. “I loaded up the back of my car with my lawnmower, my blower, my rake, because I wanted to make sure their lot was cleaned up.”

It took seven hours, but she figured all that overgrown vegetation can't be good for Altadena with the fire season just around the corner.

And just like that, the idea for Neighbors Helping Neighbors was born.

Preventing another disaster

Antoinette “Toni” Bailey-Raines, founder of Neighbors Helping Neighbors.

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Fiona Ng

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LAist

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Antoinette “Toni” Bailey-Raines at one of the cleared lots.

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Fiona Ng

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LAist

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The very first lot, just south in Pasadena, was cleared in mid-April. Bailey-Raines said the property was getting notices from the city to clear the lot or face escalating fines. Pasadena conducts brush clearance inspections every spring and summer.

Toni said the family had moved to Mississippi after the Eaton Fire.

“You lost everything, and then somebody's gonna tell you they're gonna give you a fine because you have weeds on your lot and you're not even here to see that?” Bailey-Raines said.

That day, she rounded up a group of nine people, including her son and his friend. A neighbor across the street was suspicious at first, but eventually told her, "You have me for about an hour." He stayed for two.

The job took less than four hours.

A growing movement

On May 13, dozens of volunteers showed up in Altadena to clear seven lots in one morning.

One of them — a 14,000-square-foot lot — belongs to Sarkis Aleksanian and his family. He had reached out to Bailey-Raines in late April, after learning about the group from a neighborhood WhatsApp chat.

“I was looking into cleaning up the lot and really daunted by the prospect,” he said. “I was worried that the lawn would dry up and be a problem.”

Aleksanian and his wife were on hand to help out. It’s the one thing that Bailey-Raines requires — for the homeowners to be there.

“I've asked them that if they're able-bodied to be here and help,” she said. “You're here. You're encouraging people, and you're helping on your lot. [Sarkis] was doing everything from weed-eater, to chainsaw, to whatever, and that's what it's about.”

This 14,000-square-foot lot in Altadena was cleaned up in less than two hours on a recently Saturday.

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Fiona Ng

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LAist

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“It was just remarkable, I tell you,” Aleksanian said. He said he recognized some of the volunteers that morning — folks he sees in the community.

And he did encounter someone he knew — a high school acquaintance from years back. “It's neighbors helping neighbors, just like she called it, you know?” Aleksanian said.

His lot was finished in 90 minutes.

More is needed

With a growing waitlist, what is needed are people and equipment — from gloves and trash bags to the hardware.

“I have six brush cutters and two chainsaws and a couple trimmers, but I need, like, triple that at least,” she said.

Same goes for rechargeable batteries that power these tools — which Bailey-Raines juices up with generators they bring on-site.

A number of organizations — including Neighborhood Survants, Altagether, Project Passion, My Tribe Rise, Dena Heals — have granted money and donated equipment and manpower. Bailey-Raines has also put in her own money.

“My dream is one Saturday morning to have 500 people and that we clear a whole street, a whole block — so that this list of 200 can go down, and as others hear about it, they get on it, and we as a community do this as neighbors to help one another,” she said.

After fires and floods, Southern California’s only remaining native freshwater turtle recently got a boost.

Just last month, 15 southwestern pond turtle hatchlings were released into the San Gabriel River — a major milestone in an effort to restore the vulnerable turtle population.

But this wasn’t a typical raise-and-release scenario.

These turtles’ parents went on a harrowing journey before they were born.

A daring rescue

In early September 2020, amid a heat wave and dry weather, a tree branch hit a Southern California Edison power line, igniting the Bobcat Fire.

The fire eventually scorched more than 180 square miles — mostly forest in the San Gabriel Mountains. For comparison, the 2025 Eaton Fire burned about 22 square miles.

Lights from a fire truck illuminate firefighters working the Bobcat Fire in September 2021.

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Frederic J. Brown

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Getty Images

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As the Bobcat Fire spread, biologists grew worried. The fire was burning in the West Fork of the San Gabriel River, a biodiversity hotspot and refuge for bears and mountain lions, the federally protected Santa Ana sucker fish and the mountain yellow-legged frog.

It’s also home to the largest remaining — and possibly only — population of southwestern pond turtles in the entire watershed. Their exact numbers aren’t known, but it’s likely less than 200.

“Because this hadn’t burned in decades and decades and decades, there was big concern about debris flows,” said Robert Fisher, a biologist with the U.S. Geological Survey.

Scientists hoped the turtles would be able to ride out the fire itself by staying in the water, but any rain after would likely lead to a deluge of mud, trees and other burned materials. That would be akin to an avalanche for the turtles in the river, and it had the potential to wipe out the entire population.

Once the flames died down, Fisher and a team of biologists, in partnership with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife and U.S. Forest Service, trekked to the home of the pond turtles.

“It was a moonscape,” Fisher said.

They waded through ashy, murky waters, eventually collecting 11 adult turtles.

A temporary home and 15 surprises

The turtles were taken to the San Diego Zoo, where the plan was to hold them until their mountain habitat recovered enough for them to return.

By 2024, the San Gabriel Mountains were looking far better — biologists even found some pond turtles that survived major debris flows.

But right before the turtles were set to go back home, scientists got a surprise.

“Just before we were getting to release, we found a baby turtle, which is amazing,” said Brandon Scott, wildlife care manager of herpetology and ichthyology at San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance. “You don't know how long it's going to take to restart that process of them actually being able to breed, with the stress and it's a new habitat.”

A juvenile southwestern pond turtle is weighed before being released to the wild.

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Ken Bohn

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Courtesy San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance

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The turtles and the new baby were all returned to their home in the San Gabriels. But then came another surprise. And another.

“We just continually, every day, started finding a baby in that habitat,” said Scott.

Female southwestern pond turtles lay and bury their eggs in late spring or early summer. Juveniles emerge months later, only about the size of a quarter.

Fifteen babies later, conservation staff were shocked and pleased.

Their goal for the 11 rescued turtles was to make sure they could thrive before being released back into their habitat. “But in the process,” Scott said, “yes, we made it comfortable enough for them to breed.”

A hopeful release

The new generation of southwestern pond turtles was released in April near the spot their parents were rescued from in the San Gabriel River.

Such rescues of vulnerable wildlife are becoming increasingly common in the face of more catastrophic fires. All but two of the biggest fires in recorded history have been in the last 20 years.

Fisher said a similar rescue of pond turtles had occurred only once before, after the 2009 Station Fire in the San Gabriels. That time, the turtles were quickly returned to their habitat.

A staff member of the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance releases a juvenile southwestern pond turtle into the San Gabriel River.

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Ken Bohn

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Courtesy San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance

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That rescue, in part, inspired the U.S. Geological Survey to work with the San Diego Zoo to build a conservation habitat for southwestern pond turtles nearly two decades ago. And the Bobcat Fire became the first time it was used for wild rescues, Fisher said.

Ironically, the Bobcat Fire could eventually help the local population, Fisher said.

“We’ve known about [the population] for decades, but it’s not really thriving,” he said. “So this helped give it a head start. And because the fire was so intense, it opened up a lot of habitat.”

With less tree canopy and more sunlight, the cold-blooded reptiles could thrive in warmer waters and on sunnier rocks.

But the new generation is key.

“Because the site was so forested and hadn’t burned in so long, we don’t think they were having good success at breeding,” Fisher said. “Now we think we’ve really enhanced the population by putting more animals out there, especially young animals.”

Scott and Fisher said the saga has inspired preliminary conversations about formalizing breeding efforts to support the population. The little turtles' myriad threats have yet to let up, so they’ll likely need more help in the future.

But at the moment, there’s a little more hope — at least 16 hatchlings and 11 adults' worth of hope, to be exact — for California’s only native freshwater turtle.