Christopher Damien reported about law enforcement in Southern California’s inland and desert communities as part of The New York Times’s Local Investigations Fellowship.

As two cellmates were fighting in a Riverside County jail, an inexperienced guard remotely opened the cell door, a violation of safety protocols. One of the men immediately pulled out the other, hoisted him over his shoulder and threw him over a catwalk railing. He fell 15 feet before smashing into a metal table. It was his first day in the jail and his last day of life.

At another county jail, a detainee who had been mentally ill and charged with child sexual abuse should have been segregated for his own safety. Instead, he was placed in a bunk room with about 15 other men where he was strangled.

When a guard started a security check more than 90 minutes late at another county site, blood was pooling under a cell door and a detainee was wiping the walls. Inside, the officer found the man’s cellmate beaten, stabbed and without a pulse.

Killings are relatively rare in American jails, but those in Riverside County experienced a surge in them. They had the highest homicide rate among large jails in California from 2020 through 2023, according to state data. The murders and other deaths made the county’s five jails the second-deadliest in the nation during that period. In 2022, the jail system’s worst year, 19 detainees would die from homicides, suicides, overdoses and natural causes.

There were clear patterns of security lapses, negligence and policy violations that contributed to the six homicides in the county jails from 2020 through last year, The New York Times and The Desert Sun found. Similar issues were factors in the other deaths from this time period, previous reporting shows.

An examination of the killings revealed that more than half the guards at one jail were performing security checks far less frequently than required, and often one to two hours late. They also failed to act during the fatal attacks or suspicious activity related to them caught on surveillance cameras, which are supposed to be constantly monitored.

In four homicides, detainees were assigned to cells that put them at greater risk, contrary to standard practices of separating detainees by race, sexual orientation and other factors, including a history of violent crimes, that could stoke conflict.

When deaths occurred, subsequent investigations were often flawed. Internal and public reports about the killings from the Sheriff’s Department established inaccurate timelines, omitted relevant facts and sometimes added false information, including a security check that never happened. Such reports had the effect of concealing from the public and detainees’ families consequential failures and decisions.

This article draws on more than 75 department reports, photos and videos of the deaths, internal documents detailing jail staffing and interviews with current and former employees.

The Riverside County sheriff, Chad Bianco, who took office in 2018 and was reelected four years later, implemented substantial staffing changes over that period, significantly reducing training requirements for guards. He declined to comment for this article or respond to questions. The union representing guards in the county jails also did not respond to requests for comment.

Bianco, a vocal Trump partisan, is now campaigning to win the Republican nomination for California governor. He has regularly bashed Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, and put blame for the jail deaths on the state’s left-leaning legislators.

But as the body count has risen, so has scrutiny of his department. The California Department of Justice has been conducting a civil rights investigation, and more than a dozen lawsuits making wrongful death claims have been filed against Riverside County, which has paid more than $13.3 million in settlements.

The morning after a detainee killing in September 2022 at the county jail in Murrieta, an administrator told sergeants to audit video to ensure that security checks were adhering to state law.

What was at stake, Lt. Aaron Martin wrote in an email obtained by The New York Times and The Desert Sun, was the threat of civil litigation.

“Due to the recent overdoses and deaths, it is important for you to understand how to properly conduct and document security checks to protect yourself and the Department from liability issues,” the email began. “Whenever these catastrophic situations occur, security checks are heavily scrutinized.”

Little training, big consequences

Hours before he was thrown from the Murrieta jail’s second floor, Mark Spratt, 24, had been charged with fraud after he was caught with stolen debit cards. He had several convictions for vehicle theft in neighboring San Bernardino County, but his crimes involved nothing like the violence he would fall victim to.

He was placed in a cell with Micky Payne, 35, who had three previous felony convictions, one for trying to take a gun from a police officer and two for domestic violence. In January 2023, he was awaiting sentencing for attacking a man with a broken bottle.

Payne was an admitted gang member and had recently fought with a cellmate, said Brynna Popka, a lawyer representing Spratt’s family. On the day Payne was sentenced to two years in state prison, Spratt was sent to share his cell.

From the start, there was trouble. Surveillance footage shows Payne blocked entry to the cell in a brief standoff. (The Sheriff’s Department has not publicly released the video.) Payne, who is Black, later complained on a phone call that a White man had been put in his cell, according to a department report.

Five current and former jail supervisors said that Payne’s altercation with his previous cellmate, along with the bottle attack, should have triggered a behavioral health assessment or the more restrictive custody often used for dangerous detainees. Along with the racial issues, the disparity in the men’s records — violent crimes versus small-scale fraud — should have led the jail to classify them differently and not pair them up, according to the veteran employees. (They spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution.)

At the time, there was upheaval in the Riverside jails.

The department had long required deputies to start their careers in the jail system. But many objected. Sheriff Bianco promised to do away with jail assignments during his campaign in 2018. In 2022, as the nation began to emerge from the pandemic, he was eager to deliver.

He increased the number of jail staff and leadership positions that would be filled by correctional deputies. They are paid significantly less than deputy sheriffs, can start at age 18 instead of 21 and complete training in less than three months rather than six.

That change drained critical experience and training from the jails, according to the five veteran employees. The surge in violence and detainee deaths that followed, they said, was a consequence.

Internal emails obtained by The New York Times and The Desert Sun included spreadsheets tracking the shifts in jail staffing. The number of sworn deputies dropped from about 180 in March 2022 to 65 by the following November. The first of the 19 deaths came in April that year.

Michael Lujan, who had retired as a sheriff’s captain before he challenged Bianco in the 2022 election, said it was invaluable to have experienced jail workers at all levels who know how to effectively communicate with people in custody, and to make sound decisions when situations become volatile.

“I’m not casting blame on the hardworking young people in these difficult assignments,” Lujan said in an interview. “It was a managerial error to move veteran workers out of the jails and create an experience deficiency that builds on itself.”

While the county jails had, on average, a killing every two years during the last two decades, three homicides occurred at the Murrieta jail over just four months.

Spratt’s was one of them. In Cell 43, he appeared to be asleep when deputies did a security check just after midnight on Jan. 12, 2023. But about 1:30 a.m., neighboring detainees alerted deputies that a fight had broken out inside.

Correctional Deputy Nicolas Sevilla, who had finished training just six months earlier, did not intervene, however. When told of the conflict, he didn’t leave his post in the central control room — about 50 feet away — but turned on the lights and told the two men over the intercom to stop fighting, according to a department report.

Minutes later, he remotely unlocked and opened the door to the cell, the report said.

That was highly unusual. Several of the former supervisors said it was typical practice for deputies to alert other guards, go outside the cell where a fight was occurring, try to de-escalate verbally, then use pepper spray or another deterrent. Opening the door, they added, created a chaotic, dangerous situation.

Spratt was on the floor of the cell. Payne then dragged him, exited the cell and threw him over the nearby handrail, according to the report and video images from the subsequent criminal case.

Doctors at a nearby medical center found that Spratt had sustained facial fractures, a broken leg and spine and a torn aorta. He underwent emergency surgery but did not survive.

In later commenting on the death, Bianco falsely claimed that Spratt had a history of violent crime and that the two detainees had gotten along as cellmates for three months. The jail system, in reporting the death to the California Department of Justice, wrote that Spratt was Black, while the autopsy report — and his own family — said he was White.

Fatal errors

The placement of detainees contributed to other killings at the Riverside County jails. It’s standard at jails around the country to house detainees according to demographics, gang affiliations, records of violence and any medical and behavioral health issues. While strict segregation isn’t always necessary or possible, these factors typically are carefully considered.

“If you are following your training and guidelines, you should be able to effectively reduce the risk of this kind of violence,” Lujan, the former captain, said of the homicides. “Think of the thousands of people who have cycled through the jails in years past without a problem here and in other counties.”

Scott Lowder, 55, for example, had previous convictions for violent crimes and had been incarcerated since May 2024 for threatening to kill a gas station attendant with a knife. Two current and former jail employees said that Lowder was incorrectly classified when he was booked. Despite his record, he was permitted access to tools in the print shop at the jail in Banning during a vocational program for low-risk defendants. On Sept. 7 last year, while a teacher was present without any guards, he stabbed Steve Deleon Gonzalez, 36, another detainee, with a screwdriver. The victim later died from the wound.

Rosendo Echevarria, 29, was held at the same jail after returning from treatment to improve his mental competency so he could stand trial. His mental health issues and the crimes he was accused of — child sexual assaults — made him a target in a barrack-like unit with about 15 other detainees.

On Sept. 8, 2020, three days after his arrival, three of them strangled him while others played cards and chess nearby, video images show. One man convicted in the killing later told a reporter that deputies had told some of the detainees to check out the charges against Echevarria.

At the Murrieta jail, Kaushal Niroula, 41, was awaiting retrial on homicide charges in the 2008 killing, with five others, of an art collector in Palm Springs whom they had intended to defraud. Niroula, who had been transitioning to female while in custody and had H.I.V., should have been considered for segregation for her own safety, according to jail policies.

Instead, she was housed with Rodney Sanchez, 63, a man accused of several violent child sexual assaults. After six months sharing a cell, he strangled her on Sept. 6, 2022.

He later pleaded guilty and told detectives he had been annoyed by Niroula’s talk of possible release after an upcoming trial. At that point, he had been jailed more than six years.

Violence can break out at any point when people are incarcerated, but long stays in jails and prisons can be associated with more conflict and attacks. The Riverside County jails tend to hold people longer than those in most other California counties.

Sheriff Bianco and District Attorney Mike Hestrin both tout their tough-on-crime stances. Many suspects are kept in jail for long periods awaiting trial because the prosecutors’ office offers plea bargains far less often than its counterparts in the state. That leads to packing the jails and backlogs in the courts.

Riverside County’s share of the jail population awaiting resolution of a felony case rose from 59% to 86% between 2015 and 2024, data shows. That is one of the highest rates in the state.

In the jail killings, some victims and their attackers had been held for long periods. Niroula had been incarcerated for nearly 12 years, with a stint in state prison. Echevarria had been in custody for seven years. The three men accused of strangling him had collectively spent more than seven years in jail before the attack.

A lack of accountability

When a detainee is killed, the Sheriff’s Department initiates a series of inquiries that are essential to criminal prosecutions and internal assessments.

But reports of those investigations in Riverside County are often marked by errors and omissions, The New York Times and The Desert Sun found. In some cases, the reports appeared to cover up serious security lapses.

The flaws were particularly striking in reports about the death of Ulysses Munoz Ayala, 39, held on an assault charge, at the Murrieta jail on Sept. 29, 2022.

Just three weeks after Niroula’s killing there, Correctional Deputy Mario Correa saw a detainee inside his cell smeared with blood. He was focused on cleaning the walls while his cellmate lay face down under a white sheet, blood flowing under the door.

“Is he breathing?” the guard asked the man, Erik Martinez, now 33, who stopped abruptly and shrugged.

Munoz Ayala, the cellmate, was unresponsive. Emergency workers declared him dead about 20 minutes later.

An autopsy found he had a skull fracture and seven puncture wounds to the neck. He and his cellmate had both been drinking alcohol, reports show. Martinez later admitted to the killing and told investigators that the men had argued about a rap song. He had been arrested about a year earlier after an unprovoked attack on a man outside a laundromat, killing him by repeated stabs to the neck.

Within days of the jail murder, two detectives from the department wrote reports for the criminal case. They referred to video footage, saying the two men entered their cell at 2:36 p.m. and it remained locked until 4:21 p.m., when Deputy Correa, the guard, did a security check. An internal investigator for the jail claimed that Munoz Ayala was “last seen alive” at 2:36 p.m., and a coroner deputy added that a routine security check was performed at 2:48 p.m., which no other report asserts.

But the timeline wasn’t true. Footage obtained by The New York Times and The Desert Sun shows that the two men moved freely outside their second-tier cell up until 3 p.m. that day, almost a half-hour later than claimed, and interacted with others from the first tier who had been let out to use the common room.

It is not known if those interactions contributed to the death or the cellmates’ acquisition of alcohol, but allowing detainees from multiple tiers out at the same time is a security violation. Deputies assigned to monitor surveillance video should have noticed the men moving throughout the cell block and called for intervention, the current and former employees said.

One of the detectives on the criminal case discovered the inaccuracies about 10 months later. He had asked the jail’s internal investigator for the footage while preparing for a court hearing, but was given video missing a crucial 20-minute portion. He obtained the complete video from someone else and wrote a revised timeline.

The video showed that after the two men returned to their cell, another detainee noticed a confrontation inside. After looking in the cell window at 3:49 p.m., the detainee alerted others in the common room, making a stabbing motion to his neck. Men from the lower tier gathered nearby, and several appear to have communicated with Martinez as he was wiping down the cell. All of that would have been considered suspicious activity, but deputies — some of whom are assigned to monitor security cameras — apparently didn’t notice and didn’t intervene until Deputy Correa’s security check more than 30 minutes later.

The Sheriff’s Department did not appear to take issue with these lapses and discrepancies. Instead, another internal investigator focused on the deputy’s late security checks in a report about seven months after the killing.

The investigator told Deputy Correa that he had been 97 minutes late for the security check when he discovered the body, which the deputy eventually conceded. During an interview, the guard said he had been trained to start a security check an hour after the previous one had been completed, even if he was running behind. Jail policy requires 12 security checks in a 12-hour shift, however, and a log for the day of the killing shows that Correa and his partner did only 10. Of those, seven started more than an hour after the prior one had ended.

The report found that, like Correa, many newer staff members — nearly 100 at the Murrieta jail — had been incorrectly trained, performing checks one to two hours late. Ultimately, investigators attributed the lapses to the jail’s software system and cleared Correa.

Munoz Ayala was the last of seven deaths at that jail in 2022. Correa was on shift during three of them, including one overdose and one apparent suicide. State law requires hourly security checks in case there is need for emergency medical treatment. Civil cases filed by the survivors of those seven detainees assert that a late security check was a contributing factor.

Nearly three years after Munoz Ayala’s murder, his former cellmate pleaded guilty and is serving a life sentence.

But the Sheriff’s Department is still reporting to the California Department of Justice that Munoz Ayala’s death is under investigation and his cause of death pending. Accurately reporting that he was murdered would further raise the county jails’ homicide rate.

Justin Mayo contributed reporting.  Julie Tate contributed research.

Christopher Damien is a reporter focusing on law enforcement and incarceration in California as part of the Local Investigations Fellowship at The Times.

WAR – FIRST DAY | By Lawrence M. Kirsch

Those can’t be our planes – that hum, high above the field, growing into an angry buzz – because it’s early Sunday morning. The Army just doesn’t fly on Sundays! I roll over sleepily and eye the alarm clock on the dresser beside the bed. It’s about ten minutes to eight.

But the mean whine of the engines which has awakened me had become the heavy racket of power-diving aircraft. Then at the crescendo of one of the dives, there is a muffled, heavy kaPLUNK! The damn show-off Navy is up on maneuvers I think, drowsily. I hop out of the bed to the window to watch the doings.

At the far end of the field, coal black smoke is pouring up in a huge column, but my mind is too fogged with sleep to think straight. It appears to be some game. Before we can identify the planes the cha-cha-cha stutter of machine guns staccatos the morning quiet. “That’s real machine gunning,” I say to myself.

“The sky is full of planes, diving and zooming over the hangar line a couple of blocks to the south. I pick out one in particular. It has long unretractable landing gear and strange-looking wingtips. It pulls out of its dive sharply – more suddenly than any of our planes could do. A missile drops from its belly, fifty feet above a hangar-top. BLAM! A jarring thud. As it chandelles away, my stomach turns leaden. A huge red eye, a rising sun, glares at me from the bottom of a wing.

“It’s the Japs,” I say automatically. My voice trembles strangely. It’s like watching a newsreel. It doesn’t seem possible. It can’t be true. Something’s crazy.

Across the street came two friends and their bathrobed wives, running with panic from their apartment, which is closer to the field. We see one plane veer, nose down, and its machine guns begin to spit, loud and close. One of the two girls falls flat.

I wait to see no more. “The sonsabitches,” I mumble, feeling the blood pound up my neck. I run upstairs to slap on a flying suit and shoes. Must get to the planes, is all I can think.

As I get into the car the two pilots join me. And here comes one more, still dressing. They pile in. The car starts and we swing toward the street. But here comes a plane, unmistakably at us. It looks as if it will dive straight through the windshield. The doors burst open and we scatter like a bunch of rabbits. One of the pilots tells me later that bullets actually kicked dirt in his eyes as he lay prone.

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The plane streaks by. Three of us jump back in and drive like mad down the street toward the hangar line. We’re all ducking low on the seat as plane after plane whizzes over us shooting at the hangar line, and, for all we know, at us. Other cars are racing with us. There’s a big open space to cross before we get to the officer’s club. Someone yells, “Get across this spot fast!” I can only think, as I flatten the accelerator, “What a way to die – shot in the back like a running burglar.”

The hangars are black and red with smoke and flame. Bombs and machine guns are deafeningly doing their work, the bullets darting about like a bunch of angry bees. A few of our planes in front of one hangar are untouched as yet and we park the car and decide to try to get to them. But the gunnery is too intense, especially as the Japs are starting to concentrate their incendiary shells on the parked planes. It would be suicide to try to reach the line.

I run up to a non-com’s house on the main street and squat against the wall facing the field. I stick my neck around the corner to see if it would be safer on the other side, but planes are diving from all angles now in a methodical pattern. I might as well face the hangars and watch the show, even though the huge air-base barracks across the street may offer a tempting target to a bomber.

Some cars are whizzing down the main avenue in front of me and tracer bullets seem to bracket them in red streaks, bouncing toward me as they hit the pavement. The noise is terrific – deafening. What a nightmare!

A corporal with blood-stained face squats on his heels near me. “Not much we can do, is there,” I grin at him, or try to grin. He turns his head and stares at me mutely, blank, as if I were a post.

Across the street stands a field guard, calmly watching the proceedings as he leans against a small tree.  Does he think the whole thing is some kind of maneuver or is he daffy? Bullets finally zip around him. Two more soldiers, prone beside a lumber pile near him, yell and beckon him to cover, but he ignores them.

I think: Which way will I fall; how will they find my body sprawled if one of those slugs hits me in the head?  The POW-POW-POW of the planes’ automatic cannons is hard on the nerves.

Suddenly the racket ceases, I crane a cautious neck around the corner and survey the sky. They must be through. I run across the street downhill toward the hangars. At the lumber pile, one of two soldiers has not risen. His pants are scarlet above the knee. I yell at the guard by the tree to run for a stretcher and he trots off like an automaton.

Men are emerging from underneath buildings. They are grimy with dirt and look as if they can’t believe they’re untouched. I bump into two majors. “Get all the good planes out into the field,” one yells.

Running down the last fifty yards onto the ramp is like ascending into some noisy black and red pit. Row after row of parked P-40s standing like patient blind men, are ablaze from the incendiary bullets. I feel that they have been awaiting a terrible and unknown doom. Only an occasional one, here and there, had failed to ignite, even though riddled with shells. The hangar line is devoid of any life – it is a lurid stage, set for a horrible scene.

Our hangar is worst hit, I notice, as I keep trotting down the ramp. The noise from the crackling flames and falling walls is almost as bad as the gunning had been. Smoke and ashes billow about. The burning planes pop, spit and shower sparks as if in protest to their unexpected destruction. The whole mess stuns one’s mind.

Something is moving in the blackened space between hangar and planes. It is an arm – rising and falling – a feeble attempt to summon help. The man is hardly distinguishable from the shambles from this distance. But as I approach I see his uniform is mostly blown off and in shreds. His face is black and greenish. I can barely make out his eyes. “My leg is broken,” he yells, trying to raise himself on an elbow. I cup my hands to my mouth: “Lie still. I’ll get a stretcher right away.”  Broken leg – God! It is split open nearly from his hip almost to ankle. The white bone is clearly visible. Strangely enough, it does not seem to bleed.

The first plane I try to start grinds furiously and refuses. Gas drains from the holes in the tanks and I sit on windshield glass which has fallen on the seat.

Men are running about on the ramp now. We push one good plane away from the confusion. Another one, with a flat tire, gets a lift from a tug. I see the General striding by, grimly. Seawards, toward Pearl Harbor, the sky is split by the same kind of coal black smoke. And from time to time, we pause and gaze in that direction, note the puffs of anti-aircraft fire, and think, “They’re really getting it now!

Most of the moveable planes are out of the way now. Remaining, like charred blue tombstones, are the unburned engines, pitifully pointed skywards as they rest on their bent propellers. Their fuselages trail out in blackened smudges behind them. They look like fishheads on an ocean wharf.

They were the planes we had learned to fly, to stunt, and to shoot. Planes we had come to identify with the field, with our daily course of living – with ourselves. We had cussed them, mistreated them – but somehow there was a bond between us. They were defenseless friends, butchered without warning.

Our own fiercely burning hangar draws our attention. Ammunition stored there keeps banging away, exploded by the heat. Part of the iron walls had fallen over an outer portion of the cases of 50- and 30-caliber shells, stacked there recently in preparation for a move to another island to the west. We push and tug the iron away, form a line and pass the heavy boxes of ammunition, arm to arm, from the insides of the hangar to safety on the ramp. Why nobody is struck by one of the many exploding bullets further inside is a mystery. Faces about me are blackened and drawn. One private, very eager, is big and loud and believes he is running the whole rescue business. The Captain is standing next to him and gets orders from the private to move the cases along faster. I’m forced to grin.

Firemen are hosing a burned gas truck to one side of us and I wangle the hose away from them. We retrace it through several tents so that it will reach our hangar. Finally we get it near enough so that the stream will reach and I open the nozzle. Aha! One of my lifetime ambitions is fulfilled – I am working a fire hose!

Suddenly, a great yell rises. The seas of working men along the hangars, like a wheat field in a gust of wind, flows away from the ramp in one lashing wave. “Here they come again” is the cry. We hear the approaching plane engines and we drop the hoses and run with the rest.

At the top of the hill we pause and survey the sky. It evidently is a pair of planes returning from Pearl Harbor. They are shot down several minutes later by two of our planes who have flown up from an outlying field.

One plane crashes a half-mile from the field, and in later hours about fifty-three persons claim to have made the shot which got it. The lieutenant with a shotgun; a private with a pistol; a civilian with a .22 rifle; a ground machine gunner – all are sure they are the killers!

About this time, in comes a B-17, half-crippled and scared to death by the chasing he has been getting as he arrived from a long formation flight from San Francisco. He lands directly into the hangar line, a feat not only difficult to do but against all air regulations. The General himself strides up to bawl him out, but the pilot just steps down and throws his arms around the General’s shoulders. “General,” he smiles with a quiver in his voice. “I am so damn glad to be down on solid earth alive, I don’t care if I landed on the hangar roofs!”

We swap stories as we catch our breaths. One pilot, who had driven up from his home on Pearl Harbor, has seen at least two big ships sunk by torpedo and bombs. One guard at Hickam Field, they say, stood immovable at port-arms for a half-hour after the attack. Officers kept telling him to lay his gun aside and help. Finally they had to pry the gun from his hands.

I like the story about the one GI who was missed after the raid and everyone thought he had taken off for the hills. But someone finally remember seeing him running across a street just a bomb hit the corner of the nearby barracks. He must have been nearly a direct hit. That bomb blew a running man’s head one way and his body another. Anyhow, not a particle of this first GI was ever identified. Although, come to think of it, they said that one man, while rummaging in the debris, picked up a battered shoe. Inside the shoe was somebody’s foot.

As we return to the hangars the second time some of the men are working bedecked in bloody bandages. But they wear grins, too. Tin helmets, gas masks and hip pistols have put in an appearance.

I help pile ammunition into a truck and spend some time dispersing it out to the planes which have been stuck in the bunkers around the field. Mechanics have their hands full taking parts from badly damaged planes to renovate less damaged ones. Armament men are just as busy loading the guns. Squadrons are getting organized in their respective dispersal positions.

Alarming reports are coming in from the Honolulu radio station: Jap troop ships flying the American flag; a major first engagement southwest of the island; parachutists landing at Barbers Point. We don’t relish the thought of being prisoners for some years to come!

Around one p.m. I get in on a patrol flight of four patched-up planes. There is not an instrument working in one of them. Below us, southwest of the island, about fifteen or twenty navy ships are zigzagging around in their methodical patterns. We can’t see if they have any opposition, but there is anti-aircraft fire in a line of black puffs high above the ships.

I twist and turn my neck searching the sky. Then my heart jumps. There are four black specks out to sea and above us. On the radio I start calling our leader but he cannot seem to make them out. “They’re coming this way!” I shout, and start imagining Jap slugs tearing into my vitals. I can make out six planes now, approaching in formation.

“Take the lead and point them out,” calls the leader. I swing ahead, point my ship and waggle my wings. “Okay,” answers the leader, and climbs to meet them. The “bogies” make a slow arc and start to descend, straight at us. It will be a heads-on meeting. I feel rather glad I am the last man in the flight. But it turns out to be another friendly P-40 patrol, and the leaders rock their wings relievedly. My hand is very sweaty on the stick.

Just after we get back, they call for two pilots to transfer to Bellows Field, our gunnery camp on the northeast side of the island. I am one who happens to be handy, to grab a parachute, check out at headquarters and race down the highway in a command car driven by a bandaged wild man. At every intersection stands an M.P. waving army traffic along. By army orders, civilian cars are abandoned along the road.

Skirting Pearl Harbor – invulnerable Pearl Harbor – we look out on the still-burning Arizona and the other sunken shops. One’s huge, bare bottom is turned skywards. Another pair is sunk to their rails and tilted at crazy angles. It is a pitiful sight. Honolulu is devoid of any traffic and we make Bellows Field in record time.

Here no bombing was done. Evidently the enemy planes sent to attack the nearby Navy auxiliary station of Kaneohe saw, just by chance, the pursuit planes stationed at Bellows. This squadron had been told to load its guns and go on the alert – but they had no word of the actual attack until the Navy station began to get it.

One pilot ran out to his plane. He was sprayed with lead and fell under the wing. Another barely made it off the ground and was murdered from behind. A third flew a few miles down the coast, taking off despite the fact that he had witnessed the other two deaths. He managed to bail out of his riddled plane and swim safely to shore.

More exchanges of tales as we arrive. Dusk falls soon, and with it comes our first blackout. A cigarette butt may be a beacon to the enemy, or death to its owner – so nervous are the guards. Walking about is dangerous to shin and head alike, and the repeated challenge: “HALT! Who goes there?” makes one jump every time. We fumble about in the mess tent munching a scant supper and we talk in low, tired tones. At present, we discover we are the strongest squadron on the island.

For a time after supper we sit in cars, drink canned beer, and listen to mainland radio broadcasts of the blitz which had struck.

A glow of light across the mountains, from the Honolulu side, attracts our attention, and we surmise it is a fire or anti-aircraft shooting. It turns out to be the latter, which mistakenly shoots down some of our own Navy planes, coming in off a carrier.

A flash pinpoint of light at the end of the runway lures a bunch of us out. Like boys playing cops and robbers, we stoop low and run in courses from dune to dune. And keep reassuring ourselves that we are not jittery by saying, “Yes, I’m sure I saw a light.” One officer raises a hullabaloo when he finds a crouching figure in a hole. It turns out to be a guard, almost too scared by the ruckus to talk. It is pitch black and spooky, a steady wind whispers and coughs in from the sea.

Finally, exhausted, I crawl into a bunk. It belonged to one of the killed fliers. Before I start to doze, there is a far-off mumbling and then a bellow, “MAKE WAY FOR THE PRISONERS!” Out of the tents we dash.  About five soldiers with pointed rifles are herding two little sweat-shirt-clad Japs to the guardhouse. They have been showing lights from a shack in a cane field.

“Keep your hands up, you dirty sonsabitches.” The sergeant in charge keeps up a steady, loud monologue. Who is more frightened, I wonder, himself or the prisoners? “Stop here,” he roars. “Don’t MOVE!”

We get back to bed when they’re taken inside the guardhouse for questioning. I can’t keep awake much longer. What a long day it’s been! I am too exhausted to review it all; too glad to be in bed to think what the day’s doings may mean to history and to our own futures. Somehow I feel at peace; they will not come back.

“Make W-A-A-Y for the prisoners!” My eyes open again. More treading of feet up the hill to the guardhouse. I cannot budge – just strain to hear what is being said. The commotion dies down again after a bit.

Two pilots in the next tent get up and talk around outside. One of them utters, “I just can’t get to sleep. Don’t feel like it at all.” An answer, and their footsteps and low voices drift away.

The wind whooshes about the tent. It brings the sound of the season. Above my head the loose canvas of the tent flaps lazily – soothingly.

Annabel Streets has always loved walking, whether in the English countryside or at home in London. Her book, “52 Ways to Walk: The Surprising Science of Walking for Wellness and Joy, One Week at a Time,” takes readers on an eclectic series of journeys. 

But Streets, who also writes historical fiction (under the name Annabel Abbs), is also a consummate researcher, guided by an insatiable curiosity. So her book is more than a mere series of strolls. Streets shares the unusual walking habits of others – like a friend of William Shakespeare’s who dance-walked 127 miles in nine days – and backs up the benefits of varied styles of walking with scientific evidence. Additionally, the book prepares the reader mentally and physically for each walking experience.

Related: Want to read more stories about books, authors and best-sellers? Check out the Book Pages newsletter

“When it comes to walking,” Streets said during a recent video interview, “We sometimes get into a rut. This book is to get people out of that rut, out of that way of thinking.”

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Q. Why is walking important? 

You can build your life around it really and then improve your fitness quite dramatically. It’s such a simple thing, and I think it’s something that we really have evolved to do and are designed to do. Anyone can build some walking into their lives.

Q. Why do we need a book telling us how to walk? 

One reason I wrote the book was because so many people were ringing me up saying, “I can’t walk today because it’s raining or it’s a bit cold, and you can’t walk in this.” Or “I don’t want to do that route or it’s a bit muddy.” I just thought, Let’s turn all these excuses on their head. I just started digging further – walking in altitude, walking near water, walking when you’re hungry, walking when you’re tired, walking at night. And there were compelling reasons for almost everything.

Q. At the end of each chapter, you provide tips to make each walk more comfortable for the reader. Why?

We don’t always have the right kit [gear]. When we go out in the rain, we think we’re going to get wet and cold, but actually, if you’ve got proper waterproof clothing and proper waterproof boots, that doesn’t happen. A rainy walk is one of my favorites, but you really have to have the right clothes. I’m a big fan of waterproof trousers. You can’t really enjoy rainy walks without them.

Q. Each one of your walks is supported by scientific evidence. How difficult is it to keep science accessible and engaging to the average reader?

I have read thousands of studies written by scientists, and while they are brilliant at science, the reports can be deadly dull. As a writer, I look at something that’s really turgid and dull and try to make it a bit more interesting, a bit more accessible, a bit more exciting so people actually want to read it. 

Q. What is one of your favorite walks?

Night walking. We all think that the dark is the time to stay in and watch Netflix or sit on the sofa with a book. I go night walking with groups of other women and it’s just a very powerful, quite beautiful, quite wild experience. We discovered we were talking about subjects that we didn’t talk about in the day. Darkness creates a sort of intimacy. 

Q. Prior to this book, you wrote “Windswept, Walking the Paths of Trailblazing Women.” Did “Windswept” inspire this book?

“Windswept” was sort of my diving board really. It involved doing all sorts of things I had never done before, like walking on my own for 10 days in a foreign country. And I had done quite a lot of digging for “Windswept,” so I already had a big stack of research. 

Q. You also write historical fiction. How is researching for fiction different than researching for non-fiction?

You don’t have to go through statistics (Streets has a master’s in statistics) and be able to dissect a complicated and dull piece of information. Historical research is not like that at all. It is fascinating from the get-go. I did history and literature at university, so that’s probably my first love really. 

Q. Before writing books, you worked for 15 years at a tech company. How did the job prepare you for the kind of writing you do now?

When I look back, I can see that it was a brilliant training ground. I was writing speeches and articles and features, news pieces. It was not dissimilar to taking very dull science reports and turning them into something more readable. 

Q. When did you decide you wanted to write?

I left my job in my late forties and had some time out with my four kids. And then I was desperate to do something. It was quite hard to find something that fit in with the children going to school. So I fell into writing. You can work at night. You can work around different people’s schedules. So it’s quite flexible in that respect. Then I just thought I’d try to write a novel. I didn’t have any expectations. (Writing as Annabel Abbs, she entered her manuscript, “The Joyce Girl,” a fictional account of James Joyce’s mysterious daughter, in a competition and won. The book was published to critical acclaim.)

Q. I haven’t tried walking backwards, but was intrigued by Plennie Wingo who, wearing reverse-looking mirrored glasses, walked 7,000 miles in the early 1930s and holds the Guinness record for “greatest extent of reverse pedestrianism.” What is one of your favorite stories?

Oh, it’s definitely Wingo. He may even be my absolute favorite, but I quite like Kant the philosopher who walked every day at 5 o’clock breathing only through his nose. We now know after COVID that it’s good to breathe through your nose, but he knew it in the year 1800. He always walked alone because if there was someone with him, he would talk, and couldn’t just breathe through his nose.

Q. I love walking in our local cemetery. Did you ever think about including a chapter called, Walking with the Dead?

Walking with the dead is a great, great, great idea. I should have done a whole chapter on that. I love cemeteries because you’ve got nature, you’ve got silence, and you’ve got history. In a city, that’s as good as it gets. 

Q. As someone who has trouble sleeping, I found it interesting that taking a 10-minute walk upon waking has amazing health benefits. What was a big surprise you discovered during your research?

I found all the data on waterfalls and crashing waves really fascinating, how the force of water and all the molecules colliding, break apart the molecules, and each one creates an additional charge becoming a negative air ion. Studies done in Austria show there are health benefits from just being near this tumbling, colliding, crashing water. It’s almost magic, isn’t it? Like alchemy. This can’t be science. It’s just like Harry Potter!

Joe Ide, the mystery novelist, is most known for his creation of Isaiah Quintabe, or IQ, a young Black man in Long Beach whose intelligence rivals Sherlock Holmes. But this winter the South Central-raised Japanese American author takes a break from IQ to bring to his readers a modern-day version of Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe in the novel “The Goodbye Coast.”

While Ide’s publisher, Mulholland, had to license the Philip Marlowe character from the late author’s estate, Ide did not have to submit pages for approval as he wrote and recast the hard-boiled Los Angeles private detective in the 21st century instead of the 1940s. Also, instead of emulating Chandler’s stylized first-person point of view, Ide used his trademark propulsive third-person narrative, entering the heads of multiple characters, including Marlowe’s father, Emmet, an aging LAPD officer, and Cody, a client’s missing teenage daughter. The prose is pure Ide, infused with whip-smart dialogue and fast-moving scenes throughout iconic Southern California hangouts. 

Read more: Pasadena’s Naomi Hirahara explores the treatment of Japanese Americans in ‘Clark and Division’

Ide himself is Marlowesque – content to be on his own in his home in Santa Monica to write without the assistance of writing groups or creative partners. Here he shares with me how Hollywood almost broke his passion to write and how a cousin from the other coast made it possible for Joe to find his place in the nation’s literary landscape. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Hirahara: How has it been for you during the pandemic? Has it prevented you from capturing the iconic Hollywood locations in “The Goodbye Coast”?

Ide: Things haven’t changed much. I stay home and write. I don’t go out to dinner and that kind of thing. I’m good. I know what Marlowe’s neighborhood, East Hollywood, looks like. I used to live down there. East Hollywood has not changed much at all. It’s different around Grauman’s [now TCL Chinese Theatre] and all, but East Hollywood has been a hard-pressed neighborhood for a long time. The money just left it behind.

Hirahara: You’ve dedicated this book to your cousin Francis Fukuyama. You are a mystery writer and he has published books about politics and predicting the future. Why did you dedicate this book to him?

Ide: When I finished my first book, “IQ,” I had been out of the movie business for five years. I didn’t know anyone in publishing. I waffled a little about contacting Francis. He’s a busy guy. He agreed to read my book. I wasn’t very hopeful. I didn’t know how much he could relate to the book. He grew up on the East Coast and went to excellent schools. But he called me back and he really liked the book. He turned me onto his agent. And I had the easiest ride any writer had in terms of getting published. 

Hirahara: You mentioned that you had been out of the movie business for five years. You worked as a screenwriter. Can you tell us about your experience with Hollywood?

Ide: I was working a fair bit for most of the majors. I sold specs and did rewriting and polishing. But nothing I wrote got made. And that’s how you keep score in Hollywood. I started to get fewer and fewer calls. It got so discouraging. I would open the screenwriting program and I got physically repulsed. I just couldn’t. And so I quit. I was just depressed for a long time: If I wasn’t a screenwriter, who was I? But writing is the only thing that I knew how to do. I started to write a novel. I figured that I had the writing part down. But it turns out that writing long-form narrative is a whole different creature. I had to learn how to write decent prose. It took me a year just to do it. 

Hirahara: You seem to be a fan of classic mystery writers. Did reading their books help you?

Ide: Some books did. Like Thomas Perry’s books. During that time, I studied what I wanted to write. I tried to understand how these writers were doing what they were doing. Like Jo Nesbo and suspense. That guy can kill you. I was trying to understand the mechanics of it in a very granular way. Does this sentence work? Does it transition from the one before it and the one after it? Rewrite, rewrite and rewrite. The prologue in “IQ” was two and a half pages long. I rewrote it 27 times.

Read: These 10 Noteworthy books by Southern California authors made an impact in 2021

Hirahara: You modeled IQ after Sherlock Holmes and now this book is based on Raymond Chandler’s writings. Can you tell us more about your relationship with these two writers?

Ide: In terms of Conan Doyle I read his stories — multiple times —  in middle school. I carried Sherlock Holmes as my alter ego as I grew up. I didn’t read Chandler until I was in my twenties, and it was recreational reading at the time. But it did make an impression on me. I like cool guys like Marlowe. Iconic loner, survivor in the big city. 

Hirahara: If you were in trouble, who would you call first — would it be Sherlock or would it be Marlowe?

Ide: Sherlock is much more attentive to detail. His actual knowledge factual base is much more vast. But Marlowe has a much better grasp of people, relationships and issues. Sherlock was pretty removed from people. He was more about the clues. Marlowe has to take in clients that are much more finicky and demanding. The danger that he deals with is much more life-threatening. He’s more suited to contemporary society. So I would call Marlowe. He is also someone I could talk to, whereas Sherlock is much more challenging.

Hirahara: In “The Goodbye Coast” the father, Emmet, takes up a very large role.  Did that evolve as you were writing it? Were you surprised by that?

Ide: I wanted somebody close to Marlowe that he could talk to, somebody who had something to say about his work, and somebody formidable. Somebody who knew him growing up and had input on that. OK, that’s family but I needed conflict between Marlowe and whoever his sidekick turned out to be. I thought that a cranky old father and his smooth son—there would be a lot to make the scenes interesting. Emmet grew as I wrote him. His underlying conflict was written on the fly. One of the parent-child issues is bubbling on the surface and is always there. I also wanted Emmet to represent old Hollywood.

Hirahara: Is there a cranky old father in your life?

Ide: Not in the same way. My father was a Japanese dad, very aloof. Anything that had to do with family and kids was my mother’s responsibility. I really resented that. I resented it then and never resolved with him or myself. That’s something that I unconsciously go back to – that child/parental relationship. That comes through in all of my writing, one way or another.

Hirahara: Favorite Chandler book?

Ide: “The Long Goodbye.” It was the first Chandler book I read and the character always stuck with me. And then I saw the Bogart movie [“The Big Sleep”]. That made an impression on me. I thought, “That’s Marlowe.” 

Hirahara: You have Musso & Frank Grill in your novel. Your favorite eatery in Southern California?

Ide: Tacos Por Favor. It’s this little place in eastern Santa Monica. Carnitas tacos. I also like a Chinese restaurant called Paul’s Kitchen.

Hirahara: What’s next?

Ide: I’m working on IQ No. 6. I’d like to write another Marlowe but it’s dependent on the publisher and estate to decide what to do. 

Naomi Hirahara is the Edgar Award-winning author of multiple mystery series and noir short stories, including the Mas Arai series. Her acclaimed 2021 novel, “Clark & Division,” was named one of Southern California News Group’s inaugural Noteworthy recipients, and her next novel,  “An Eternal Lei,” will be published this year.

“What are you doing differently?” he asked, almost dumbfounded.

After all, I’m a 67-year-old balding guy who had spent much of his life as a desk-bound journalist dealing with nasty ailments like hernias (in my 30s), kidney stones (40s) and shingles (50s).

I ruminated over what had changed since my last physical. Sure, I exercise more than 90 minutes daily, but I’ve been doing that for five years. And yes, I watch what I eat, but that’s not new. Like most families with college-age kids, mine has its share of emotional and financial stresses — and there’d been no let-up there.

Only one thing in my life had registered any real change. “I’m volunteering more,” I told him.

I’d been spending less time in my basement office and more time out doing some good with like-minded people. Was this the magic elixir that seemed to steadily improve my health?

All signs pointed to “yes.” And I was feeling great about it.

Then just as I realized how important volunteering is to my health and well-being, the novel coronavirus appeared. As cases climbed, society shut down. One by one, my beloved volunteer gigs in Virginia disappeared. No more Mondays at Riverbend Park in Great Falls helping folks decide which trails to walk. Or Wednesdays serving lunch to the homeless at a community shelter in Falls Church. Or Fridays at the Arlington Food Assistance Center, which I gave up out of an abundance of caution. My modest asthma is just the sort of underlying condition that seems to make COVID-19 all the more brutal.

It used to be that missing even one day of volunteering made me feel like a sourpuss. After almost eight months without it, I’m downright dour.

Science helps explain why.

“The health benefits for older volunteers are mind-blowing,” said Paul Irving, chairman of the Center for the Future of Aging at the Milken Institute, and distinguished scholar in residence at the USC Leonard Davis School of Gerontology, whose lectures, books and podcasts on aging are turning heads.

When older folks go in for physicals, he said, “in addition to taking blood and doing all the other things that the doctor does when he or she pushes and prods and pokes, the doctor should say to you, ‘So, tell me about your volunteering.’”

A 2016 study in Psychosomatic Medicine: Journal of Behavioral Medicine that pooled data from 10 studies found that people with a higher sense of purpose in their lives — such as that received from volunteering — were less likely to die in the near term. Another study, published in Daedalus, an academic journal by MIT Press for the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, concluded that older volunteers had reduced risk of hypertension, delayed physical disability, enhanced cognition and lower mortality.

“People who are happy and engaged show better physiological functioning,” said Dr. Alan Rozanski, a cardiologist at Mount Sinai St. Luke’s Hospital, a senior author of the Psychosomatic Medicine study. People who engage in social activities such as volunteering, he said, often showed better blood pressure results and better heart rates.

That makes sense, of course, because volunteers are typically more active than, say, someone home on the couch streaming “Gilligan’s Island.”

Volunteers share a dirty little secret. We may start it to help others, but we stick with it for our own good, emotionally and physically.

At the homeless shelter, I could hit my target heart rate packing 50 sack lunches in an hour to the beat of Motown music. And at the food bank, I could feel the physical and emotional uplift of human contact while distributing hundreds of gallons of milk and dozens of cartons of eggs during my three-hour shifts. When I’m volunteering, I dare say I feel more like 37 than 67.

None of this surprises Rozanski, who looked at 10 studies over the past 15 years that included more than 130,000 participants. All of them, he said, showed that partaking in activities with purpose — such as volunteering — reduced the risk of cardiovascular events and often resulted in a longer life for older people.

Dr. David DeHart knows something about this, too. He’s a doctor of family medicine at the Mayo Clinic in Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin. He figures he has worked with thousands of patients — many of them elderly — over his career. Instead of just writing prescriptions, he recommends volunteering to his older patients primarily as a stress reducer.

“Compassionate actions that relieve someone else’s pain can help to reduce your own pain and discomfort,” he said.

At age 50, he listens to his own advice. DeHart volunteers with international medical teams in Vietnam, typically two trips a year. He often brings his wife and children to help, too. “When I come back, I feel recharged and ready to jump back into my work here,” he said. “The energy it gives me reminds me why I wanted to be a doctor in the first place.”

I think of my personal rewards from volunteering as cosmic electricity — with no “off” button. The good feeling sticks with me throughout the week — if not the month.

When will it be safe to resume my volunteering activities?

I’m considering my options. The park is offering some outdoor opportunities involving cleanup, but that lacks the interaction that lifts me. I’m tempted to go back to the food bank because even Charles Dinkens, an 85-year-old who has volunteered next to me for years, has returned after eight months away. “What else am I supposed to do?” he posed. The homeless shelter isn’t allowing volunteers in just yet. Instead, it’s asking folks to bag lunches at home and drop them off. Oh, they’re also looking for people to “call” virtual games of bingo for residents.

Virtual bingo just doesn’t float my boat.

Truth be told, there is no one-size-fits-all way to safely volunteer during the pandemic, said Dr. Kristin Englund, staff physician and infectious disease expert at the Cleveland Clinic. She suggests that volunteers — particularly those over 65 — stick with outdoor options. It’s better in a protected space where the general public isn’t moving through, she said, because “every time you interact with a person, it increases your risk of contracting the disease.”

Englund said she’d consider walking dogs outside for a local animal shelter as one safe option with some companionship. “While we do know that people can give COVID to animals,” she said, “it’s unlikely they can give it back to you.”

Meanwhile, my next annual physical is coming right up in January. It’s got me to wondering if my labs will be quite as pristine as they were the last go-round. I’ve got my doubts. Unless, of course, I’ve resumed some sort of in-person volunteering by then.

Last year, an elderly woman staying at the homeless shelter pulled me aside to thank me after I handed her lunch of tomato soup and a turkey sandwich. She set down her tray, took my hand, looked me smack in the eye and asked, “Why do you do this?”

She was probably expecting me to say I do it to help others because I care about those less fortunate than me. But that’s not what came out.

“I do it for myself,” I said. “Being here makes me whole.”

Kaiser Health News is a nonprofit news service covering health issues. It is an editorially independent program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, which is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.

I think I can speak for us all, in saying that we are craving celebrations to break up the social doldrums that have come in 2020. Whether attending live or virtually, we all want to look vibrant and be camera ready. When you feel you look your best, you project confidence, happiness, and a positive energy that others are attracted to.

Given that there are only two weeks until Thanksgiving and six weeks until Christmas/Hanukah; It would be best to utilize minimally invasive and non-surgical aesthetics for your enhancements. There are many options we have in our armamentarium to provide you notable improvements; it can feel a little overwhelming not knowing where to start. Please allow me to share some of the most popular procedures you can now use to address your individual concerns, those which have minimal to no downtime and will have you looking glam in about two weeks.

Microneedling with PRP AKA The Vampire Facial

This procedure, (attributed to Dr. Charles Runnels), is an aggressive exfoliation creating pinpoint bleeding from the Microneedling portion. Separately, your blood is drawn and then centrifuged to pull the red and white blood cells down to the bottom of the tube leaving just the nutrient-rich, platelet infused plasma behind. This wonderful straw-colored fluid is injected into various depths of the tissues and then also further driven into the skin with the Microneedling to mimic injury; signaling the body’s stem cells to come repair and rejuvenate the area, stimulating fibroblasts, elastin, collagen formation, and neovascularization.

Real Benefits

Improved appearance of fine lines, pore size, pigment irregularities, skin texture and tone, improved overall radiance.

Ave cost: $1000-$3200 depending on the number of areas treated and if combined with HA filler, Neurotoxin, or Vitamins.

Fillers and Threads

Most commonly used are Hyaluronic Acid fillers, such as Kysse,  which are injected to replace volume loss, enhance shape and add contour; as well as fill the vertical “smokers lines” around the mouth.  Fillers can also create a youthful apple cheek, highlight a cheekbone, or define the chin and jawline amongst many other uses.

Threads, which can safely be used and are made of PDO, Polydioxanone; an absorbable material your body breaks down over the course of about 6-9 months, and in doing so stimulates your own collagen production.  Threads can be utilized to provide structure and support in the case of small smooth types and tissue lifting can be achieved with the utilization of longer, barbed varieties. The results they yield are a more lifted youthful appearance of the tissues. Threads are best suited for patients with mild to moderate laxity who are not quite ready for a traditional facelift.

Real Benefits

HA Fillers: All ages, improved appearance of volume loss, shape and contour

Ave cost: $650-$800/ area dependent upon the type

PDO Threads: Beginning in 30’s, tissue lifting, support, & contour

Ave cost: $1200-$3200 depending on the number of areas being treated

BioStimulators

Sculptra and Radiess

These two products are wonderful options for patients who would benefit from both immediate improvements as well as the delayed bio stimulatory effect. They are designed to promote one’s own tissue regeneration and growth.  These can be injected and used in diluted washes to improve crepe skin, which is common in the lines of the neck and chest. Growing in popularity is the “Brazilian Butt Lift” look, we can even utilize Sculptra to build a booty and treat cellulite.  Please note that despite their versatility, Sculptra nor Radiesse should ever be used on the lips or around the eyes.

Real benefits

Improvement in volume, lines, texture, stretch marks, cellulite, tone, and radiance.

Ave Cost: $800-$5000+ depending upon the number of areas (need multiple treatments in case of BBL)

Liquid Lipo

Kybella, deoxycholic acid, is essentially a synthetic gallbladder acid that can be used to treat lipodystrophy in areas that are resistant to exercise or genetically predisposed to accumulation, such as a double chin, bra fat, muffin top, saddlebags, etc. It is not designed for widespread use nor a substitute for liposuction but can be used for refinement of areas.

Real benefits

Reduction in localized fatty volume and improvement in perceived contour.

Ave Cost: $1200-$2500

Neuromodulators

Botox, Dysport, Jeaveau, Xeomin, are all type A Botulinum toxins that can be used to eliminate wrinkles, improve symmetry and positioning, debulk muscles, reduce pore size, improve scars, soften neckbands, and inhibit sweating.  Using these for cosmetic purposes can make a tremendous difference in both immediate and long term improvements for the signs of aging.  They are extremely well tolerated, make you appear happier, younger, and more relaxed.

These should not be used by patients with a history of: Multiple Sclerosis, Guillane-Barre, or Myasthenia Gravis.

Real Benefits

Improvement in wrinkles, fine lines, pore size reduction among many others.

Ave Cost: $330-600 per treatment, the duration is approximately 3-4 months.

As with all cosmetic procedures, please ensure they are administered by a licensed and trained provider such as an NP, PA, or MD.  While all of the mentioned procedures are very well tolerated and can be done with minimal disruption;  bruising, redness, swelling, unevenness, lumps, and bumps can be common in the first two weeks, and typically resolve by week four, so plan accordingly.

Wishing you a beautiful holiday season!

To keep up with all beauty tips and tricks from Heidi visit SoCalMoments.com and subscribe for updates!

Author Bio: Heidi Lindner has been an aesthetics expert for over 17 years specializing in all aspects of non-surgical aesthetics and plastic surgery. She is sought out for her techniques that focus on a natural-looking approach to facial balancing, restoration, and beauty optimization. Follow her on Instagram @j_derme

Twice in this admiring portrait of civil rights leader and Atlanta Congressman John Lewis (1940–2020), Jon Meacham admits he may be guilty of sentimentality in writing this book. He is correct, if sentimentality is defined as affectionate, tender, or nostalgic. Lewis was a “quietly charismatic, forever courtly, implacably serene man,” writes Meacham, a Vanderbilt historian. He was a humble man, “moved by love, not hate,” who “embodied the traits of a saint.”

As for nostalgia, the author concedes that Lewis’ vision “has been somewhat out of fashion at least since 1966.” In that year, Lewis left his post as chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), a major civil rights organization, as it embraced black power, an ideology with connotations of violence and separatism.

Throughout his life, Lewis imagined people of all races and religions living together amicably. He believed that “hope shaped history—the hope that Lincoln’s better angels could prevail if men and women heeded the still, small voice of conscience that suggested the country and the world would be better off if Jefferson’s assertion of human equality were truly universal.”

“We can create a multiracial community, a truly democratic society,” he wrote.

With a strong focus on Lewis’ actions in the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s (and touching lightly on his 33-year career in the House of Representatives), “His Truth Is Marching On” celebrates years of courageous youthful activism. While in his teens and twenties, Lewis was attacked by a white mob during a Freedom Ride, spent a month at the notorious Parchman Farm prison, participated in Freedom Summer in Mississippi, and suffered a skull fracture from a policeman’s billy club during a voting rights march in Selma, Alabama. Meacham details all of these events vividly.

In a word, Lewis was a principal in many of the defining moments of the civil rights movement, including the 1963 March on Washington. Why did he dedicate his entire youth to the movement?

“From my earliest memories, I was fundamentally disturbed by the unbridled meanness of the world around me,” he recalled. “Though I was not yet familiar with the words of the Declaration of Independence, I could feel in my bones that segregation was wrong, and I felt I had an obligation to change it.”

His parents lived quietly in Troy, Alabama, where Lewis’ grandfather had been a slave. They never shared their son’s penchant for activism. “Preach the Bible, not civil rights,” they told him. But Lewis had heard Martin Luther King’s galvanizing 1950s radio talks advocating “nonviolent, religiously inspired protest” and read the work of “Social Gospel” theologian Walter Rauschenbusch.

Meacham evokes nicely the forces that shaped Lewis’ vision. Besides his teachers at the American Baptist Theological Seminary in Nashville, his main influences included King, the nation’s most visible civil rights leader; the Rev. James Morris Lawson, then a field secretary for the Fellowship of Reconciliation, a pacifist group, who preached a hybrid of the gospel and Gandhi; and Robert Kennedy, a civil rights supporter whose 1968 presidential campaign Lewis joined. All pointed the way for Lewis to “channel his sense of justice into redemptive action.”

Many readers will find themselves sharing Meacham’s nostalgia for the man and the nonviolent movement for civil rights, which accomplished “more to change America for the better than any single domestic undertaking since the Civil War.”

Meacham notes that Rutgers historian David Greenberg is writing a full-scale biography of John Lewis. For now, the stirring “His Truth Is Marching On” will serve nicely for readers who want to understand the essence of Lewis who, even at 80, shortly before his recent death, admonished:

“We have a lot of work to do. So don’t get weary! Keep the faith.”

“His Truth Is Marching On: John Lewis and the Power of Hope”

Jon Meacham

Random House

Joseph Barbato, a reviewer for New York Journal of Books, is an author and journalist whose books include Writing for a Good Cause (Touchstone) and Heart of the Land: Essays on Last Great Places (Vintage). 

Delegates stationed about the nation took a virtual roll call vote during the Democratic National Convention on Tuesday night and Biden passed the 2,374 required delegates needed to formally become the nominee.

Biden is expected to accept the nomination on Thursday night.

World War II is replete with stories of courage and heroism in the face of evil. It is gratifying to know that not all of them have seen the light of day and continue to be told. This is especially so for those stories that are obscure or little known and even more so when the defiance occurred in opposition to the Japanese military forces, notorious for their brutality and terror tactics.

“The Indomitable Florence Finch: The Untold Story of a War Widow Turned Resistance Fighter and Savior of American POWs” by author and former Congressman Robert J. Mrazek combines all of those elements. It is not only a biography of Florence Finch’s early and long postwar life but includes all of the actions that she undertook to handicap the Japanese war effort as an office worker for a fuel company and provide aid to American prisoners of war but also, not mentioned in the subtitle, foreign national civilian internees in the Santo Tomas camp in the Philippine capital of Manila.

Her origins can be traced to the early 20th century after her American father had served in the U.S. Army in the Spanish-American War and decided to stay on. As a person of mixed-race parentage, she lived in a world literally between the native people and the Americans, generally looked down upon by both, consequently. As a result, she learned early on to become her own person: self-reliant, accomplished, and intelligent.

Those attributes helped her to succeed in the prewar business world before meeting her first husband, a U.S. Naval officer, and then being engaged in intelligence gathering for the Americans regarding Japanese intentions. When he was killed in the fighting after the Japanese invasion, she was left to fend for herself.

Concealing her work (and her passport) for the Americans, she was able to secure a position in a liquid fuel company run by the Japanese in which she had access to ration coupons, some of which she would falsify to obtain gas and diesel that could in turn be sold to buy food, medicines, and other supplies for the resistance, the internees and POWs, the latter through a secret underground courier system that also provided intelligence to the prisoners on the ongoing progress of the war.

Of course, this work was fraught with danger if she should be caught. In the event, the fraud was discovered. She was imprisoned and tortured but never revealed her participation despite the pain inflicted under interrogation.

Notwithstanding her contributions, she was willing to do even more. After being returned to Allied control in early 1945, following General Douglas MacArthur’s campaign in the Philippines, she came to the United States and, after recovering from her ordeal, enlisted in the Coast Guard where she became the only female member to receive the Asiatic-Pacific Medal.

In later life, she was awarded the Medal of Freedom after paperwork was submitted by an American officer who was a recipient of her aid as a POW and knew her story. Her long and incredible life ended in 2016 at the age of 101.

Besides her amazing story, this is also a very easily and quickly read book. The chapters tend to be very brief, generally just a handful of pages, but the author manages to pack a lot of information into each, ranging from what Ms. Finch was experiencing or doing at one point to the toil and privations suffered by the resistance, prisoners and internees, and the efforts of the Japanese.

Creditably, and helpful, are two maps in the front of the book. One shows the overall Southwest Pacific Theater of Operations and the other being of the Philippine Islands. The photographic section, mid-book, contains many relevant shots of Finch, others who figure in the story, and locations.

If there is any criticism, there are no notes. The Acknowledgments and Bibliography, however, indicate that the largest part of the research done was obtained from the so-called “Florence Archives” and her immediate family members who made a point of learning all they could about her wartime experiences before she passed. Military records, documents, and correspondence from others were also employed.

Finch has now been immortalized, as the Coast Guard Headquarters in Honolulu, Hawaii, is named for her. Most assuredly, the word indomitable should be inscribed on it in front of her name. Florence Finch is definitely an unsung hero.

Stuart McClung holds a Master of Arts in Military History and has written reviews for the Journal of America’s Military Past, Humanities and Social Sciences Online and New York Journal of Books.

“Indomitable Florence Finch: The Untold Story of a War Widow Turned Resistance Fighter and Savior of American POWs”

By Robert J. Mrazek.

368 pgs, Hachette Books, $28

“She ties it tight. It takes a while to find a vein. She can’t use her arms anymore, her veins have collapsed. But at the back of the knee, she still has one that lights up for her. It glows blue in the gray of early morning. She places the tip of the needle at the pulsing, simmering center of the vein and slides it in. She is desperate, this close to the rush, but takes the time to pull the plunger back a little to make sure she has hit blood. For a second, the swirling red and white reminds her of cherry blossoms.”

The voice speaking above serves as a narrator throughout her sister’s ghastly descent into the hellacious pit of drug addiction is that of Los Angeles-based author Rose Andersen. Her memoir “The Hearts and Other Monsters,” which she worked on while getting her MFA at CalArts Creative Writing program, is quite like a diary with each successive journal entry becoming increasingly more macabre as sister Sarah’s journey into darkness becomes ever more pronounced.

Most people become addicted to opioids as a result of a legitimate prescription from a doctor for pain. A concomitant reaction to the drug as it binds to receptors in the body is to produce a “sense of well-being or euphoria.”

No eventual addict desires to become a hopeless passenger on the road to despair when they take that first pill or shot. But the statistics don’t lie about the dangers of opioids as explained by Andersen in her statement, “About 80% of people who use heroin begin by first abusing prescription opioids.” Further, according to the NIH (The National Institute of Health) 2018 data shows that every day, 128 people in the United States die after overdosing on opioids

In the chapter entitled Opioids 101, Sarah describes to her sister that “the original point was to feel good. And then it became about not feeling bad, about avoiding the pain of withdrawal and the deep unending depression that took over when she tried to get clean.”

In this day and age, most people have some awareness that there is an opioid crisis but know little about the complex bodily processes involved in the ubiquitous amount of death and destruction to families. Unless someone is personally going through, it is extremely difficult to imagine the foreboding of dark layers of nimbostratus clouds that mask the sun in the midst of an all-encompassing crisis such as this one.

To achieve the optimal setting for a successful outcome for recovery, the most successful treatment modalities galvanize the entire family system to support the efforts of the addict to begin to heal a fractured body and psyche.

The Andersen family was not quite up to the task of presenting a united front to support Sarah. As an example, Andersen describes her father as a man who “cheated, lied and stole” but “when he focused his attention on you, it felt like the most brilliant, warm light.”

Unfortunately for Sarah Andersen, even though author and sister Rose had ultimately been successful in her own road to sobriety, it was still difficult to admit that it wasn’t enough to want recovery for Sarah. Nothing is more accurate than the statement Rose makes that, “An addict has to be ready to get clean, want to do the work of sobriety, want to feel again.”

“The Heart and Other Monsters” is one of the rare books in the marketplace that is both written by a recovering addict as well as being the person who bore witness to the downward spiral of addiction and ultimate death of her closest family member. As much personal experience Andersen had with the degradation and destruction of substance abuse, she was forced to stand by helplessly when it came to saving her own sister. Unfortunately, this is the plight of many who love an addict or alcoholic.

Laura Schultz, a freelance writer and licensed Marriage and Family Therapist for over 25 years specializing in addiction and family systems, is a reviewer for New York Journal of Books.