The Binge Cases: U R NEXT - The Sellout | 3. Red Flags

Episode Date: November 2, 2021

Alvin Parra worked for Huizar when he first got elected. He saw early warning signs that Huizar wasn’t the man of the people he made himself out to be. Parra tried to warn people about what he saw behind closed doors, but most of them weren’t ready to listen. He ends up doing something drastic to try to expose Huizar. A Neon Hum Media and Sony Music Entertainment production. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts to binge all episodes now or listen weekly wherever you get your podcasts. Find more great podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at sonymusic.com/podcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Alvin Parra says there were a bunch of red flags, but the lightbulb stood out. About 5,000 CFC light bulbs, those little circular ones, energy efficiency light bulbs. It's 2006. Weissad has been in office for less than a year, and the LA Department of Water and Power gave Weisad's office a bunch of energy-efficient light bulbs to distribute to his constituents. The city had been having these brownouts, which is when power companies restrict power access to prevent total ones. blackouts. The light bulbs were supposed to basically decrease the demand on the power grid. And we got pallets of them, so we decided to make it an event. Like, since we were fresh off the campaign, call the volunteers back in, we'll proceed walking, hand out light bulbs to residents.

So basically, Alvin is working for Jose, we said. He's pretty high up in a city council administration. Alvin is in charge of his offices all over the district. And we had a big event. We got about like 10 media stations there. We got like 300 volunteers. Gonna be at the Aliswino Senior Center. It was a great event. And then the night before the event, Visad comes by.

And he's looking at the light bulbs. And these are individually packaged light bulbs with their own boxes. And it says, LADWP, energy efficiency light bulb. That was it. He says, where's my name and picture on these bulbs? Alvin says, Wissad wanted his name and his picture. his picture on all the light bulbs, all of them.

Mind you, this is like late afternoon, early evening before the event the following day. I get a phone call from one of the staff members and say, the council member wants his name on each box. And someone says, we're going to make labels. We can't put his picture. We're just going to put his name, compliments of town's member Joseo Rizor. Yeah, they spend hours into the three hours to put that label on. It's like, oh my God, this guy's full of himself.

From Neonha Media in LA Taco. This is smokescreen. The sellout. A podcast about a politician dogged by allegations of corruption, harassment, and pathological pettiness. It's about the residents who fought gentrification, even as in neighborhoods were auctioned off to the highest bidder. I'm Maria Castanella. This is episode three, Red Flags. Long before Alvin Parra went to work for Rizad, he had political aspirations of his own.

They came from home. from his mom. My mom was an immigrant from Mexico. Basically, you know, in a new country with six children, and I was the youngest of them all. So we, they were just an immigrant community in this community of El Serino in Dingen Heights. And I never knew much about politics,

but I was very passionate about it because of my mom. Alvin remembers his mom yelling at politicians on television. She helped them to a very high standard. It kind of rubbed off on me, just the sense of justice and doing what's right. So Alvin grew up in El Sereno, just a little north and a little east of Boyle Heights.

He ended up going to UCLA. And then, in the late 80s, he landed an internship with Gloria Molina. At the time, she was the city councilwoman for the first district of Los Angeles, which is right next to District 14. And right off the bat, they had two college interns, and our jobs were to go around the community

and look for dumped sofas and trash and report it to the departments and get it picked up. So I was just blown away that, oh my God, I could have an impact and cleaning up the quality of life in my area. Alvin said that he fell in love with all the little things that go into working in local government, like being able to fix things around the neighborhood, you know, housing stuff, a neglectful landlord.

The kind of problems where there's a big power imbalance when having a city council member on your side can really make a difference. Once he graduated college, he went on a college, he went on to work for other politicians. He actually got a little less local. He went all the way up to working for the congressman who represented East L.A.

So here's this kid from El Serino, Latino, immigrant family, working in the Capitol. And I was living there when Bill Clinton was elected president. So back in 1992, so it was a celebration. We parted hardy on the streets of Washington, D.C.

Eventually, Alvin came home. He got into local politics again. And that's when he met, we sat. This is my producer, Carla Green, talking to Alvin. What was your first impression of him? Clean cut. He was always clean cut, nice looking. He's got his law degree, and so he was trying to come back to get back to the community.

So Alvin knew we sat for a long time, and he knew a sight of him that, like, not everyone saw. I think it was hard to approach him. He wasn't a bad guy to get to get a lot with, but he was kind of a little like, he was kind of a little nervous. And I think I've gotten to see that he is shy around people. So we side gets on the school board. and he gets elected to the city council in 2005. He'd run against Nick Pacheco. Alvin had run for office before,

so he thought about running against Pacheco himself. But his son had just been born. It just wasn't the right time. So he threw his weight behind Wissad. And when Wissad won, Alvin became his head of field operations, which meant he was in charge of what was happening in the district, outside of City Hall. Other staffers might want to be in the seat of municipal power,

going to vote on big city policy stuff, like the budget. But to Alvin, worrying about the little things was a plum assignment. I want to be in the community. Our community needs attention. We need those sofas picked up. So I supervised all the staff members in the field. So my responsibility was that and I loved it. Alvin's like, yes, put me out in the district.

Let me talk directly to constituents. He loved it. And he loved having the power to help them out. Sometimes anyways. And putting out fires wherever I could, anything that had to deal with constituents, complaining, or having questions, or wanting to meet with the council's office. And as a young, new city council member, Wizar was a hit.

He was charming, he seemed thoughtful. He'd do little things, like go to local events where kids were playing music, like Norberto's little sister. Remember, Norberto is a guy who grew up in Culver City and made Perro-like for BuzzFeed. My sister, I believe she played at an event where he attended. She played in a band.

So she played clarinet, and he happened to be there. Wiesad was out in the district, a lot. He was very careful to go to cultural events that he knew matter to his constituents. Raquel Zamora, whose family owns that Takaria that's been in Boa Heights for generations, Samora brothers. Because damn, like, for Mother's Day, he gave 200 seignoras. a dozen of roses, and he paid for all of their lunches, and the mariachi played for three hours. Wezad also dedicated a statue to the braceros, the agricultural workers, like his father. Like, he didn't have to do that statue. He didn't have to make this dedication and honor them.

Like, nobody else has done that, you know, right? And even in his speech, he, like, his voice cracked, because he spoke about how his father was Avrazero and the sacrifices he made to come, you know? So that's what I'm like, he had a heart. You can actually see how Isad prioritized things like that in some of the emails that came out in a public information request. He forwards along things like invites to events happening in the district, a mariachi performance or ribbon cutting or unveiling.

He would send his assistants emails like, Am I able to make it? And try and get me there. This one time when he wanted to visit an elderly activist and Eagle Rock on her deathbed, he emailed three times in less than 24 hours. What's the status? What's the status? And then again, this is my third time asking, what's the status?

And Norberto says people really notice that kind of stuff. And, you know, again, like, oh, it's Jose Wiesar. Like, my family's into him. My family likes him. He attends events where other Latinos are at. He represents. He is representing. representing us in the local politics of LA.

And so there wasn't much to really dislike about the dude. But while Wissad is spending time going to events, Alvin says that inside the office, just a couple months into his term, Wiesad just doesn't seem that interested in the district, doesn't seem interested in his constituents or their problems, which from Alvin's perspective is like the whole job. We would meet with the council member every way to brief him on everything that's going on.

He wouldn't really engage with us. It was kind of like sometimes talking to a wall. And after like a month or two, he told the chief of staff to cancel those meetings and just provide written memos. And it was kind of said to me indirectly that he was just bored. And he didn't really care about the district that much. So again to the point where we're just more briefing him and what we're planning on doing. And we'd probably just meet with like maybe five or ten constituents a month.

And I was like, oh, my God, this guy doesn't really want to meet with people. You can't solve your constituents' problems if you're never even talking to them. But that wasn't everyone's experience of We Said. This is The Sellout. Want more true crime? Subscribe to The Binge to get all episodes of My Mother's Lies, add free today, and get instant access to over 50 other jaw-dropping true crime stories. Plus, subscribers get a binge drop of a brand new series on the first of every month,

every month. Search for The Binge channel on Apple Podcasts or head to getthebinge.com to subscribe today. The Binge, feed your true crime obsession. So I'll start with a little bit of context. This is Eric Wertha again, my L.A. Taco colleague who went with me to Maraci Plaza. Like I said, Eric's been blogging reporting on Bull Heights for a while. And when Eric was still a student journalist, we said reached out to him about doing an interview. It's not really clear why he went for Eric. You know, out of all the journalist he could have approached. No disrespect to Eric, but he was just a student. And we sad was fully a city councilman.

Maybe we said liked that Eric was an ambitious student reporter from the neighborhood. Maybe he liked turning on the charm for someone who might never catch the attention of a city council member otherwise. Anyways, we said got in touch with Eric. So, you know, I put on my student journalism. at. And I was like, cool, this is a serious opportunity. Eric got all ready for the interview. Got his recorder, skateboarded over. So I showed up, you know, wearing what is usually my typical uniform is like, could have dickies, sneakers, a t-shirt.

So, you know, I was just like showing up as like a 20-year-old skater kid. And I just show up like, yeah, hey, we're all, cool, nice to meet you. He's excited. I'm excited. You could feel that energy in the article Eric eventually writes. It definitely gives Weissad the benefit of the doubt. He writes towards the end, quote, It's safe to say that behind all a political drama and BS that goes around,

Wiesad is improving Boyle Heights for the better. So I will say that because it was just for me doing it for myself. I didn't put too much into it. You know, I wasn't very critical of him. Maybe that's why Wissad approached Eric. He figured he'd have an inn. Eric was a young journalist, a fellow Mexican. Maybe Wezad thought he'd give him the benefit of the doubt.

But if we said thought Eric wasn't going to get something out of their friendly relationship, he underestimated him. And after that, I kind of took advantage of that in a lot of different ways. If Eric saw something going on in the neighborhood that needed attention, he'd message, we said. Tag him on social media. One of the things that I did a lot was whenever there was garbage that wasn't picked up along the streets, you know, like sometimes these same garbage cans lie on fire and melt.

So I would just take a picture and I would tag him and the Department of Sanitation and be like, can you send somebody to fix it? And he would reply back, you know, saying, yeah, take care of it. We'll have somebody come take care of that trash can. And within like a day or two, you know, boom, the sanitation department would come, clean it up and put in a new trash can. This is the stuff that Alvin thought was so important, that little stuff. And at least from Eric's perspective, we saw it as taking care of it. So it seems like it kind of depends. If Isad likes you, if he wants to turn on the charm with you, maybe those little things do get done.

But then Alvin says there was the way we Sad would treat his staff. Like if we sad was upset with someone, they'd suddenly find themselves on some weird time out, often without understanding why. It felt petty. He never had the, sorry for using his words, he never had the balls to tell you directly. he would have his chief of staff. So if he was angry with you, you know, he just went to the chief of staff and he had that person go and say,

hey, you're grounded. There was another woman who was the initial, first press secretary for the council member. I think she was expecting the baby. And she was doing a great job. I don't know what she did. Obviously, she doesn't know. I don't think she had a clue that upset him.

Then she saw a listing for a press secretary for Joseouisad. Her job just posted somewhere. And then after she's kind of like, what's going on here? And she's, oh, council member is going to be replacing you. Huh? When are you going to tell me? So that's kind of the way he operated. It was unfortunate.

Yeah, that's wild. Did that ever happen to you? Yeah. In some level, he was like, okay, you're not allowed to go to Eagle Rock. Okay? I'll just take care of Borough Heights and El Serino. And then, eventually, the time out would be over. Then I'm off the S list.

The shit list. Then I can go back to whatever. Then I'm not able to do this. And I'm like, I'm like, okay, whatever. It was weird. It was kind of weird. I think everybody got on that list at some point. So we said was not a great boss.

He was not the easiest to work for. He could be vindictive. This actually came out publicly a lot later. A couple of his staffers sued him for different things, alleging a pattern of harassment and retaliation. One of the staffers, Myra Alvarez, said in her lawsuit that Wesad would do things that ranged from bizarre to disturbing, like obsessively track her social media. I'm just going to read from the lawsuit here. It was somewhat amusing at first.

Mrs. Alvarez would post a photograph of she and her husband and then count the minutes it took We Sad, ostensibly having seen the picture and seen that she was out living a life unrelated to him, to send her a text or email about some superfluous issue. But it soon became harassing and abusive. There was other stuff too. Alvarez said that if Wissad's tea wasn't waiting for him when he arrives in council chambers, he'd text her over and over again. Tea.

Tea. One time, when Alvarez was late bringing his tea and a work binder down to him, she says he threw the binder at her. hitting her in the chest Alvarez's case was later settled by the city for $150,000. She sued Wiesad in 2018 years after Alvin left his office.

But back when Wissad was first elected, for Alvin, the way Wissad treated his staff wasn't even the most disturbing thing. You know, I remember we having that constituent meetings because there's this one senior that wanted to meet with him. The owner, the landlord, increased the rent, like doubled it, and she had lived there for like 20 years. She was in her 60s or 70s. So the woman needed help, and she reached out to Isad's office.

She's like, all I need is an extra month or two to figure things out, which was something we said could maybe help with. He met with her, told her, yeah, yeah, we'll do something to help you. And then as soon as she left the room, I said, so council member, what would you like me to do? He's like, ah, leave it alone. And I'm like, ah, what? I mean, it doesn't hurt you to just tell me to make a phone call to the landlord and ask for a favor. Other council members would have called building in safety and do an inspection, look for COVID violations, and play hardball.

But at the minimum, just a phone call. That's what I thought would be. Just phone call. Hey, courtesy, we got this senior that lived with you for 20 years. We tried to speak to other people and we saw his office at the time to get a sense of what he was like. No one got back to us. But at this point, Alvin said he was losing. faith in Wieszad. But he hadn't totally given up. The final nail in the coffin was Wivernwood.

Yeah, Wyvernwood. Oh my gosh, you know, the memories are coming back. Boyle Heights will be made, or Boyle Heights will be broken on the fate of Wynvernwood, I believe. Stay with me after the break. An apartment complex with thousands of tenants, the developers who want to kick them out, and we said with a decision to make. So Wyvernwood is this big apartment complex in Boyle Heights. It's on the south side of the neighborhood, about two miles down from Marietje Plaza. It's a couple blocks from this big freeway interchange, where the five meets the 101 and the 10. Anyways, Wyvernwood was built in the 30s.

It's this huge complex with over 1,000 units and rent that's really affordable for the neighborhood. About 6,000 people live there. It's a bunch of these wide, two-story buildings. They're all built around this big garden area. There's grass, trees, and all these paths between the different buildings. It was built in 1939. The architects were Whitmer and Watson. That's Richard Shave.

He's a preservationist and one half of the couple that makes up the esoteric tours, which does historical tours around L.A. He and his wife, Kim Cooper, do a lot of fighting for historic buildings around Los Angeles. Like, back in 2018, they led the church. charge to landmark the old LA Times building in downtown LA. Wyvernwood is this wonderful oasis in southern Boyle Heights. I recommend everyone go there when the hackarandas are in blossom. It is just a sea of purple.

Wyvernwood is a special kind of housing called Garden Apartments. It's a historic California thing. Here's Troll Gonzalez, the guy whose family has lived in Boyle Heights for like six generations. The idea of garden apartments was that you could build them. housing for working class people, but that you could do it in a way that put them in social experience within each other within these gardens, with these walking paths and all of trees and all of this to enjoy, so that you have a sense of nature and serenity within that. And just a lot of families live there, and they're lower income families, and they've been living

there for maybe generations. So some developers are asking for a meeting with Alvin, about Wyvernwood. They bought the property back in the 90s, and they're looking to do something with their investment. It's 2006. We Saad has been in office for less than a year at this point. We sat down. They came in with their, you know, the owner and their folks, a little team, and they showed that they wanted to basically demolish the 1,000 units and build six to 700 luxury condos. Meaning everyone at Wyvernwood, all the tenants would have to leave.

And they probably would not be able to afford to come back. whenever the construction finished. And I said, so how are you going to take care of these thousand family members? They've got to be relocated somewhere. And I'm thinking the council member lived in Boy Heights. He grew up there. He's going to be pissed if he hears that these developers are going to just dump a thousand families onto the street.

So I asked him this question. I go, what's your relocation plan? He said, oh, that's not our problem. That's the city's problem. I'm like, oh, no. But I had to bite my time because I'm not the council member. but I was about to give that guy a lashing. And I bit my tongue and I said, okay.

In Spanish, we say, Basse van, you're going to wait and see. And so I briefed the council member. I said, oh, this is a bad project. They're just going to throw out the thousand families. Somehow they set up a follow-up meeting. I guess, you know, we decided to meet in Rivenwood at the community center, all by ourselves.

It's empty, just the developers team in our office. There's about five or six of us. They get basically the same pitch. Before this meeting, Alva had given his boss. some suggestions of what to say. Tell the developers that they've got to have some kind of plan for the long-time tenants if they're going to redevelop. That if they don't have a plan,

beside is going to stand in their way and make it difficult for them to get their project approved, which is something a council member can do. They have a lot of influence over what kinds of projects get approved in their district. I give Jose the talking points of what to say and to hold this team accountable and maybe tell them, like,

if you're going to do this, these are the conditions I want, I want on behalf of the community or you know what this is a deal breaker if you don't take care of the residents you don't get none of my support so I gave up my talking points and I'm like thinking okay he's he's got my back I got his back we got the community's back and presentation's over pretty much all that Jose says is okay go ahead move forward just don't use my name and I felt like the blood just left my body I had an outer body experience like oh my God he sold out a thousand families I don't know why what's going on here, but he sold out a thousand. Didn't even ask or didn't even fight and challenge and use any of my talking points.

I thought, wow, this guy is, this guy is another piece of work. For Alvin, that was the last straw. We Sad rolled over. He didn't stand up for the thousand families about to be displaced. So it was a struggle between taking care of my community and working for this person who I thought was unethical. And I started seeing the dark side of him. He's not just this aloof kind of character. there's a dark side to him.

That was the first time Alvin saw something and we said that didn't just look like apathy or boredom, but something that felt more malicious. Alvin didn't get it. Why wasn't we said trying to do something to help all the Wyvernwood tenants who were going to get displaced? It was like his indifference was becoming pathological.

We tried to get in touch with the property owner, 15 group, to ask about this meeting, but they never got back to us. We also asked Weissad himself about this meeting, as well as other anecdotes included in this episode. He never got back to us. That iteration of the Weaver and Wood project actually didn't end up going forward. This is 2006, and the Great Recession is just about a year away, stalling out pretty much all real estate projects, including this one. But the redevelopment of Weaverenwood is kind of like this zombie that just won't stop coming back to life throughout Weissad's time and office.

So, it's 2015, nine years later, and a post about Wyvernwood goes up on the website of the LA Conservancy, a local preservationist group. It has a quote from Ruesa. I pledge to make the preservation and rehabilitation of the existing Wyvernwood Garden Apartments, especially its existing tenants and rent control protections, and its open spaces, a high priority in any discussions that take place regarding the future of the site. That's awesome. That's Richard Shave again. That's an awesome statement to make. That's so great.

My experience is the exact opposite of that, is that he refused to take a stand on anything that had to do with Weinvernwood. Here's why Richard's laughing. In that quote, it sounds like we said is going to try to make Wyvernwood a municipal, historic landmark, which is possible. And that would set off some present. reservationist dominoes for sure.

And maybe make developers at least try to find a solution that doesn't involve demolition. And here's something else. Richard says that making Weaverwood a historic landmark is something we said could have done easily. If a city council member feels that a property in their district needs municipal landmark status, they bypass everything and put it on council floor as a motion. And they bypass all of that. Yes, council members that want properties landmark in their districts, they just get it done. So Wyvernwood stayed without any municipal landmark status.

In public, you'd see we said speaking out about the importance of protecting Weavernwood and its tenants. But behind closed doors, nothing changed. There was nothing standing in between Wyvernwood and demolition. And that's how it stayed for years, with the buildings and the residents in perpetual limbo. It was beyond the scope of anything Jose Wiesar was prepared to do. He never wanted to deal with this. He wanted to ignore it until he was termed out because it's too explosive an issue.

Because if you actually start evicting 6,000 people in the middle of Boyle Heights, I mean, that's just a nightmare. And so this is just something that no one really wants to touch. From the minute 15 Group bought the property in 1998 to the end of Jose Wiesar's term, I see it as negative space. And it's just inability or refusal to take a stand on this incredibly important parcel

and how it represents, in a nutshell, all the hopes and fears and dreams of Boyle Heights as it faces gentrification as it moves into the 21st century. So back to Alvin in 2006, it was that Wyvernwood meeting that made him realize, I can't keep working for this guy. So at that point, I stayed on for a couple of more months. and he was only serving one year to complete Antonio Villaragosso's term. And re-election had just started. The filing period had started.

And I said, I can't let him run unopposed. There was actually one other person who ran in that election, Juan Johnny J. Jimenez. He ended up with about 5% of the vote. Anyways. So on Friday, the deadline to file, I just told my wife the night before. And she knew I was struggling. And I said, honey, I got to. to do this. I don't think we got a shot of winning, but I got to send out a message that this guy

is not who you think he is, and hopefully people hear it. Imagine living in the 14th council district where we bring services to you. It's worked here, beautifully. This is from Alvin's campaign video. It's the one and only video posted to the YouTube account, Alvin Parra 2007. It's over 10 minutes long. It's extremely early 2000s, and it's extremely Alvin. So come join me. We're going to see some great things. So how government works and how it can work for you.

Let's go. Alvin gets into this beige SUV with his campaign poster on the door. The video cuts to black. And then in yellow text, imagine your city government working for you. The video follows Alvin around the district, talking about a bunch of hyper, hyper, local issues. At one point, we watched him pick up a tiny piece of trash and throw it into a trash can. Nothing is too small. It's all the stuff that makes Alvin excited about local government and that he felt like we saw it ignored, like Mr. Manchaka's tree. I'm standing here with Mr. Manchaca,

who lives in the 14th council district, and he reported a tree that was diseased and a tree limb was going to fall. How long have you been calling to report this? For about three years. About three years. I think three weeks later, they didn't, Yellow text pops up at the bottom of the screen. City is responsible for street trees. About three years.

We reported it to the Department of Tree Services, Urban Forestry, to trim the limb and make it safe for you. I think three weeks later, they didn't respond. They never responded. And the tree limb, in fact, did fall. Alvin didn't expect to win. And he didn't. We Sad beat him easily by almost 5,000 votes.

I ran and I lost, but I had to tell people this is not the guy you think he is. But word didn't get out. At least not much. To most people in 2007, We Sad was still a golden boy. It was pretty easy to dismiss Alvin as a disgruntled former employee, which is exactly what We Sad did. In one LA Times article about Alvin running, Weissad called Alvin desperate. And in another, said that he demoted Alvin because he, quote,

simply was not performing. And to be fair, Alvin was a disgruntled former employee. That's the whole reason why he decided to run against Wiesad in the first place. So that was like 13 years ago. And 10 years later, a lot of stuff came out. And for a while, I thought he was going to get away with a lot. that didn't think it would get this bad. So Alvin was kind of like a Cassandra.

You know that lady from the Greek myth who was cursed? She could see the future, but everybody would be like, yeah, okay, whatever Cassandra. That's kind of what happened to Elvin. He tried to tell Los Angeles who Weissad was, but people didn't believe him. He tried to warn them that Wesad was a guy who was one person behind closed doors and another in public. But the message just didn't. didn't get out. Next time on the sellout.

Weissad is fighting to be re-elected. He's running up against a guy named Rudy Martinez. And something strange starts happening during the campaign. We Sad staffers start snitching to his opponent about things they'd witnessed in his office. Their allegations were pretty wild. And some of them are made public. The sellout is produced by Neonha Media in LA Taco. I'm your host, Mariah Castaneda.

My co-reporters are Lexus, Olivier Ray, and Carla Green. Carla Green is our lead producer, and she wrote the episodes. Our editor is Captain St. Louis. Rickram Patel is our consulting editor. Associate editor is Stephanie Serrano. Associate producer is Liz Sanchez. Our executive producer is Jonathan Hirsch. Samantha Allison is our production manager.

Fact checker is Sarah Ivory. Our sound designer is Hansdale's Su. Eduardo Arenas made our theme music. Other original music by Moni Mendoza with an additional track from Blue Dot Sessions. Special thanks to Erica Lindo, Javier Capral, Tanner Robbins, Haley Faker, Natalie Wren, Adrian Riskin, Sharon Risskin, Sarah Morris, Navani Otero, Janet Villafana, Vanessa and Jorge Cassignada, and Ivan Fagnandez. If you want to know more about what you've heard on the show so far, head of over to laitaco.com to see a beautiful map of some of the places we talk about made by Tommy Gallegos,

as well as new reporting and interviews. This week, we've got two interviews with our amazing composers, Eduardo Arenas, who's from Boyle Heights and made our theme song, and Moni Mendoza, who's from Sella and made most of the other music you hear. Thanks for listening. See you next week.