Why Syria's alleged use of chemical weapons is spurring US action; Fast-food workers unite in nationwide protest for higher wages; Wal-Mart to extend insurance benefits to employees' domestic partners; Ask Emily about Obamacare: What happens when you turn 26?; How technology makes it easier to get caught in a lie; Low water deliveries from Mexico hurt Texas farmers, plus much more.
Why Syria's alleged use of chemical weapons is spurring US action
The regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is accused of launching a large-scale chemical weapons attack against civilians. While the Obama administration has yet to say how the U.S. will respond to the attacks, it has indicated the strong possibility of punitive military strikes.
Today, the White House is expected to brief Congressional leaders on possible courses of action.
Intervention, should it happen, would come more than two years into a conflict that's estimated to have killed more than 100,000 Syrians. With so many deaths already, we wondered why it was the use of chemical weapons that seems to be prompting action from the international community.
Dr. Alexander Garza is the former assistant secretary for health affairs with the Department of Homeland Security. He currently teaches epidemiology at Saint Louis University and joins us to talk about chemical weapons.
Fast-food workers unite in nationwide protest for higher wages
This morning, fast food workers across the country have been staging protests, calling for an increase in wages. These demonstrations began in New York last fall. Today marks the first time such an event is being held in southern California.
RELATED: Some Los Angeles-area fast-food workers join nationwide strike for higher pay
KPCC's Corey Moore is at one of the protest sites at a Burger King.
Ask Emily On Take Two: What happens when you turn 26 under Obamacare?
Now it's time for our regular explainer "Ask Emily," about the Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare. Chances are, many of you may have questions about how exactly the new law will affect you.
Joining the show is Emily Bazar, senior writer for the California Healthcare Foundation Center for Health Reporting. She explains what happens to young adults when they turn 26 outside of their employers' open-enrollment period. In this case, Bazar says you'd be eligible for a "qualifying event" provision. But you have to make sure you apply for it in a timely manner,
Wal-Mart to extend insurance benefits to employees' domestic partners
This week, Wal-Mart announced big changes to its health insurance policies. The mega retailer will offer benefits to its employees' domestic partners, including those of the same sex.
Beginning next year, these benefits will be available in all 50 states, regardless of whether same-sex marriage is legal in that state. With 1.3 million employees, Wal-Mart is the nation's largest private employer, but it's not the first to make such a move.
For more on this we're joined now by Linda Barkacs, professor of business law at the University of San Diego
Low water deliveries from Mexico hurt Texas farmers
The Rio Grande River is the lifeblood of south Texas. A 70-year-old treaty between the U.S. and Mexico is supposed to keep the river's water flowing, but Mexico has fallen behind on its end of the deal.
That's heightened tensions between the two countries and jeopardized the future of agriculture in the Rio Grande Valley. From our Fronteras Desk, Mónica Ortiz Uribe reports.
How technology makes it easier to get caught in a lie
When's the last time you told a lie?
Was it in a text message — "on my way!" — or was it a little fudging on your LinkedIn profile. Or maybe it was your last Facebook post. If you can't remember, you might be shocked to learn the answer because it's probably more recent than you think, thanks to technology.
Megan Garber is a writer for the Atlantic and she's been looking into this issue.
California communities take part in push to get kids reading
A lot of 9-year-olds struggle with reading, even with books that are aimed at their age group. But across California, nearly 20 communities are taking part in a national campaign to enchant children with the magic of reading. For the California Report, Lillian Mongeau has the story
California TRUST Act moving toward passage
After Arizona enacted SB 1070, a controversial bill that empowered local police to enforce federal immigration law, several states followed Arizona's lead. But California is trying to go in the opposite direction. The proposed bill has been dubbed by some as the 'anti-Arizona' bill. From San Diego County, Adrian Florido of the Fronteras Desk has the story.
One afternoon in late June, about a hundred people, mostly young Latinos, marched to Escondido Police Department headquarters. They were kicking off a caravan to Sacramento.
"We're pushing for the governor to sign the TRUST Act this year, because it's important," Viviana Gonzalez, an activist and undocumented immigrant, told the crowd. "Communities like Escondido have seen the brunt of what it means to not have something that protects immigrant families."
In Escondido, collaboration between the city's police and federal immigration activists has caused tension in the city's Latino communities for years. Agents have been present at the police department's driver's license and sobriety checkpoints, and in the city's jails.
Activists say this kind collaboration diminishes public safety because immigrants are less likely to trust police or report crime if they fear that interacting with police could get them deported.
Assembly Bill 4, better known as the TRUST Act, is a bill now working its way through the state Legislature that would limit one element of collaboration between federal immigration agents and local law enforcement.
But before explaining how it would work, it helps to know how federal immigration agents get involved after a potentially deportable person is arrested.
At San Diego County's central jail, as in most jails in the state, fingerprints taken during a person's booking process are sent to the FBI, to be run against criminal databases. But since 2009, that information has been sent one other place.
Under the Department of Homeland Security's Secure Communities program, launched in 2008, the FBI now sends information it receives about an arrested individual to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency.
If ICE believes someone in custody at a local jail may be deportable, it sends what's known as an immigration detainer to that jail, a request asking that the person be held for up to two additional days, until an immigration agent arrives to interview and potentially take that person into federal custody. The program has helped the Obama administration deport nearly 2 million immigrants -- a record.
But if passed, the California TRUST Act would prohibit jails from honoring ICE's request for that two-day hold. Local jails would instead be required to release someone in custody as soon as they've posted bail or become otherwise eligible for release, unless that person has been convicted of certain violent or sex crimes.
Advocates for the bill think this would correct what they believe is a major problem with Secure Communities program.
"The original intent of this program was to focus on people who have serious convictions," said Jon Rodney, of the California Immigrant Policy Center, which has been vocal in its support for the TRUST Act. "But when we look at these hundred thousand Californians who have been deported, we see that about 7 out of 10 did not have what immigration authorities consider to be the most serious offenses."
ICE officials refused to comment for this story, except in a statement saying that their priority is to deport people who pose threats to public safety.
San Diego's police chief, and others across the state, have supported the TRUST Act.
But San Diego Sheriff Bill Gore has not taken a public stance. The state sheriff's association, however, is opposing the bill.
"You get a request from a federal law enforcement agency, and to say that you should basically willfully disobey, or not cooperate, or thwart that request from law enforcement puts local law enforcement in a difficult situation," said Aaron Maguire, the association's lobbyist.
The sheriff's association also wants the TRUST Act's sponsors to amend it so that, in addition to people convicted of violent or sex crimes, people arrested on suspicion of those crimes could also be held on ICE's behalf, as could anyone with a past deportation order issued against them.
The bill as currently written would not allow local law enforcement to honor an ICE detainer for the mere fact of a previous deportation order, because many past deportations were the result of minor infractions.
Felipe Porcayo's 23-year-old son was arrested last year, after a fight broke out at San Diego's Memorial Park.
"The police investigated everything, and they decided that he wasn't involved," Porcayo said one recent evening, standing in the park. "They didn't charge him with anything. But he was deported anyway."
If the TRUST Act passes, those kinds of deportations may be less likely.
In fact, the bill passed the state Legislature last year. But Governor Jerry Brown vetoed it because while it still allowed people with certain serious convictions to be turned over to ICE, some violent crimes were left out.
This year, the bill's sponsor, Assemblyman Tom Ammiano of San Francisco, has worked with the governor to amend the bill in an effort to ensure the governor's signature. In May, the revised bill passed the Assembly. It now awaits a vote in the Senate before could reach the governor's desk for a second time.
State Of Affairs: Prison realignment, Garcetti appointment, murals and more
Its time for State of Affairs, our look at politics throughout California with KPCC's political reporters Alice Walton and Frank Stoltze.
This week, Governor Jerry Brown announced a plan to spend $315 million this year to move prison inmates to private jails and other housing facilities. This came about because the federal courts have ruled it's unconstitutional to have such overcrowded state prisons. But this spending plan has divided the state's Democratic leaders.
From one politician to the next, this word this week that President Obama will be back in town for a very expensive sitdown with some fundraisers.
Mayor Eric Garcetti made another personnel announcement this week. He's appointed a new chief to the Office of Immigrant Affairs. This is an office that first opened under Mayor Jim Hahn, but was inactive during Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's tenure. What does the Office of Immigrant Affairs do?
On Wednesday, the Los Angeles City Council had a lengthy discussion on murals. For more than a decade, there has been a moratorium on the public art displays but that ban seems to have been overturned. How can L.A. turn something like murals into a controversy?
LA drivers second most accident-prone in US, says Allstate
Drivers in Fort Collins, Colorado should be feeling pretty good about themselves. The insurance giant Allstate says they're the best in the nation, at least in terms of avoiding collisions.
L.A. drivers aren't the worst when it comes to collisions, but we're pretty close:
So what makes car-obsessed Angelenos so accident prone?
"Certainly density of population, the number of cars, are multiple factors that can certainly have an affect on how often we get into a collision," said Allstate communications specialist Jim Klapthor.
One thing to keep in mind with this list is that Allstate came up with the rankings based on Allstate policy holder claims data. Therefore, it might not reflect the numbers that the police department may have.
"If you back up into a telephone pole because you're trying to park the car at a neighbor's house in a back alley that you've never been to before, the police don't file a report," said Klapthor. "But if you need a new bumper, you might contact your insurance company. That would show up in Allstate's 'America's Best Drivers Report.'"
See Allstate's full list:
Allstate America's Best Drivers Report®
Whereabouts of freed Mexican drug lord Rafael Caro Quintero unknown
We have an update now on a story we brought you a few weeks back about a notorious Mexican drug lord who was convicted of torturing and killing a DEA agent back in the 80s.
Earlier this month, Rafael Caro Quintero was released early from prison on a legal technicality. It was seen as a slap in the face to the U.S., and officials here vowed to pursue charges against him stateside. But Caro Quintero has disappeared.
Mexican authorities lost track of his whereabouts after his August 9th release. Tracy Wilkinson is the Mexico City bureau chief for the Los Angeles Times and has been following the story. She joins the show to fill us in on the details.
POM Wonderful on defense in one court case, on offense in another
POM Wonderful, makers of a variety of pomegranate juice products, is locked in a legal battle with the Federal Trade Commission over its ads. The case involving the California-based company could set an important precedent in false advertising litigation.
Reporter Michael Doyle has been following this story for McClatchy and joins us now.
Dinner Party Download: Spray-on caffeine, teen driving, Cold War hotline
Every week we get your weekend conversation starters with Rico Gagliano and Brendan Newnam, the hosts of the Dinner Party Download podcast and radio show.
On Tap This Week:
The future of caffeine intake: spray-on. Really.
Favorite music makes teens drive badly
History! It’s the anniversary of the Cold War hotline.
Surfers, drug smuggling and running from the law in 'Coronado High'
The sleepy beach town of Coronado in San Diego County is the last place you might imagine to be the birthplace of an international drug ring, but that's exactly what it turned into during the summer of 1969.
Dubbed the Coronado Company, a drug ring made up of pot-smoking surfers and former high school Spanish teacher, Lou Villar, as the mastermind smuggled bundles of marijuana over the border in Tijuana. Within 10 years, the operation became a $100 million empire, making it the largest pot smuggling ring on the West Coast.
Writer Joshuah Bearman, best known for his Wired article "The Great Escape," which was the inspiration for the Oscar-Winning movie "Argo," recently published a piece about the Coronado Company for The Atavist called "Coronado High."
For "Coronado High," Bearman interviewed Villar and a number of other people involved, including DEA agent who finally unraveled the network. Hollywood has already come knocking for the story, and George Clooney set to work on adapting it into a feature film.
Bearman joined Take Two to talk about how he came upon the story of "Coronado High," who the main players are and why they're actually lucky that they finally got caught.
Interview Highlights:
On how the Coronado Company came to be:
"Originally there was this guy named Lance Weber, whose nickname was "The Wizard." Everybody had nicknames back then. Apparently in the '70s nicknames were the rage, we don't have them anymore. I feel jealous like we do need nicknames. Lance had washed out of the Navy but was kind of a grease monkey.
"He was the first guy to build a lowrider bicycle and he'd cruise around the beach all stoned with his hair blowing in the wind smoking a joint. He went down to Mexico and sort of wound up at the Long Bar in TJ which was "The Joint." He got ahold of a block, brought that over, converted it to money and then started scaling up just with his friends. He lived in this big Victorian house called the yellow house...they would work on VW bugs in the alley and then go to the beach at night and see the light of Tijuana twinkling across the water and it was beckoning to them."
On who Lou Vallar was and how he became the company's ring leader:
"Lou had been the Spanish teacher at the high school, and also he had coached the basketball team for a year and the swim team for a year. He was sort of a beloved teacher he started teaching when he was 25 or something. He was a young, charming, handsome guy, he was Cuban by birth grown up in New York.
"By the time that Lance started doing the drug smuggling operation Lou had dropped out like everybody else and was hanging the beach, smoking joints and roasting pigs in luaus, reading carols castaneda and then lance saw him and said 'uh hey man you speak Spanish right?' and Lou said 'yeah" and he said 'Well lets go down to Mexico and make these deals'."
"The reason why Lou wound up the ring leader is because he just had this instinctive charism and charm and it's important to say that the Coronado Company never dealt with guns or had any violence this is sort of before all that. Lance always called Lou "golden tongue" because he could talk his way through anything."
On how it was lucky that the Coronado Company fell apart:
"James Conklin, who's the DEA agent who tracked them down, for years said that essentially they were lucky to have gotten busted at this time. They got busted in the early '80s, which is when real organized crimes was coming into pot smuggling. I kind of imagine it sort of like the "Boogie Nights" of the pot trade because this was a time when the pot trade was innocent really and they were all innocent."
On why it's such a great story:
"Besides just being a true crime story and this crazy smuggling tale, it's like a coming of age story, because it starts with the exuberance of youth and the '60s and the '70s and all bets are off and we're throwing over the establishment and who needs rules and the sexual revolution. Eventually they'd run aground on the realities of adulthood where there are consequences and people disappoint one another and those consequences turn out to be really hard."
Why Syria's alleged use of chemical weapons is spurring US action
The regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is accused of launching a large-scale chemical weapons attack against civilians. While the Obama administration has yet to say how the U.S. will respond to the attacks, it has indicated the strong possibility of punitive military strikes.
Today, the White House is expected to brief Congressional leaders on possible courses of action.
Intervention, should it happen, would come more than two years into a conflict that's estimated to have killed more than 100,000 Syrians. With so many deaths already, we wondered why it was the use of chemical weapons that seems to be prompting action from the international community.
Dr. Alexander Garza is the former assistant secretary for health affairs with the Department of Homeland Security. He currently teaches epidemiology at Saint Louis University and joins us to talk about chemical weapons.
Fast-food workers unite in nationwide protest for higher wages
This morning, fast food workers across the country have been staging protests, calling for an increase in wages. These demonstrations began in New York last fall. Today marks the first time such an event is being held in southern California.
RELATED: Some Los Angeles-area fast-food workers join nationwide strike for higher pay
KPCC's Corey Moore is at one of the protest sites at a Burger King.
Ask Emily On Take Two: What happens when you turn 26 under Obamacare?
Now it's time for our regular explainer "Ask Emily," about the Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare. Chances are, many of you may have questions about how exactly the new law will affect you.
Joining the show is Emily Bazar, senior writer for the California Healthcare Foundation Center for Health Reporting. She explains what happens to young adults when they turn 26 outside of their employers' open-enrollment period. In this case, Bazar says you'd be eligible for a "qualifying event" provision. But you have to make sure you apply for it in a timely manner,
Wal-Mart to extend insurance benefits to employees' domestic partners
This week, Wal-Mart announced big changes to its health insurance policies. The mega retailer will offer benefits to its employees' domestic partners, including those of the same sex.
Beginning next year, these benefits will be available in all 50 states, regardless of whether same-sex marriage is legal in that state. With 1.3 million employees, Wal-Mart is the nation's largest private employer, but it's not the first to make such a move.
For more on this we're joined now by Linda Barkacs, professor of business law at the University of San Diego
Low water deliveries from Mexico hurt Texas farmers
The Rio Grande River is the lifeblood of south Texas. A 70-year-old treaty between the U.S. and Mexico is supposed to keep the river's water flowing, but Mexico has fallen behind on its end of the deal.
That's heightened tensions between the two countries and jeopardized the future of agriculture in the Rio Grande Valley. From our Fronteras Desk, Mónica Ortiz Uribe reports.
How technology makes it easier to get caught in a lie
When's the last time you told a lie?
Was it in a text message — "on my way!" — or was it a little fudging on your LinkedIn profile. Or maybe it was your last Facebook post. If you can't remember, you might be shocked to learn the answer because it's probably more recent than you think, thanks to technology.
Megan Garber is a writer for the Atlantic and she's been looking into this issue.
California communities take part in push to get kids reading
A lot of 9-year-olds struggle with reading, even with books that are aimed at their age group. But across California, nearly 20 communities are taking part in a national campaign to enchant children with the magic of reading. For the California Report, Lillian Mongeau has the story
California TRUST Act moving toward passage
After Arizona enacted SB 1070, a controversial bill that empowered local police to enforce federal immigration law, several states followed Arizona's lead. But California is trying to go in the opposite direction. The proposed bill has been dubbed by some as the 'anti-Arizona' bill. From San Diego County, Adrian Florido of the Fronteras Desk has the story.
One afternoon in late June, about a hundred people, mostly young Latinos, marched to Escondido Police Department headquarters. They were kicking off a caravan to Sacramento.
"We're pushing for the governor to sign the TRUST Act this year, because it's important," Viviana Gonzalez, an activist and undocumented immigrant, told the crowd. "Communities like Escondido have seen the brunt of what it means to not have something that protects immigrant families."
In Escondido, collaboration between the city's police and federal immigration activists has caused tension in the city's Latino communities for years. Agents have been present at the police department's driver's license and sobriety checkpoints, and in the city's jails.
Activists say this kind collaboration diminishes public safety because immigrants are less likely to trust police or report crime if they fear that interacting with police could get them deported.
Assembly Bill 4, better known as the TRUST Act, is a bill now working its way through the state Legislature that would limit one element of collaboration between federal immigration agents and local law enforcement.
But before explaining how it would work, it helps to know how federal immigration agents get involved after a potentially deportable person is arrested.
At San Diego County's central jail, as in most jails in the state, fingerprints taken during a person's booking process are sent to the FBI, to be run against criminal databases. But since 2009, that information has been sent one other place.
Under the Department of Homeland Security's Secure Communities program, launched in 2008, the FBI now sends information it receives about an arrested individual to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency.
If ICE believes someone in custody at a local jail may be deportable, it sends what's known as an immigration detainer to that jail, a request asking that the person be held for up to two additional days, until an immigration agent arrives to interview and potentially take that person into federal custody. The program has helped the Obama administration deport nearly 2 million immigrants -- a record.
But if passed, the California TRUST Act would prohibit jails from honoring ICE's request for that two-day hold. Local jails would instead be required to release someone in custody as soon as they've posted bail or become otherwise eligible for release, unless that person has been convicted of certain violent or sex crimes.
Advocates for the bill think this would correct what they believe is a major problem with Secure Communities program.
"The original intent of this program was to focus on people who have serious convictions," said Jon Rodney, of the California Immigrant Policy Center, which has been vocal in its support for the TRUST Act. "But when we look at these hundred thousand Californians who have been deported, we see that about 7 out of 10 did not have what immigration authorities consider to be the most serious offenses."
ICE officials refused to comment for this story, except in a statement saying that their priority is to deport people who pose threats to public safety.
San Diego's police chief, and others across the state, have supported the TRUST Act.
But San Diego Sheriff Bill Gore has not taken a public stance. The state sheriff's association, however, is opposing the bill.
"You get a request from a federal law enforcement agency, and to say that you should basically willfully disobey, or not cooperate, or thwart that request from law enforcement puts local law enforcement in a difficult situation," said Aaron Maguire, the association's lobbyist.
The sheriff's association also wants the TRUST Act's sponsors to amend it so that, in addition to people convicted of violent or sex crimes, people arrested on suspicion of those crimes could also be held on ICE's behalf, as could anyone with a past deportation order issued against them.
The bill as currently written would not allow local law enforcement to honor an ICE detainer for the mere fact of a previous deportation order, because many past deportations were the result of minor infractions.
Felipe Porcayo's 23-year-old son was arrested last year, after a fight broke out at San Diego's Memorial Park.
"The police investigated everything, and they decided that he wasn't involved," Porcayo said one recent evening, standing in the park. "They didn't charge him with anything. But he was deported anyway."
If the TRUST Act passes, those kinds of deportations may be less likely.
In fact, the bill passed the state Legislature last year. But Governor Jerry Brown vetoed it because while it still allowed people with certain serious convictions to be turned over to ICE, some violent crimes were left out.
This year, the bill's sponsor, Assemblyman Tom Ammiano of San Francisco, has worked with the governor to amend the bill in an effort to ensure the governor's signature. In May, the revised bill passed the Assembly. It now awaits a vote in the Senate before could reach the governor's desk for a second time.
State Of Affairs: Prison realignment, Garcetti appointment, murals and more
Its time for State of Affairs, our look at politics throughout California with KPCC's political reporters Alice Walton and Frank Stoltze.
This week, Governor Jerry Brown announced a plan to spend $315 million this year to move prison inmates to private jails and other housing facilities. This came about because the federal courts have ruled it's unconstitutional to have such overcrowded state prisons. But this spending plan has divided the state's Democratic leaders.
From one politician to the next, this word this week that President Obama will be back in town for a very expensive sitdown with some fundraisers.
Mayor Eric Garcetti made another personnel announcement this week. He's appointed a new chief to the Office of Immigrant Affairs. This is an office that first opened under Mayor Jim Hahn, but was inactive during Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's tenure. What does the Office of Immigrant Affairs do?
On Wednesday, the Los Angeles City Council had a lengthy discussion on murals. For more than a decade, there has been a moratorium on the public art displays but that ban seems to have been overturned. How can L.A. turn something like murals into a controversy?
LA drivers second most accident-prone in US, says Allstate
Drivers in Fort Collins, Colorado should be feeling pretty good about themselves. The insurance giant Allstate says they're the best in the nation, at least in terms of avoiding collisions.
L.A. drivers aren't the worst when it comes to collisions, but we're pretty close:
So what makes car-obsessed Angelenos so accident prone?
"Certainly density of population, the number of cars, are multiple factors that can certainly have an affect on how often we get into a collision," said Allstate communications specialist Jim Klapthor.
One thing to keep in mind with this list is that Allstate came up with the rankings based on Allstate policy holder claims data. Therefore, it might not reflect the numbers that the police department may have.
"If you back up into a telephone pole because you're trying to park the car at a neighbor's house in a back alley that you've never been to before, the police don't file a report," said Klapthor. "But if you need a new bumper, you might contact your insurance company. That would show up in Allstate's 'America's Best Drivers Report.'"
See Allstate's full list:
Allstate America's Best Drivers Report®
Whereabouts of freed Mexican drug lord Rafael Caro Quintero unknown
We have an update now on a story we brought you a few weeks back about a notorious Mexican drug lord who was convicted of torturing and killing a DEA agent back in the 80s.
Earlier this month, Rafael Caro Quintero was released early from prison on a legal technicality. It was seen as a slap in the face to the U.S., and officials here vowed to pursue charges against him stateside. But Caro Quintero has disappeared.
Mexican authorities lost track of his whereabouts after his August 9th release. Tracy Wilkinson is the Mexico City bureau chief for the Los Angeles Times and has been following the story. She joins the show to fill us in on the details.
POM Wonderful on defense in one court case, on offense in another
POM Wonderful, makers of a variety of pomegranate juice products, is locked in a legal battle with the Federal Trade Commission over its ads. The case involving the California-based company could set an important precedent in false advertising litigation.
Reporter Michael Doyle has been following this story for McClatchy and joins us now.
Dinner Party Download: Spray-on caffeine, teen driving, Cold War hotline
Every week we get your weekend conversation starters with Rico Gagliano and Brendan Newnam, the hosts of the Dinner Party Download podcast and radio show.
On Tap This Week:
The future of caffeine intake: spray-on. Really.
Favorite music makes teens drive badly
History! It’s the anniversary of the Cold War hotline.
Surfers, drug smuggling and running from the law in 'Coronado High'
The sleepy beach town of Coronado in San Diego County is the last place you might imagine to be the birthplace of an international drug ring, but that's exactly what it turned into during the summer of 1969.
Dubbed the Coronado Company, a drug ring made up of pot-smoking surfers and former high school Spanish teacher, Lou Villar, as the mastermind smuggled bundles of marijuana over the border in Tijuana. Within 10 years, the operation became a $100 million empire, making it the largest pot smuggling ring on the West Coast.
Writer Joshuah Bearman, best known for his Wired article "The Great Escape," which was the inspiration for the Oscar-Winning movie "Argo," recently published a piece about the Coronado Company for The Atavist called "Coronado High."
For "Coronado High," Bearman interviewed Villar and a number of other people involved, including DEA agent who finally unraveled the network. Hollywood has already come knocking for the story, and George Clooney set to work on adapting it into a feature film.
Bearman joined Take Two to talk about how he came upon the story of "Coronado High," who the main players are and why they're actually lucky that they finally got caught.
Interview Highlights:
On how the Coronado Company came to be:
"Originally there was this guy named Lance Weber, whose nickname was "The Wizard." Everybody had nicknames back then. Apparently in the '70s nicknames were the rage, we don't have them anymore. I feel jealous like we do need nicknames. Lance had washed out of the Navy but was kind of a grease monkey.
"He was the first guy to build a lowrider bicycle and he'd cruise around the beach all stoned with his hair blowing in the wind smoking a joint. He went down to Mexico and sort of wound up at the Long Bar in TJ which was "The Joint." He got ahold of a block, brought that over, converted it to money and then started scaling up just with his friends. He lived in this big Victorian house called the yellow house...they would work on VW bugs in the alley and then go to the beach at night and see the light of Tijuana twinkling across the water and it was beckoning to them."
On who Lou Vallar was and how he became the company's ring leader:
"Lou had been the Spanish teacher at the high school, and also he had coached the basketball team for a year and the swim team for a year. He was sort of a beloved teacher he started teaching when he was 25 or something. He was a young, charming, handsome guy, he was Cuban by birth grown up in New York.
"By the time that Lance started doing the drug smuggling operation Lou had dropped out like everybody else and was hanging the beach, smoking joints and roasting pigs in luaus, reading carols castaneda and then lance saw him and said 'uh hey man you speak Spanish right?' and Lou said 'yeah" and he said 'Well lets go down to Mexico and make these deals'."
"The reason why Lou wound up the ring leader is because he just had this instinctive charism and charm and it's important to say that the Coronado Company never dealt with guns or had any violence this is sort of before all that. Lance always called Lou "golden tongue" because he could talk his way through anything."
On how it was lucky that the Coronado Company fell apart:
"James Conklin, who's the DEA agent who tracked them down, for years said that essentially they were lucky to have gotten busted at this time. They got busted in the early '80s, which is when real organized crimes was coming into pot smuggling. I kind of imagine it sort of like the "Boogie Nights" of the pot trade because this was a time when the pot trade was innocent really and they were all innocent."
On why it's such a great story:
"Besides just being a true crime story and this crazy smuggling tale, it's like a coming of age story, because it starts with the exuberance of youth and the '60s and the '70s and all bets are off and we're throwing over the establishment and who needs rules and the sexual revolution. Eventually they'd run aground on the realities of adulthood where there are consequences and people disappoint one another and those consequences turn out to be really hard."