The Binge Cases: Denise Didn't Come Home - Bonus episode: Where's my money?

Episode Date: May 20, 2022

Last year, as the final episodes of The Sellout aired, LA TACO got a tip from a listener: for years, Jose Huizar had been awarding flashy scholarships to college-bound students from Boyle Heights and East LA. But some of those students say they never got the scholarship money promised to them. Was Huizar really stiffing high school students from his own neighborhood? After months of investigating, we're ready to share what we found out. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, Sellout fans, we're back. It's been a minute. We're back for just one episode with an investigation we've been working on since our season finale. It's about Wissad and how he messed with the future of dozens of students. You'll see. This is where it happened, right here. Every year, in the fall, two rival football teams from high schools in East L.A. and Boyle Heights face off in a big game, the East L.A. Classic. It's kind of a big deal. It's like this big showdown.

It happens at East L.A. College, and the whole community comes out. So both sides of the bleachers are filled. It's a huge game. It's where like we kind of show up for our community. And yeah, it's a lot of fun. And every year, the day of the East LA Classic, something else happens. Something special goes down for the students.

A ceremony they've been waiting for. I was super excited and also excited to like go down and on the field, you know, and have my name announced and like be congratulated. Okay, so it's halftime and someone comes down onto the field. It's their local council member and none other than Jose Huizar,

or sometimes one of his staffers. And not just him, he's got a whole bunch of students with him. He lines them up and hands each of them an enormous check, like they just won the lottery. And to some students, it probably felt like they did win the lottery. Huge, like checks in the middle of the field.

You were able to see them from the stands. The students are the winners of the José Huizar Excellence in Education Scholarship. It's this yearly award that was given out for at least a decade. The students were awarded $500, sometimes $1,000, in scholarships for college. Here's Huizar during an interview

with a local Spanish news station at the game several years ago. Basically, we sat as saying these scholarships are proof that students are working hard in the classroom and earning good grades. College can be really expensive. Depending on where you go, it can literally cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. So $1,000 might not sound like that much. But the money was a big deal to a lot of the students who won it. Many of their parents didn't have the money to help pay for their college education. They were funding it all through scholarships. Some of the students had specific plans for the

money, like these five textbooks, or a computer, or money toward rent. Some of the students were undocumented, meaning it wouldn't be easy for them to get a side job to help pay the difference. Some of the kids were going to prestigious schools like Pomona and UC Berkeley. Some of them had imposter syndrome and felt like they'd gotten in by the skin of their teeth. So every dollar mattered. And we sat and knew how important the scholarships were to the kids. Because he was once a kid from Bull Heights going to UC Berkeley. And also, he was talking about it.

Here's that news story again. That's Huizar talking. He was making this big show out of giving the money, handing out those enormous checks. And he's saying, I want to tell kids that college is accessible. Lots of times, parents think it's going to cost too much. But, Huizad says, there are lots of scholarships, lots of help. So, back to the football field.

The students are holding their giant checks. They take a picture with Wissad. They get shuffled off the field. And I carried that thing home. I think my mom probably kept it in the apartment for at least a couple months. And they wait and wait. And at some point, they're like, hold on a second. So when did you first hear that you might not get the money?

Where's my money? I was just like, wait, what? Like, that's my money? What do you mean I'm not going to get it? From Neon Hum Media and LA Taco, this is Smokescreen, The Sellout, a podcast about a politician dogged the allegations of corruption, harassment, and pathological pettiness. It's about the residents who fought gentrification even as their neighborhoods were auctioned off to the highest bidder. I'm Mariah Castaneda. This is a bonus episode of The Sellout. Where's my money? Okay, so we first heard about the Jose Huizar Excellence in Education Scholarship in late 2021. We got a tip to the LA Taco Instagram.

We had a colleague read it. I'm wondering if you're aware of Huizar's college scholarships at the East LA Classic each fall. To my knowledge, although recipients were celebrated with huge individualized checks, they never actually received the funds. I don't know how widespread this was, if some recipients received the funds while others didn't. But I wanted to share this with you as well if there are plans to widen your research into Huizar's broken promises to his own community. We got the tip and we were like, okay, is that real? Is Huizar really saying that he's gonna give kids money and then stiffing them? So we started looking into it. Four of us from LA Taco and Neon Hum

have spent the past four months looking into this. And I'm going to walk you through what we found. It's kind of messy, kind of all over the place. We've talked to more than a dozen students who were awarded the scholarship, almost all of them Latinx, from Boyle Heights or East LA. Most of them were funding their college educations through scholarships and loans.

And let me just say up front, some of the Jose Huizad excellence in education students did get their money. Some got it right away, no problems. But lots of the students had to fight to get their money. They called and physically went to Huizad's office for months, even years. And students say there are whole graduating classes of students

who never got their money at all. We spoke to four different students who never got the money awarded to them, who still haven't gotten it years later, like Abby. My name is Abby. I've been living in Boy Heights for my whole life. Current college student. I attend Pomona College. Abby graduated in 2018 from Roosevelt. She was a great student. So like a lot of kids who won the Jose Huizad Excellence in Education Scholarship, the money was important to her. I'm undocumented, so I can't work in the traditional sense. I always knew I wanted to go to college, and I also knew my parents could not afford it. And so I very much was doing everything I could senior year to apply as many scholarships as I could, just to like lessen the burden on myself and like my parents. And so yeah, Weezer was like a good amount of money. A thousand dollars is good. Sarai Gomez also went to Roosevelt. She graduated the year before Abby in 2017.

And she actually found out about the scholarship years before she could apply for it. Actually, since freshman year. So Jose Huizar did like an inauguration of the streetlight right in front of Roosevelt. And a student was chosen to be the commencement speaker, kind of. And I was chosen. And so I was able to deliver a speech and then get to meet him. And then he was like, oh, I have a scholarship. You should apply to a senior year.

Here's my colleague Liz Sanchez, who interviewed Sarai. What was your first impression of him? Very nice guy, respected by the community, very involved. Yeah, he seemed like a very noble guy. So senior year, Sarai gets a scholarship. I literally started crying because it was my first scholarship. Like, oh my God, it's just so competitive. Everybody applies for it. There are no exceptions. And so I was very ecstatic. I couldn't believe it, but I called my mom right in that instant. And I was like, mom, I got it. You know, this is a scholarship that he told me about freshman year. I wanted to like reconnect and tell him like, hey, you know, you told me about this. I got selected. Sarai decided what she would spend it on, a new laptop.

Because at that point, her family just had one laptop they would all share. Once you talk to enough students about the scholarship, you learn that there's kind of a rhythm to these stories. It starts with hope, then elation, then a slow, creeping sense of dismay. But when the dismay set in for Sarai, that's when her mom got involved. And then I told my mom. She was like, yeah, yeah, like, I'll go talk to her. So Sarai's mom goes down to the college office.

And so my mom was just persistent. And my mom thought maybe because she only spoke Spanish, like, that she was being persistent. And my mom thought maybe because she only spoke Spanish, like that she was being unclear. And so one time she brought my brother, my older brother along, and it wasn't until then that Mata was like, Mr. Raul Mata, the Roosevelt College counselor, was able to explain to him like what was going on

and what the delay was about apparently and it wasn't until like october and some sometime in the fall where both of them went in again and then mr matthew's like oh yeah like um the checks have arrived and you're able to get a hold of it now. But my mom said that. He said it in a very bad attitude because he saw them coming again and was tired. I don't know. But he was kind of like, oh, here it is.

By the way, we reached out to Mr. Mata for an interview. He ghosted me. Anyways, Saray's family finally goes to pick up the check. But it's not even for the full thousand. Mr. Matat had told her that only half was going to be given, and he said that the other half was going to be awarded later on. So my mom was like, okay, we'll take what we can get. That was it for the fall.

By this point, Sarai is already at college. Her tuition is covered by a scholarship, but she still has to pay her own way for stuff like books and transportation. She's still waiting on the other half of the money she was promised, and she keeps following up. December of 2017. Winter break, Sarai and her mom go to his office. His office is in Boy Heights, like by the college track center,

like a few blocks away from school. They talked to Wissad's assistant. And she kind of said that there was hesitation because the office had been unable to process the funds. So they were kind of having trouble with that, but to not worry that they were going to be given to us. And then a full year after graduation, she gets a letter from Wistad. So I received a letter on April 3rd, 2018, from Huizar's office. She was like, you have earned this scholarship as an exemplary student, and under no circumstance will it be revoked from you.

I thank you in advance for your patience. But the money still doesn't come. I honestly, like, was very stressed at that point because we only had a year. Sari had heard that she only had a year to pick up the scholarship money. And it had been a year. So she was like, it's too late. And after I went back, I came back to school in the fall of 2018. I kind of gave up.

I was like, okay, I don't know if I'm ever going to see this money again. And my mom was like, don't give up hope. You know, I'm still going to keep going. And making sure that, like, you know, I get some answers. And I at that point, I just gave up. They never managed to get the other half of the money, $500 that we said had promised her. But then she found out that some students from her year hadn't gotten anything. I feel like sometimes we're, I don't know, in the Latino community, we're a bit hesitant to talk about finances and money. And so I felt like there was a bit of hesitation from their part.

And they said they hadn't received anything. And this was when I received the first half. Here's the timeline we've been able to piece together from public documents and budgets and interviews. Sometime around Wissad's election to city council in 2005, he created the Jose Wissad Excellence in Education Scholarship for students at Roosevelt High School and Garfield High School. They're about four miles apart in Bull Heights and East LA. But almost right away, there were problems with the scholarship. We talked to one student who graduated in 2009, just four years after WESAD was elected. She had to bug WESAD's office for months after graduating

before they finally got the money to her university. And you can see evidence in public documents that some students got their money years late. There's a line item in the city budget for March 2018 tagged as a payment for the WSAD scholarship. When we dug up the log of how that money was spent, it lists checks going to years of WSAD scholarship recipients, all the way back to the class of 2015, getting paid out in 2018, which meant that money was three years late.

So students were only getting the money in dribs and drabs, but up until 2018 or so, it seems like a lot of students were at least getting some money. Maybe just half, like Sarai, but something. And then at some point, the money just stopped coming. I vividly remember speaking to a class of 2017. Here's Abby again, who graduated in 2018. One of them saying like, you're never seeing that money.

Like the winners from our class have never seen that money. And I was kind of like, what, what do you mean? Like, what are you talking about? I have not heard anything about anyone getting it. I was actually going to reach out to a couple of students that I know and be like, hey, did y'all ever get it? But to be honest, I don't think anyone ever got that money. It's still not clear what happened, why so many students waited so long to get money that was promised to them and why some students never got the money at all. Why year after year he paraded students down the football field while word was spreading around Roosevelt High School. Alumn from other classes were like, yeah, like we never,

we've never gotten in our money. Like you're never going to see it. When we first got the tip, we suspected fraud. We thought maybe somebody pocketed the money, but we have found no evidence of fraud. It seems like when money did come through the city, it usually made its way to the students. And it doesn't seem like incompetence either. This was an office capable of coordinating hundreds of millions of dollars in real estate deals. They could figure out how to get a dozen students a year a thousand bucks each. In the end, it felt more like the students didn't get their money because of indifference. Because no one cared enough to follow up. Which in some ways is even more surprising than fraud. We saw just not caring enough to make sure that there's a system to get money to the students on time.

Imagine your office getting months and months of emails and phone calls from students who need the money that was promised to them, and just not following up. We haven't been able to find anyone who got their money after the FBI raided Wissad in the fall of 2018. So maybe the money stopped coming after the raid. Maybe. But even if that's true, by that point, there was a decade of Wissad scholarship students struggling to get the money their council member had promised them. By the way, we reached out to the principals of Roosevelt and Garfield high schools for comment. They never got back to us. We also reached out to Wissad's lawyers with a list of questions.

This will probably be a surprise to no one, but they didn't get back to us. Here's Abby again. Definitely definitely shameless especially when you put up such a like performative act at like going to the classic and like making these big checks made and then you don't pay students is like super performative to me I don't know I'm just like how did he sleep at night being like yeah my name's on these checks I'm giving scholarships to sin and I'm pretty sure, like, he would mention that as, like, the things he does to better his community.

Shame on him. Shame on him. I don't know why he's sleeping at night right now. The Sellout is produced by Neon Home Media and LA Taco. I'm your host, Mariah Castaneda. My co-reporters for this episode were Alexis Olivier-Ray, Carla Green, and Liz Sanchez. Carla Green is our lead producer,

and she wrote this episode. Our editor is Catherine St. Louis. Associate editor is Stephanie Serrano. Associate producer is Liz Sanchez. Our executive producer is Jonathan Hirsch. Samantha Allison is our production manager. Our sound designer is Hans Dale Shee.

Eduardo Arenas made our theme music. Other original music by Moni Mendoza. We also reported out a print version of the story written by Lexus Olivier Rey and Liz Sanchez. It's got lots of extra stuff we couldn't fit into this episode. Emails about students not getting their money. Pictures, tweets to and from Wisad about the scholarship. You should really check it out at lataco.com. You can find us on Twitter for updates about Wisad and the trial at LA Taco and Neon Home Media. Wisad's trial has been pushed back to early 2023, but one of his original co-defendants is going to start being tried in

mid-June. Stay tuned for more on that. As always, thank you so much for listening. And if you love the show, tell a friend or give us a shout out on social media or Apple Podcasts. Thank you. We appreciate you. you