The Brief

Orange County officials are demanding the refund of millions in tax dollars that county Supervisor Andrew Do gave to a nonprofit linked to his daughter — saying Viet America Society has failed to show it actually did the work it was paid to do.

The repayment demands come shortly after the nonprofit failed to meet another deadline to submit a long-awaited audit, which was supposed to answer how the money was spent.

The new details are outlined in letters obtained by LAist. They disclose that last week, VAS fired the auditors it hired for the audit, the day after those auditors said they would officially find that the group failed to follow requirements to track what it did with the money.

The $2.2 million demanded to be returned was directed by Do to VAS to feed needy seniors during the pandemic. The letters say the group has failed to show that the meals were handed out as required by the county’s contract.

Do chose the group for funding from January 2021 through May 2022, without public votes naming the vendor. Some of the money was granted under the county’s emergency authority to issue contracts nearly a year into COVID-19, and the rest was federal pandemic response funding supervisors granted themselves authority to spend without having to name the recipients on public agendas.

Public records show VAS was led on and off by Do’s now 22-year-old daughter Rhiannon Do. The family ties were not publicly disclosed when Supervisor Do directed the taxpayer money to the group, and wasn’t revealed publicly until reporting by LAist. State law does not require such a disclosure, although a bill making its way through the state legislature that was spurred by LAist’s investigation would change that.

The letters, obtained through a public records request, also raise concerns about “questionable” payments made to Rhiannon Do and to another business where she was listed as an officer. The nonprofit has refused to explain those and other payments, according to the letters.

The refund demand

In all, LAist has reported that Do directed at least $13.5 million in taxpayer dollars to Viet America Society since it was formed in 2020 most of which was given to the group after his daughter was first listed as an officer on government filings. The letters, which were sent to VAS last week, show the county has ordered VAS to reimburse $2.2 million — the entire amount of two contracts awarded to the group to feed seniors during the pandemic.

“Due to VAS’s failure to substantiate the work performed under the Contract, the County is requiring full reimbursement,” states one of the county’s letters, all of which are dated July 26.

“Payment is due within 30 days, but no later than Monday, August 26, 2024,” it added. An address was then listed for sending the payment.

Additionally, the county is demanding reimbursement of another $1 million Do gave to a different group, Hand to Hand Relief Organization. A significant portion of that money was routed to VAS, according to county spokespeople and a financial ledger reviewed by LAist.

Messages for comment were not returned by Supervisor Do, his daughter Rhiannon Do, Viet America Society leader Peter Pham, or the group’s attorney, Sterling Scott Winchell.

Supervisor Do has declined multiple interview requests since LAist began investigating the contracts late last year. He has told other outlets that LAist’s reporting had errors but has not provided evidence of any errors or requested any corrections.

On July 3, Winchell told LAist that the audit was “almost done” and would take just “a few” more days. He said the meals were provided, but that the nonprofit had to create documents to show the auditors what happened with the money.

“The issue has been they haven’t kept the normal accounting for what they’ve done,” he said at the time. “So they’ve had to basically create the…documentation in the form that an accountant would want to watch and see for an audit.”

Hand to Hand’s leader, Thanh Huong Nguyen, also did not return messages for comment. County officials wrote that Hand to Hand had failed to respond at all to the county’s document demands over the past few months to show what happened with the money.

‘Red flags’

Eric Sussman, a UCLA accounting professor, after LAist read him the county’s letters to VAS, called the findings full of “red flags.”

“At best, it reflects extraordinarily sloppy record keeping, insufficient policies and procedures at the nonprofit to comply with underlying standards, prevent misstatements of financial reporting and so forth,” Sussman said.

“I don’t think it would shock this accounting expert, or any other accounting experts, that there may be some at best, negligence, at worst, fraud.”

Do didn’t disclose daughter’s role

The earmarking of the millions for meal funding was first brought to light by an LAist investigation into Do’s awarding of contracts to VAS without disclosing his family connection. He directed most of the $13.5 million identified by LAist using a secretive process where contracts do not appear on public meeting agendas.

In emails to LAist, Rhiannon Do has denied serving as an officer or having any role in the meal funding at issue or the financial side of the organization. But she has not answered requests to explain public records that contradict her claims. Those records include a contract she signed as group’s president, and meeting minutes showing her as an officer and director.

The bill inspired by LAist’s investigation was approved unanimously by the state Senate and now working its way through the Assembly. It would make it illegal for state and local officials to knowingly award contracts that involve their adult children. A news conference about it was held Friday.

Details of the missed audit 

The county’s demand for full repayment of $2.2 million covered by two contracts comes after VAS failed for years to meet audit requirements under both the county contract and federal law.

After pressure from O.C. officials, the group did eventually hire auditors in April, and told the county the audit would be finished by June 30, according to emails and the county letters.

That deadline also passed with no finished audit. And according to the letters, the group’s story changed.

Leading up to the June 30 deadline, the nonprofit assured the county it was providing the documents auditors would need to finish their work, according to the county letters and emails reviewed by LAist.

But after the deadline passed, VAS acknowledged for the first time that the auditors couldn’t finish their work because VAS “had failed to provide significant amounts of information,” the county letters state.

At a meeting last week, the auditors told the county they were planning to officially find that VAS failed to properly track what it did with county dollars and had “problematic” accounting of how many meals it was providing.

The next day, VAS fired the auditors, according to the county letters.

That makes it hard to know whether the group actually did what it was paid to do, the county wrote.

“VAS’s decision to terminate the auditor after receiving the negative information undermined the County’s efforts to determine the extent to which VAS performed,” states one of the letters.

[Read the county’s letters demanding repayment from Viet America Society, and to read the letter to Hand to Hand Relief Organization.]

‘Unexplained transactions’ and ‘questionable costs’

In its letters last week, the county raised concerns about a series of financial transactions that “VAS has refused to provide explanations or supporting documentation for.”

These “unexplained transactions” raise “concerns of potential commingling of funds and questionable costs,” the county wrote.

Among them:

• $18,000 paid to Rhiannon Do
• $200,000 paid to Behavioral Health Solutions, a private mental health company whose officers were listed as Rhiannon Do and two other VAS leaders
• Over $480,000 in “Food Supply” expenses
• $1.2 million in revenue listed as coming from a company called Aloha Financial Investment. Public records show it’s been registered to the same house and office suite as VAS, and has shared two of the same leaders.

When LAist previously asked VAS’ attorney about some of these transactions, he said the answers would come in the audit. That audit has since been canceled by VAS.

The attorney, Winchell, also represented Aloha Financial Investment last year, according to court records. He was Do’s appointee to the county ethics commission from 2018 to 2023.

County officials in the letters also reported discrepancies in records VAS provided about how many meals were being served.

“The credibility of the reports submitted are questionable,” the county wrote.

VAS originally reported serving 20,000 meals per month, but “later revised” it to 10,000 per month — without changing the number of people it claimed to be serving each week, according to the county letters.

The group also did not document when people stopped or started receiving meals, the letters state.

Additionally, the county says it found “inconsistencies” in VAS’ list of meal recipients, including people listed more than once.

And when the county reviewed hundreds of records of people VAS said had received meals, only 16% of people marked on applications for meals could be verified as being on the group’s list of who received meals.

Catch up on the investigation

In November 2023, LAist began investigating how millions in public taxpayer dollars were spent. In total, LAist has uncovered over $13 million in public money that went to a little-known nonprofit that records state was led on and off by Rhiannon Do, the now 22-year-old daughter of O.C. Supervisor Andrew Do. Most of that money was directed to the group by Supervisor Do outside of the public’s view and never appeared on public meeting agendas. He did not publicly disclose his family ties.

Much of the known funding came from federal coronavirus relief money.

• Read the story that launched the investigation here.
• Since we started reporting, we’ve also uncovered the group was two years overdue in completing a required audit into whether the meal funds were spent appropriately.
• And we found the amount of taxpayer money directed to the nonprofit was much larger than initially known. It totals at least $13.5 million in county funding — tallied from government records obtained and published by LAist. 
• After our reporting, O.C. officials wrote demand letters to the nonprofit saying millions in funding were unaccounted for. They warned it could be forced to repay the funds.
• And, we found the nonprofit missed a deadline set by county officials to provide proof about how funding for meals were spent.

How to watchdog local government

One of the best things you can do to hold officials accountable is pay attention.

Your city council, board of supervisors, school board and more all hold public meetings that anybody can attend. These are times you can talk to your elected officials directly and hear about the policies they’re voting on that affect your community.

• Read tips on how to get involved.
• The next scheduled board meeting is Tuesday, Aug. 13. You can check out the O.C. Board of Supervisors full calendar here.
• Learn how to submit a public comment to the O.C. Board of Supervisors.

The universe is a strange place — filled with exploding stars, ancient galaxies, and unseen worlds. Now, astronomers are about to get a brand new tool to explore it.

The $4.3 billion Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is scheduled for launch Aug. 30. Named for NASA's first chief astronomer, the observatory is expected to reveal new information about the expansion of the universe and discover multitudes of planets orbiting distant stars.

Roman, as it is known to its friends, has an unusual history. About 15 years ago NASA was making plans to build a space telescope that could, among other things, search for exploding stars known as Type 1A supernovas. These supernovas were used as a kind of cosmological measuring stick to uncover a mysterious force called dark energy that was causing the universe to expand — a discovery that earned the Nobel Prize in 2011.

Cosmologist Daniel Scolnic at Duke University says finding more of them would be key to better understanding that expansion.

As NASA was developing plans for this new telescope, a call came in from the government office in charge of surveillance satellites.

"The National Reconnaissance Office reached out to NASA," Scolnic says, "saying, 'We have this amazing satellite sitting in a hangar that we're not using. And what what do you guys think about instead of pointing downwards, we point upwards, and you guys use it?'"

NASA said yes. It took some substantial modifications, but now that old satellite is set to become NASA's next major space observatory.

Scolnic says that the new observatory could fundamentally change the scientific model that astronomers use to understand our universe.

"In the last few years, there have been measurements saying that model might be wrong — and that's something that Roman will absolutely nail, whether the model's right or wrong," he says.

Another goal of the telescope is to spend a month surveying all the stars in the Milky Way galaxy. Julie McEnery is Roman's project scientist. She says even though Roman has broadly the same sensitivity and sharpness of vision as the currently orbiting Hubble Space Telescope, its design lets it do things much faster.

"That one month of observations to survey our Milky Way galaxy would take about a century with Hubble," says McEnery.

Instead of focusing on a single object, Roman is designed to make catalogs of large swaths of the sky, and McEnery says these catalogs will be available to everyone, not just academics.

"You can be a teacher in a high school in Kentucky and your students have the opportunity to see Roman data at the same time as a professor in Princeton," she says.

One professor eager to get his hands on Roman data is Scott Gaudi at The Ohio State University. Along with colleagues, Gaudi developed a technique for detecting planets around distant stars. It's called gravitational microlensing, and it measures the way those planets bend the starlight that passes them by.

Albert Einstein described the idea in 1936 but thought it would be impractical. New technology has proven him wrong — and Gaudi expects Roman will find tons of planets that way.

"We're looking for planets that are just completely undetectable by any other method," Gaudi says. That includes planets at the center of our galaxy, "that are very analogous to our own solar system planets like Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune."

In addition to new planets, Roman should also reveal new galaxies, helping astronomers to get a better idea of the large-scale structure of the universe.

But predicting what will be Roman's greatest accomplishments over the course of its five-year mission is a tricky business.

"The history of astronomy really has shown that when you get a new capability, and especially a survey capability, you learn something new, something unexpected," says Wendy Freedman, an astronomer at the University of Chicago. "Often that turns out to be the most exciting part of a new facility. So I am completely open to what this telescope will find."

Copyright 2026 NPR

The sounds of Los Angeles are bringing together people from all walks of life to record and archive them, from the buzzing of a bees’ nest in Griffith Park to church bells echoing over goose honks in Echo Park.

And you can listen to these recordings tomorrow in Highland Park.

George Jensen founded the Los Angeles Field Recording Club a little over a year ago. He said it has attracted sound lovers with all levels of recording sophistication, from people using their phones to folks with professional recorders worth thousands of dollars.

A longtime radio guy with shows on dublab and KCHUNG radio, Jensen fell in love with preserving audio moments in the city and beyond after capturing the serene sounds of a cove in Big Sur.

“There’s a certain fluctuation of sound happening — a pulse you might say — in this city," Jensen told LAist. "Once people sit and be still for a moment, they hear it.”

About 20 club members meet up once a month at places like the purportedly haunted Greystone Mansion in Beverly Hills, a scrap yard in Sun Valley and a section of Griffith Park, where someone recorded a cacophony of bees buzzing around their nest.

Jensen, who works as a prop fabricator in the TV and film industry, said people are drawn to field recording for many reasons: Some love nerding out over the gear; others need the sound to embellish an art or music project.

The club's next endeavor, he said, is an interactive sound map where field recordists can archive their audio online for all to enjoy.

The club’s outings end up being a bit of an antisocial social club, Jensen joked.

“At the beginning, everybody meets each other... and then you go be by yourself and be quiet,” he said.

He added there's a meditative quality to field recording that hooks people.

“I think once people do it, they realize that you kind of stop and listen," Jensen said. "You become in the present. You’re forced to.

"I think there’s, like, a certain therapeutic thing that comes with it,” he said.

Michael Hyatt was photographing the new L.A. punk scene tearing up Hollywood when he got an offer few would refuse.

It came shortly after the band X released their seminal 1980 debut, Los Angeles. Singer Exene Cervenka and bassist John Doe had liked a photo Hyatt had taken of the Plugz.

“They asked me if I would photograph X,” Hyatt said.

For the first half of the ‘80s, Hyatt photographed X wherever he could. On their first national tour where he also drove the jury-rigged tour van. At the Whisky just months after the unexpected death of Exene’s sister. On a downtown L.A. rooftop, days before the band’s big Greek Theatre show.

Exene.

(

Michael Hyatt

/

Michael Hyatt

)

“I never pose people. I find a location, a backdrop and just let them be human beings,” Hyatt said. “People reach a point where they forget the camera —  that's when the good photographs happen.”

Hyatt’s works are compiled in a new book, X: On the Road & At the Crossroads, 1980-2024, with an accompanying exhibition opening at Beyond Baroque on Sept. 5 — where Cervenka will join Hyatt for a reading.

Exene Cervenka and John Doe in the Louisiana countryside in 1980.

(

Michael Hyatt

/

Michael Hyatt

)

A band built on chance encounters 

X’s story reads like a constellation of happenstances hurtling toward inevitability. In 1976, Doe and guitarist Billy Zoom answered each other’s ads in the Recycler. That same year at a Beyond Baroque poetry night, Doe met Cervenka and saw punk lyrics in her writing. Ray Manzarek of the Doors, after seeing X live, offered that very night to produce their debut album in 1979.

A year later, Los Angeles helped cement L.A. punk, with a sound and sensibility markedly different from contemporaries the Germs and Black Flag.

A release party marked by tragedy

For the album’s release party, Hyatt said, X played two back-to-back shows in April at the Whisky a Go Go. Before they went on stage, Cervenka was told that her sister had been en route to the show when she was hit and killed by a drunk driver.

Three months later, Hyatt took this portrait of the band after another show at the Whisky.

X at the backstage area of Whisky a Go Go in July 1980, three months after the sudden death of Exene's sister.

(

Michael Hyatt

/

Michael Hyatt

)

“I placed Exene against that plywood panel,” Hyatt remembered. “My goal, maybe on an unconscious level, was to capture the emotion related to the tragedy that happened three months prior.”

The iconic rooftop shot

A photo of X taken two days after their 1981 Greek Theatre show.

(

Michael Hyatt

/

Michael Hyatt

)

In August 1981, X played in front of a crowd of 5,000 at the Greek Theatre.

“ They had reached the height of their powers,” Hyatt said.

He wanted to capture that zeitgeist. So two days later, he met the group at the rooftop of their rehearsal studio, which Hyatt scoped out at a practice session prior to the big Greek show.

“I went up and I thought, ‘Wow, this is a fantastic spot,’” he said. “Got a little bit of the skyline off in the distance of downtown L.A., but you've got the Roosevelt Hotel right there too.”

After three rolls of film, Hyatt said one shot clearly stood out.

Four decades later, still at the front row

At X's Houston show in 2024, Hyatt photographed a married couple that went on a first date to see the band in 1980.

(

Michael Hyatt

/

Michael Hyatt

)

In 2024, X went on tour for their final album, Smoke & Fiction. One stop was Houston, Texas.

They’d played in Houston on their national tour in 1980, at a long-defunct punk venue called the Island.

In the crowd at the Island in 1980 was a young couple on their first date. A couple years later, Hyatt said, they got married.

“And there they were, 44 years later, right up front cheering on X — who they saw on their very first date,” Hyatt said.

Still together, wearing matching X shirts.

Over the Linda Lindas’ career, talk about the band has often centered around how young they are.

They broke through as tweens and teens when a 2021 performance at the library in Cypress Park went viral after it was posted online, in part because they sounded so commanding for their age. The drummer, Mila de la Garza, was 10 at the time.

Five years and several albums later — Gotta Get Out, their third album and major label debut, just dropped yesterday — the Linda Lindas are outgrowing their old image.

“I do think people still hear 'kid band' when they think of the Linda Lindas,” said Lucia de la Garza, Mila’s older sister and one of the guitarists. “It's like we're not actually really that young anymore.”

Eloise Wong and Bela Salazar of The Linda Lindas perform during Riot Fest at Douglass Park last year in Chicago.

(

Barry Brecheisen

/

Getty Images

)

It’s been eight years since the sisters joined cousin Eloise Wong and family friend Bela Salazar to play a local music fest. What was a one-off gig turned into a real band that always seemed to have homework to do.

“We'll play a show and then go backstage and finish an essay,” Lucia said.

“Almost like we're Hannah Montana,” Mila said.

“Without the secret identity,” laughed Lucia.

Then came the library video, a record deal with punk label Epitaph and their 2022 debut album Growing Up. 

They started touring the world opening for their heroes like Green Day and Paramore. (Paramore frontwoman Hayley Williams is featured on the single “Closer.”)

And as of this summer, more big leaps: They signed with Warner’s Reprise imprint, and all but Mila have graduated high school.

As they’ve grown, so has their songwriting.

Where they used to write individually, for their new album, they holed up in L.A., Long Beach and Palm Springs to write in the same room from the beginning. No phones allowed. Just riffing.

“We believe in each other and each other's ideas so much that we were kind of just pushing each other to go for it,” Lucia said. “What if we added synth here? What if the drums dropped out?”

By the end of the sessions, they had amassed about 30 songs and the 12 tracks on the album were split evenly between the three writing locations, produced by the sisters’ dad, Carlos de la Garza, who’s worked with Paramore, Bad Religion and Best Coast. (He actually started working with Best Coast after meeting them when the duo came to a Linda Lindas rehearsal in the family's backyard, according to Lucia.)

The album moves beyond straight-ahead punk, dipping into new wave, power pop and hardcore.

That range tracks with the members’ own eclectic listening habits. Lucia has been listening to indie artists Blondshell, Francis of Delirium and Indigo De Souza. Mila cited Julien Baker’s Little Oblivions, while Eloise, who plays bass, has been digging into local hardcore punk like Special Forces from San Luis Obispo, not to mention the Heated Rivalry soundtrack. Guitarist Bela has been listening to pop from Hollis and Mexico's Belanova.

Meanwhile, their lyrics tackle the issues staring down their generation, from climate change to fascism and economic injustice.

On “Blood on Our Hands," Eloise belts out an indictment of not just the government but the complicity of bystanders.

Eloise said the song isn’t just about calling people out about the state of the world, but “making everyone think about all of the little things that we can do to try and make it better, you know, and make it more sustainable, and make sure that people can live.”

Mila de la Garza of The Linda Lindas performs during the Bumbershoot Arts and Music Festival in Seattle last year.

(

Mat Hayward

/

Getty Images

)

Elsewhere on the album, like on the single “Burning Out,” the band reflects on that strange space between youth and adulthood and seeing friends move into new stages of life while wondering if they’re being left behind.

Whatever uncertainty they may be feeling, the Linda Lindas say one thing is for sure: It’s all about their music now.

Next month, they head out on their biggest tour yet as headliners with dates across the U.S. and Canada.

For a band whose early years involved squeezing in homework between soundchecks, life has simplified in at least one respect.

“It's pretty much all about the band,” Eloise said.