The Anaheim Union High School District Board of Trustees approved the consolidation plan in 2023, citing declining enrollment and long-term financial challenges. The district has lost about 5,500 students since the 2014-15 school year and, according to district staff, expects to lose another 3,900 by 2026-27. District officials have also said average daily attendance — which determines how much funding schools receive — has dropped, while costs tied to pensions, special education and other staffing issues continue to grow.

Orangeview most recently enrolled about 650 students, while Western High had 1,660, according to the latest figures from the California Department of Education.

Anaheim Union isn’t the only district making changes. As enrollment continues to drop across Orange County, other districts are also closing or considering the consolidation of schools. Last year, the Ocean View School District shut down Spring View Middle School and move its students to other campuses, and Orange Unified has also started exploring possible consolidations in response to declining enrollment.

“K-12 enrollment in Orange County has declined steadily over the past decade, with the most recent three-year drop totaling more than 22,000 students in traditional public schools — a trend largely driven by the high cost of living and declining birth rates,” Orange County Department of Education spokesman Ian Hanigan said in a statement.

District staff and educators in Anaheim Union said the school will adopt a more personalized, community-centered education model.

“We are at the forefront of rethinking what schools should be, and can be,” Bindi Crawford, co-principal of the new Orangeview-Western school, said during an update to the Board of Trustees meeting this week ahead of the start of school on Aug. 6.

District staff said the redesign introduces new academic structures aimed at boosting both learning outcomes and student well-being. That includes an eight-period block schedule on Mondays, three days of an advisory period each week, and twice-weekly late starts on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

“On Mondays there will be a single block anchor day in which students will be able to go to all of their eight classes and check in with their teachers. On the other days, they will have a four-block period,” said Sean Fleshman, a longtime history teacher at Orangeview.

“The team felt very strong that it would be important to start off the week where each teacher saw each of their students at least once,” Crawford added. “These are shorter periods, but each student will go through every single one of their periods, including advisory, to kick off the week. Each period will be approximately 35 to 40 minutes.”

The idea behind advisory, according to Yamila Castro, a Spanish teacher at Western, is to build smaller learning communities and ensure each student has consistent contact with a trusted group of teachers. At the new school, students will meet in small, consistent advisory groups multiple times a week to build relationships and receive academic and emotional support.

“It ensures every student is known by name, assets and needs,” Castro said.

Another key component of the new school program, modeled after Hillsdale High in San Mateo, is what teachers call “Kid Talk.”

“When we visited Hillsdale, one of the practices that we learned at Hillsdale is this opportunity for students, support staff, administrators, counselors to do a preliminary intervention discussion about student needs and strengths,” Castro said. “So teachers come together twice a month and discuss students that they have questions about, that they would like to learn more about, maybe they’re having an attendance issue.”

“So this is a discussion with all of the teachers and support staff before it gets to the next level of intervention,” she said. “This way, every teacher has the opportunity to discuss students in a structured way.”

On Tuesdays, staff will use the late start time for Kid Talk and advisory planning, Castro said. Thursdays will be used for staff meetings, department check-ins or committee work.

Students will also be able to start career technical education (CTE) classes as early as eighth grade.

District officials said they expect the new model to yield stronger academic, behavioral and emotional outcomes.

“We’re going to likely be doing this with other schools as we move forward,” Superintendent Michael Matsuda said. “We learn together.”

Crawford said the team is focused now on getting to opening day, but also the work won’t stop there.

“This is just Year 1. And what we told our community is that Year 1 should not look like Year 2. This is a cycle of continuous progress and improvement,” she said.

Board President Brian O’Neal agreed.

“I’m really looking forward to seeing what happens when the school opens and then how it is at the end of this first year,” he said.

The district is also planning another major campus move. Hope School is expected to close later this year and reopen on the former Orangeview campus in the 2026-27 school year, once that site is vacated.

“We have a committee working on thinking through the process of what will happen to that property,” Trustee Katherine Smith said.

“That was astonishing to me, because almost all of the detainees that I saw were in either orange or red,” Obernolte said Thursday, July 17. “There were hardly any blue uniforms.”

The high percentage of detainees classified as criminals at the Adelanto ICE center is an exception, however, according to the agency’s own data.

About every two weeks, ICE releases updated data on those it detains. According to data released on July 7, 69% of the 213 detainees at the High Desert center Obernolte visited on July 11 were criminals. The classification includes both convicted criminals and those with pending criminal charges.

But statewide, only 28.26% of the 3,284 people currently in detention are criminals, according to ICE.

That’s not unusual. Nationwide, there were 47,238 people being detained by ICE as of July 7. According to the agency, 13,656 of those detained — 28.9% — were categorized as criminals.

ICE did not respond to repeated requests for comment on this story.

Threat levels

President Donald Trump‘s administration has repeatedly said it’s targeting “the worst of the worst” — including terrorists, gang members and violent criminals — in the immigration sweeps that began soon after his second inauguration on Jan. 20.

But ICE is detaining more than violent criminals, according to its own data.

The agency sorts those it detains into four “threat levels.”

“Threat level is determined by the criminality of a detainee, including the recency of the criminal behavior and its severity,” the footnotes in ICE’s Detention Statistics spreadsheet explains. “A detainee can be graded on a scale of one to three with one being the highest severity. If a detainee has no criminal convictions, he/she will be classified as ‘No ICE Threat Level.’ “

As of July 7, 36.43% of the detainees at the Adelanto ICE center were categorized “Threat Level 1.”

“These numbers confirm what we’ve been seeing for years, that the overwhelming majority of people in ICE detention do not pose any threat to public safety,” Javier Hernandez, executive director of the Inland Coalition for Immigrant Justice, wrote in an email on Thursday, July 17.

“In fact, only a small fraction are classified as ‘Threat Level 1,’ and even that designation is often vague and not always based on actual convictions,” he continued.

California detainees

The Adelanto ICE center had a higher percentage of both criminals and those categorized as “Threat Level 1” among its detainees than California’s five other ICE detention centers.

As of July 7, there were 3,284 detainees in the six detention facilities combined, according to ICE. The agency characterized 28.26% of them as criminals and 10.81% as “Threat Level 1.” And 83.7% of the detainees in California were categorized as “No ICE Threat Level.”

According to the data:

• The Adelanto ICE Processing Center had 213 detainees, 69% of them classified as criminals and 36.43% characterized as “Threat Level 1.”
• The Desert View Annex in Adelanto had 412 detainees, 35.14% of them classified as criminals, 3.62% characterized as “Threat Level 1.”
• The Golden State Annex in McFarland had 582 detainees, 50.76% of them classified as criminals, 22.55% characterized as “Threat Level 1.”
• The Imperial Regional Detention Facility in Calexico had 667 detainees, 13.63% of them classified as criminals, 5.12% of them characterized as “Threat Level 1.”
• The Mesa Verde ICE Processing Center in Bakersfield had 60 detainees, 88.83% of them classified as criminals, 49.85% of them characterized as “Threat Level 1.”
• The Otay Mesa Detention Center in San Diego had 1,360 detainees, 14.57% of them classified as criminals, 4.97% of them characterized as “Threat Level 1.”

On July 2, the ACLU Foundation of Southern California, along with other local advocacy groups, sued the Department of Homeland Security — which administers ICE — accusing the federal government of unconstitutionally arresting and detaining people for the sake of meeting arrest quotas. In May, Trump aide Stephen Miller directed ICE to make 3,000 immigration arrests per day.

“The objective of this draconian crackdown is to eviscerate basic rights to due process and to shield from public view the horrifying ways ICE and Border Patrol agents treat citizens and residents who have been stigmatized by our government as violent criminals based on skin color alone,” Mark Rosenbaum, senior special counsel for strategic litigation at Public Counsel, representing the plaintiffs, said in an ACLU news release.

Meanwhile, the number of immigrants detained by ICE in California is the highest it’s been since Trump’s first term:

• In 2019, the agency detained 4,375 people in nine facilities.
• In 2020, during the coronavirus pandemic, that number fell to 966 people in seven facilities.
• In 2021, after the election of President Joe Biden, and as the pandemic continued, the number fell further to 794 in eight facilities.
• In 2022, the number of people detained by ICE in California rose to 1,530 in seven facilities.
• In 2023, ICE held 1,955 people in six California detention centers.
• And in 2024, the agency held 2,664 people in six California facilities.

Gaps in data

The data ICE releases about twice each month doesn’t include information on who is detained in each center, what specific crimes they’ve allegedly committed, if they’ve been convicted of those crimes or other details. The reports also exclude those being detained in hospitals, hotels, Office of Refugee Resettlement or Mexican Interior Repatriation Program facilities.

The lack of clarity in the data the agency releases is no accident, according to Graeme Blair, an associate professor of political science at UCLA.

“ICE in particular does not want to release this information,” he said.

The agency’s traditional lack of transparency has been a concern for Blair, and is now heightened by Trump’s return to office.

“A group of us came together in the fall, and realized that given what kind of promises and threats Donald Trump was making around immigration, it was going to be important to be able to fact-check what they’re saying,” he said.

Blair and others created the Deportation Data Project, which publishes data obtained through federal Freedom of Information Act requests from ICE.

The data the project has received, in three waves as of mid-July, has underscored that the White House rhetoric around the detentions doesn’t match what ICE’s own records are saying.

Among “the (detainees) that do have offenses, the biggest category is traffic infractions,” Blair said. “Only 8% of detainees have been convicted of violent crimes and that’s a far cry from what (the White House’s) claims are.”

“I would certainly like to work with my colleagues in Congress to fix our broken immigration system,” he said. “But we should be able to agree that the law ought to be enforced.”

Despite the United States being deeply divided politically, Blair thinks releasing accurate and more detailed information on who ICE is detaining is important — and it’s making a difference.

Joe Rogan, the most popular podcaster in America and a supporter of Trump’s reelection, called ICE rounding up migrant workers whose only crime was being in the country illegally “insane.”

“Not cartel members, not gang members, not drug dealers. Just construction workers. Showing up in construction sites, raiding them. Gardeners. Like, really?” Rogan said on his July 2 show.

“I think when you have the ACLU and Joe Rogan both saying there’s something wrong with these arrests,” Blair said, “hopefully these conversations will break through and help people understand what it means to arrest 3,000 people a day and who’s being arrested.”

More about ICE’s California detention centers

• 3 Southern California Democrats denied entry to a high desert ICE detention center Sunday
• 5 Southern California Democrats demand ICE detention center improve conditions for detainees
• California Republicans ask President Trump to focus immigration efforts on ‘violent criminals’ rather than ‘non-criminal migrants’
• What the data say about who ICE is arresting in San Diego
• Two Democrats and a Republican visited ICE Adelanto detention center. Only one got in

After all, there was a chance — if a Texas immigration judge ruled their way — that her family was about to be reunited.

After a month apart, Murillo’s husband, and the father of their children, was on the cusp of finally coming home.

Until he wasn’t.

Jose Luis Zavala, a gardener, was one of thousands of immigrants swept up last month in President Donald Trump’s massive nationwide immigration crackdown. Now detained in a Texas detention center, his journey halfway across the country is a reflection of many with a now elusive path to freedom.

It’s a path that runs through an increasingly complex federal immigration system, already unclear to many Americans, where attorneys, families and detainees face a pipeline of evolving interpretation of rules and expanded federal authority, claimed by a new presidential administration.

As Zavala’s attorney said: “Be prepared for surprises.”

Those surprises, as Zavala and his family learned this week, could impact how long detainees could be in custody, whether they will remain in this country or rejoin families in the U.S.

For weeks, Zavala and his family have found themselves among the targets of the government’s mammoth legal battle to deport millions of immigrants in the country illegally — an effort fueled by relentless reminders by the president and his officials to use federal law enforcement to purge the “worst of the worst” felons from the nation.

• Also See: First came the immigration agents, then came the text. Pomona family’s day turns into a nightmare

For the Trump administration, Zavala’s 20-year-old DUI charge — which had been cleared from his record — and his undocumented status, count him as among the “worst,” despite the charge having been cleared and a record of raising a family, with a job, in the U.S. for years.

Like many, recent weeks have been full of uncertainty, as days turn into weeks in federal custody, and as expanding interpretations of long-standing federal rules cast a shadow over a detainee’s fate.

As his family waited, Zavala was in the crosshairs of the Trump administration’s massive expansion of a federal drive that put he and millions in jeopardy of being detained indefinitely.

Against all that, nearly one month after he was apprehended, Zavala took a big step toward walking out of an El Paso detention center, with his eldest son and daughter to fly home to Pomona.

But in a span of 48 hours, joy turned to sorrow after the government applied the breaks, his family and attorneys said.

It’s a glimpse at the kind of turbulence Southern California immigrant families face against a backdrop of a mammoth removal strategy designed to deport millions.

Rewind to June 18: From LA’s B-18 to El Paso

On June 18, Zavala was on his lunch break on a La Mirada gardening job when federal immigration agents converged.

“I’m (expletive)” he texted his wife, but in Spanish.

Within moments, he was ushered into the rear seat of an SUV and taken to the basement of the Edward R. Roybal Building, the downtown Los Angeles ICE detention center where in a facility called – B-18- scores of detainees – fathers such as Zavala, mothers, aunts and uncles — have been taken and processed since raids began all over the region in early June.

• Also See: A day outside an LA detention center shows profound impact of ICE raids on families

It’s the first stop in processing detainees, during which officers verify their identities before transporting them to detention centers. It’s also where their families and lawyers have come in search of their loved ones.

On June 18, Murillo and her daughter were among them. They’d come to see Zavala and give him vital medication for his diabetes. Murillo was lucky to get in after repeated tries, for a fleeting moment with the patriarch of the family of Murillo and their four children.

They left in tears, amid the early uncertainty of the raids blanketing Southern California. What did he do wrong, they wondered? Would he simply be deported on the spot? Would he get any kind of medical care?

For ICE and the Homeland Security, what Zavala did was crystal clear.

“Jose Luis Savala Ramirez was encountered by CBP in 2002 and agreed to return to Mexico rather than face a final order of removal or other penalties,” said Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs at DHS Tricia McLaughlin said at the time. “He then illegally entered the country again and in 2006 he was encountered by CBP with falsified immigration documents. Ramirez has a Felony DUI conviction from 2005, but California dangerously created a program in 2021 to dismiss these to prevent conviction as criteria for removal.“

While immigration advocates caution that undocumented immigrants are more deportable if they have a conviction, immigrants have indeed benefited from state laws that dismiss convictions under certain circumstances.

In 2017, California Penal Code §1473.7 took effect, erasing the adverse impacts that very old convictions can have on people.

People could vacate an old conviction or sentence if newly discovered evidence proved their innocence; if it was brought over racial or ethnic prejudice or bias; or if there was prejudicial error damaging an accused person’s “ability to meaningfully understand, defend against, or knowingly accept the actual or potential adverse immigration consequences of a conviction or sentence.”

Echoing the Department of Homeland Security stance, agency attorneys have argued that convictions vacated under the state’s law remain “convictions” for immigration purposes.

About a week after the arrest, Murillo would learn that her husband was being transferred out of L.A. to the detention center in El Paso, Texas.

The uncertainty heightened, now so many miles away.

Expansion of federal rule casts shadow

More uncertainty would come.

That’s when Todd M. Lyons, acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, wrote employees on July 8 that the agency was revisiting its “extraordinarily broad and equally complex” authority to detain people. It was effective immediately, meaning people would be ineligible for a bond hearing before an immigration judge. Instead, now, they cannot be released unless the Homeland Security Department makes an exception.

The directive, first reported by The Washington Post, signaled a wider use of a 1996 law to detain people who had previously been allowed to remain free while their cases wind through immigration court.

He told officers that immigrants should be detained “for the duration of their removal proceedings.” The action was a huge hit to those fighting deportation, because, according to immigration lawyers, those proceedings could take months or years and could effect millions.

Zavala was among those millions. His attorney, Arturo Burga, knowing his client, Zavala, was requesting a bond hearing at the El Paso federal hub after weeks in detention, was getting worried.

“Yeah. I definitely was concerned. I went from very confident, to ‘oh no. I hope they don’t mention that.”

The July 15 hearing in front a Department of Justice administrative law judge would be a pivotal moment. At stake was whether Zavala could walk out on $5,000 bond. If he loses, he stays in and the government would gain a victory in efforts to deport him.  If he wins, the outlook is bright – as release could help him fight in his deportation proceedings – a defense against deportation, his attorney said.

For Burga, the ICE memo was a jolt, despite confidence his client had a strong case.

“I’m like, ‘what is going on? This is going to be so hard to overcome.”

Traditionally, at least in California, clients who were not a threat were released on bond, and could continue their deportation proceedings, with their attorneys and families, all outside of the confines of a federal detention center.

But the government — nationalizing an approach said to become a growing practice among some immigration judges in the nation to jail people for prolonged prolonged periods – appeared intent on doubling down, even on folks who many said are not the hardened criminals — the “worst of the worst” — that officials pledged to deport.

Asked by the Associated Press last week to comment on the memo, McLaughlin said. “The Biden administration dangerously unleashed millions of unvetted illegal aliens into the country — and they used many loopholes to do so. President (Donald) Trump and Secretary (Kristi) Noem are now enforcing this law as it was actually written to keep America safe.”

The initiative would apply to anyone who crossed the border illegally, and to people who have lived in the country for years, even decades.

But even in the shadow of the Lyons memo, Murillo, back in Pomona, held on to a semblance of faith.

Good news, bad news, 48 hours

Lyons wrote in his memo that detention was entirely within ICE’s discretion, but he acknowledged a legal challenge was likely. For that reason, he told ICE attorneys to continue gathering evidence to argue for detention before an immigration judge, including potential danger to the community and flight risk.

It would come back to Zavala’s case.

On Tuesday, Murillo and her family were preparing for a reunion. Yes, they would reunite with a visibly thinner Jose Luis Zavala, aged by weeks inside two federal detention centers thousands of miles away from each other.

Nevertheless, she and her family could taste the moment when Zavala would hug is 11-year-old again. They were counting the moments until he could see the signs they’d made for his return.

“Bienvenido para de nuevo a casa”! Welcome back home.

Only one thing needed to happen: The Texas judge had to sign off on releasing him on the $5,000 bond. Only then could he get on a plane and go home.

Murillo stayed back home, but two of their eldest children flew to El Paso. Their mission, their hope: Bring their father back.

But this wouldn’t be easy. They’d have to endure a “redetermination” hearing, where government attorneys would bear down, bringing the legal might of a powerful push to deport millions of immigrants, fueled by a president’s pledge to deport the “worst of the worst” and the countless depictions of rapists, the gang members, the murderers.

Zavala felt the full brunt of that might as Department of Homeless Security attorneys focused on his past. But it was a past that been cleared. The DUI charge that the government keyed in on had long been dismissed, Burga said.

According to Burga, the government did not mention the the memo in its arguments — “luckily,” he said.

Burga said the conviction has been dismissed.

The bond hearing happened at 9 a.m. Tuesday. By 11 a.m., the judge had ruled in Zavala’s favor. He would be released on $5,000 bond.

For an anxious family, it was a first moment of pure joy since before June 18, the day when Zavala was picked up by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents while he was on a job in La Mirada.

“Honestly, we just started celebrating and crying and hugging each other,” Murillo said of the moment the family got word. “Our first reaction was ‘thank God for this.”

Bad news Wednesday

The next day, the reverberations of the government’s expansive policy appeared to be playing out, deflating Murillo’s hopes for her husband’s release.

As Murillo’s daughter worked to finalize the release on the ground in El Paso, she hit a glitch. She had to go online to pay the bond, a practice Zavala’s lawyer said the government is making “everybody” do now. The request bounced back — denied.

According to family and the lawyer, the government had “reserved” the case for appeal.

“In the same way we we so happy the day before, we were back to ‘why are they doing this to us,” Murillo said. “We went back to square one, basically. What’s the point of having a bond, if you can’t get released.”

Because of the government’s intent to appeal, Zavala would stay in custody, at least for 30 more days. If they don’t appeal in that window, he’ll be released in mid August. If the government does appeal, the case will be decided by the Board of Immigration Appeals, an administrative body within the Department of Justice that interprets and applies immigration laws.

That process could take weeks, months, even a year, Burga said.

‘Worst of the Worst’

Zavala’s case is another that has shined a harsh light on the administration’s “worst of the worst” pledge.

Murillo has always acknowledged that back in the early 2000s, her husband initially crossed illegally. She also acknowledged he once had a DUI on his record, back in 2005. But while he was once detained on a charge of DUI, that charge and case was dismissed by a court, Gordo said, adding that he has no criminal record.

But worst of the worst?

“Not everyone of the people detained are criminals,” Burga said. “Mr. Zavala, his record was clean. It’s just the simple fact that he appeared undocumented was the simple reason he got detained.

“I think they are just trying to find different methods of finding their goal of mass deportation,” he said.

• Also See: Nearly 2,800 undocumented immigrants have been detained in LA area since early June, DHS says

But McLaughlin, the DHS spokesperson, has called the assessment that ICE isn’t targeting immigrants with a criminal record “false” and said that DHS Secretary Kristi Noem has directed ICE “to target the worst of the worst — including gang members, murderers, and rapists.”

She counted detainees with convictions, as well as those with pending charges, as “criminal illegal aliens.”

The latest ICE statistics show that as of June 29, there were 57,861 people detained by ICE, 41,495 — 71.7% of whom had no criminal convictions. That includes 14,318 people with pending criminal charges and 27,177 who are subject to immigration enforcement, but have no known criminal convictions or pending criminal charges.

Each detainee is assigned a threat level by ICE on a scale of 1 to 3, with one being the highest. Those without a criminal record are classified as having “no ICE threat level.” As of June 23, the latest data available, 84% of people detained at 201 facilities nationwide were not given a threat level. Another 7% had been graded as a level 1 threat, 4% were level 2 and 5% were level 3.

“The government appears to be doing everything in its power to try to jail people under the authority of the immigration laws,” said Ahilan Arulanantham, professor of practice and co-director of the Center for Immigration Law and Policy at UCLA School of Law.

But the rhetoric is not matching reality, he said.

“Citizens get DUIs and they then receive whatever punishment the criminal legal system deems appropriate,” Arulanantham said. “Nobody is more dangerous because of where they were born. So the basic concept that we need to engage in immigration enforcement to make us safer is kind of at war with the way we know the criminal justice systems works at the most basic level.”

Arulanantham said the majority of people being arrested in this wave of enforcement operations are people who do not have a conviction, or who have minor convictions.

“Given that the Trump administration is saying over and over again that we’re going against the worst of the worst, touting alleged arrests of people with criminal histories in their past … it’s important to note they are not telling the truth about that,” he said.

“That someone committed a DUI 20 years ago does not mean they have to be deported now to make us safe. That makes no sense.”

‘Another waiting game’

Back in Pomona, Murillo reeled from the emotional rollercoaster of a month of starts and stops.

She has hope in her husband’s case and that the judge’s decision will stand. But it’s mixed with concern that the government will find something, some morsel of a blemish that would enable them to deport her husband.

“It’s like another waiting game,” she said. “That’s a whole month to gather information… to look for stuff against him, I really doubt they are going to find. They know he has a possibility to win a case. I’m just scared. They could, out of nowhere, find something and put stuff on his case that could effect him.”

Her 11-year-old appears to be taking the brunt of it emotionally. Murillo said she had to take her to the emergency room about a week after the arrest for a condition that appeared to start with anxiety.

“I have to have the mentality to stay strong for them, but also for him,” she reminds herself, referring to her family.

They are able to talk to Zavala.

The theme in their conversations: “He’s gonna stay strong for us, and hopefully he will be released and we can bring him home.”

For now, the reunion will have to wait.

“We were ready to have a little gathering with the family,” she said. “Make some food for him. My daughter had made big posters of “Welcome Back Daddy. We missed you!”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Woodie Wagon Day is today and since a lot of us are heading to the beaches, what better time to explore the world of woodies.

CLASSIC OR JUST COLLECTIBLE?

So, are those polished and shiny Ford woodies from 1949 classic? Technically, no. The Classic Car Club of America has a list of approved models, and there are no Fords, Chevys or Dodges. The club’s definition of a classic is a fine and distinctive automobile produced between 1915 and 1948. That means there are a few woodies that make the list – say, a Chrysler Town & Country made between 1941 and 1948. It’s technically a classic, and you could also say it’s cherry and boss.

This 1948 Chrysler Town & Country is technically a classic.

CARRIAGE-LIKE CARS

In the 1920s, cars with wood paneling were mostly done by custom shops. Henry Ford bought 400,000 acres of forest land in Michigan in 1920 and shipped the wood out to be milled and assembled until Ford began milling in 1934.

General Motors used a separate company to make its woodies. The 1930 Ford at right sold for $30,800 this month. Trains, boats and cars were mostly made of wood in the 1920s and 1930s. The earliest woodies looked a lot like the wagons and coaches they replaced. By 1932, during the Great Depression, General Motors was selling about a third as many cars as it had three years earlier. Consumers began to regain confidence by 1935 and sales of woodies picked up, including luxury models like Packard’s wood-bodied cars for a premium price.

The original SUV

This ad for a 1939 Ford states the station wagon combines beauty with utility.

1940 Fords came in Standard and Deluxe models; this changed to Deluxe and Super Deluxe for the 1941-1948 lines. The structural framework was mostly maple, birch, mahogany or gum wood panels. Basswood was used for the longitudinal roof slats. In 1940, Ford built over 500,000 passenger cars, and of those about 8,700 were wood-bodied station wagons. Ford never used ash wood, but GM and Chrysler did. During World War II, domestic car production was essentially on hold. After the war, car companies began to produce new cars and since wood was readily available more wood-bodied cars came off the production line in the first few months after the war than in years past.

The look of woodies changed a lot in the late 1940s, not because of the wood, but because of steelmaking advancements. The all-steel roofs replaced the fabric roofs of the past. End of the production line By 1947, woodies had started to become unprofitable because of the labor needed to produce them. Chevy’s eight-seat woodie was its most expensive model and did not sell well. By 1951, Chevy stopped making wood-bodied cars. 1949 was the last year Oldsmobile made woodies. They were high-end family cars with a list price of $3,295, equivalent to about $34,000 now. Approximately 1,355 were built. A restored 1949 model sold for $78,100 in 2006.

This 1953 Buick recently sold for $55,000. It is one of only 1,830 made and has a V8 engine. It was made in the last year Buick constructed cars with real wood.

The downfall of wood

The wood that made the cars desirable was also their undoing. The demand for woodies declined rapidly in the 1950s because the wood panels required a lot more maintenance than steel bodies.

In my woody I will take you

By the 1960s, young surfers who needed a cheap car to transport their 10-foot boards latched on to the discarded wagons that were no longer mainstream. One man’s trash became the surfers’ treasure.

1960s SURF MUSIC

“Surfin’ Safari”

Early in the morning we’ll be startin’ out Some honeys will be coming along We’re loading up our woody With our boards inside And headin’ out singing our song -Released in 1962, the song was the Beach Boys’ first release with Capitol Records and first hit single, peaking at No. 14. Woody or Woodie? The Beach Boys used woody, but the National Woodie Club says they spelled it wrong.

“Surf City”

I bought a ’30 Ford wagon and we call it a woody (Surf City, here we come) You know it’s not very cherry, it’s an oldie but a goody (Surf City, here we come) Well, it ain’t got a back seat or a rear window But it still gets me where I wanna go Written by Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys and Jan Berry of Jan and Dean, the song became the first surf song to hit No. 1 on the charts, in 1963.

This 1952 Mercury was estimated to sell for $70,000 to $90,000 prior to it being auctioned in 2013. The car wound up being sold for $135,000. Some woodies can fetch more than $150,000.

Sources: Classic Car Club of America, Barrett-Jackson.com, Classic-car-history.com, Southern California Woodie Club, National Woodie Club, RM Auctions, Photos: Staff and Wiki Media Commons

It sounds sophisticated — like something whispered in back rooms by finance guys wearing French cuffs. But really, it’s simple: leverage means using someone else’s money to buy something you couldn’t afford on your own.

That “someone else” is usually a lender, and the “something” is typically real estate. Whether you’re buying an industrial building, an office condo or a strip retail center, leverage is the reason you don’t need a million bucks in the bank to make it happen.

Let’s walk through it, and then I’ll explain why it’s both powerful and dangerous.

How leverage works

Say you find a building you want to buy. It’s priced at $2 million. You could write a check — if you happen to have a spare $2 million lying around. But most investors don’t.

So you approach a lender. The lender agrees to loan you 65% of the purchase price, or $1.3 million. That means you need to bring $700,000 to the table. With that $700,000, you now control a $2 million asset. That’s leverage.

Why is this useful? Because you get all the benefits of owning the building — rental income, appreciation, tax advantages — without tying up your full net worth in a single deal. But, you’ve borrowed $1.3 million, which must be repaid.

The cash-on-cash return

Now here’s where leverage starts to flex its muscles: cash-on-cash return.

Cash-on-cash is a fancy way of asking, “What am I earning on the actual money I invested?”

If that $2 million building brings in $100,000 in income after expenses and debt payments, and you only put in $700,000 to acquire it, you’re earning roughly 14% annually on your cash. (That’s $100,000/$700,000.) Not bad.

But if you bought the building all-cash and still brought in $100,000 a year, your return would only be 5%. See the difference? ($100,000/$2 million.

That’s why experienced investors love leverage. It makes the return on your money better because you’re using someone else’s money to own more.

When the math goes backward

There’s a flip side to this, and it’s become more common lately: negative leverage.

Negative leverage happens when the cost of borrowing exceeds the return you’re getting on the property. Specifically, when your interest rate is higher than the property’s capitalization (cap) rate. Imagine paying 7% interest on a loan to buy a building that only returns 5.5% annually. That’s a losing equation from day one.

Unless you’re banking on major rent growth, redevelopment or some other value-creation, you’re effectively paying to hold the asset. Your cash-on-cash return goes down, not up. And in that scenario, leverage isn’t helping you, it’s hurting you.

We saw the opposite for years when money was cheap. Investors could borrow at 3% and buy properties at 5%-6% cap rates all day long. But today’s reality is different. Many deals that penciled before don’t anymore, not because the buildings changed, but because the cost of capital did.

Pitfalls of leverage

Leverage works great when things go well: when tenants pay rent, rates stay low and property values rise.

But if vacancy creeps in, or interest rates rise, or your building needs unexpected repairs, that monthly loan payment doesn’t go away. It still shows up every month, like clockwork.

I’ve seen more than a few deals that looked great on paper fall apart in practice because the borrower didn’t leave enough breathing room. That extra margin of return? It can vanish quickly when costs go up or income goes down.

And over-leverage can lead to overconfidence. I’ve watched folks stretch into larger deals just because the bank said “yes.” And when the market turned? That yes turned into a painful lesson.

Using leverage wisely

Leverage is neither good nor bad, it’s neutral. It’s how you use it that matters.

Here are a few guiding principles I share with clients:

—Be conservative. Just because a lender will loan you 80% of the purchase price doesn’t mean you should take it.

—Understand your debt. Know your payments, your interest rate, your amortization period and what happens if rates change.

—Stress-test your deal. If rents drop by 10%, can you still pay the mortgage?

—Watch for negative leverage. If you’re borrowing at 7% to buy at a 5% return, you need a very clear reason for doing so.

—Keep reserves. Surprises happen. Don’t let one roof repair or a missed rent payment jeopardize your investment.

Bottom line? Leverage can be your best friend or your worst enemy. Used with discipline, it can multiply your wealth. Used carelessly, it can multiply your mistakes.

Choose wisely.

Allen C. Buchanan, SIOR, is a principal with Lee & Associates Commercial Real Estate Services in Orange. He can be reached at abuchanan@lee-associates.com or 714.564.7104.

With decades of combined experience across a variety of units and stations, detectives Joshua Kelly-Eklund, Victor Lemus and William Osborn had deep law enforcement experience even before joining the Sheriff’s Department’s elite Special Enforcement Bureau’s Arson Explosives Detail.

“There are no words to express the pain and sorry we feel,” LA Sheriff Robert Luna said in a written statement in which he identified the three men late Friday. “These heroes represented the best of our Department, exemplifying courage, integrity and selfless service.

“This is not only a heartbreaking loss for their families, but for all of us,” the sheriff added.

Detective Kelley-Eklund first joined the department in 2006. After working assignments at the Pitchess Detention Center North and the North County Correctional Facility, he moved to the Lennox and South LA stations.

Kelley-Eklund mentored younger deputies as a field training officer before becoming a detective in the Narcotics Bureau and being assigned to the LA Impact Team. As part of that assignment, he spent years investigating complex crimes that led to large narcotics seizures and the arrests of murder suspects, department officials said.

Detective Lumus joined the department in 2003. He initially worked at the Twin Tower Correctional Facility, and in his off time joined the department’s Baker to Vegas running team. He worked a senior training officer and a detective at the Century Station and as a K-9 handler at the Special Enforcement Bureau.

Lumus was known for his mentorship and his arrests of career criminals, department officials said, and joined the Arson and Explosive unit last year.

Detective William Osborn joined the department in 1992, and after serving as the Men’s Central Jail moved to the Industry Station, where he rose to the rank of detective. Over more than a decade as an investigator, Osborn handled upwards of a hundred cases a year, and gained recognition for his skill at recovering stolen vehicles.

Osborn moved to the department’s training bureau in 2016, where he worked as an emergency vehicle operations instructor. But his love for investigations drew him back into the detective ranks, officials said, and he joined the Special Enforcement Bureau and the arson and explosives unit in 2019. He was considered a leader among his peers in the unit, officials said, often handling cases that involved damage to expensive properties or the loss of life.

All three men leave behind family’s, some of whom also serve in the department.

Det. Kelley-Eklund is survived by his wife, Jessica, and their seven children, officials said.

Detective Lemus is survived by his wife, Sheriff’s Department Detective Nancy Lemus, and three daughters.

Osborn is survived by his wife, Detective Shannon Rincon, four sons, and two daughters.

Information about memorial services will be announced in the coming days, officials said.

Recent numbers from property data firm Attom show home sales in the six-county Southern California region decreased from a year ago for the first time in nine months, falling to the second-lowest total for a May in at least 21 years.

Home prices, meanwhile, have mostly leveled off, with values dropping from April to May in three of the region’s six counties.

“It’s definitely been slower than in past years,” said Brandie Jones, a broker-associate with Downey-based Keller Williams Realty for Southeastern Los Angeles. “Buyers aren’t as eager to hop into the market because of all this uncertainty, uncertainty over tariffs.”

See also: Home-sale cancellations see ‘dramatic increase,’ agents say

Jones added that many would-be homebuyers are on the fence, waiting to see if interest rates or home prices drop.

For the most part, prices are not dropping in Southern California, although they did fall on an annual basis in Riverside and San Diego counties.

The median price of a Southern California home — or the price at the midpoint of all sales — was $825,000 in May, Attom reported.

On the one hand, that’s a record, topping the last high of $821,000 reached in February. Yet, May’s median was less than 1% above the year-ago level.

Price appreciation in April and May were the smallest for the region in two years, Attom figures show.

“With longer market times, negotiations have shifted in favor of buyers, and they are now calling more of the shots,” Steve Thomas, author of Reports On Housing, said in his latest dispatch.

Slow sales and steadily rising listings are behind the shift.

May saw 14,957 houses, condos and townhomes change hands, or 3.5% fewer than in May 2024, Attom reported Thursday, July 17.

That’s significantly below the May average of 21,000 home sales, and half the tally of May 2005, when buyers snatched up more than 33,000 Southern California homes.

This year’s spring — typically the busiest time of year for housing deals — is the third in a row of rock-bottom sales. Just two other springs, 2020 and 2024, were slower.

“We are seeing homes staying on the market longer, and we’re seeing more price reductions than we did in previous months,” Jones said, adding that buyers are worried about the economy and their job security.

“The ICE raids and things like that, they do have an impact on us. They do have an impact on our people,” Jones added. “People are kind of a little bit hesitant right now.”

Southern California homes are averaging more than 42 days on the market before going under contract, or almost 11 days longer than a year ago, according to the online brokerage Redfin.

See also: Seal Beach’s Water Tower House, a relic of 1890s ingenuity, lists for $5.5M

Slightly more sellers also are dropping their prices to make a deal than a year ago, Redfin reported.

Southern California’s active inventory of homes for sale hit the highest level in May and June since the pandemic lockdowns in the spring of 2020. The number of homes for sale increased 70% in the past 1 ½ years.

“The housing market has been tilting in buyers’ favor for months, with buyers getting concessions from sellers and often successfully negotiating sale prices down,” Redfin reported Thursday.

A slowdown in asking-price growth, along with a shrinking gap between asking prices and buyer offers, is a sign that sellers are coming to terms with today’s market, Redfin said.

“Sellers are having to be more realistic in terms of their purchase price,” Jones added. “And the buyer will more than likely ask for some closing costs or ask for a concession, and it would probably be in (a seller’s) best interest to consider that.”

A small improvement in interest rates from a year ago made Southern California homes slightly more affordable.

May’s rates for a 30-year fixed mortgage averaged 6.8%, compared with just over 7% a year earlier. The house payment for a median-priced home was $77 cheaper in May.

Still, the local housing market remains pricey. The median house price was $880,000 in May. Buyers need $1 million to buy the typical house in San Diego County and $1.3 million for an Orange County house.

The median price for a Southern California condo, the most affordable type of housing, was $685,000 in May, topping out at more than $700,000 in L.A. and San Diego counties. In Orange County, a typical condo cost $829,000.

Sales were down from year-ago levels in all six counties, Attom figures show.

Here’s a county-by-county breakdown of median prices and sales totals, with annual percentage changes:

—Los Angeles County’s median rose 2.8% to a record high of $915,000; sales were down 1% to 5,535 transactions.

—Orange County’s median was unchanged at $1.2 million, which ties a record set in May and June 2024 and again this past February and March; sales were down 8.3% to 2,154 transactions.

—Riverside County’s median fell 1.8% to $599,000; sales were down 4.5% to 2,570 transactions.

—San Bernardino County’s median rose 1% to $515,000; sales were down 3% to 1,698 transactions.

—San Diego County’s median fell 0.2% to $900,000; sales were down 4.4% to 2,384 transactions.

—Ventura County’s median rose 3% to $865,000; sales were down 3% to 616 transactions.

The vote, according to the news release from the California Nurses Association/National Nurses United, came after “repeated bad faith bargaining practices by hospital executives, who have continued to disregard failures in patient care standards.”

MemorialCare officials, in a Friday, July 18 statement, said the safety of its patients and workers is top priority, while arguing that the union’s no-confidence vote is a tactic in ongoing labor contract negotiations.

Both Long Beach hospitals are well-respected institutions, both locally and, by reputation, nationally.

The nearly 120-year-old Long Beach Medical Center has been repeatedly recognized as a top-performing hospital — both overall and in specific discliples, such as obstetrics and gynecology, and colon cancer surgery — by U.S. News & World Report and Newsweek. Miller Children’s & Women’s Hospital, which has received similar honors over the years, treats more than 13,000 children annually, whose families come from all over the region and beyond, according to its website.

But despite all that success, there has been escalating tension between MemorialCare and the nurses union as they bargain for a new contract — with the no-confidence vote the latest increase.

The California Nurses Association, which represents more than 2,000 registered nurses at both Long Beach hospitals, held a one-day strike in May, just a week after MemorialCare had announced a wave of layoffs impacting 115 workers locally.

The union delivered that strike notice following 15 bargaining sessions with representatives of the hospitals, and without either party having declared an impasse in negotiations, according to a previous press release from MemorialCare.

During the two previous contract negotiations between the hospitals and CNA — both of which successfully concluded in an agreement without a strike being called — the negotiating teams held 41 and 21 bargaining sessions, respectively, before an agreement was reached, MemorialCare said at the time.

“We are aware of the tactics being deployed by leadership of the California Nurses Association in an attempt to influence negotiations around a new collective bargaining agreement. We have deep respect for our dedicated nurses,” Richele Steele, the company’s vice president of communications and public relations said Friday. “However, these negotiating tactics and biased allegations by union leadership will not distract our hospitals from our mission of providing the highest quality care to our patients and the communities we serve.”

The vote of no confidence, CNA said, represents a “call to urgent action and accountability,” and a demand for “fair contracts that ensure safe staffing and high quality patient care.”

Some issues Long Beach nurses have been dealing with at the two hospitals, CNA said, include unsafe staffing levels across units and incidents of workplace violence that have continued to happen without a comprehensive prevention plan in place.

“Nurses have had enough,” Stephanie Jobe, a registered nurse at Miller Children’s & Women’s Hospital, said in the news release. “We are committed to our patients and our profession, but we cannot continue to work under leadership that ignores our safety warnings, stonewalls us at the bargaining table and punishes transparency.”

MemorialCare, Steele added, takes the safety of patients and employee safety seriously.

“The safety of our care providers and patients is among our top priorities,” Steele said. “We remain firmly committed to bargaining in good faith and reaching an agreement with the union that is fair to our nurses and sustainable for the hospitals.”

The hospitals, MemorialCare officials said previously, are constantly evaluating and reviewing their processes to ensure that measures are meeting the demands of patients and constantly evaluating safety protocols.

“We have metal detectors in that (ER) area to assure that we have processes in places to screen patients and visitors,” MemorialCare official said previously, “and more importantly, we are going to meet the state requirements, or even exceed the demand for us to have metal detectors throughout our entire hospital by 2027.”

As for the no-confidence vote, CNA said it will share the results with the “relevant regulatory bodies,” adding that the union is “calling on community members, elected officials and patients to stand with them in demanding fair contracts that ensure safe staffing and high quality of patient care.”

MemorialCare had a productive negotiation session with the union today, Friday, July 18, according to Steele.

“(We) look forward to continuing constructive dialogue with the union’s representatives in upcoming sessions,” Steele said.

CBS says its decision to end Stephen Colbert’s late-night comedy show is financial, not political. Yet even with the ample skepticism about that explanation, there’s no denying the economics were not working in Colbert’s favor.

The network’s bombshell announcement late Thursday that the “Late Show” will end next May takes away President Donald Trump’s most prominent TV critic and the most popular entertainment program in its genre.

The television industry’s declining economic health means similar hard calls are already being made with personalities and programming, with others to be faced in the future. For the late-night genre, there are unique factors to consider.

As recently as 2018, broadcast networks took in an estimated $439 million in advertising revenue for its late-night programs, according to the advertising firm Guidelines. Last year, that number dwindled to $220 million.

Once a draw for young men, now they’ve turned away

Late-night TV was a particular draw for young men, considered the hardest-to-get and most valuable demographic for advertisers. Increasingly, these viewers are turning to streaming services, either to watch something else entirely or catch highlights of the late-night shows, which are more difficult for the networks to monetize.

More broadly, the much-predicted takeover of viewers by streaming services is coming to pass. The Nielsen company reported that during the last two months, for the first time ever, more people consumed programming on services like YouTube and Netflix than on ABC, CBS and NBC or any cable network.

Networks and streamers spent roughly $70 billion on entertainment shows and $30 billion for sports rights last year, said Brian Wieser, CEO of Madison & Wall, an advertising consultant and data services firm. Live sports is the most dependable magnet for viewers and costs for its rights are expected to increase 8% a year over the next decade. With television viewership declining in general, it’s clear where savings will have to come from.

Wieser said he does not know whether Colbert’s show is profitable or not for CBS and parent company Paramount Global, but he knows the direction in which it is headed. “The economics of television are weak,” he said.

In a statement announcing the cancellation, George Cheeks, Paramount Global’s president and chief executive officer, said that “This is purely a financial decision against a challenging backdrop in late night. It is not related in any way to the show’s performance, content or other matters happening at Paramount.”

Cheeks’ problem is that not everyone believes him.

Colbert is a relentless critic of Trump, and earlier this week pointedly criticized Paramount’s decision to settle Trump’s lawsuit against CBS over a “60 Minutes” interview with Kamala Harris. He called Paramount’s $16 million payment to Trump a “big fat bribe,” since the company is seeking the administration’s approval of its merger with Skydance Media.

On Friday, the Writers Guild of America called for an investigation by New York’s attorney general into whether Colbert’s cancellation is itself a bribe, “sacrificing free speech to curry favor with the Trump administration as the company looks for merger approval.”

CBS’ decision made this a pivotal week for the future of television and radio programming. Congress stripped federal funding for PBS and NPR, threatening the future of shows on those outlets.

Journey Gunderson, executive director of the National Comedy Center, called the decision to end Colbert’s show the end of an era.

“Late-night television has historically been one of comedy’s most audience-accessible platforms — a place where commentary meets community, night after night,” Gunderson said. “This isn’t just the end of a show. It’s the quiet removal of one of the few remaining platforms for daily comedic commentary.

Trump celebrates Colbert’s demise

Trump, who has called in the past for CBS to terminate Colbert’s contract, celebrated the show’s upcoming demise. “I absolutely love that Colbert got fired,” the president wrote on Truth Social. “His talent was even less than his ratings.”

Some experts questioned whether CBS could have explored other ways to save money on Colbert. NBC, for example, has cut costs by eliminating the band on Seth Meyers’ late-night show and curtailing Jimmy Fallon’s “Tonight” show to four nights a week.

Could CBS have saved more money by cutting off the show immediately, instead of letting it run until next May, which sets up an awkward “lame duck” period? Then again, Colbert will keep working until his contract runs out; CBS would have had to keep paying him anyway.

CBS recently cancelled the “After Midnight” show that ran after Colbert. But the network had signaled earlier this year that it was prepared to continue that show until host Taylor Tomlinson decided that she wanted to leave, noted Bill Carter, author of “The Late Shift.”

“It is a very sad day for CBS that they are getting out of the late-night race,” Andy Cohen, host of Bravo’s “Watch What Happens Live,” told The Associated Press. “I mean, they are turning off the lights after the news.”

Colbert, if he wanted to continue past next May, would likely be able to find a streaming service willing to pay him, Wieser said. But the future of late-night comedy on the entertainment networks is genuinely at risk. Trump, in fact, may outlast his fiercest comic critics. Jon Stewart, once a weeknight fixture, works one night a week at “The Daily Show” for Paramount’s Comedy Central, a network that seldom produces much original programming any more.

ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel, who was chided on social media by Trump on Friday — “I hear Jimmy Kimmel is next” — has a contract that also runs out next year. Kimmel, 57, openly wondered in a Variety interview before signing his latest three-year contract extension how long he wanted to do it. He’s hosted his show since 2003.

“I have moments where I go, I cannot do this anymore,” Kimmel told Variety in 2022. “And I have moments where I go, what am I gonna do with my life if I’m not doing this anymore?’ It’s a very complicated thing … I’m not going to do this forever.”

Colbert, Kimmel and Stewart were all nominated for Emmy awards this week.

AP journalist Liam McEwan in Los Angeles contributed to this report. David Bauder writes about the intersection of media and entertainment for the AP. Follow him at http://x.com/dbauder and https://bsky.app/profile/dbauder.bsky.social.

The state of New York agreed Friday to pay $450,000 to settle a lawsuit from an ex-aide to former Gov. Andrew Cuomo who alleged Cuomo sexually harassed and groped her while he was in office.

The former aide, Brittany Commisso, had sued Cuomo and the state, alleging sexual harassment from the then-governor and retaliation against her after reporting the incidents. The allegations were part of a barrage similar misconduct claims that forced Cuomo to resign as governor in 2021.

Commisso’s lawyers said the settlement “is a complete vindication of her claims” and that Commisso is “glad to be able to move forward with her life.”

The settlement came as Cuomo is in the midst of a so-far bruising political comeback with a run for mayor of New York City. Cuomo lost the Democratic primary last month to Zohran Mamdani by more than 12 percentage points and this week relaunched his campaign to run in the general election as an independent candidate, beginning a potentially uphill battle in a heavily Democratic city where support is coalescing behind Mamdani.

Cuomo, who has denied wrongdoing, has been dogged by the scandal during his campaign for mayor.

“The settlement is not a vindication, it is capitulation to avoid the truth,” Cuomo’s lawyers said Friday in a statement in which they called Commisso’s allegations “false.”

The attorneys, Rita Glavin and Theresa Trzaskoma, added that they “oppose the dismissal of Ms. Commisso’s lawsuit.”

“Until the truth is revealed, the lawsuit should not be dismissed,” they said in the statement.

Cuomo resigned as governor after a report from the state attorney general determined that he had sexually harassed at least 11 women, with some alleging unwanted kissing and touching, as well as remarks about their appearances and sex lives.

Commisso filed her lawsuit in late 2023, just before the expiration of the Adult Survivors Act, a special law that created a yearlong suspension of the usual time limit to sue over an alleged sexual assault.

She later filed a criminal complaint accusing Cuomo of groping her but a local district attorney declined to prosecute, citing lack of sufficient evidence.

The Associated Press doesn’t identify people who say they have been sexually assaulted unless they decide to tell their stories publicly, as Commisso has done.

Anthony Hogrebe, a spokesperson for current Gov. Kathy Hochul, said Friday that the state “is pleased to have settled this matter in a way that allows us to minimize further costs to taxpayers.”