The Brief

California will have to build public charging stations at an unprecedented — and some experts say unrealistic — pace to meet the needs of the 7 million electric cars expected on its roads in less than seven years.

The sheer scale of the buildout has alarmed many experts and lawmakers, who fear that the state won’t be prepared as Californians purchase more electric cars.

A million public chargers are needed in California by the end of 2030, according to the state’s projections — almost 10 times more than the number available to drivers in December. To meet that target, 129,000 new stations — more than seven times the current pace — must be built every year for the next seven years. Then the pace would have to accelerate again to reach a target of 2.1 million chargers in 2035.

A robust network of public chargers — akin to the state’s more than 8,000 gas stations — is essential to ensure that drivers will have the confidence to purchase electric vehicles over the next several years.

“It is very unlikely that we will hit our goals, and to be completely frank, the EV goals are a noble aspiration, but unrealistic,” said Stanford professor Bruce Cain, who co-authored a policy briefing detailing California’s electric vehicle charging problems. “This is a wakeup call that we address potential institutional and policy obstacles more seriously before we commit blindly.”

Under California’s landmark electric car mandate, a pillar of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s climate change agenda, 68% of all new 2030 model cars sold in the state must be zero emissions, increasing to 100% for 2035, when 15 million electric cars are expected in California.

“We’re going to look really silly if we are telling people that they can only buy electric vehicles, and we don’t have the charging infrastructure to support that,” said Assemblymember Jesse Gabriel, a Democrat from Encino who introduced a package of unsuccessful bills last year aimed at expanding access to car chargers.

“We are way behind where we need to be,” Gabriel told CalMatters.

Big obstacles stand in the way of amping up the pace of new charging stations in public places. California will need billions of dollars in state, federal and private investments, streamlined city and county permitting processes, major power grid upgrades and accelerated efforts by utilities to connect chargers to the grid.

State officials also are tasked with ensuring that charging stations are available statewide, in rural and less-affluent areas where private companies are reluctant to invest, and that they are reliable and functioning whenever drivers pull up.

In Pacific Gas & Electric’s vast service area, home to 40% of all Californians, electric car purchases are moving twice as fast as the buildout of charging stations, said Lydia Krefta, the utility’s director of clean energy transportation. Californians now own more than 1.5 million battery-powered cars.

Patty Monahan, who’s on the Energy Commission, the state agency responsible for funding and guiding the ramp-up, told CalMatters that she is confident that California can build the chargers its residents need in time.

The agency’s estimate of the current chargers is likely an undercount, she said. In addition, fast-charging stations could play a bigger role than initially projected, meaning hundreds of thousands of fewer chargers might be needed. Also, as the ranges and charging speeds on cars improve, there may be less demand for public chargers.

“California has a history of defying the odds,” Monahan said. “We have a history of advancing clean cars, clean energy, writ-large. We have naysayers left and right saying you can’t do it, and then we do it.”

Barriers to private investments: an uncertain marke

On a September day last year, Monahan spoke behind a podium in the parking lot of a Bay Area grocery store. A row of newly constructed car chargers rose behind her.

“Let’s celebrate for a moment,” she said.

California had met its goal of 10,000 fast electric chargers statewide — two years ahead of a target set in 2018.

California Energy Commissioner Patty Monahan speaks during the launch of an EVgo fast charging station in Union City on Sept. 25, 2023.

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Loren Elliott

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CalMatters

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Fast chargers like the new ones at the grocery store are increasingly seen as critical to meeting the needs of drivers. They can power a car to 80% in 20 minutes to an hour, while the typical charger in use today, a slower Level 2, takes from four to 10 hours.

But installing and operating fast chargers is an expensive business — one that doesn’t easily turn a profit.

Nationwide each fast charger can cost up to $117,000, according to a 2023 study. And in California, it could be even more — between $122,000 and $440,000 each, according to a separate study, although the Energy Commission said the range was $110,000 to $125,000 for one of its programs.

Most of America’s publicly traded charger companies have been forced to seek more financing, lay off workers and slow their network build outs, analysts said. EVgo, for instance, has seen its share price crater, as has ChargePoint, which specializes in selling the slower, Level 2 hardware.

California stands apart from other states — it has by far the most chargers and electric car sales, and more incentives and policies encouraging them.

Tesla, America’s top-selling electric car manufacturer, dominates fast-charging in both California and the U.S. — but the company didn’t get into the business to sell charges to drivers; it got into the charger business to sell its electric cars. Initially Tesla Superchargers were exclusive to its drivers, but starting this year other EV drivers can use them after Tesla provided ports to Ford and other automakers.

Tesla’s manufacturing prowess, supply chain dominance and decade-plus of experience with fast chargers have given it an edge over competitors — a coterie of unprofitable, publicly traded startups, as well as private companies that often benefit from public subsidies, according to analysts.

“All the automakers joined forces with their biggest competitor,” said Loren McDonald, chief executive of the consulting firm EVAdoption. “If that doesn’t tell you how bad fast-charging networks and infrastructure were, I don’t know what else does.”

Tesla vehicles charge at a Supercharger lot in Kettleman City on June 23, 2024.

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Larry Valenzuela

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CalMatters/CatchLight Local

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Now Tesla is showing uncertainty about the future of its charging business amid slumping car sales, and eliminated nearly its entire 500-member Supercharger team in April. Then chief executive Elon Musk said in May that he would spend $500 million to expand the network and hired back some fired workers.

In California, Electrify America, a privately held company, was created by Volkswagen as a settlement for cheating on emissions tests for its gas-powered cars. The company is spending $800 million on California chargers, building a robust network of 260 stations, with more than half in low-income communities, including the state’s worst charging desert, Imperial County.

The problem is Electrify America was ranked dead last in a consumer survey last year, and its chargers have been plagued by reliability problems and customer complaints. The California Air Resources Board in January directed Electrify America to “strive to achieve charger reliability consistent with the state of the industry.” A company spokesperson said the dissatisfaction showed “an industry in its growth trajectory.” There are signs of improvement, based on consumer data from the first three months of this year.

Startups continue to jump into the charging business, with the number of companies offering fast chargers growing from 14 in 2020 to 41 in 2024, EVAdoption said. Seven carmakers formed a $1 billion venture to build a 30,000-charger network in North America. And gas stations such as Circle K are offering more charging because electric car customers spend more time shopping while waiting for their rides to juice up.

But the realization that charging is a costly business has set in on Wall Street, and that doesn’t seem likely to change anytime soon. “Can public EV fast-charging stations be profitable in the United States?” the consultancy McKinsey & Company asked.

“The fervor, the excitement from the investor base, has definitely dwindled quite a bit, given the prospects that EV adoption in the U.S. is going to be slower, revenue growth is really slower, the path to profitability is going to be slower, and they might need more capital than everyone originally expected,” said Christopher Dendrinos, a financial analyst who covers electric car charging companies for the investment bank RBC Capital Markets.

The stakes are high for California when it comes to encouraging investments in expensive fast chargers: If 63,000 additional ones were built, California might need 402,000 fewer slower Level 2 chargers in 2030, according to an alternative forecast by the Energy Commission.

Billions of public dollars: Will it be enough?

Nationwide $53 billion to $127 billion in private investments and public funding is needed by 2030 to build chargers for about 33 million electric cars, according to a federal estimate. Of that, about half would be for public chargers.

Congress and the Biden administration have set aside $5 billion for a national network of fast chargers. So far only 33 in eight locations have been built, but more than 14,000 others are in the works, according to the Federal Highway Administration. California’s share of the federal money totals $384 million; about 500 fast chargers will be built with an initial $40.5 million, said Energy Commission spokesperson Lindsay Buckley.

In addition, the state has spent $584 million to build more than 33,000 electric car chargers through its Clean Transportation Program, funded by fees drivers pay when they register cars. The Legislature extended that program for an additional decade last year.

Newsom has committed to spending $1 billion through 2028 on chargers with his “California Climate Commitment,” Buckley said. But this year Newsom and the Legislature trimmed $167 million from the charger budget as the state faces a record deficit. A lobbyist for the Electric Vehicle Charging Association said “the state pullback sends a very challenging message” to the industry.

California’s commitment to charger funding is “solid,” despite the cuts, Buckley said. They have not yet estimated the total investment needed in California to meet the targets.

But Ted Lamm, a UC Berkeley Law researcher who studies electric car infrastructure, said the magnitude of building what California needs in coming years likely dwarfs the public funding available.

State and federal programs will “only fund a fraction,” and the state needs to spend that money on lower-income communities, he said.

Another possible funding source is California’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard, which is expected to be revised in November. The program requires carbon-intensive fuel companies to pay for cleaner-burning transportation. Utilities get credits and use that money to pay for chargers, rebates to car buyers and grid improvements, said Laura Renger, executive director of the California Electric Transportation Coalition, which represents utilities.

“I think with that, we would have enough money,” Renger said. She said the program’s overhaul could help utilities invest “billions” in chargers and other electric car programs over the next two decades.

Backlogged local permits and grid delays 

One of the biggest barriers to more chargers isn’t money. It’s that cities and counties are slow to approve plans for the vast number of stations needed.

State officials only have so much political power to compel local jurisdictions to do what they want — a reality made abundantly clear by the housing crisis, for instance. California relies on grants and persuasion to accomplish its goals, and the slow buildout of chargers shows how those strategies can fall short, said Stanford’s Cain.

“The locals cannot be compelled by regulatory agencies to make land and resources available for what the state wants to achieve,” Cain said.

The same obstacles have marked the state’s broader effort to electrify California and switch to clean energy. Local opposition and environmental reviews sometimes hold up large solar projects and transmission projects for years.

California has created a “culture of regulation that emphasizes the need to be extra careful and extra perfect, but this takes an incredible amount of time,” Steve Bohlen, senior director of government affairs at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, said last month at the inaugural hearing of the state Assembly’s Select Committee on Permitting Reform.

“We’re moving into a period of rapid change, and so perfect can’t be the enemy of the good.”

Workers install a transformer to power electric car chargers in Calexico

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Adriana Heldiz

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CalMatters

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Chargers aren’t as complicated as large-scale solar or offshore wind projects. But most chargers installed in public spaces do need a land-use or encroachment permit, among other approvals. California has passed laws requiring local jurisdictions to streamline permits for chargers. What’s more, the Governor’s Office of Business Development now grades cities and counties using a scorecard and maintains a map displaying who has, or hasn’t, made life easier for car charger builders. But these strategies only go so far.

“It doesn’t matter how many requirements you put on (local governments),” Lamm said. “If they just don’t have the time in the day to do it … it’s going to sit in the backlog, because that’s how it works.”

The delays have consequences. Getting a station permitted in California, on average, takes 26% longer than the national average, Electrify America reported. Designing and constructing a station in California can cost on average 37% more than in other states because of delays in permitting and grid connections. A utility on average takes 17 weeks after work is completed to connect chargers to the grid, Electric America said.

Powering large charging projects often requires grid upgrades, which can take a year or more for approval, said Chanel Parson, a director at Southern California Edison. Supply chain issues also make getting the right equipment a challenge.

Edison, which has a 10-year plan to meet expected demand, has asked the utilities commission for approval to upgrade the grid where it anticipates high charging demand.

“Every EV charging infrastructure project is a major construction project,” Parson said. “There are a number of variables that influence how long it takes to complete the project.”

Impatient with broken chargers, bad service

Inspired to help the nation reduce its dependence on fossil fuels, Zach Schiff-Abrams of Los Angeles bought a Genesis GV60. As a renter, he has relied on public charging, primarily using Electrify America stations — and that’s been his biggest problem about owning an electric car.

Charging speeds have been inconsistent, he said, with half-hour sessions providing only a 15 to 30% charge, and he often encounters broken chargers.

“I believe in electrical, so I’m really actually trying to be a responsible consumer,” Schiff-Abrams said. “I want to report them when they’re down, but the customer service is horrible.”

For years, the reliability of charging networks has been a well-documented problem. Only 73% of fast chargers in the San Francisco Bay Area were functional in a 2022 study. The growth of the EV market has put increasing strain on public charging stations, a consumer survey found.

In January, the California Air Resources Board approved a final $200 million spending plan for Electrify America — but not before board chair Liane Randolph scolded its CEO.

Randolph — arguably one of America’s top climate regulators — told CEO Robert Barrosa about an exchange she had with his company’s customer service line after finding a broken charger at a station along Interstate-5.

“It didn’t work,” Randolph said during the board meeting. “Called the customer service line, waited like 10-ish minutes. …(The charger) was showing operable on the app and the guy goes, ‘oh, my data is showing me that it has not had a successful charge in three days.’”

“These issues are not easy,” Barrosa responded. “Our head is not in the sand,” he told board members earlier. “We are listening to customers.”

But Randolph, addressing journalists at a conference in Philadelphia, pushed back against the idea that because the transition to electric vehicles is happening gradually that it’s a failure. Many people will rely on charging at home or work, and batteries are becoming more efficient.

“The infrastructure is continuing to be rolled out at a rapid pace,” Randolph said. “It doesn’t all have to be perfect instantly. It’s a process. And it’s a process that’s continuing to move.”

Data journalists Erica Yee and Arfa Momin contributed to this report.

This story first appeared on The LA Local.

The contract Inglewood’s SoFi Stadium was built on is void, a judge ruled, upending a 10-year-old deal at the center of a larger fight between the city and the stadium developer.

Companies tied to Stan Kroenke and his Hollywood Park stadium property say Inglewood owes them about $400 million under the agreement that had the companies pay for the development’s infrastructure up front in exchange for future reimbursement.

But Inglewood said it shouldn’t have to pay, and claimed the agreement was not enforceable, prompting several businesses that operate SoFi, YouTube Theater and other real estate developments on the site to sue in December 2025.

The city claimed that the process used to greenlight the stadium construction in 2015 was no longer legitimate after a court ruled a similar development agreement in the Inland Empire was void a couple of years later.

Now, Superior Court Judge David Reinert has not only agreed with the city, but said in a Sept. 1 ruling the process leading to the contract had been problematic from the start. Developments similarly based on signature-gathering campaigns that skirt voter feedback had been overturned in the 1990s, according to his ruling.

The order calls into question the future of the financial arrangement the city and the stadium developer have maintained for more than a decade, one that promised Kroenke’s companies reimbursement for the infrastructure and services they paid for and that has generated millions in tax revenue for the city.

It’s also the latest public signal that the once-friendly relationship between Kroenke and Mayor James Butts, which paved the way for the NFL’s return to LA, has grown increasingly tumultuous.

A spokesperson for Hollywood Park said they could appeal the order but haven’t yet done so.

“We respectfully disagree with the Court’s ruling,” they said by email. “Hollywood Park has fulfilled every one of its commitments under an agreement that the City unanimously adopted, described as ‘the best [stadium deal] ever’, and benefited from for more than a decade. We remain hopeful that the City and its leadership will reverse course from their unilateral decision to abandon their commitments under the agreement and will honor their part of the deal.”

An attorney representing Inglewood described it as an important win for the city.

“This decision has huge repercussions for the 300-acre SoFi Stadium/Hollywood Park development,” Skip Miller, lead counsel for the city of Inglewood, said in a press release. “It means that without a valid development agreement, Hollywood Park/SoFi Stadium no longer has vested rights and that the City has no further obligations under the 2015 Development Agreement.”

Butts told The LA Local he wants to negotiate a path forward with the stadium developer but didn’t say if those talks have been scheduled.

“I look forward to talking with them and seeing what we can do to move forward as partners,” he said.

The backstory 

The arrangement that cemented the development agreement in 2015 was: Kroenke’s companies would pay up front for the infrastructure needed to build Hollywood Park, and Inglewood would reimburse them later.

The deal landed Kroenke a new home for the Rams and the opportunity for more real estate development on the site in the future. And it helped the city move forward with reworking the site of the former Hollywood Park Racetrack into one of the nation’s premier stadium complexes.

The reimbursements were designed to be delayed until the city could afford them: When the city earned $25 million in tax revenue from the development in a given year, it would pay down the debt.

Kroenke’s companies say Inglewood owes them about $400 million for those improvements and other investments they made. They claim that the city began surpassing the $25 million revenue threshold in 2022 and each year since.

Butts first told Hollywood Park that he believed the development agreement was void in letters he wrote to Kroenke and his employees last year. He was frustrated that the stadium businesses were fighting the city’s plan to work with an LA advertising agency to install dozens of digital billboards near the stadiums.

The city’s lawyers had found that a similar development agreement had been voided in 2018 and asked that the city be paid back the $20 million in reimbursement payments it made, Butts wrote Kroenke.

The stadium companies sued soon after.

The judge’s ruling

Public projects on the scale of SoFi Stadium typically require a series of hearings, reviews and voter approval — which can take years to achieve. Instead, the stadium developer and city truncated that process by collecting more than 22,000 signatures supporting it.

The City Council voted unanimously in favor of the stadium development in February 2015, and the project broke ground not long after. Butts was a booster of the plan, the LA Times reported at the time. “Now we can celebrate,” Butts said after the winning vote to a cheering crowd in Rams jerseys.

Hollywood Park’s lawyers said in interviews and court filings that the city never questioned the validity of the subsequent contract until last year.

“Its announcement that the Development Agreement is void comes only after the Project was painstakingly built in reliance upon the [agreement], and after the City has reaped enormous benefits from the economic boon created by the project,” Hollywood Park’s lawyers wrote.

State law requires legitimate development agreements to meet various standards. They need to be negotiated between the involved parties, for example, and subject to voter referendum. But the initiative process the city and the developer pursued did not meet those standards. California courts had already found similar agreements “wholly void” dating back to the 1990s, Reinert wrote in the Sept. 1 ruling.

“Therefore, here too, the Development Agreement must be set aside,” he wrote.

Butts said the city was not aware of the legal issues the development agreement could face back in 2015, but he declined to talk more about it because the case could be appealed.

“This is the ruling right now, and we agree with it,” Butts said on Friday.

What happens next

Lawyers for both Hollywood Park and the city released statements saying they remained committed to the success of the stadium development. But how they will arrive at or proceed with a new framework remains unclear.

Hollywood Park said it is exploring its legal options and could appeal the decision. If the ruling stands, the city and Hollywood Park will have to determine what, if anything, replaces the agreement that governed their financial relationship for more than a decade.

The timing adds urgency. SoFi Stadium is set to host the 2027 Super Bowl and the Opening Ceremony of the 2028 Olympics.

Meanwhile, the disagreement over the city’s and stadiums’ digital billboard programs continues. The competing billboard networks have sparked an advertising turf war that has jumped from the courts into the Nov. 3 election.

Ballmer Group is a funder of The LA Local, but their support doesn’t influence our coverage. To learn more about our funders and commitment to editorial independence, click here.  

Los Angeles County has exotic wild animals roaming about, such as wild parrots and peacocks. But what about camels?

No, we’re not talking about that ancient camel found in the La Brea Tar Pits — these animals were brought over for a U.S. Army experiment.

How camels got into our military

We’re going back to the mid-1800s, before gas-powered automobiles changed the way we travel. The U.S. was on the brink of civil war and in the middle of westward expansion.

Typically, the army relied on mules and horses as beasts of burden, but in the new states and territories, they had a hard time hauling supplies over long distances. That was especially true for the Southwest’s dry deserts and mountains.

Meanwhile, camel brigades (also known as Camel Corps) were already in use in armies around the world. These were made up of camel drivers who ferried supplies, transported troops and conducted military cavalry operations.

Great Britain and India used the animals in the 19th century, according to London’s National Army Museum. The Imperial Camel Corps was also established during World War I, with British, Australian and New Zealand forces in the Middle East.

The Camel Corps caught on in America around the 1850s, according to the Army Historical Foundation. The idea bubbled up to Maj. Henry C. Wayne — a camel fan himself — who recommended their use to a skeptical War Department and Congress.

After some years of political finagling, they gave the experiment $30,000 in funding in 1855 (about $1 million today). The money was used to buy 74 camels from the Mediterranean and put them into military service.

The Los Angeles arrival

They were brought over on the Navy store ship USS Supply and went to Texas first, to Camp Verde. As the camels got used to their new home, the time came for one of their first test missions. The federal government planned to build a wagon road to connect the eastern U.S. to the California/Arizona border.

The Secretary of War at the time required the land surveyor to take 25 of the camels on the expedition in 1857, according to the foundation. These “ships of the desert” ended up thriving where horses and mules couldn’t.

The camels could carry a 700-pound load with ease, traveling up to 40 miles a day. They ate off the land and could go over a week without water. After the camels completed the job, the army sent them to L.A. in 1860.

This was for another test to see if camels could be used for mail delivery. They were essentially racing against mules to see who could get from Camp Fitzgerald (a short-lived Civil War camp in L.A. County) to the Colorado River fastest. What the army didn’t realize was that speed wasn’t the camels’ strong suit — several died from exhaustion.

A historic marker on the L.A. Times' old building in downtown Los Angeles on September 30, 1967. The plaque mentions that the area was used as a "corral for camels from Fort Tejon", which is one of the places the animals were sent to in California.

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Mildred L. Harris

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Los Angeles Public Library/L. Mildred Harris Slide Collection/Los Angeles Photographers Collection

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As the Civil War continued, the camels’ future became uncertain. The army was tired of the experiment and the money it cost. The camels were never officially designated as the U.S.’s “Camel Corps” and thus given no real purpose. In California, they essentially floated around L.A.-area outposts, such as the Los Angeles Quartermaster Depot in downtown, Culver City’s Camp Latham and the Drum Barracks in Wilmington.

The U.S. Army eventually sold the camels in California for about $50 each ($1,000 today) in 1864, according to the foundation. These noble animals, roped into what many called a failed military experiment, ended up as circus attractions and on ranches as pack animals. Some were even let loose.

The last of California’s “Camel Corps” is believed to be Topsy. After the experiment shut down, she was used in the Ringling Brothers Circus and movies.

Topsy was eventually sold off to what’s now the Old Zoo in Griffith Park, according to the Natural History Museum, which found her bones. She died there in 1934 at approximately 80 years old.

A new space celebrating the art of autistic and neurodiverse youths has opened on Abbott Kinney Boulevard in Venice, amid the trendy coffee shops and boutiques.

Called “Limitless,” the space is a project of Help Group, a nonprofit that has served people in Los Angeles with autism and mental health challenges for 85 years.

“What art does is it allows people to have a voice who can’t communicate typically. It gives you an insight into who they are as a being,” Susan Berman, CEO of Help Group, told LAist.

Berman said the prime Abbott Kinney real estate was a gift from a board member. Help Group is using the square footage for a community space and gallery to feature neurodivergent artists.

Among the artists included is Noah Remis, 15, whose piece “I <3 NY” incorporates watercolor over the titles of famous musicals like Hamilton and Sweeney Todd.

“Those are different musicals that I know and love,” Remis said.

“Some I saw on Broadway. Just so you know, I also put Cats on there just to anger my dad,” he joked. He said his dream is to act on Broadway.

Noah’s dad, Rich Remis, might not be a fan of Cats, but he is a fan of seeing his son’s love of theater expressed in his painting.

“To hang it up in a gallery with everyone else’s work, it just really adds a special weight to it that I think is certainly not lost on Noah,” he said.

Noah, in response, added: “Don’t get emotional.”

Noah said he hopes other kids will be inspired by his work and maybe even take it home.

Berman, who’s been with Help Group for more than four decades, said she has big plans for the space, which opened last week.

“Our plan is for the community to see the gifts that our neurodiverse artists have, not only in their art but as human beings,” Berman said.

Tanaka Day, an epic meet-and-greet of people with the Japanese surname, is happening the weekend of Sept. 19 and 20 at — wait for it — Tanaka Farms in Irvine.

"I'm the idea guy around here," said proprietor Glenn Tanaka — aka Farmer Tanaka — who dreamed up the inaugural event. "Some of them [were] pretty good, some turned out OK."

For this one, 400 people from across the country RSVP’d, bonded by a Japanese surname that is one of the most common in the U.S. — and one that speaks to the history of Japanese immigration that first brought laborers here starting in the late 1800s.

Glenn Tanaka runs the family Tanaka Farms in Irvine.

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Courtesy Tanaka Farms

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One of them was Glenn's grandfather, Takeo Tanaka, who put down farming roots in California that span four generations and counting — Glenn's father George Tanaka, Glenn himself, and Glenn's son Kenny, whose three children are a regular presence at the farm.

"Tanaka literally means middle of the rice field," he said — farmers, essentially. And because many early immigrants were from farming villages, he added, "a lot of Tanakas came over."

The 69-year-old figured, why not bring as many of them together as possible — to hang out, tell family stories and help fill in the tapestry of the Japanese American immigration experience united by the surname.

One example is how the incarceration of Japanese Americans in camps during World War II had touched those who worked and owned farms — and ended up having to sell their holdings on the cheap.

Already, stories are flooding in. Tanaka said different siblings from one Tanaka family had sent in their experiences.

One brother read them and wound up learning new things about the family.

"What's really good to know is I've helped create families that talk," Tanaka said. "Because now they're asking, 'What did, you know, great-grandmother do?'"