Los Angeles Times - Sandy Banks

Struggling school gets a boost

Sun, 12 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Through Chaka Khan's education foundation, low-achievers at Drew Middle School in Compton receive help from people who care about their future.

She telephoned me in desperation, pitching a story about the Compton middle school students her group had taken to the Century City office of the investment firm Bear Stearns, to learn about money management and careers in finance.

Could you be an addict?

Sat, 11 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

It's not just the Michael Jacksons and Anna Nicole Smiths who pop pills. Society's reliance on painkillers and sleeping aids has us walking a fine line.

Subpoenas have gone out, the DEA has been brought in, and every doctor who has ever come within a prescription pad of Michael Jackson can probably expect a phone call soon.

Taking infidelity to a new level

Sat, 4 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

If you're the wife -- but not the soul mate -- why even bother to try to recover?

I suppose a woman could take some comfort from the predicament of the governor of South Carolina, who vanished last week for a secret tryst in Argentina with his lover.

2 California legislators who just said no

Wed, 1 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

They refused to cave in to pressure from their state Senate colleagues -- no voluntary 5% pay cuts for them.

By the time you read this, either the ink will be drying on California's last-ditch budget deal or the state will be poised to issue IOUs.

Man on the streets captured a community

Sat, 27 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Eddie Dotson, who built his home under a freeway overpass near USC, became a local curiosity. He also represents a culture that we don't quite know what to do with.

Nataline Viray-Fung spent weeks last winter admiring the unconventional artistic displays that kept popping up on the sidewalk along her route to USC -- the geometric sculpture of paper cups, the totem poles of bent hubcaps, the stack of child-sized pink chairs adorned with deflated soccer balls.

Lost for 12 years, a prodigal father is found

Sun, 21 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Loving friends and family embrace Eddie Dotson, who lived on an L.A. sidewalk

The e-mails arrived in March, within an hour of one another -- one from New York City, the other from Austin, Texas.

All the colors that make blue

Sat, 20 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Police Academy graduation spotlights changes in the department since the arrival of Chief William J. Bratton.

It had the hallmarks of a typical graduation ceremony -- awards, speeches and hordes of excited families.

In limbo over the cha-cha

Sat, 13 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

It didn't exactly jibe with the Broadway version, but this week's musical production of "Little Orphan Annie" produced by Patrick Henry Middle School's drama class was entertaining enough for this critic's thumbs-up.

In a time of need, schools rally to the rescue

Sat, 6 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Families stricken by tragedy say it is not the monetary donations but the sense that so many people care that means the most to them.

Jane Silverstein didn't know Kenza Kadmiry and hadn't heard about the high school senior's tragedy. Neither did most of the two dozen other parents at the Cleveland High magnet school's monthly meeting.

California speakership isn't the prize it once was

Sat, 30 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

In her year as head of the state Assembly, Karen Bass has discovered that getting lawmakers to cooperate is far tougher than her previous work as a community activist.

California Assembly Speaker Karen Bass earned her political stripes on the streets as a grass-roots activist for more than a decade. Her Community Coalition helped change the landscape of South Los Angeles by shutting down seedy low-rent motels and converting liquor stores to grocery markets.