Produce inspectors keep farmers markets honest

On a recent Saturday morning, Ed Williams stood off to the side at Santa Monica's downtown farmers market, scrutinizing a bright red mango like a detective trying to solve a mystery.

"It looks damaged by hot water treatment, which is only used on imported mangoes," Williams said to market supervisor Laura Avery. Pointing to tiny white specks on the fruit, he added, "I think these are dead scale insects."

Williams is deputy director of the Los Angeles County agricultural commissioner's office. Avery contacted him because she suspected that the vendor was buying the fruit, not growing it at his farm as required by state law.

A county entomologist later confirmed that the spots were white mango scale, a pest not present in California, but common in South America — clear evidence that the vendor was reselling imported fruit.

The vendor will probably be fined, officials said, in part of a crackdown over the last year on those who buy produce from neighbors or packinghouses and sell it as their own at certified farmers markets. It has led to 20 vendors being fined in Los Angeles County in 2013, up from two last year. San Diego County has sanctioned five vendors, and more Southern California cases are pending.

The crackdown came after Los Angeles County Agricultural Commissioner Kurt Floren, stung by media reports of farmers market cheating, hired Williams in November 2012. Williams, who has a degree in botany, inspected Southern California farmers markets for the state in the late 1980s and 1990s. Managers said he had a knack for spotting violators.

After 14 years in Sacramento, he's back in the Southland, with in-depth knowledge of the rhythm of the seasons, the growing areas and the tricks of market scammers.

Williams said he is training his inspectors to recognize tipoffs, such as produce that has a commercial appearance — being waxed or uniformly sized — or is out of season for a growing area.

If an investigation determines that vendors have violated state laws, they can face fines up to $1,000 for each offense. For serious or repeated violations, producers can also be suspended from farmers markets for up to 18 months.

"The whole point of farmers markets is that you know who you're buying from, and what their practices are," said Robin Holding, a regular shopper at the Santa Monica market who unknowingly bought one of the bogus "local" mangoes. "It was not inexpensive, and of awful quality. I was really turned off," Holding said.

Williams says the punishment fits the crime.

"I want compliance, but I don't want to take everybody out and damage the markets," Williams said in an interview at his office in South Gate. "You see how many violators we've caught. We're going to give them enough rope to hang themselves."

To avoid being sanctioned, investigators say, some farmers go so far as to plant dummy crops to deceive inspectors on the lookout for sales volume that far exceeds a grower's capacity.

"They plant [crops], but they never harvest, they're just for us to see," said Korinne Bell, who supervises farmers markets for the Ventura County agricultural commissioner.

Los Angeles County, which has 153 farmers markets, spent $243,000 on the program during the fiscal year that ended June 30. That figure far exceeded the $81,000 the county received from farmers market fees charged to farmers and market operators.

Floren tapped his department's general funds to boost enforcement, but it is unclear how long that can continue.

"We're spending a lot more money on this program than we can sustain," Williams said.

One of the sanctioned farmers, Victor Gonzalez of Atkins Nursery in Fallbrook, did not contest that his vendors had on three occasions sold produce not grown by the farm, records show. But he appealed the penalty to the California Department of Food and Agriculture, asking that he not be suspended from participating at farmers markets because that would "cause him and his employees a great hardship."

In a decision issued Tuesday, the agency's staff counsel affirmed his suspension for six months.

Speaking by phone Thursday night, Gonzalez said his workers had mistakenly placed fruit from another farm on his farm's tables at markets. "I fired those people, and I'll pay the fine, but please let me work, or I'm dead," he said.

Officials declined to identify the vendor who was selling the suspect red mangoes in Santa Monica, saying that the administrative process had not been completed.

Avery, the Santa Monica market supervisor, said she welcomes the oversight.

"I'm thrilled that the Los Angeles agriculture department is going after the cheaters," Avery said. "For farmers markets to continue to prosper, it is crucial that consumers have confidence that vendors really grow what they sell."

food@latimes.com

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Woman, 24, killed in drive-by shooting in South L.A.

Denise Piazza was inside her upstairs apartment when the shots resounded on Christmas Day.

There weren't squealing tires or a revving engine like you'd expect to hear after a drive-by shooting, she said, just the five or six loud pops about 5 p.m. Wednesday, and then children's screams.

Witnesses said they could tell 24-year-old Juliana Barrios was dead before her panicked family carried her body into a car and rushed her to a nearby hospital.

"She wasn't moving," said Piazza, who has lived in the 700 block of East 87th Street in South Los Angeles for 14 years. "It's sad, so sad. God forbid, it could've been one of those kids."

Police on Thursday said there is still no clear motive for why Barrios or the home may have been targeted. Barrios lived in Pomona and was visiting family for the holiday, police said. Neither she nor her family have apparent gang ties, according to residents and detectives.

"It could be just to make a lasting memory for whoever the intended victim was, to let the family know that every Christmas they have to live through this again," said Los Angeles Police Department gang homicide Det. Charles Hicks. "Or maybe they were bored and just didn't have something to do. It could be any number of things at this point. It's undetermined what the motivation is. It just looks like an unfortunate victim."

Residents said the street was quiet Wednesday afternoon before the shooting. Barrios and some children from the home were in the front yard when a truck drove by in the westbound lane, and someone on the passenger side fired in Barrios' direction.

Plates and bowls remained on a table on the home's porch Thursday. A pair of bullet holes were visible next to the front door and window; one shot narrowly missed a painting of the Virgin Mary hanging nearby.

"It's horrible … you never think something like this would happen right here," said Perry Wright, who has lived on the street for 30 years and is familiar with the family living at the home Barrios was visiting. "These kids weren't, like, in gangs or anything like that. They were pretty good kids."

It's a neighborhood where everyone watches out for each other, Piazza said.

"They're very nice," she said of the family. "They stayed in the yard. Mind their own business. No one ever had a problem."

joseph.serna@latimes.com

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Echo Park Lake's lotus plants aren't dead — they're just resting

Nancy Smith and her family were strolling around Echo Park Lake on Thursday when they noticed an odd, brown patch in the water.

Smith visited the lake as recently as August and recalled that back then, its bright green lotus plants shot into the air.

But on the day after Christmas, the wilted bed of bronze flowers before her drooped onto the water like a sea of broken miniature umbrellas.

"I've walked around this park in the winter and I don't remember it ever quite looking like this," said Smith, 56, a lawyer from La Crescenta. "I'm sure hoping it comes back green in the spring."

Rest assured, horticultural experts say, the famed flowers are not dead.

The lotus is a deciduous plant, said Randy McDonald, the man who sold the city more than 300 of them for the lake restoration. That means they grow part of the year and are dormant another part of the year.

December is part of the dormant period, but "the lotus are going to come back," McDonald said.

Still, the flowers' health is a sensitive subject to locals. When Echo Park Lake reopened earlier this year after a $45-million makeover, people flocked to see the newly installed lotus plants, which were making their return to the lake after a multiyear absence.

As recently as 2005, the lotuses stood five feet high and spilled onto the shore. But about seven years ago, the flowers started to shrivel and the leaves began to brown. By 2008, they had disappeared.

Some people blamed the lake's dirty water, others accused natural predators — fish, turtles and crayfish. A crew of biologists did a study, but they never pinpointed a cause.

The plants were restored recently under a veil of black protective mesh and hundreds of Angelenos turned out in June to celebrate the rebirth.

June is around the time lotuses get their first flowers, said Virginia Hayes, a lotus expert who consulted on the lake's restoration project. They continue to bloom into the summer, she said; then, in the winter, the top of the plant "turns brown and goes away."

"In nature they might wither and fall into the bottom of the pond like fertilizer," said Hayes, a curator at the Ganna Walska Lotusland garden in Santa Barbara. "They are native to habitats that have real winters.… They have evolved to go dormant when the conditions are unfavorable for growth above the water. They still do that even if we plant them in California."

Hayes said the growth the plants achieved this year was "amazing," and McDonald expects the plants "to come back with an intensity that will be superior to what we saw before."

The experts said new leaves will sprout in late March or early April. By summertime, they said, the flowers will bloom again.

If that's the case, "it might be nice to put up a sign," Smith said, "so people don't think that they're dead."

matt.stevens@latimes.com

Times staff writer Marisa Gerber contributed to this report.

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'Men are stuck' in gender roles, data suggest

Brent Kroeger pores over nasty online comments about stay-at-home dads, wondering if his friends think those things about him. The Rowland Heights father remembers high school classmates laughing when he said he wanted to be a "house husband." He avoids mentioning it on Facebook.

"I don't want other men to look at me like less of a man," Kroeger said.

His fears are tied to a bigger phenomenon: The gender revolution has been lopsided. Even as American society has seen sweeping transformations — expanding roles for women, surging tolerance for homosexuality — popular ideas about masculinity seem to have stagnated.

While women have broken into fields once dominated by men, such as business, medicine and law, men have been slower to pursue nursing, teach preschool, or take jobs as administrative assistants. Census data and surveys show that men remain rare in stereotypically feminine positions.

When it comes to gender progress, said Ronald F. Levant, editor of the journal Psychology of Men and Masculinity, "men are stuck."

The imbalance appears at work and at home: Working mothers have become ordinary, but stay-at-home fathers exist in only 1% of married couples with kids under age 15, according to U.S. Census Bureau data.

In a recent survey, 51% of Americans told the Pew Research Center that children were better off if their mother was at home. Only 8% said the same about fathers. Even seeking time off can be troublesome for men: One University of South Florida study found that college students rated hypothetical employees wanting flexible schedules as less masculine.

Other research points to an enduring stigma for boys whose behavior is seen as feminine. "If girls call themselves tomboys, it's with a sense of pride," said University of Illinois at Chicago sociology professor Barbara Risman. "But boys make fun of other boys if they step just a little outside the rigid masculine stereotype."

Two years ago, for instance, a Global Toy Experts survey found that more than half of mothers wouldn't give a doll to someone else's son, while only 32% said the same about giving cars or trucks to a girl. Several studies have found that bending gender stereotypes in childhood is tied to worse anxiety for men than women in adulthood.

In the southern end of Orange County, former friends have stopped talking to Lori Duron and her husband. Slurs and threats arrive by email. Their son calls himself a boy, but has gravitated toward Barbies, Disney princesses and pink since he was a toddler. In a blog and a book she wrote, Duron chronicles worries that would seem trivial if her child were a girl: Whether he would be teased for his rainbowy backpack. Whether a Santa would look askance at him for wanting a doll.

"If a little girl is running around on the baseball team with her mitt, people think, 'That's a strong girl,'" said her husband, Matt Duron, who, like his wife, uses a pen name to shield the boy's identity. "When my 6-year-old is running around in a dress, people think there's something wrong with him."

Beyond childhood, the gender imbalance remains stark when students choose college majors: Between 1971 and 2011, a growing share of degrees in biology, business and other historically male majors went to women, an analysis by University of Maryland, College Park sociologist Philip N. Cohen shows. Yet fields like education and the arts remained heavily female, as few men moved the opposite way. Federal data show that last year less than 2% of preschool and kindergarten teachers were men.

In the last 40 years, "women have said, 'Wait a minute, we are competent and assertive and ambitious,'" claiming a wider range of roles, said Michael Kimmel, executive director of the Center for the Study of Men and Masculinities at Stony Brook University. But "men have not said, 'We're kind, gentle, compassionate and nurturing.'"

As the Durons and other families have discovered, messages of gender norms trickle down early. In Oregon, Griffin Bates was stunned when the little boy she was raising with her lesbian partner at the time came back from a visit with Grandma and Grandpa without his beloved tutu and tiara.

"They were perfectly OK with his mother being gay," Bates said. "But they weren't OK with their grandson playing dress-up in a tutu."

Boys stick with typically masculine toys and games much more consistently than girls adhere to feminine ones, Harvard School of Public Health research associate Andrea L. Roberts found. Biologically male children who defy those norms are referred to doctors much earlier than biologically female ones who disdain "girl things," said Johanna Olson of the Center for Transyouth Health and Development at Children's Hospital Los Angeles. Even the criteria for diagnosing gender dysphoria were historically much broader for effeminate boys than for masculine girls.

Why? "Masculinity is valued more than femininity," University of Utah law professor Clifford Rosky said. "So there's less worry about girls than about boys."

Gender stereotypes do seem to have loosened: The Global Toy Experts survey found that most mothers would let their own sons play with dolls and dress-up sets, even if they shied from buying them for other boys. Parents in some parts of Los Angeles said their boys got barely any flak for choosing pink sneakers or toting dolls to school. And in a recent online survey by advertising agency DDB Worldwide, nearly three quarters of Americans surveyed said stay-at-home dads were just as good at parenting as stay-at-home moms.

But while attitudes may have shifted, Rosky said, "nothing changes until men are willing to act."

Some experts say economic barriers have stopped men from moving further into feminized fields. Jobs held by women tend to pay less, an imbalance rooted in the historical assumption that women were not breadwinners. Women had an economic reason to take many of the jobs monopolized by men, particularly college-educated women trying to climb the economic ladder.

"But if men made the switch, they'd lose money," New York University sociologist Paula England said.

Yet it isn't just economics that keeps men from typically female jobs. Men are still rare in nursing, for instance, despite respectable pay. England and other scholars see that dearth as another form of sexism, in which things historically associated with women are devalued.

Men who do enter heavily female fields are often prodded into other ones without even searching, as other people suggest new gigs that better fit the masculine stereotype, said Julie A. Kmec, associate professor of sociology at Washington State University.

While women have "come out" to their families as people who want a life outside the home, men have not "come out" at work as involved fathers, Kimmel said. And that, in turn, holds many working mothers back, Risman argued.

Familiar measures of progress toward gender equality, such as women working in management or men picking up housework, began to plateau in the 1990s. Cohen found that in the first decade of the millennium jobs stayed similarly segregated by gender — the first time since 1960 that gender integration in the workplace had slowed to a virtual halt.

"If men don't feel free to go into women's jobs," said Risman, a scholar at the Council on Contemporary Families, "women are not really free."

emily.alpert@latimes.com

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Accused LAX gunman pleads not guilty

In a raspy voice that barely registered above a whisper, the man accused of opening fire in a terminal at Los Angeles International Airport pleaded not guilty Thursday to charges connected to the attack that left a security officer dead.

Paul Anthony Ciancia, 23, was arraigned on 11 federal counts stemming from the Nov. 1 shooting rampage including murder, attempted murder and charges related to committing violence and using a firearm in an international airport.

Three of the charges — including the killing of Transportation Security Administration screener Gerardo I. Hernandez — make Ciancia eligible for the death penalty if convicted. Prosecutors said they have not determined if they will pursue it, and that the final decision rests with U.S. Atty. Gen. Eric Holder.

Ciancia was indicted by a federal grand jury last week.

The brief arraignment hearing was held at West Valley Detention Center in Rancho Cucamonga, where Ciancia is recovering from injuries sustained when airport police apprehended him. Ciancia had scrapes and bruises on his face and wore a large bandage over his throat.

Observers in the small jailhouse courtroom said Ciancia appeared young for his age and occasionally looked nervous. He declined to have the indictment read in court, acknowledging he had already read it.

Officials said he was still being held at the Rancho Cucamonga jail because it had the medical facilities he needed. He was shot in the head and leg, and was hospitalized for two weeks before being sent to jail. Officials declined to elaborate on his medical condition, citing federal privacy laws.

At a Dec. 4 hearing U.S. Magistrate Judge David Bristow ordered Ciancia be held without bond.

Authorities said Ciancia, a New Jersey native living in Los Angeles, had a documented hatred of TSA agents and targeted them during the attack. He is accused of fatally shooting Hernandez, 39, who was the first TSA officer to die in the line of duty since the agency was formed in the months after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Two other officers were wounded and Ciancia faces attempted murder charges related to their injuries. A civilian was also injured in the attack, but federal prosecutors did not file attempted murder charges in that person's case because, unlike the federal officers', it falls outside their jurisdiction, prosecutors said.

At the hearing Thursday a trial date was set for Feb. 11 in Los Angeles, although prosecutors said there was a high likelihood the date could be pushed back. Thom Mrozek, a spokesman for the U.S attorney's office, said the investigation was still underway to get "a complete picture of what happened."

Ciancia's next court appearance is a pre-trial hearing set for Jan. 27 in Los Angeles.

rick.rojas@latimes.com

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Newport Beach candidate taking donations in bitcoins

When Newport Beach City Council candidate Michael Glenn thinks of freedom, that includes the freedom to choose how to donate, be it with dollars, pesos or bitcoins.

Glenn claims to be the first local politician to accept campaign donations in the esoteric digital currency. He is seeking the Balboa Peninsula's 1st District council seat being vacated by Mike Henn. Also in the race are businesswoman Diane Dixon and Harbor Commissioner Joe Stapleton.

Glenn's announcement comes weeks after individuals used bitcoins to pay for a Tesla car, and then a Lamborghini, from a Costa Mesa dealership.

But as the chief executive of a Web development company, Glenn felt familiar with the virtual currency — created by a computer programmer in 2009 — long before it appeared in recent headlines. He even possessed some bitcoins himself.

The idea to accept bitcoins percolated in his mind until, after about two months of research into potential legal issues, Glenn took his online payment system live Wednesday.

Although he is not sure how many donations — if any — will eventually come of it, he sees the move as being in line with the ideology of an open and accessible politician who simultaneously desires to be inclusive and challenge the status quo.

"The things I'm doing are not necessarily for the benefit of my campaign," he said. "They're for the benefit of where I think the structure should be going."

From a donor's perspective, the process for giving by using bitcoins mirrors that of giving by way of credit card. Users click a "donate now" button on Glenn's Web page. They select the dollar amount they would like to give, enter the necessary personal information and proceed to a payment page, where they enter credit card information or receive steps for sending their bitcoins.

A processing agency called Coinbase receives the bitcoins, converts them into dollars and passes the money into Glenn's account.

Glenn, a Balboa Peninsula resident, feels confident that this process helps ensure compliance with the California Fair Political Practices Commission's stipulation that only a singular bank account can be used for donations. He said he never handles the bitcoins himself.

He said his account has already received donations.

emily.foxhall@latimes.com

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Police kill man suspected of setting fire to home, apartment

A man set fire to the apartment shared by his ex-girlfriend and their 2-year-old son early Thursday, authorities said, then set his mother's home ablaze before being killed by Torrance police when they found him with a knife on a middle-school campus.

Class was not in session at Madrona Middle School when Asa James Dolak, 19, was fatally shot about 1:35 p.m. Thursday, said Torrance Police Sgt. Robert Watt. Police said Dolak made it clear in telephone conversations with officers that he did not intend to be taken into custody without a fight.

"He threatened his family and threatened to kill police if confronted," Watt said. "We took that threat very serious."

The chain of events began just after midnight, when Dolak set fire to an apartment in the 16700 block of Crenshaw Boulevard. Fire crews and officers responded, rescuing the toddler.

The child was treated for smoke inhalation and was listed in fair condition at a hospital, Watt said. The mother was not injured.

Watt said the arson was the result of "a domestic dispute that started verbally on Christmas Day." But he added that it was one of several domestic issues involving Dolak and his ex-girlfriend, who has not been identified. Watt said Dolak had been arrested before by Torrance police for "minor stuff."

Police said that about 2 a.m., Dolak went to his mother's home in the 3200 block of Opal Street and set that property on fire as well. Soon after, officers found "the vehicle that he used to go from crime scene A to crime scene B," Watt said.

The sergeant said an extensive search for Dolak ensued and about 1:30 p.m. someone "that identically matched Mr. Dolak" was seen at the school. The teenage suspect was seen in a girl's restroom, bleeding from a hand and armed with a knife.

Watt said a short foot pursuit began and Dolak ran to a nearby sports field where he was fatally shot.

"He confronted the officers and failed to comply with their demands and ultimately there was an officer-involved shooting," he said. "He was armed with a knife."

Watt said the school was unoccupied because of the winter break.

Tommy Angiano, 34, a manager at Mr. Rooter in Gardena, said Dolak did some work for the company but was fired last summer. Angiano said Dolak's mother asked about a job for her son during a plumbing repair at her house.

Dolak became a plumber's helper, and at the beginning, Angiano said, he was a good worker who was willing to show up any time of the day and willing to get his hands dirty. But as time went by, Angiano said, Dolak stopped listening to directions and once threatened a co-worker.

"He was just real quiet. Way too quiet," Angiano said, adding that Dolak could get "pretty angry," though the result was usually a quiet seething as opposed to verbal or physical altercations.

"You would see him get pretty angry and then go quiet," he said.

Still, Angiano said he was surprised when he found out about Dolak's alleged role in the arson attacks and his death.

"I'm still shocked about it," he said.

hector.becerra@latimes.com

Times staff writer Ari Bloomekatz contributed to this report.

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Ex-employee accuses lobbying firm of directing illegal contributions

SACRAMENTO — A lawsuit filed Christmas Eve alleges that a prominent California lobbying firm sought influence by directing illegal contributions to dozens of politicians — including nearly a third of the Legislature.

The suit charges that Sloat Higgins Jensen and Associates tapped its roster of Fortune 500 clients to steer hundreds of thousands of dollars in checks to favored politicians — although the document fails to name any.

According to the court papers, company founder Kevin Sloat, who was once an aide to former Gov. Pete Wilson, also improperly gave gifts to legislators, instructing that no written record of them be kept.

Legislative lobbyists are barred by California law from donating to lawmakers or candidates for the Legislature, and from directing such contributions. The state also prohibits lobbyists from making, arranging or delivering gifts worth more than $10 to an elected state official in a single month.

The allegations are made by Rhonda Smira, a former employee of Sloat's firm. She contends that she was fired in late 2012 because she protested that Sloat's practices were illegal and says Sloat falsely accused her of theft.

Smira asserts wrongful termination and defamation, and seeks various damages but does not specify an amount.

Sloat did not respond to the accusations.

But in a written statement provided by a media consultant, the Sloat firm questioned Smira's credibility. The statement said Smira is under investigation by local authorities on unspecified charges.

"We are not at all surprised that the plaintiff, a former bookkeeper for the firm, has resorted to such a desperate legal maneuver," the statement said.

Shelly Orio, spokeswoman for the Sacramento County district attorney's office, said the department has a case against Smira under review.

Smira's lawyer, Jesse Ortiz, said the lawsuit lacks legislators' names because it is not his practice to spell out such supporting details in an initial pleading.

The lawsuit alleges that Sloat and his firm routinely broke state political law over the last decade, arranging private dinners, doling out floor tickets to Sacramento Kings basketball games and passes for San Francisco Giants baseball games, and setting up golf outings.

Smira, who now runs a consulting firm that specializes in campaign finance reporting and event hosting, says in the suit that she was ordered not to provide receipts for the gifts; that way, recipients could avoid disclosing the transactions on financial reports required by the state.

The lawsuit says Sloat told her: "If I don't report and there is no written record, and they don't report it, then it didn't happen."

She also says it was her job to arrange elaborate fundraisers for California lawmakers at Sloat's showcase home in Sacramento, stocked with cognac and imported cigars and served by private caterers.

Sloat's lobbying clients were expected to attend and make political donations, Smira alleges.

"A typical evening at [Sloat's] mansion would result in between $10,000 and $50,000 for an elected official," the lawsuit states, and in return the firm's clients "were promised exclusive access to the governor, legislators or candidates."

The lawsuit alleges that 37 lawmakers and an undisclosed number of other public officials received "hundreds of thousands of dollars" in illegal contributions this way.

Sloat was Wilson's chief legislative aide in the 1990s, when he "supervised legislative operations in 81 state departments in the executive branch," according to the firm's website.

Sloat's business partner, Kelly Jensen, worked in the 1990s as chief of staff for Charles Calderon, who was then state Senate majority leader. Calderon is a brother of current state Sen. Ronald S. Calderon (D-Montebello), who is under investigation by federal authorities alleging that he engaged in influence peddling and bribery.

That investigation has spotlighted Ronald Calderon's legislative lifestyle, including travel, dinners, cigars and liquor paid for by lobbyists and their clients.

The Sloat firm reported receiving $4.4 million from four dozen clients last year to lobby state government, making it the seventh-largest concern in the Sacramento lobbying corps.

The company's client roster includes Indian casino operators, city governments, water agencies and beer makers and other large corporations.

patrick.mcgreevy@latimes.com

paige.stjohn@latimes.com

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Saying thanks to onetime DJ for a favor done long ago

Master Blaster sounded a little put off when I called to ask if I could bring him a gift.

The gift was a Japanese robe that a reader had entrusted to me to give to him. It wasn't the so much the robe itself — or the story behind it — that distressed him as it was my request to bring a photographer to record the event.

The Master Blaster informed me he didn't do kitsch. "I'm just myself," he said.

Only a few days earlier, I had written about Tom Reed, a.k.a. the 1960s rhythm and blues DJ whose broadcast name was the Master Blaster. After leaving radio Reed reinvented himself as a historian of black Los Angeles, especially its music.

At 77, Reed is still making the television documentaries that he proudly calls L.A.'s longest continuously running African-American TV production.

I knew that dedication to the story of black L.A. and to his documentary craft meant much more to him than a quaint story from the distant past.

But I finally persuaded him that the robe represented a duty I could only discharge in person.

The robe came to me from a man who had kept it for 45 years.

The story started at the First Presbyterian Church of Altadena in 1968. Though the church was largely Japanese American, the members of its youth club attended predominantly black public schools and listened to rhythm and blues broadcast over KGFJ.

Club president Gary Mikuni fulfilled a huge wish by club members when the Master Blaster agreed to speak to them.

Mikuni needed an appropriate gift. His mother, the owner of Yamato's tourist agency, which still operates in Little Tokyo, came up with one. She had brought a robe back from a trip to Japan.

It was black with a yellow lining, embroidered in cobalt blue with scenes of mountains, streams, deer, birds, flowered trees and pagodas.

"It was too showy for a Japanese person," Mikuni said. "We thought it would be good for the Master Blaster."

On the day of the speech, Mikuni had the robe in his hands when he was called away on another matter. He doesn't remember what it was. All he remembers is that when he returned, the Master Blaster was gone, and he was left holding the robe.

There are many ways of dealing with this situation. Mikuni chose what must be the least likely. He put the robe away, telling himself that one day an opportunity would arise to deliver it.

Through high school and college, Mikuni had too much else on his mind. Then came marriage and children. By then the Master Blaster had departed KGFJ. Mikuni had no idea where to find him.

Others in this situation might have found an opportunity to give the robe away, or even break it out and wear it. Not Mikuni. Even following a divorce he took the robe with him, still in its original plastic wrap.

Then, he read my article on Tom Reed. He emailed to ask if I could help deliver the gift.

Mikuni received me in his Pasadena condo. He spoke easily about his children, his amicable relations with his ex-wife, his mother's refusal to give up work and even his grandmother's bitterness about the relocation camps of World War II.

But he wasn't particularly expressive about himself. He's a semi-retired estate planning attorney. His clients won't let him off the hook, he said.

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Southland's Christmas present? Warm weather

As temperatures hovered around freezing across much of the United States on Christmas Day, Southern California basked in unseasonably warm weather as Santa Ana winds pushed hot, dry air across the region.

In Long Beach, the mercury hit 85 degrees, beating the 1972 high of 81 degrees.

In downtown Los Angeles, temperatures reached 82 degrees, making it the second warmest Christmas Day since records began in 1877 and well above the seasonal average of 67 degrees. The record was set in 1980 with a high of 85 downtown.

The hot air was being pushed offshore on winds generated by a high pressure system lingering over the Great Basin and the High Desert, said Bonnie Bartling of the National Weather Service. In the mountains, gusts reached as high as 50 miles per hour.

A wind advisory remained in place through Thursday for Los Angeles County mountains, and a red flag warning was in effect for much of Los Angeles and Ventura counties as the combination of low humidity and gusty winds raised concerns about fire dangers.

"If fire ignition occurs, there would be the potential for rapid spread," Bartling said.

A major power outage in Simi Valley on Wednesday morning left thousands of residents without electricity and affected traffic signals at intersections in the area. Southern California Edison attributed the power outage to the winds.

The outage occurred at 9:10 a.m. and mainly affected two circuits, said Southern California Edison spokesman Robert Villegas.

The winds are likely to weaken by late Thursday, but the above average temperatures will continue through the weekend and into next week, Bartling said.

Hot holiday seasons are not uncommon.

"There are many years where I can remember wearing shorts and a tank top on Christmas," Bartling said. "When you have these Santa Ana events, it just warms up."

But this season has been noteworthy for the sudden shifts from hot to cold temperatures.

"We've been flip-flopping a lot this winter," Bartling said.

This current hot spell could break more records before it's through. The forecast for Burbank on Thursday is 82 degrees, one degree short of the record high set in 1947.

Missing from the forecast is any sign of rain. That puts Southern California on track for a very dry year.

There has been less than an inch of rain since July 1, Bartling said. Normally the area would have close to four inches of rain by now. Last year, a dry year, about two and a half inches had fallen by Christmas Day.

jason.felch@latimes.com

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