The Brief

La Cuatro — as the downtown stretch in Santa Ana is fondly called by locals — is usually a busy destination.

Families shop for quinceañera dresses, others check out El Vaquero, known for its cowboy boots. Street vendors serve up cold agua frescas or fruit cups loaded with lime and Tajín. Everywhere you look, Latin culture is front and central in this mostly Latino city.

But, now with the federal government stepping up immigration enforcement, the mood on La Cuatro has changed. On a recent afternoon when a LAist reporter visited, it was like a ghost town with no foot traffic or street vendors.

A storefront selling quinceañera dresses — seen at left — is closed for business in the middle of the day on Wednesday, June 18.

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Yusra Farzan

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LAist

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It’s like the pandemic all over again, said Jose Rodriguez, known as Mr. Diablito, a fruit vendor who typically sets up shop at the corner of 4th and Bush streets.

Rodriguez said he's a permanent resident with a green card. But he's reluctant to go to his usual corner, worried that he could be swept up by federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and detained.

Which explains why nearby Alta Baja Market, known for wares from California, Mexico and the American Southwest, is now also selling fruit.

Owner Delilah Snell opened her doors to Rodriguez to sell his fruit cups brimming with coconut, watermelon, melon, lemon, pineapple, orange, cucumber and jicama in her brick-and-mortar store because Mr. Diablito is “a part of the fabric of our downtown”.

“When I heard that was happening, I needed to do something, whatever I could,” Snell said. “I just said, let's do a shelf here and then I'm going to get them on our catering menu.”

The small businesses in this downtown area have learned to pivot over the last few years in order to survive.

First, it was COVID-19.

Then, the O.C. Streetcar project — a light rail project constructed through the downtown area.

And now the ICE detentions and National Guard presence.

All have all disrupted businesses — but not the community’s spirit.

 ”The culture of our downtown, the way that all these independent businesses work, and there a lot of them are family owned, it makes this city unique, special,” Snell said. “ When you come here, you're really meeting business owners, you're meeting part of our culture.”

And that culture is all about taking care of its own these days.

Painting monarch butterflies to raise funds 

Alejandra Vargas runs Vibes Boutique on 4th Street: it’s a one stop shop for Labubus, clothing fit for a Beyoncé or Kendrick Lamar concert and Mexican talvera pottery products.

Since the protests and raids began, she has lost about 80% of walk-in customers. And her business was damaged during the protests.

During Saturday’s No Kings protest, Vargas said she opened her shop to give water bottles to the demonstrators and allow them to use her restroom. She locked up the shop and left at 8 p.m. She returned the next morning to find a glass window shattered.

She said the security camera footage revealed law enforcement shot at protesters and hit her window.

Vargas said when she spoke to the police department, they said that they would take accountability and asked her to file a claim.

But she'd have to pay upfront to get the damage fixed. Within hours, though, Councilmember David Penalooza had city staff clean up the glass and board up the shop window. And a GoFundMe raised enough to cover repairs.

The community rallied around her, so now she’s looking to rally around them.

On Saturday and Sunday, she's opening the doors to her shop for a sip-and-paint event to raise funds for Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles (CHIRLA).

" Business owners are scared. Customers are scared so it means like right now it's a dead town,” she said. “There's no one walking around. It's super scary to think maybe you could be taken away from your family so no one's coming out.”

Vargas, a DACA recipient, has been worried about mixed status families and undocumented folks who are sheltering in place.

 ”Bills are not gonna stop for them,” she said.

The event will also help boost community morale, she added.

" It could be something to help people decompress and maybe just put their pain or their fear into something that's something meaningful,” she said.

For the paint-and-sip event, she chose something symbolic.

“We're going to be painting monarch butterflies,” Vargas said.

Why monarch butterflies?

“I think to me mean migration and family and being free,” she said.

Alta Baja Market

• Open daily from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
• 201 E 4th St., Santa Ana

Vibes Boutique

• The sip-and-paint event will be held twice on Saturday and Sunday, from 1 to 3 p.m. and again from 4 to 6 p.m.
• 208 W. 4th St., Santa Ana
• Recommended parking nearby at 310 N. Birch St. First hour free, 75 cents every hour after that
• More info here.

Alysa Liu’s comeback at this year’s Olympics — and her stunning gold medal win — has rocked the world of figure skating, making headlines due to her joy while performing and her commitment to mental health on and off the ice.

Though she primarily trained in Oakland, Liu, who’s also a psychology student at UCLA, has used a facility in Lakewood as one of her home bases away from home. The 20-year-old started training there as she came back from retirement and prepared to take the gold medal (not that that was necessarily her goal, to hear her tell it).

It’s part of a long history for the Rinks-Lakewood ICE, which has also hosted many champions and Olympians over the years, including Mariah Bell, Nathan Chen, Ashley Wagner and Adam Rippon, and counts prominent figure skaters among their staff.

“ We're not unfamiliar with Olympic ties,” said Braden Overett, the skating manager at Lakewood ICE, though he also clarified, “that does not in any way diminish the fun and the coolness [of Liu’s win].”

Lakewood ICE’s place in this year’s Olympics

Working with her coaches remotely, Liu started to drill down on perfecting her skating while also attending classes at UCLA. And though she moved on to her home base at Oakland Ice Center as the Olympic training started to ramp up, the staff who worked with her at Lakewood ICE kept cheering her on.

Overett said that he loves highlighting the Olympic connections at the rink, which may not be obvious to everyone who skates there.

“It's always fun just to connect the dots, right?” Overett said. “It's like going to a restaurant and then you find out later it's your favorite actor's restaurant.”

Ashleigh Ellis runs the nonprofit Unity Ice Academy, which focuses on increasing access to figure skating for kids of all backgrounds at Lakewood ICE.

“ That's just very much how the skating world is. It's very small, you never know who you're going to run into at any time,” Ellis said. “ Could you imagine just being on the ice with a national champion and Olympic skater of any sort? It's just so inspiring for the kids to see that and be within the vicinity of that.”

And Liu wasn’t the only 2026 Olympic figure skater who's used the facility. Li Yu-Hsiang, the Taiwanese national champion who represented Chinese Taipei in Milan this year, also trains in Lakewood.

The rink’s coaches

The small world of skating means that even novice skaters can take classes from world-class skaters: 1976 Olympic silver medalist Dianne de Leeuw teaches there, as do national medalists (and future Olympic contenders) Starr Andrews and Josephine Lee.

 "To get to see them and to get to share ice with them just has a layer of magic that you can't replace and you can't get anywhere else,” Overett said. “ You see the turnover of generations, and it brings in a huge element of history.”

What Liu’s win means for the skating world

Ellis is already using Liu’s example to stress the importance of mental health to the kids and families she works with, like one parent who was worrying about her child taking two weeks off skating due to pneumonia.

“I was like, ‘Alysa Liu took two plus years off and she just won the Olympic gold. Do not worry about it this two weeks,’” she said.

A bipartisan bill aimed at protecting pets during disasters has been introduced in Congress, with a Southern California representative citing the rescue efforts of local organizations during last year’s L.A.-area fires.

The PETSAFE Act of 2026 — which stands for Providing Essential Temporary Shelter Assistance For Emergencies — would expand the use of emergency management funds so local governments can plan for evacuations that move animals to safety, as well as provide veterinary care and rescue equipment during disasters.

Rep. Judy Chu (D-CA) helped introduce the bill earlier this month with several House of Representatives colleagues, including Republican Rep. Brian Mast of Florida and Democrat Rep. Dina Titus of Nevada.

Chu, who represents Pasadena and Altadena in the 28th Congressional District, said when the Eaton Fire tore through her district, many families delayed evacuations because they couldn’t bear to leave their pets behind.

She told LAist she’ll never forget seeing the cats, dogs and other animals with burned feet and singed fur who were being cared for by Pasadena Humane in the aftermath.

“But to think, if there is even one more thing we could do to keep our precious pets safe, wouldn't we want to do that?” Chu said. “So this PETSAFE Act could go a long way towards making sure that our loved pets can indeed survive a disaster.”

About the bill

Pasadena Humane teams looked for pets and wildlife in Eaton burn zones, dropping off food and water along the way.

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Courtesy Pasadena Humane

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The PETSAFE Act now has been referred to the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure. The bill would amend the Emergency Management Performance Grant program to increase the federal cost share for certain animal-related preparedness activities from 50% to 90%.

Supporters say this would lower barriers and make it more affordable for communities to roll out emergency protection plans for people and pets.

Specifically, the PETSAFE Act would allow state, local and tribal governments to use grant money awarded by FEMA toward pet supplies, crates, veterinary equipment, emergency generators and training, among others.

Pet owners whose homes are under disaster-related evacuation orders can be faced with an “impossible choice” — leaving their pets behind or staying home with them, which risks the owner’s own safety and complicates rescue efforts for first responders, according to Chu’s office.

The bill aims to address the challenges pet owners and first responders face without authorizing new federal spending, according to Mast’s office.

How we got here 

Chu said local shelters, including Pasadena Humane, and communities across California stepped up to care for all kinds of animals during the Eaton Fire, which ignited in January 2025.

Pasadena Humane helped more than 1,500 pets and wildlife during the fire and in the aftermath by providing shelter, medical care and emergency resources.

A horse was housed in the organization’s garage when Chris Ramon, Pasadena Humane’s president and CEO, ran into its owner walking down Raymond Avenue for miles.

“Part of me likes to think that this won’t happen again,” Ramon told LAist last month. “But the realist in me realizes … disaster preparedness is something that just is an ongoing conversation for us at Pasadena Humane.”

Chu also cited the work of the ASPCA, which helped more than 530 animals during the Eaton Fire, including goats, parakeets, pigs and a gecko, according to the organization.

She said local organizations did “tremendous” work and “lovingly cared for” the rush of animals affected by the fire.

“But what we would want to do is to make sure that there is an even better system for animal evacuation and ways to ensure that pets could be safe,” Chu said, adding that would relieve the burden on places like Pasadena Humane.

Other laws aiming to protect pets

This is not the first time last year’s fires have led to new legislation focused on protecting pets during emergencies.

A new state law known as the FOUND Act, which went into effect Jan. 1, was inspired by Oreo the Pomeranian, who reunited with its Pacific Palisades owner in an emotional, viral video during the Palisades Fire.

The law requires cities and counties to include procedures for rescuing pets during mandatory evacuations in their next emergency plans, which need to be updated every five years to qualify for FEMA assistance.