The Brief

Last summer, as reports mounted of federal immigration agents taking Costa Mesa residents off the streets, leading others to hole up in their homes, the City Council decided to do something. They voted 5-0 (two other council members were absent) to donate $100,000 in city funds to help families affected by the ICE raids with food and basic needs. They also asked city officials to look into allocating money for legal defense.

Many at the meeting, in the audience and behind the dais, felt good about the outcome: the advocates thought they finally had a solid source of funding for the relief effort, which was already underway through small donations and their own out-of-pocket costs, and council members felt they were providing tangible support for the city’s large immigrant population.

More than 1 in 5 Costa Mesa residents is foreign-born, according to Census data, and more than one-third of residents are Latino, who've borne the brunt of President Donald Trump's mass deportation campaign.

The goodwill didn’t last long. The language used to earmark the funds was intentionally vague, meant to keep the small, politically divided city out of the crosshairs of the Trump administration and local MAGA activists. Before the smoke cleared, the relief measure would lead to a rift in the city’s tight-knit volunteer network, demands for accountability, and, among the would-be beneficiaries, a feeling of increasing abandonment by local government.

Here’s what happened.

It started with volunteers delivering food

When ICE raids intensified in Southern California, the streets of Costa Mesa’s largely Latino westside started emptying out. Tamale vendors stayed home. Kids on summer break stopped riding bikes around their neighborhoods.

“This has been the saddest summer of my life,” Councilmember Manuel Chavez said at a City Council meeting in August.

Chavez represents District 4, which is predominantly Latino.

“It is noticeably a lot quieter in my community and time and time again at community events I go to it’s very clear there’s a visible lack of our Latino brothers and sisters,” he added.

At the time, a group of volunteers had been busy organizing a mutual aid effort to deliver food boxes and other necessities to residents who either feared leaving their homes, or had lost a breadwinner to deportation. Adam Ereth, executive director of the Someone Cares Soup Kitchen, let the volunteers use the nonprofit’s facilities to pack the food boxes, and passed on some of the soup kitchen’s leftover food donations.

Ereth also offered up the nonprofit as a conduit through which individuals could donate money directly to the food box effort. Ereth kept track of the privately donated funds, which totaled around $14,000, he said, and used it to reimburse volunteers for purchasing tortillas, beans, meat and fresh produce for the boxes.

Like much of the local response to the surge in ICE raids, the mutual aid effort was scrappy. Which is why the organizers began to lobby City Council members — some of whom were part of the mutual aid group — for a more reliable source of funding.

“After a while I was like, you know, I can't spend $240 on chorizo twice a month. I need to get reimbursed,” said Haley Horton, one of the organizers.

At the Aug. 5 City Council meeting, Mayor John Stephens proposed that the city help fund the relief effort, along with legal defense for families facing deportation. Residents recounted the devastating impact the raids were having on the community.

“I was listening to the public speak about it,” Stephens later told LAist. “And I was thinking, you know, we could do more.”

Around the same time, local governments in L.A. County and other parts of Orange County, including Santa Ana and Anaheim, were setting up funds to help immigrant families with groceries, rent and legal defense against deportation. (The governor recently announced the state’s own $35 million investment in humanitarian aid and legal defense for immigrant residents; Irvine is also now funding immigration legal aid.)

Ultimately, Costa Mesa's City Council allocated funds to two local nonprofits to help affected families with food, rental assistance and other needs: $50,000 would go into a relief fund run by a local church; the other $50,000 would go to the Someone Cares Soup Kitchen “to provide daily meals and groceries to impacted residents,” according to a staff report at a subsequent council meeting.

There was no contract, and no requirement to account for how the money was spent, a city spokesperson confirmed.

Horton and the other volunteers working on the food box program were elated. Among them was Brooke Grey, who heads the local chapter of the group Food Not Bombs.

“ When the city approved that money, despite all the awfulness that's happening, it was a very joyous moment,” Grey said. “It's knowing that … we're in this together to help,” she said.

But the good vibes were short-lived.

A Costa Mesa volunteer preps food boxes for delivery for ICE-affected families.

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Jill Replogle

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LAist

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‘I didn’t want ICE going to the soup kitchen’

The Someone Cares Soup Kitchen started 40 years ago in Costa Mesa when its founder, Merle Hatleberg, literally made a pot of soup for hungry children. Today, the nonprofit provides a free hot lunch to around 300 people daily, including seniors, veterans, unhoused residents and anybody else who shows up — all served out of a former Chinese restaurant in central Costa Mesa.

The organization took in around $975,000 in donations and fundraising efforts in fiscal year 2024, according to its most recently available tax filing.

Debbee Pezman, Halteberg’s daughter, now chairs the soup kitchen’s board of directors. She said she was hesitant about accepting the city’s $50,000 donation when approached. She knew the mutual aid effort was already operating out of the kitchen. But it was under the radar, and she didn’t want the organization to be “in the spotlight,’” she recalled recently.

“I didn’t want ICE going to the soup kitchen,” Pezman said. Plus, she added, her board was wary of singling out a particular group for help.

“We support people in need, not only the immigrants in need,” Pezman said.

Still, in neighborhoods around the soup kitchen, ICE enforcement was having increasingly devastating consequences for the city’s immigrant residents. In October, a Costa Mesa resident named Gabriel Garcia Aviles died in a hospital in Victorville after being picked up in a raid and detained at the Adelanto detention center. As families sought to decrease the chance of being separated, some parents quit their jobs and stopped going outside, including to buy groceries and visit the doctor.

“It’s absolutely horrific,” Councilmember Andrea Marr said of the arrests and deportations. “We’re talking about families who have been involved in their communities, moms cooking for school events. These are not other people, this is very much the fabric of the community."

Increasing the economic squeeze, as of January, the state no longer allows adults without legal immigration status to enroll in Medi-Cal.

“All of the doors are closing,” said Juana Trejo, a long-time leader in Costa Mesa’s Latino community. “It’s like we’re imprisoned.”

As concern kept rising, the soup kitchen accepted the city funds — on the condition that the money not be earmarked for a specific purpose.

That’s when the rift began.

A debate over the council’s intent

Volunteers who’d been buying supplies and packing boxes for delivery said they assumed the $50,000 from the city would replenish dwindling private donations. 

Ereth, who’d opened the nonprofit’s doors as a staging center for the mutual aid effort, saw it differently. He turned down those requests.

Tensions grew between Ereth and the mutual aid organizers. At the end of 2025, Ereth closed down the delivery program.Horton, the volunteer who helped start the program, was livid.

“I had to go into a room, I had to cry, I had to scream,” she told LAist. Horton and other mutual aid leaders estimate that the city funds could have fed 200 families for two years.

The fundamental disagreement comes down to this:

Mutual aid volunteers said they believed the $50,000 was made available specifically, to deliver groceries to families directly affected by the immigration crackdown.

Ereth said there was no expectation that the money be used for that narrow purpose. “The city decided to solicit us to give us a gift based on the work we’ve been doing for the past 40-plus years,” he said of the soup kitchen’s long-standing role in Costa Mesa. “It happened to be during the time federal enforcement activity was taking place pretty forcefully.”

Councilmember Arlis Reynolds, who helped launch the food box effort, was dismayed by Ereth’s interpretation of why the city awarded immigrant relief funds to the soup kitchen.

“We were intentionally vague based on what I thought was a pretty clear understanding,” she told LAist.

Marr agreed. “I think (Ereth) took advantage of a loophole,” she said, adding “he should have known” what the money was intended for.

That vague language, however, also allowed Ereth to use the funds as he saw fit.

Reynolds conceded that “technically (Ereth) is correct that he got city funds with zero written restraints.” But, she added, “if I knew that he was going to change the model, I would not have voted to give the funds.”

How best to help?

Ereth defended his use of the city funding for the soup kitchen’s overall operations.

“We’re a longterm organization in the community,” Ereth said, “when times get tough, we’re looking to remain as an institution, rather than just addressing an acute need that pops up.”

Ereth said it was unsustainable to continue delivering food boxes to ICE-affected families because of the large number of people and resources required. He also noted that the soup kitchen had invested its own staff time and resources into the delivery effort, including electricity, gas and most of the donated food that went into the boxes.

Some City Council members agree with Ereth’s position, including Stephens, the mayor. He told LAist the city funding for the soup kitchen had “absolutely” gone to its intended use.

“The Someone Cares Soup Kitchen has been a part of the Costa Mesa community for decades — they serve lots of populations in need, including this group impacted by ICE activity,” Stephens said.

He and soup kitchen leaders say the dispute boils down to miscommunication, and a dispute over how best to help. Pezman, the board chair, said instead of delivering boxes, the soup kitchen is providing groceries for pick-up twice a month, to about 40 families.

“I’m sure there are people who are fearful and not coming out of their house,” Pezman said, “but there are also people who are coming out of their house.”

She said the nonprofit leaders never intended to cause friction. “I do feel like what the soup kitchen did was on board and correct and communicated all the way through to the city,” said Pezman. But, she added, “if the city said, ‘We would like you to return the funds,’ we’d just return the funds.”

Sheryl Long helps stack food boxes in the back of a minivan for delivery to ICE-impacted families.

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Jill Replogle

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LAist

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Calls for accountability, as mutual aid moves on

Today, many involved in the mutual aid effort in Costa Mesa would like to just move on from the incident. Others are demanding more accountability.

“In my mind, it’s a huge injustice,” said Trejo, the community leader. “We’re going to be a little more careful in the future about who we put our confidence in.”

Another activist, Grey from Food Not Bombs, has repeatedly asked the City Council to investigate how the money was spent.

“There’s no accountability,” she said. “It creates a distrust in the community.”

Meanwhile, Councilmember Reynolds has asked city officials to look into how families who were receiving boxes last year can access food paid for with the ICE relief funds. She told LAist she saw “no incremental benefit as intended” from the city’s donation to the soup kitchen. Rather, she said, Ereth’s decision to end the food delivery program “created a huge amount of confusion, frustration, and service gaps to families we intended to serve.”

When Ereth ended the food delivery program in December, the mutual aid leaders vowed to find another way to keep it going, but it was unclear how, without a reliable fiscal sponsor. They spent the next few months fundraising and looking for new partners.

Then, on Valentine’s Day, more than a dozen volunteers met at a warehouse in Costa Mesa to load beans, rice, chorizo, tomatoes, limes and more into cardboard boxes and IKEA bags. Other volunteers then pulled up into the alley to collect the boxes and distribute them to 150 needy families.

The goal is to increase the number of recipients to 200, which the organizers estimate will cost $4,000 per monthly delivery. Fundraising is ongoing.

“There's no way this can end,” Horton said. “There's too many people who care.”

Warm temperatures are on tap again today as we head into a toasty weekend with temps set to reach the triple digits in desert communities.

L.A. County beaches will see daytime highs from 67 to 72 degrees. It'll be between 69 and 76 degrees along the Orange County coast. More inland areas like downtown L.A., Hollywood and Anaheim will see temperatures from 75 to 81 degrees.

Meanwhile, the valleys will see varying temperatures. Areas closer to the coast will see highs from 78 to 83 degrees, and further inland, temps will stay in the upper 80s, up to 89 degrees.

Meanwhile in Coachella Valley, temperatures will rise to 101 to 106 degrees.

Looking ahead to the weekend, the valleys will reach the 90s for Mother's Day, up to 100 degrees in the Antelope Valley too. Come Sunday, an Extreme Heat Warning kicks in for the Coachella Valley, where temperatures will stay in the low 100s, with up to 109 degrees possible. Make sure to stay hydrated!

Jessica Wang has experienced delay after delay for nearly two years as she tried to open Gu Grocery in Chinatown. Her father, a contractor, had told her it would take nine months.

Instead, she says, there have been issues with city permits, inspectors, inaccurate information, illness and wayward appliance installers which have pushed things back.

The community didn't take nearly as long. In two weeks, 134 donors contributed nearly $12,000 to keep Wang afloat. But money can't solve her problem — she still needs the city's approval to open the doors.

Wang signed the lease at the end of 2023, envisioning a Chinese-Taiwanese grocery store and community hub where seniors could use EBT to buy fresh tofu, where kids from nearby elementary schools could stop by after class, and where her mother, Peggy, could teach neighbors how to make their grandmother's pickles.

Now, more than two years into a five-year lease, and nearly out of money after paying for permits, buildout, and rent on a space she can't operate, Wang launched a GoFundMe campaign a few weeks ago. The response showed the community believes in Gu Grocery and wants to see it succeed. But she's still waiting for at least seven final inspections by the city before she can open.

The story of Gu

The name "Gu" carries layered meaning: the character 菇 means "mushroom" in Chinese, a traditional symbol of prosperity, while the sound "gu" also means "auntie" in Mandarin — honoring intergenerational caretakers. Wang's mission for the space is to provide a place to purchase Chinese-Taiwanese pantry staples and prepared foods, and to host community workshops.

The communal aspect is central to Wang's vision of social entrepreneurship, not solely focused on profit. In addition to workshops, Gu Grocery plans to accept EBT and offer senior discounts for those on fixed incomes.

"I wanted a space where I could share knowledge and share culture and also just learn from the community," Wang said.

Ultimately, she hopes to convert the store into a worker-owned co-op.

Wang grew up in the San Gabriel Valley and worked as a pastry chef at San Francisco's State Bird Provisions before a pre-diabetic diagnosis at age 29 prompted her return to L.A. She began volunteering with API Forward Movement, a local nonprofit focused on health equity and food access in AAPI communities, and saw firsthand the need during COVID food distributions at L.A. State Historic Park.

Chinatown had lost its last two full-service grocery stores in 2019. Last fall, the neighborhood lost another: Yue Wa Market, a small produce shop that had served residents for 18 years before rising rent and pandemic losses forced it to shut its doors. The closures hit especially hard in a neighborhood where, according to American Community Survey data, half of the residents are low-income and one in five are seniors 65 and older — many of whom rely on walking to shop.

Jessica Wang (center, in black) and her mother Peggy (left, in white and red) smile while serving customers at a farmer's market pop-up for Gu Grocery.

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Daniel Nguyen

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Courtesy Gu Grocery

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Permitting woes

Much of bringing Gu Grocery to reality has been made possible by support from Wang's friends and family. Her father, Willie Wang, serves as her general contractor. When plans were submitted to the city in March 2024, he told her the buildout would take nine months if everything went smoothly.

Instead, she’s experienced delays from all directions, from slow bureaucracy, to issues with contractors. A hood installation contractor rescheduled multiple times, she said, then doubled his price the day before a rescheduled appointment. Drywall contractors said their workers had been detained by ICE and never returned.

The process hasn't just taken time — it's been expensive. One inspector approved a makeup air unit for the kitchen hood system, she said, only to have a senior inspector overturn the decision and order a complete replacement at nearly $6,000. Her father paid out of pocket — even as he was recovering from March surgery to remove a cancerous lung growth.

"Who would have thought that something an inspector asked us to do would be completely overturned by another inspector?" Wang said. "That's just so wild."

LAist has reached out to the city's Department of Building Services for comment but has not heard back.

The financial toll

Wang estimates she's spent more than $200,000 so far — more than $100,000 on buildout and permits alone, plus a full year of rent on a space she can't operate, equipment, insurance and taxes.

She draws no income from Gu Grocery. To cover personal expenses, she teaches fermentation workshops through her other business, Picklepickle, though that work has been inconsistent lately. Her health insurance doubled this year. The GoFundMe money, she said, is a "rainy day fund" in case she needs it to pay future bills.

The financial strain has touched her entire family. Her mother, who received a small inheritance when Wang's grandparents died, got scammed late last year trying to grow that money to help with the store. Targeted through online ads, she was convinced by an "investment tutor" based in Taiwan to hand over cash to a stranger in a parking lot.

"I didn't realize this would become part of what it's like to have aging parents in the age of technology," Wang said. "But it's scary how they get targeted."

Black sesame noodles from Gu Grocery's popup menu. Wang uses black sesame for higher nutritional value and plans to offer the dish as one of the prepared foods when the store opens.

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Aunty J

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Courtesy Gu Grocery

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Rice balls with house pickles from a Gu Grocery pop-up. Wang has been teaching fermentation and pickling workshops for 15 years and plans to serve pickles alongside all meals when the store opens.

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Aunty J.

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Courtesy Gu Grocery

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Addressing Chinatown's needs

Once Gu Grocery opens, it won't operate as a full-service market — there won't be a meat counter. Instead, it will function like a corner store with a focus on healthy prepared foods: butter mochi, sesame noodles and daily congee.

"Something that Chinatown has never had was prepared food that is EBT eligible," Wang said.

In 2020, Wang surveyed seniors through API Forward Movement's Tai Chi fitness program to understand their shopping habits following the closure of local grocery stores. Many told her they now ride the bus to Super King on San Fernando Road in Glendale, nearly 5 miles away, for produce deals, or rely on family members to drive them to 99 Ranch in Alhambra. Some grow their own food in gardening plots, Wang said, "but they can't produce everything they need."

Willie Wang (left), Jessica Wang (center), and Peggy Wang (right) pose inside Gu Grocery. The signs display the store's values in both English and Chinese — Willie's reads "body health" and Peggy's reads "mushroom auntie," playing on the dual meaning of "gu."

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Daniel Nguyen

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Courtesy Gu Grocery

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The community response

When she launched her Go FundMe in mid-April, she was overwhelmed by the response. "I have a hard time asking for help," said Wang. "So actually receiving help, it's very moving."

The donors range from former pop-up customers and friends to a range of assorted well-wishers — a musician who had her food once at an event, fellow food business owners, farmer's market regulars and even her insurance agent.

"The generosity is beyond my expectations," Wang said. "Some of these people only had my food once. People are showing their support truly in a personal way and really believing in the vision."

The GoFundMe money helps Wang stay "afloat for now," but she's had to rethink her opening strategy. She won't be able to afford full inventory when she opens. Instead, she plans a phased opening: prepared foods only, served through a takeout window, then using revenue to slowly stock shelves with the retail items she originally envisioned.

The community raised more than $14,000 in three weeks. After nearly two years of delays, Wang is still waiting for permits. She hopes to open by Father's Day — her general contractor dad's birthday. But she's learned to expect the unexpected.

Many donors sent her direct messages saying simply: "We got this, Jess, we got you."

Olympics organizers have released a first look at plans for a celebration of arts and culture across Los Angeles during the summer of 2028.

Known as the "Cultural Olympiad," the programming will include a poster series by local artists, film screenings across the city and a calendar of events, including live performances and art installations at different institutions. The city of L.A. will also put on its own events, including culture festivals in each council district, in the lead up to the Games.

Arts programming is a long Olympic tradition — starting in 1912 as artistic competitions and eventually evolving into festivals.

When Los Angeles last hosted the Olympics in 1984, the city hosted a weeks-long spectacle that included more than 400 performances and launched with the unveiling of a sculpture by artist Robert Graham topped with two statues depicting the naked female and male form, each without a head. The statues still stand at the entrance to the Coliseum today.

A closeup of the statues by artist Robert Graham atop the Olympic Gateway Arch at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.

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David Madison

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Getty Images

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The 1984 festival is credited with transforming the city's arts scene. After the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion put on opera productions in the summer of 1984, local patrons launched L.A. Opera, which had its first season in 1986.

“That moment — when this city chose to present itself to the world not only through sport but through the full force of its artistic imagination — gave rise to an institution that has, for four decades, reflected the scale, diversity and ambition of Los Angeles itself," Christopher Koelsch, president of L.A. Opera said in a statement provided by LA28.

L.A.'s artistic contributions in 1984 in turn transformed the Olympics. John Williams composed the "Olympic Fanfare" for the Opening Ceremony, which is still associated with the Games today.

The legacy of 1984 means expectations for the 2028 Olympiad are high — but most details on what's in store are still to come. Some in Los Angeles have criticized LA28, saying that planning is lagging.

Another big question is funding. The city of L.A.'s initial plan for cultural programming estimates a budget of $15 million, which would cover local festivals in each council district. But the city also painted a vision for what it could do with $45 million in funding, including a seven-week arts festival across the city.

Documents from the city's Department of Cultural Affairs says full funding will depend on external partnerships, including LA28. LA28 told LAist that the Cultural Olympiad will be funded through private fundraising but didn't provide further details.

The first event associated with the Olympiad will launch in July 2027, when winners of the local artist poster contest are announced.