For a reported cost of just more than $4 million, California’s fast food industry may have bought itself a two-year reprieve from one of the most contentious state labor laws in recent memory.

Last week, a coalition led by the International Franchise Association and national business groups announced it had collected enough signatures to qualify a referendum for the 2024 ballot. If at least 623,212 of the 1 million-plus submitted signatures are valid, that would give voters the opportunity to overturn a first-in-the-nation law that would create a state council to set wages and other workplace standards for a large swath of California’s burger-flipping, taco-hawking industry.

The 2024 election is still nearly two years and many millions of dollars away, but the likely qualification of the referendum constitutes its own victory for the franchisees: It would buy them some valuable time.

Unlike initiatives — ballot measures that enact new laws — referenda, which overturn statutes passed by the state Legislature and signed by the governor, have an added feature that benefit their backers even if they ultimately lose on Election Day. As soon as a referendum campaign qualifies for the ballot, the law that it targets is put on hold. And because state law only allows referendum votes to be held during regular general elections, that reprieve can last as long as two years.

That could explain why the “people’s veto” seems to be having a moment of late. With Democrats dominating the Legislature and governor’s mansion and proving ever more willing to aggressively regulate, penalize or phase out specific industries, those targeted interest groups have turned to the will of the electorate.

In 2014, after state lawmakers passed a bill barring stores from distributing single-use plastic bags, manufacturers took the battle to the ballot. The referendum campaign failed, leaving the law in effect, but only after a lengthy delay. A more ambitious plastics recycling proposal was headed to this November’s ballot, until a last-minute legislative deal between industry and environmental groups.

Then in 2020, when the Legislature voted to end cash bail, the entire bail bond industry qualified a referendum to put bail reform on hold. The industry ultimately succeeded, persuading voters to nix the law.

Then this year, voters were asked to reconsider the Legislature’s work once again. This time, the law in question was a ban on most flavored tobacco products. Tobacco giants including Philip Morris and R.J. Reynold ponied up the money to qualify a referendum. By nearly a 2-1 margin, voters opted to keep the long-delayed ban.

The 2024 ballot is shaping up to be more of the same.

First, there’s the effort by the fast food industry. On Friday, the Secretary of State’s office directed county election officials to start verifying a random sample of signatures and gave them until Jan. 25 to finish. Second, oil and gas producers are mounting their own effort to overturn a law that bans new oil and gas wells within 3,200 feet of homes, schools, hospitals and other “sensitive” facilities. The industry has until Thursday to submit the necessary signatures.

Putting a price tag on a pause

Under the moniker “Save Local Restaurants,” fast food giants such as In-N-Out Burger, Chipotle, Starbucks and McDonald’s have raised nearly $21 million to overturn the labor-backed law. The group had spent $4.3 million through the end of September, according to its most recent filing, with the bulk of that money being used to fund signature gathering. It’s a continuation of a battle the industry has been waging throughout the year. In the final months of the last legislative session, the International Franchise Association spent more than $5 million lobbying members of the Legislature not to support Assembly Bill 257.

It’s not difficult to see why overturning the law — or at least delaying its implementation — might be worth the expense. One of the law’s provisions would allow the new council to mandate a minimum wage as high as $22 an hour next year for fast food restaurants, compared to the overall minimum wage that rises to $15.50 an hour on Jan. 1.

UC Berkeley economist Michael Reich, who performed a preliminary calculation for CalMatters, said the higher wage bill could add up to as much as $3.6 billion over two years. That figure equates to about $6,000 for each of California’s more than 500,000 fast food workers.

Reich’s calculation comes with a few caveats. It’s based on the assumption that if the law goes into effect, the council would impose the $22 minimum wage in six months — as early as next July. A more gradual approach is more likely, he said.

And though the law would only apply to large chains, defined as fast food establishments with more than 100 locations nationwide, federal labor statistics don’t distinguish how many workers fall into that category. Reich’s figure is based on a wage hike from the current California average hourly wage of all fast food workers, which he estimated is more than $19.

It’s also not clear how franchised fast food restaurants would respond to higher labor costs. Another economist, Christopher Thornberg, said a back-of-the-napkin calculation shows a pause on the law would save the industry about “one to two billion dollars a year.”

But it’s fast food consumers, not the businesses themselves, who would ultimately pay the higher wage costs in the form of higher prices, he said. Thornberg this year authored an industry-commissioned report at the U.C. Riverside Center for Economic Forecasting & Development that estimated that the law’s increased labor costs would result in a 20% hike in fast food prices.

“Pausing it will not only stave off, but prevent up to a 20% food increase cost for consumers,” said Jeff Hanscom, vice president of state and local government relations at the International Franchise Association.

The association estimates about 15,600 franchised fast food restaurants in California would be subject to the council’s regulations. That number doesn’t include non-franchised chains such as Starbucks and Chipotle, which would also be covered by the law. A pause on the law also means halting a fast food council from setting numerous other workplace standards such as training requirements, safety rules and the temperature of a restaurant.

“No one really knows what they could do,” Hanscom said. “Knowing we’re now back to the certainty of the status quo will allow business owners in California to operate without that fear of what’s coming down the road.”

Winning even when you lose

Though precise numbers may not be available on the benefits of delaying a law, for an industry on the wrong side of a piece of legislation, a temporary pause can be well worth the price of a campaign, even if the referendum eventually fails.

Few political observers expected Proposition 31, the November referendum on the state’s flavored tobacco ban, to be particularly close. And it wasn’t. In the final uncertified count, California voters upheld the ban 63% to 37%.

But thanks to the unsuccessful referendum campaign, the ban only briefly went into effect on Jan. 1, 2021, as the law prescribed. It was then paused when the referendum qualified later that month, and is likely to remain on hold until as late as Dec. 21.

According to reports filed with the state, the tobacco industry-funded campaign spent a little more than $15 million on signature gathering in late 2020. The coalition spent less than $2 million during this year’s actual campaign — a negligible sum by the standards of statewide ballot battles.

The Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids, an advocacy group that supported the ban, estimated that the industry made an additional $784 million during that nearly 700-day delay. CalMatters reached out to both the “No on 31” campaign and R.J. Reynolds Tobacco, one of the campaign’s biggest financial supporters, requesting comment on that estimate. Neither responded.

“It was a good investment on their part,” said Jerry Hill, a former Democratic senator from San Mateo, who introduced the flavored tobacco ban. “They were using the referendum to delay the inevitable.”

On Nov. 9, the day after the polls closed in California, R.J. Reynolds, along with a coalition of vape and chewing tobacco companies, filed a lawsuit to challenge the ban in federal court. A few days later, the court rejected the companies’ request to put the law on hold.

What’s behind the referenda uptick?

California voters have had the option to veto legislation passed in Sacramento since 1912. But after a surge in referenda through the 1940s, the practice fell out of favor through around 2000. The recent run of referenda on the ballot since 2016 isn’t unprecedented, but is part of a longer-term trend, said Mary-Beth Moylan, a University of the Pacific law professor.

What might explain what she describes as a “slight uptick?” Moylan points to the increasingly Democratic dominance in Sacramento, with a majority of lawmakers now more willing to slap legislative targets on large, well-resourced industries. Those industries may be “seeing this as the only option now, whereas they were having more success in prior decades sorting and killing bills in the legislative process,” she said.

Though the state constitution doesn’t explicitly say that a referendum, once qualified, puts the underlying law on hold, the text has been interpreted that way by state courts for decades.

“It was a good investment on their part. “They were using the referendum to delay the inevitable.”
— Jerry Hill, a former Democratic senator from San Mateo, who introduced the flavored tobacco ban

Now some advocates who have grown tired of this electoral maneuver are calling for change.

At a press conference held last week by the Service Employees International Union California, which sponsored the fast food law, advocates said they want the state to require proof of “grassroots support” before qualifying a referendum. That could include requiring a certain share of signatures to be gathered by volunteers, rather than firms that pay workers by the signature.

“Petition circulators were once almost universally unpaid,” said Trent Lange, president of the California Clean Money Campaign, who said he hasn’t taken a position on the fast food referendum. “Now, however, corporations and billionaires can buy their way onto the ballot by using unlimited amounts of money to hire mercenary signature-gathering firms.”

SEIU has accused the referendum campaign of lying to get voters to sign petitions, submitting videos to the Secretary of State’s office and the Attorney General’s office in which signature gatherers appear to tell the public they would be supporting an increase in the minimum wage. Neither office has said whether they are investigating the complaints. Hanscom, of the International Franchise Association, said the group has not heard from either office, but it believes the “referendum was pursued in a way that met the letter of the law.”

Another voice that’s called for change: The Los Angeles Times’ editorial board, which called the recent run of referenda a “perverse application of a system designed to empower ordinary people against corporate influence in the state Capitol.”

Hill, the former state senator, said “it is easy — and too easy — to file a referendum by a corporation with paid signature gatherers…They have nothing to lose and everything to gain by doing this.”

“I do think that there needs to be reform in the referendum space,” he added, “and I would hope that the Legislature or a commission or something could look at it.”

There’s little indication yet that the Legislature is willing to take that step.

State Sen. Lena Gonzalez, a Democrat from Long Beach and the author of the oil well setback bill that could wind up on the 2024 ballot, called the campaign an “abuse” of the electoral process in a conversation with CalMatters earlier this year. Asked last week, a spokesperson for the senator said she had “no specific concrete policies” under consideration.

Assemblymember Isaac Bryan and Sen. Steve Glazer, the current Democratic chairpersons of the respective chamber’s election committees, also declined to comment.

In an interview with CalMatters during her reelection campaign, Secretary of State Shirley Weber said her office was considering whether to support changes to the referendum process “because it can easily be bought.” She also said she wants to find ways to better educate voters because referenda can be particularly confusing — a “yes” vote is to uphold the law being challenged, not to support the industry.

Last week, Weber’s spokesperson said the office was “still in discussions about best approaches to this issue” and encouraged the public to check back in 2023.

In recent surveys, support for monkeying with the ballot measure qualification process has been lukewarm at best. And though there were calls for change from lawmakers and advocacy and watchdog groups after the unsuccessful recall election of Gov. Newsom last year, interest in changes to the statewide process waned after Election Day.

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CalMatters.org is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media venture explaining California policies and politics.

If you work in California and your sister is undergoing cancer treatments, or your spouse gets knee surgery, you might be able to get paid while you take time off work to care for them.

It’s a less well-known part of California’s paid family leave benefit, which also covers new parents who leave work to care for and bond with their babies. Although the number of Californians, especially women, using paid leave for reasons beyond new babies has soared in the past two decades, still roughly six times more use paid family leave to care for new children than use it to take care of seriously ill family members

While there’s broad support for giving new parents paid time off — a benefit that doesn’t exist across the U.S. — there’s less consensus around paid leave to care for ill family members. At the same time, research on the effects of paid family leave for anyone besides new parents has been limited.

A new study published today, though, finds that access to paid family leave decreases the likelihood that women leave their job if their spouse has serious health issues.

Researchers at Wellesley College and Stanford University looked at data for thousands of healthy, employed adults who had either a child undergoing surgery or hospitalization, or a spouse who had a health condition or a cognitive limitation and also had a major health event. They compared outcomes for people in California, New York, and New Jersey before and after those states passed paid family leave, and also compared them to people in other states that lack family leave.

Women with spouses who had health issues saw the largest benefit. While all women were working at the outset, after their spouses had surgery or were hospitalized, roughly 10% of women left their jobs.

But, the study found, access to paid family leave more than halved the rate at which they left work. “We were surprised at how big this effect was,” said Maya Rossin-Slater, a health economist at Stanford and one of the paper’s authors.

Rossin-Slater has seen the benefit play out in her own life: her mother has taken paid leave twice for family caregiving purposes. Once was about 10 years ago, when Rossin-Slater herself had surgery, and the second time was more recently to care for Rossin-Slater’s uncle, who had cancer. “In fact, she was going to retire but then she decided to not retire and instead use paid family leave,” Rossin-Slater said of her mom.

The study’s finding was concentrated among women with 12 or fewer years of education. Many women without college education work in low-paying jobs that don’t offer paid family leave benefits, Rossin-Slater said, so “in the absence of having a state-level program, these women by and large are left to kind of fend for themselves.”

Paid family leave didn’t have a meaningful impact on whether men stayed in their jobs if their spouses with a health condition had a major health event. Regardless of whether they had access to paid family leave, less than half of 1% of men in the study reported leaving their job to care for a family member or their home, Rossin-Slater said. “Just very few men do that, and so perhaps then it’s not surprising that (paid family leave) doesn’t really affect them,” she said.

Priyanka Anand, a health economist at George Mason University who has also studied the impacts of paid family leave, said she liked the research, particularly because it focuses on non-parental uses of paid leave, which has gotten little attention from researchers. There are strengths to the data the researchers used, she said, but one drawback is a relatively small number of people who actually had access to paid family leave: While more than 2,700 healthy spouses were in the sample, only 237 of them had access to paid family leave.

Some people are hesitant to take leave because they’re worried they might lose their job, or that they’ll be the first to go in future layoffs, or they’ll get passed over for raises or promotions, said Christina Irving, director of client services at San Francisco-based Family Caregiver Alliance.

In 2020, state lawmakers expanded job protections for people who take leave. Now, if you work at a company with five or more employees and meet work hour requirements, you can take unpaid leave to take care of a family member and be legally protected from losing your job. Previously, job protections generally covered people working at companies with at least 50 people at or near the worksite. Many people get both job protection and some pay during their leave, but the laws providing those two benefits are separate.

“Generally, folks are very concerned about how they can make sure that they keep their jobs,” said Katherine Wutchiett, a senior staff attorney at Legal Aid at Work, a San Francisco non-profit that provides legal services to low-income workers. “If they have a spouse who’s facing a long term disability and will be out of work, they might be the sole source of income for their family for the first time, making it all that more important that they’re able to keep their job,” she said.

More change is coming in 2025, when lower-income workers will get to keep 90% of their paycheck when they take paid family leave. Currently, workers get 60% to 70% of their wages when they take leave. Advocates pushed for the increase, saying that many low income workers couldn’t afford to take leave when it came with a large pay cut.

Another barrier to getting paid family leave is understanding what you’re eligible for and how, exactly, to get the benefits. Legal Aid at Work runs a hotline for people who have questions about paid leave and other workplace accommodations, or need help with the process. It gets over 1,000 calls per year, according to Wutchiett.

Some version of paid family leave has been in place for nearly two decades. Yet, there’s still a need for lawyers who can help people through the process, said Rossin-Slater. That reflects negatively on how the program is being run, she said. “Ideally, people shouldn’t have to turn to a lawyer in order to be able to just access this benefit.”

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CalMatters.org is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media venture explaining California policies and politics.

[Just discovering this LoCO feature?
Find the beginning by clicking here.] 

CLEAN BREAK

by

Lionel White

CHAPTER TWO

1

He’s changed, she thought.

Stretching out her slender, naked arm, she reached over to the night table at the side of the bed and fumbled around until she found the pack of cigarettes. She brought it over to herself and hunched up so that she was half sitting. She shook out a cigarette and then leaned over again to find the lighter. With the lights out, the room was only half dark as the mid afternoon sun filtered through the almost closed venetian blinds.

She lit the cigarette and drew a deep lungful of smoke, slowly expelling it. Her eyes went to the man lying beside her. His own eyes were closed and he lay completely still, but she knew that he wasn’t sleeping.

Once more she thought, he’s changed. It was odd, but something about him was different. Physically, the four years hadn’t seemed to have altered his appearance in the slightest. There was, of course, that new touch of gray over his ears. But he was still a lean, hard six feet one, his face still carried the sharp fine lines, his gray eyes were as clear and untroubled as they had always been. No, the change wasn’t a physical one.

For that she was glad. She wouldn’t have been able to stand it if those four years had done to him what they do to most men who go to jail and come out shattered and embittered.

Johnny had been right about one thing; he had done it on his ear. He’d taken the rap and put it away and he hadn’t let it hurt him.

No, it wasn’t a physical change. It was something far more subtle. Not that the time behind bars had soured him. It hadn’t even taken that almost boyish optimism and wild enthusiasm from him.

He still talked the same and acted the same. He was still the same old Johnny. Except that in some way or another he seemed to have settled down. Now, there was a new, deep, serious undercurrent to him which hadn’t been there before. A sort of grim purposefulness which he had always lacked.

It was as though he had finally grown up.

Her hand went across to him and she softly rubbed the side of his head. He didn’t move and instinctively she leaned over and kissed him gently on the mouth.

God, she was just as crazy about him as she had always been. More so. She was glad now that she had waited.

Four years had been a long time, a hell of a long time. For a moment she wondered what those years might have done to her. But at once, she dismissed the thought. Whatever they had done, it hadn’t seemed to bother Johnny at all. He was just as much in love with her as he had always been. Just as impetuous and just as demanding. It was one of the things which made her always want him and need him—his constant demand for her.

Twisting her lovely, long limbed body, she put her feet on the floor at the side of the bed and sat up.

“It’s getting late, Johnny,” she said. “Must be after four. I’ll get dressed and make us a cup of coffee. You suppose this man has any coffee around the place?”

He opened his eyes wide then, and looked around at her. He smiled.

“Come on back,” he said.

She shook her head and the shoulder length blonde hair covered the side of her face.

“Not on your life, baby,” she said. “You get up now and get dressed. I want to be well out of here before this Unger character gets home.”

He grunted.

“Guess you’re right, honey. You hit the bathroom; I’ll be up in a second. There’s a coffeepot in the kitchen. See if you can find something for a couple of sandwiches.”

He reached for a cigarette from the package she had replaced on the table. The girl stood up and crossed the room toward the bath. She reached and took a handful of clothes from the back of a chair as she passed. A moment later the door closed behind her.

Flicking an ash on the floor, he thought, God it was worth waiting for. Worth every bitter second of those four years.

When he heard the sound of the shower, he too got up. He pulled on his clothes carelessly and was tucking in his shirt as she once more returned to the room.

“Honey,” he said, looking at her with the admiration still deep on his face, “honey, listen. The hell with the coffee. Run down to the corner and pick up a bottle of Scotch. Jesus, I feel like a drink. I want to celebrate. After four years, I feel like something a little stronger than coffee.”

She looked at him silently for a second and then spoke. 

“You sure it’s a good idea—drinking?” she asked. 

He smiled.

“You don’t have to worry,” he said. “Nobody ever had to worry about my drinking. It’s just that I feel like celebrating.” 

“Well,” she said, slowly, “all right, Johnny. You know what you want. The only thing is, remember, it’s been four years and it’s likely to hit you awful fast. You want to be wide awake for tonight.”

He nodded, at once serious.

“I’ll be wide awake,” he said. “Don’t worry—I’ll be plenty wide awake.”

She smiled then, and pulling on the little cardinal’s hat, she sort of half shook her head to brush the hair back and turned toward the door.

“Be right back,” she said.

“Wait,” he said, “I’ll get you some money.”

“I’ve got money,” she said and quickly opened the door and closed it behind her.

Johnny Clay frowned and sat in the straight-backed chair next to the window. He thought of the single five dollar bill which Marvin Unger had left him that morning—just in case. He laughed, not pleasantly.

“Tight bastard,” he said, under his breath.

But at once his mind went back to Fay. Jesus, there was a million things he wanted to ask her. They hadn’t hardly talked at all. There were so many things they had to tell each other. Four years is a long time to cover in a few minutes.

Of course he knew that she still had the job; that she still lived with her family out in Brooklyn. She hadn’t had to tell him that she had waited for him and only him all these years. That he knew, unasked. Her actions alone had told him.

And he’d had damned little opportunity to tell her much. He’d only just briefly outlined his plans; told her what he had in mind.

He knew she wouldn’t like the idea. Certainly she had felt bad enough about it that time, more than four years ago, when the court had passed sentence on him and he’d started up the river. And she’d always been after him to get an honest job, to settle down.

Yes, he’d been surprised when she hadn’t started right in to make objections.

After he had told her about it, she’d been quiet for a long time. And then, at last, she’d said, “Well, Johnny, I guess you know what you’re doing.”

“I know,” he’d told her. “I know all right. After all, I’ve had four years—four damned long years, to think about it. To plan it.”

She nodded, looking at him with that melting look which always got him.

“Just be sure you’re right about it, Johnny,” she said. “Be awful sure you’re right. It’s robbery, Johnny. It’s criminal. But you know that.”

“I’m right.”

There’d been no questions about the right or wrong of it. That part she understood. Right now she was too happy in being with him, in loving him, to go into it.

“The only mistake I made before,” he’d told her, “was shooting for peanuts. Four years taught me one thing if nothing else. Any time you take a chance on going to jail, you got to be sure that the rewards are worth the risk. They can send you away for a ten dollar heist just as quick as they can for a million dollar job.”

But then, they hadn’t talked any more. They had other things to do. More important things.

He had the ice cubes out and a couple of glasses on the table when she returned. She tossed her tiny hat on the bed and then sat on the edge of it as he fixed two highballs with whiskey, soda and ice. Silently they touched rims and then sipped the drinks.

Looking at him with a serious expression in her turquoise eyes, she said, “Johnny, why don’t you get out of this place? It’s depressing here; dingy.”

He shook his head.

“It’s the safest place,” he said. “I have to stay here. Everything now depends on it.”

She half shook her head.

“This man Unger,” she said. “Just how…”

He interrupted her before she could finish the question.

“Unger isn’t exactly a friend,” he said. “He’s a court stenographer down in Special Sessions. I’ve known him for a number of years, but not well. Then, at the time my case came up and I was sentenced, he looked me up while I was waiting to be transferred to Sing Sing. He wanted me to get a message through to a man who was doing time up there, in case I had a chance to do so. It turned out I did.

“When I got out I figured he sort of owed me a favor. I looked up his name in the phone book and called him. We got together and had dinner. I was looking around for a guy like him—a guy who’d be a respectable front, who had a little larceny in his heart and who might back the play. I felt him out. It didn’t take long.”

Fay looked at him, her eyes serious.

“Are you sure, Johnny,” she asked, “that he isn’t just playing you along for a sucker? A court stenographer…” 

Johnny shook his head,

“No—I know just where he stands. The man isn’t a crook in the normal sense of the word. But he’s greedy and he’s got larceny. I was careful with him and played him along gradually. He’s all right. He went for the deal hook, line and sinker. He’s letting me lay low here, he’s making my contacts, arranging a lot of the details. He’s going to cut in for a good chunk of the dough, once we get it. He won’t, of course, be in on the actual caper itself. But he’s valuable, very valuable.”

Fay still looked a little doubtful.

“The others,” she said, “they all seem sort of queer.”

“That’s the beauty of this thing,” Johnny told her. “I’m avoiding the one mistake most thieves make. They always tie up with other thieves. These men, the ones who are in on the deal with me—none of them are professional crooks. They all have jobs, they all live seemingly decent, normal lives. But they all have money problems and they all have larceny in them. No, you don’t have to worry. This thing is going to be foolproof.”

Fay nodded her blonde head.

“I wish there was something I could do, Johnny,” she said. 

Johnny Clay looked at her sharply and shook his head.

“Not for a million,” he said. “You’re staying strictly out of this. It was even risky—dangerous—for me to let you come up here today. I don’t want you tied in in any possible way.”

“Yes, but… “

He stood up and went to her and put his arms around her slender waist. He kissed the soft spot just under her chin.

“Honey,” he said, “when it’s over and done with, you’ll be in it up to your neck. We’ll be lamming together, baby, after all. But until it’s done, until I have the dough, I want you out. It’s the only way.”

“If there was only something… “

“There’s plenty you can do,” he again interrupted. “Get that birth certificate of your brother’s. Get a reservation for those plane tickets. Begin to spread the story around your office about planning to get married and give them notice. You got plenty to do.”

He looked over at the cheap alarm clock on the dresser.

“And in the meantime,” he said, “you better get moving. I don’t want to take any chances on Unger walking in and finding you here.”

She stood up then and put her second drink down without tasting it.

“All right, Johnny,” she said. “Only—only when am I going to see you again?”

He looked at her for a long moment while he thought. He hated to have her leave; he hated the idea that he couldn’t go with her, then and there.

“I’ll call you,” he said. “As soon as I can, I’ll call. It will be at your office, sometime during the first part of the week.”

They stood facing each other for a moment and then suddenly she was in his arms. Her hands held the back of his head as she pressed against him and her half opened mouth found his.

She left the room then, two minutes later, without speaking.

# # #

2

It was exactly six forty-five when George Peatty climbed the high stoop of the brownstone front up on West a Hundred and Tenth Street. He took the key from his trouser pocket, inserted it and twisted the doorknob. He climbed two flights of carpeted stairs and opened the door at the right. Entering his apartment, he carefully removed his light felt hat, laid it on the small table in the hall and then went into the living room. He still carried the half dozen roses wrapped up in the green papered cornucopia.

About to open his mouth and call out, he was suddenly interrupted by the sound of a crash coming from the bedroom. A moment later he heard laughter. He passed through the living room and down the hallway to the bedroom. He wasn’t alarmed.

Bill Malcolm was down on his knees on the floor, at the end of the big double bed, beginning to pick up the pieces of broken glass. The uncapped gin bottle was still in his right hand, carried at a dangerous angle. He had a foolish grin on his handsome face and George knew at once that he was drunk.

Betty, Malcolm’s short, chubby wife, sat on the side of the bed. She was laughing.

Sherry was over by the window, fooling with one of the dials on the portable radio. There was a cigarette between her perfect red lips and she held a partly filled glass in her hand. She was dressed in a thin, diaphanous dressing gown and her crimson nailed feet were bare.

Instinctively, George knew that she was sober—no matter how much she may have had to drink. She looked up the moment George reached the door, sensing his presence.

“My God, George,” she said, “take the bottle out of Bill’s hand before he spills that too. The dope is drunk.”

“He’s always drunk,” Betty said. She stood up and weaved slightly as she moved toward her husband.

“Come on, Bill,” she said, her voice husky. “Gotta go.” She reached over and took the bottle and put it down on the floor. “My God, you’re a clumsy …”

“Oh, stay and have another,” Sherry said. “George, get a couple more glasses…”

Bill reached his feet, wobbling.

“Nope,” he said, thickly. “Gotta go. Gotta go now.” He lurched toward the door.

“Hiya, Georgie boy,” he said as he passed Peatty. “Missed the damn party.”

Betty followed him out of the room and a moment later they heard the slam of the outside door.

George Peatty turned to his wife.

“My God, Sherry,” he said, “don’t those two ever get sober?” 

Even as he said the words, he knew he was doing the wrong thing. He didn’t want to argue with her and he knew that any criticism of the Malcolms, his wife’s friends from downstairs, always led to a fight. It seemed that lately anything he said upset Sherry.

Sherry looked at her husband, the long, theatrical black lashes half closed over her smoldering eyes. Her body, small, beautifully molded, deceptively soft, moved with the grace of a cat as she went over to the bed and curled up on it.

At twenty-four, Sherry Peatty was a woman who positively exuded sex. There was a velvet texture to her dark olive skin; her face was almost Slavic in contour and she affected a tight, short hair cut which went far to set off the loveliness of her small, pert face.

“The Malcolms are all right,” she said, her husky voice bored and detached. “At least they have a little life in them. What am I supposed to do—sit around here and vegetate all day?”

“Well …”

“Well my fanny,” Sherry said, anger now moving into her tone. “We don’t do anything. Nothing. A movie once a week. My God, I get tired of this kind of life. I get tired of never having money, never going anywhere, doing anything. It may be all right for you—you’ve had your fling.”

Her mouth pouted and she looked as though she were about to cry.

George heard the words, but he wasn’t paying attention to them. He was thinking that she was still the most desirable woman he had ever known. He was thinking that right now to her, to go over and take her in his arms and make love to her.

He held the flowers out in a half conciliatory gesture.

Sherry took them and at once put them down unopened. She looked up at her husband. Her eyes were cold now and wide with resentment.

“This dump,” she said. “I’m damned tired of it. I’m tired of not having things; not having the money to do things.”

He went over and sat on the side of the bed and started to put his arm around her. Quickly she brushed it away.

“Sherry,” he said, “listen Sherry. In another week or so I’m going to have money. Real money. Thousands of dollars.”

She looked at him with sudden interest but a second later she turned away.

“Yeah.” Her voice was heavy with sarcasm. “What—you got another sure thing at the track? Last time you had one it cost us two weeks pay!”

For a long minute he looked at her. He knew he shouldn’t say anything; he knew even one word would be dangerous. That if Johnny were to learn he had talked, he’d be out. That would be the very least he could expect. He could also be half beaten to death or even killed. But then again he looked over at Sherry and he was blinded to everything but his desire for her. That and the realization that he was losing her.

“Not a horse,” he said. “Something a lot bigger than any horse. Something so big I don’t even dare tell you about it.”

She looked up at him then from under the long lashes with sudden curiosity. She reached over and her body pressed against his.

“Big?” she said. “If you’re serious, if this isn’t just another of your stories, then tell me. Tell me what it is.”

Again he hesitated. But he felt her body pressing against his and he knew that he’d have to tell her sooner or later. She’d have to know sometime. Well, the hell with Johnny. The reason he was in on the thing anyway was because of Sherry and his fear of losing her.

“Sherry,” he said, “I’ll tell you, but you’ll have to keep absolutely quiet about it. This is it—the real thing.”

She was impatient and started to pull away from him.

“It’s the track all right,” he said, “but not what you think. I’m in with a mob—a mob that’s going to knock over the track take.”

For a moment she was utterly still, a small frown on her forehead. She pulled away then and looked at him, her eyes wide.

“What do you mean?” she said. “The track take—what do you mean?”

His face was pale when he answered and the vein was throbbing again in his neck.

“That’s right—the whole track take. We’re going to knock over the office safe.”

She stared at him as though he had suddenly lost his mind. “For God’s sake,” she said. “George, are you hopped up? Are you crazy? Why my God…”

“I’m not crazy,” he said. “I’m cold sober. I’m telling you—we’re going to hijack the safe. We’re meeting tonight to make the plans.”

Still unbelieving, she asked, “Who’s meeting? Who’s we?” 

He tightened then and his mouth was a straight contrary line.

“Gees, Sherry,” he said, “that I can’t tell you. I can only say this. I’m in on it and it’s big. Just about the biggest thing that has ever been planned. We’re…”

“The track,” she said, still unbelieving. “You and your friends must be insane. Why, nobody’s ever knocked off a whole race track. It can’t be done. Good God, there’s thousands of people—hundreds of cops… George, you should know—you work there.”

He looked stubborn then when he spoke.

“It can be done,” he said. “That’s just the thing; that’s the beauty of it. It hasn’t been done or even tried and so nobody thinks it’s possible. Not even the Pinkertons believe it could be worked. That’s one reason it’s going to work.”

“You better get me a drink, George,” Sherry suddenly said. “Get me a drink and tell me about it.”

He stood up and retrieved the gin bottle from the floor. Going out to the kitchen, he mixed two Martinis. He wanted a couple of minutes to think. Already he was beginning to regret having told her. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust Sherry—he knew she’d keep her mouth shut all right. But he didn’t want her worrying about the thing. And of course, Johnny was right. No one at all should know about it except the people involved. Even that was risky enough.

He reflected that even he didn’t know exactly who was in on the plot. Well, he’d learn tonight—tonight at eight o’clock.

Carefully carrying the glasses, he started for the bedroom. He decided that he’d tell Sherry nothing more, nothing at all. He had to keep quiet, not only for his own protection, but for her protection as well. But he felt good about one thing. Sherry knew, now, that there was a chance they’d be coming into a big piece of money. She’d be happier. A lot happier. With money he could get her back; really back.

Before George Peatty left the house to take a subway downtown to keep his appointment, he took off his jacket and tie and went into the bathroom to wash up. While he was out of the room, Sherry crossed over to where he had carefully dropped his coat over the back of a chair. She made a quick, deft search through his pockets. She found the slip of paper on which he had scribbled the address down on East Thirty-first Street so that he would be sure not to forget it.

Quickly she memorized the few words and then put the paper back in his pocket.

She was back on the bed when he returned and she tolerated his long kiss and caress before he left.

 # # #

3

Number 712 East Thirty-first Street was an old law tenement house which had been built shortly after the Civil War. Countless generations of refugees from the old world had been born, brought up and died in its dingy, unsanitary interior. Around 1936 the building had been officially condemned as a fire trap, although it had been unofficially recognized as one for several decades, and ultimately evacuated. A smart real estate operator picked up the property and making use of a lot of surplus war material purchased for almost nothing, he rebuilt the place into a more or less modem apartment house. The apartments were all the same, two rooms, a bath and a kitchenette. There were four to a floor and the five floors of the building were served by an automatic, self-service elevator. The facade of the building had been refinished and it looked respectable.

Rents went up from $25 a month to $70 and the new landlord had no difficulty at all in filling the place, what with the critical housing shortage. In spite of his improvements, however, the building remained pretty much of a fire trap and it also remained, to all intents and purposes, a tenement house.

Marvin Unger was one of the first to move into the structure.

Getting off the train from Long Island, Unger looked up at the clock over the information booth and saw that it was shortly before six. He decided against going directly to his apartment, and went over and bought an evening paper with the final stock market quotations and race results. Folding the paper and carrying it under his arm, he left the station and walked north until he came to a cafeteria. He entered and took a tray. Minutes later he found a deserted table toward the rear. He put his food down, carefully placed his hat on the chair next to himself and opened up the newspaper. He didn’t bother to look at the race reports. He turned to the market page and began to check certain stock figures as he started to have his dinner.

At a time when almost every amateur speculator was making money on a rising market, Unger had somehow managed to lose money. A frugal man who lived by himself and had no expensive habits, he had saved his money religiously over the years. He invested the slender savings in stocks, but unfortunately, he never had the courage to hang on to a stock once he had bought it. As a result he was constantly buying and selling and, with each flurry of the market, he changed stocks and took losses on his brokerage fees. He also had an almost uncanny ability to select the very few stocks which went down soon after he bought them. Of the several thousand dollars he had managed to scrimp and put away from his small salary over the years, he had almost nothing left.

He finished his dinner and went back to the counter for a cup of coffee.

A few minutes later he started to walk across town in the direction of his apartment. He passed a delicatessen on his way and stopped in. He ordered two ham and cheese sandwiches and a bottle of milk. For a moment he hesitated as he considered adding a piece of cake, but then he shook his head. What he had would be enough. There was no reason to pamper the man. God knows, this thing was costing him enough, both in time and in money, as it was.

The street door to the apartment house was unlocked, as it usually was until ten o’clock at night. He passed the row of mailboxes without stopping at his own. He never received mail at his residence and in fact, almost no one knew where he lived. He had not bothered to change the records down at the office giving his latest address the last time he had moved. He had an almost psychological tendency toward secrecy; even in things where it was completely unimportant.

He took the self-service elevator to the fourth floor and got out. A moment later he knocked gently on his own door.

Johnny Clay had a half filled glass in his hand when he opened the door.

Unger entered the dingy, sparsely furnished apartment and the first thing he noticed was the partly emptied bottle of Scotch sitting on the table in the small, square living room. He looked up at the other man sourly.

“Where’d you get the bottle?” he asked. At the same time he walked over and picked it up, reading the label.

Johnny frowned. The faint dislike he had felt for the other man from the very first was rapidly developing into a near hatred.

He resented the very fact that he was forced to stay in Unger’s dismal, uncomfortable place; he hated his dependence on him. But at once he reflected that an out-and-out argument was one thing which must be avoided at all costs. He couldn’t afford to fight.

“Don’t worry,” he said, avoiding a direct answer, “I don’t get drunk. I just got tired of sitting around with nothing to do. Why the hell don’t you get a television set in this place. There isn’t even a book around to read.”

Unger set the bottle back on the table.

“Was Sing Sing any pleasanter?” he asked, his voice nasty. “I asked where you got the bottle.”

“God damn it, I went down to the corner and bought it,” Johnny said. “Why—do you object?”

“It isn’t a case of objecting,” Unger said. “It’s just that it was a risky thing to do. The reason we decided you’d stay here is because it’s safe. But it’s only safe if you stay inside. Don’t forget—you’re on parole, and right now you’re disobeying the terms of the parole. The minute you moved and quit that job, you left yourself wide open to being picked up.”

Johnny started to answer him, to call him on it, but then, a moment later, thought better of it.

“Look, Unger,” he said, “let’s you and me not get into any hassle. We got too much at stake. You’re right, I shouldn’t show myself. On the other hand, a guy can go nuts just hanging around. Anyway, I’m hungry and there’s nothing around the place. You bring me anything?”

Unger handed him the bottle of milk and the sandwiches. 

“Care for a drink?” Johnny asked. 

Unger shook his head.

Going to wash up,” he said. He started for the bathroom. 

Johnny took the brown paper bag containing the food into the kitchen. His eyes quickly went around to make sure that he had left no signs of Fay’s having been in the place. He didn’t want to have to explain Fay to anyone.

In fairness he had to admit that Unger was right. If the man believed that he had been out of the place, he had a right to squawk. But at the same time, he resented the other man and his attitude. Christ, if Unger wasn’t so damned tight, he’d make it a little more attractive for Johnny to stay put.

Marvin Unger rolled up his sleeves and turned on the cold water faucet in the washbasin. He started to lean down to wash his face and abruptly stopped halfway. The bobby pin was lying next to the cake of soap where he couldn’t possibly have missed it. His face was red with anger as he picked it up and looked at it for a long moment.

“The fool”“ he said. “The stupid fool.”

He put the bobby pin in his pocket and decided to say nothing about it. He, as well as Johnny, realized that they could not afford to have an open rupture.

For the first time he began to regret that he’d gotten mixed up in the thing in the first place. If anything went wrong, he said to himself bitterly, it would only serve him right. Serve him right for getting mixed up with an ex-convict and his crazy plans.

Thinking of those plans, he began to visualize his share of the profits if the deal turned out successful. It would be a fabulous sum. A sum he would never be able to make working as a court stenographer.

He shrugged his shoulders then, almost philosophically. If he was going to make crooked money the least he could expect was to be mixed up with crooks. Anyway, it would be over and done with soon. Once he had his cut, he’d make a clean break. The hell with the rest of them; he didn’t care what happened to them.

Where he’d be none of them would ever reach him. And it wouldn’t matter too much if the cops got onto them and they were picked up and talked. By that time Marvin Unger would have found a safe haven and a new identity. By that time he would be set for the rest of his life.

He turned back to the living room, determined to make the best of things until it was over and done with.

Johnny was munching the last of a sandwich as Unger went over to the hard leather couch and sat down.

“Everything went all right,” he said. “Got the message to both of them.”

Johnny nodded.

“Good.”

“To tell you the truth,” Unger said, “I wasn’t much impressed with the bartender. He looked soft. The other one, the cashier, didn’t seem quite the type either.”

“I didn’t pick them because they’re tough,” Johnny said. “I picked them because they hold strategic jobs. This kind of a deal, you don’t need strong arm mugs. You need brains.” 

“If they have brains what are they doing…”

“They’re doing the same thing you are.” Johnny said, foreseeing the question. “Earning peanuts.”

Unger blushed.

“Well, I hope you’re sure of them,” he said.

“Look,” Johnny said, “I know ‘em both—well. Mike—that’s the bartender, is completely reliable. He’s been around for a long time. No record and a good reputation. But he wants money and he wants it bad. He’s like you and me—he no longer cares where it comes from, just so he gets it. He can be counted on.

“The other one, Peatty, is a different proposition. Frankly, I wouldn’t have picked him for this deal except for one thing. He happens to be a cashier at the track and he knows the routine. He knows how the dough is picked up after each race, where it is taken and what’s done with it. We had to have a guy on the inside. George has no criminal record either—or he wouldn’t be working at the track. He used to be pretty wild when he was a kid, but he never got into any serious trouble. He may be a little weak, but hell, that doesn’t matter. After all, we already agreed on one thing. The big trick is to actually get away with the money. Once we’re clear, once we have the dough, then it’s every man for himself.”

Unger nodded.

“Yes,” he said, “every man for himself. How about the other one—the cop?”

“Randy Kennan? Randy’s one guy we don’t have to worry about at all. He’s not too smart, but you can count on him. He’s a horse player and a skirt chaser, he puts away plenty of liquor, but he’s no lush. His record in the department is all right. But he needs money to keep up his vices. I’ve known Randy for a long time. We were brought up together. In spite of the rap I took, we’re still friends. No, Randy’s O.K. You won’t have to give him a second thought.”

Unger looked thoughtful.

“But a cop,” he said. “Jesus Christ. You’re sure there’s no chance he’s just playing along with some idea of turning rat and getting himself a nice promotion?”

Not a chance in the world,” Johnny said. “I know him too well…” He thought for a moment, then added, “It’s possible, of course, the same as it’s possible you could do the same thing. But it doesn’t make sense. You wouldn’t throw over a few hundred grand to get a four hundred dollar a year raise, would you?”

Unger didn’t say anything. 

“One thing,” Johnny said, “I learned in prison is this. There isn’t a professional criminal who isn’t a rat. They all are. They’d turn in their best friend for a pack of butts—if they needed a cigarette. Get mixed up with real criminals and you’re bound to mess up a deal. That’s the main reason I think this caper has a good chance of working. Everybody involved, with the exception of myself, is a working stiff without a record and a fairly good rep. On this kind of a heist, the first thing the cops are going to look for is a gang of professionals. The only one with a record is myself. And I’m in it because it was my idea.”

He looked over at the other man, his eyes cynical. “There is another thing, too,” he added, “that I’ll say about myself. I never hung out crooks; never got mixed up with them. I’ve never been tied in with a job anything like this one. I’d be the last guy on the books the law would think of after this thing is pulled.”

“I hope so,” Unger said. “I certainly hope so.”

“You want to remember also,” Johnny said. “Anyone of us crosses us up, he’s in just as deep as the rest of us. It won’t be a case of the testimony of a bunch of criminals which will involve him; it’ll be the testimony of honest working stiffs. You can rest easy about the boys—the only chances we take in the whole thing is the actual execution of the job itself.”

Marvin Unger nodded, his eyes thoughtful. He took a cigar out of his breast pocket and neatly clipped off the end and put it between his thin lips. He was striking the match when the knock came on the door.

Instinctively both men looked over at the alarm clock. The hands pointed to eight exactly.

# # #

Tune in next week for the next chapter of Clean Break!

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Today, December 6, is dedicated by Catholics and Eastern Orthodox adherents to Saint Nicholas, who died, according to the early Church Fathers, on this date in 343 AD (thus preceding my dad’s death, exactly 33 years ago, by 1,626 years). Saint Nicholas morphed into St Nick into Kris Kringle into Sinterklaas into Father Christmas, he of fat belly, white beard, wire-rimmed glasses and with a workforce of elves rivaling Amazon’s.

There really was a Nicholas, born, according to tradition, on March 3, 270 to a wealthy Christian family in (now) the southern Turkish village of Patara, near Myra. He secretly donated three bags of gold to a poor father who, because he couldn’t afford to pay for his daughters’ dowry, was about to sell them into prostitution (is that really the best solution he could come up with???). (It’s OK, I guess, the story’s apocryphal.) Nicholas was rewarded for his generosity by being ordained Bishop of Myra, and was subsequently canonized. A thousand years later, a group of French nuns, in his honor, took to leaving food on the doorsteps of poor people, and the connection Saint Nick and pressies was born.

Born, but hardly developed into the “ho-ho-ho” characters you’ll be seeing for the next couple of weeks in malls, on the gazebo and in ads for Coca Cola. (Which began in the 1930s — is Coke still doing that?) For instance, those reindeer pulling his sleigh, in contravention of aerodynamic theory? Blame that on the Norse god Odin, “the old blue-hooded, cloaked, white-bearded Giftbringer of the north, who rode the midwinter sky on his eight-footed steed Sleipnir, visiting his people with gifts” according to folklorist Margaret Baker. “Odin, transformed into Father Christmas, then Santa Claus, prospered with St Nicholas and the Christchild, became a leading player on the Christmas stage.”

St. Nicholas, 13th century icon in St. Catherine’s monastery, Sinai, Egypt (Public domain)

“Merry Old Santa Claus” by Thomas Nast, January 1, 1881 Harper’s Weekly. (Public domain)

You may be wondering why, if December 6 is his feast day, we actually celebrate his arrival the night before Christmas, nearly three weeks later? Blame that one on Martin Luther and the Reformation. With no more veneration of saints, the Protestant church quietly merged Nick into the Christmas celebrations. According to Wikipedia, “The custom of gifting to children at Christmas was propagated by Martin Luther as an alternative to the previous very popular gift custom on St. Nicholas…But Nicholas remained popular as gifts bearer for the people.”

What Wikipedia doesn’t seem to address is, “Why is Santa white?” Others have, however, and it’s a bit of a mixed bag. The original Saint Nicholas was Greek, and most Greeks, in the eyes of, say, the US census, are white. But in a couple of accidents of history, forensic archaeologists have had access to his bones, half of which ended up in Venice and half in Bari in southeastern Italy, where a cathedral built in 1087 to honor him depicts him as “a Middle Eastern man with very dark skin.” The forensics agreed: “He resembled a light brown man of color.”

(Addressing a Fox News commentator that he was as white as Jesus (!), philosophy professor David Kyle Johnson wrote in Psychology Today that Saint Nicholas looked “much more like Osama Bin Laden than today’s average ‘white male’ or Coca-Cola’s Santa Claus.”)

Finally, yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. He can be reached at this address: Santa Claus, North Pole, Canada, H0H 0H0; no postage is required.

‘A fucking death wish’

The day she died, Paula Moon-Sylvia planned to make cheeseburgers for herself and her nephew at her Weitchpec home. Her nephew took a nap and went looking for his aunt when he woke up. He found her body, dead from a fentanyl overdose with methamphetamine toxicity on Nov. 8, 2021.

Moon-Sylvia, 46, had contacted her dealer James Williamson two days earlier via Facebook Messenger. Court documents record Williamson’s offer of “fet and raw” while asking “how much cash do u have?”

Williamson boasted that his “raw” (heroin) was “superior,” according to documents filed in a the dealer’s Humboldt County court case. He was selling it for $200/gram.

“I have a lot of fet tho,” he messaged Moon-Sylvia. “But idk if u like that shit. I don’t touch it which is why I’m selling it.”

“I do,” she messaged back. “Do you know where to sell any pounds of weed?”

“Ok so which do u want? My grams of fet are 170 so lemme do the math real fast.”

Williamson delivered $20 worth of fentanyl to Moon-Sylvia’s house, a tiny amount the size of a few grains of salt, on Nov. 7. A toxicology report found that Moon-Sylvia’s blood contained a fentanyl concentration of 8.7 nanograms per milliliter, which is often a fatal dose when other drugs are present. Moon-Sylvia’s blood had a 0.56 milligrams per liter concentration of methamphetamine. Humboldt coroner pathologist Neil Kushner called the death a fentanyl overdose with meth toxicity.

In interviews with police, Williamson said he wouldn’t have given her fentanyl if she had not reassured him that she’d taken it before.

“Everyone knows the dangers of fentanyl,” he told police. “It is all over the news.”

He repeated to police that he doesn’t do fentanyl.

“Anybody who does it, I feel like, has a fucking death wish,” Williamson told police, who relayed the dealer’s sentiments in court.

Williamson pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter for selling Moon-Sylvia the fentanyl.

In October, Williamson was sentenced to the time he’d served plus nine days plus a year and five months of mandatory supervision.

“I’ve never been more remorseful for anything in my life,” Williamson told Moon-Sylvia’s family at his sentencing.

Last week in Humboldt: Seven deaths in seven days

It’s been another record-breaking year for fentanyl overdoses in Humboldt with at least 60 deaths to date, up from around three dozen in 2021. The week after Thanksgiving, the sheriff’s department saw seven overdose deaths in seven days. Fentanyl is suspected in all these deaths, says Humboldt County Sheriff Billy Honsal in a Dec. 5 interview, though he says toxicology reports that confirm fentanyl take a month to process.

“The sheriff’s office and the sheriff’s coroner is seeing staggering overdose rates and overdose deaths from fentanyl,” Honsal says. “What we once saw was opioid epidemic with heroin primarily has now shifted to primarily fentanyl. Fentanyl deaths are sky high.”

Candy Stockton, Humboldt County’s new health officer as of July, says Humboldt’s fentanyl overdoses transcend demographics. The youngest overdose death this year was a 19-year-old. The oldest was 74.

“It crosses that entire range,” Stockton says. “The vast majority of people die in their homes. They are not homeless. They are not the people you think they are.”

Because it’s cheap and relatively easy to manufacture, the synthetic opioid is turning up everywhere, in meth, cocaine, heroin – and in fake pills that can look like legit pharmaceuticals including Xanax, Oxycontin, Vicodin or Adderall.

“People are stamping controlled substances to make it look like different pills, Vicodin being a prominent one,” Honsal says. “These aren’t pharmaceutical companies that are manufacturing them. They’re being made in basements and backyards and garages. You’re getting a variety of different dosages. What may or should contain 2 grains may get 3 or 4. … People can easily overdose.”

Fentanyl is potent stuff, up to 50 times stronger than heroin and 100 times stronger than morphine. The amount that contributed to the death of Moon-Sylvia, the Weitchpec grandmother, was equivalent to a few grains of salt.

But the pills, the fake pills. If you stop reading this now, please know that the pills Honsal described are killing young people, inexperienced drug users, who likely don’t know what they’re ingesting.

I know there are many worries on your list right now. Please make room for this one.

This year, the DEA launched a “One Pill Can Kill” campaign after its labs found that six out of every 10 fentanyl-laced fake prescription pills analyzed in 2022 contain a potentially lethal dose of fentanyl. That’s up from four out of 10 in 2021.

To date, the county health department and sheriff’s office say there’ve been no fentanyl overdoses in Humboldt’s K-12 schools. K-12 teachers are being trained to use Narcan, also known as Naloxone, an opioid antagonist nasal spray.

Stories of young people dying from accidental fentanyl poisoning deaths in California read like nightmares. Here are three of many:

• Fourteen-year-old Alexander Neville died in Aliso Viejo on June 23. Neville thought he was addicted to Oxycontin when he was actually taking fentanyl, reports the Los Angeles Times. This is from his obit: “He self-medicated due, in some part, to the fact that he did not realize how much he was loved by everyone who came into contact with him.”
• Also in the Times, 15-year-old Melanie Ramos died in September in Hollywood after she took a fake Percocet that turned out to be fentanyl.
• Twenty-year-old Talaia Newman died on Nov. 28 in Sacramento of fentanyl poisoning from a fake prescription pill.

In Humboldt, Chad Bernard Holub (McCay) died around lunchtime on Dec. 2. An obituary written by friends describes how the 48-year-old fisherman, farmer and member of Narcotics Anonymous injected what he thought was heroin.

“He inserted a delicate needle between his toes to deliver the immediate ecstasy and relief of heroin — the escape to a pleasant place, to run away from the nothingness of life, the fulfillment of a habit,” the obit explains. “The drug coursed through his veins, expanded a feeling of health and thoughts … then killed him. Dead. Bits of criminal fentanyl were unknowingly mixed in. A killer.”

Good citizens carry Narcan

My son died of an opioid overdose in 2015. Not fentanyl. Just a pill cocktail that his death certificate describes as “combined oxymorphone, oxycodone and clonazepam intoxication.” He was 30. If someone had been with him when he overdosed, they might have been able to save his life with Naloxone, an opioid antagonist medication used to reverse an opioid overdose.

Naloxone – brand name Narcan — is a bandaid, a last-ditch life-saving device. If you come upon an opioid user who has nodded off, who is blue or pale or clammy or vomiting or making gurgling noises or whose heart has slowed or stopped, call 911 and start CPR. If you have Narcan, you might be able to jump start this person’s life.

I’m a Cal Poly Humboldt professor and I’m raising my son’s children, now teenagers.

It could not hurt for me to have some Narcan on hand.

A good citizen can pick up Narcan free at the Community Wellness Center, 908 7th Street, Eureka CA or by calling 707.268.2132. The Humboldt Area Center for Harm Reduction gives out resources including free Narcan to folks in need on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

Naloxone is also available without a prescription at California pharmacies.

I decide to obtain Narcan at a chain drug store in Arcata. The drug store is next to the pet supply store, which sells the live crickets we feed to the teenager’s lizards. Convenient.

I don’t wait in line long.

“I’d like to pick up some naloxone,” I say to a young woman behind the counter. “Narcan.”

“Do you have a prescription?” she asks.

“It’s my understanding that I don’t need one,” I say.

She looks mildly panicked but a coworker comes to her rescue.

“You don’t need a prescription for Narcan,” he says. “But you have to talk to the pharmacist at the consultation window.”

I wait. The consultation window can service two customers side-by-side. It’s not terribly private.

“Who’s here for the naloxone, the Narcan?” a pharmacist asks. I nod and head to the counter.

“You want the nasal spray?” the pharmacist asks.

“Is there another form?”

“No, just the spray.”

“That’s what I want.”

The woman next to me is talking to another pharmacist about her diabetes medication.

My pharmacist asks me for the patient’s name, date of birth, insurance info.

“It’s me. I’m the patient.”

“It’s for you?”

“Yup.” She’s a pro, barely glancing up at me. I’m smiling, thinking about this little tidbit of my personal data zooming off to next-generation server farms that gobble up petabytes of data with ultimate efficiency and vomit them out for marketers and government agencies.

Hi, I’m Deidre, and I carry Narcan.

Good news. My insurance covers naloxone with a $5 copay. It will be ready to pick up in 20 minutes.

That’s plenty of time to buy crickets.

Here’s pharmacist Allyson showing us how to use all kinds of Naloxone

The training video links from Stop Overdose Humboldt website, which also lists how you can pick up free Narcan.

Humboldt sheriff’s war on fentanyl

In April, Humboldt’s Drug Task Force sent officers to scope out the Tenderloin District in San Francisco. This led to the arrest of four people heading back to Humboldt County with cheap fentanyl scores.

Sheriff Honsal

In May, Humboldt County’s Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to send a letter to San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin, urging the Bay Area prosecutor to crack down on “open air drug dealing” in San Francisco’s Tenderloin District. Boudin was recalled in June. Brooke Jenkins, who’s pledged to push for more aggressive criminal prosecution, was appointed as interim DA in June and won a special election for the office in November.

Nothing has much changed, though, with open air drug dealing. The Tenderloin is still a hot spot for fentanyl, Humboldt Sheriff Billy Honsal says, along with Sacramento, Redding, other cities.

“Anyone can go down there with a thousand dollars and can buy what they call a sack of fentanyl,” Honsal says. “They come up here, cut it with a cutting agent and sell it on streets and make three, four, five, 10 times more.”

On the East Coast, fentanyl has been found in marijuana. Honsal predicts it’s only a matter of time before an overdose from fentanyl-tainted marijuana happens here.

“It’s very scary,” he says. “This is what’s affecting our community. This is what’s killing our people.”

Honsal describes the accidental death of a 3-year-old in Rio Dell as the youngest fentanyl overdose in Humboldt County. Police guessed the child got into the parents’ fentanyl supply. Honsal doesn’t think the death, about two years ago, was in the news.

“We couldn’t pull a criminal case together,” he says. “And the parents were let go.”

Honsal vows to keep fighting Humboldt’s war on drugs, with fentanyl at the top of the list. That means the Humboldt Drug Task Force will prioritize fentanyl arrests over those for other controlled substances. So if tips come in about, say, a huge shipment of marijuana and another of fentanyl, the Task Force will pursue the latter first.

Part of the deliberate plan to stop fentanyl includes charging drug dealers with murder.

The attempt to charge James Williamson with voluntary manslaughter in the death of Sylvia-Moon was a historic first attempt. The charges were downgraded to involuntary manslaughter by the judge.

What does Honsal consider to be the best way to keep people from overdosing on fentanyl?

“Abstinence,” Honsal says. “Absolutely. We don’t want our community, our kids, trapped in addiction.”

Honsal believes in tough love with regards to substance use. He gives what he calls “the gift of jail” for misdemeanor drug possessions. This gives users a month or two to get sober in jail, he says.

“Not using drugs is the way to stay safe,” he says. “I want to scare every kid into not taking drugs. Try to get high on life. There’s a lot of things to do out there.”

Everyone on the street carries Narcan

Amber Bradford has lived in Humboldt since 2013. It’s a balmy Tuesday morning, two days before Thanksgiving. Bradford’s lightly tinted hair is pulled back neatly into a high ponytail. Her ears are pierced three times and she’s wearing cute silver hoops and dangles. She’s wearing a hoodie with The Mandalorian logo, and a green jacket is draped over her arm. She’s fifth in a line of people waiting for various forms of help from the back of the Humboldt Area Center for Harm Reduction van. The program’s clients know each other well. They chat, joke, and occasionally finish each other’s sentences.

Amber Bradford. Photo: Deidre Pike.

Bradford has high praise for the HACHR staff, especially Christina Donnell, the case manager who’s helped Bradford connect with health care and other services.

“Christina goes above and beyond,” Bradford says. “She calls to check in. She’ll help out even on her off hours.”

A woman in front of Bradford turns to add how much “Jami” has helped her, as well. “She drives around some days, helping people in the streets.”

“Yeah, she helps people in the streets first, the girls who work in the streets.”

“And when the Jungle was closing, HACHR tried to help us stop them.”

But there wasn’t enough time, Bradford says, to mount a strong campaign against the efforts to oust campers from their homes. “They threw everyone out on the street again. HACHR helped us carry stuff out.”

Bradford has found a new place to camp. “It is what it is,” she says. She guesses she won’t be there long. “Every couple months, they take all our stuff and burn it. Sometimes it’s every few weeks. Then we have to start all over again.”

Some campers give homeless encampments a bad name by leaving trash all around. “That gives us all a bad name,” she says.

“One bad apple,” adds the man behind Bradford in line.

“But we take care of each other,” she says. “Cuz we have to.”

Bradford is OK with talking to a journalist. She wants the community to know that there are faces and stories to an issue that’s lumped under the huge umbrella of “homelessness.”

She cites an example from a discussion with a community advocate for the homeless. The advocate said, “There are so many of you.”

“As if we’re not separate,” Bradford says. “People need to remember that we’re humans.”

The line moves forward to the HACHR van and a clipboard with a log of clients identified only by their initials. Items on the table include toothbrushes, toothpaste, condoms and lube. On the end of the van are other various useful items including Narcan, the emergency overdose medication. I ask Bradford about fentanyl overdoses, about fentanyl test strips.

She shrugs.

“It’s in everything now, even the pills,” she says. She wonders if fentanyl is part of a government depopulation conspiracy.

“One minute, everyone was doing heroin,” she says, “and the next minute, it’s fentanyl.”

HACHR gives Narcan to anyone who wants it, no questions asked. The workers provide training, as well, because sometimes an overdose victim might need more than one dose of Narcan.

“Everyone on the streets carries (Narcan),” Bradford says. “Even those who aren’t users. It being an epidemic, that’s part of our responsibility.”

Humboldt’s opioid response expert: Medication-assisted treatment gets dialed in for fentanyl – but let’s talk about the drivers of addiction and the epidemic of despair

A pregnant woman recovering from a substance use disorder in the Bay Area in early 2015 wanted to move to rural California. Shasta County did not have a methadone clinic. The woman was being treated with buprenorphine, a drug approved for medication-assisted treatment to treat opioid use disorder. When the woman moved north, her obstetrician called Dr. Candy Stockton. Stockton was then the medical director for Shingletown Medical Center, and she was the only waivered provider using buprenorphine in Shasta County.

It seemed risky. But Stockton agreed to help.

“It was the scariest thing I’d done,” Stockton says. “There were no guidelines for the treatment of pregnant women.”

Stockton says the outcome was amazing for the woman and for her baby.

“She’s the first, the person who drove my passion for this work,” Stockton says. “I dove deeper in. At some point, people asked me what I was doing.”

Stockton became the leading treater of pregnant women in rural northern California.

She’s a forward-thinker. Stockton, a fourth-gen Humboldt native, was asking questions about opioid prescribing practices in rural California and looking for better ways to do pain management well before the problem landed in the national spotlight.

About five years ago, Stockton moved back to Humboldt to work as the chief medical officer for the Humboldt Independent Practice Association in Eureka. In her practice, she watched the rise of fentanyl from something no one had heard of to a drug that scared people. In the past two years, though, she’s treated patients who seek out fentanyl as their drug of choice.

Stockton became Humboldt County’s health officer in July. She is also a trainer and consultant for the national Opioid Response Network.

Fentanyl addiction presents challenges for medication-assisted treatment, she says. Pharmaceutical therapy – methadone, naltrexone and buprenorphine – protocols developed to treat heroin addiction don’t work as well to treat fentanyl.

“It’s harder to get [patients] stable on one of our treatment drugs,” Stockton says. “So we’re asking how do we change our treatment protocols so that they’re working for users of fentanyl.”

She’s confident that medication-assisted treatment will become more effective in treating fentanyl addiction soon.

At the state and national level, the opioid response conversation is shifting away from specific drugs and treatment plans and looking harder at the drivers of addiction.

“We thought the problem was that we were prescribing too many opioids,” Stockton says. “So we targeted interventions to decrease the amount of opioids prescribed.”

Turns out that didn’t solve the problem.

“Oh wait, now it manifested as heroin,” she says. “And we got pretty good at treating heroin addiction.”

Then methamphetamine. Then fentanyl.

“Once we get fentanyl figured out, there’s carfentanil, which is 100 times more potent than fentanyl,” she says. “We’ll always be chasing the next drug that very bright illicit drug developers are coming up with.”

Instead of playing catch-up, Stockton sees the benefits of addressing the problem before a substance user turns blue and requires life-saving Narcan.

“The problem is that we have an epidemic of despair, of poverty, of inequity, of lack or opportunity, of childhood trauma that is driving people to turn to substances,” she says.

For the past hundred years, Stockton says, society has perpetuated the idea that substance use is bad and people who use substances do so because they have poor moral character or don’t try hard enough to quit. This perspective sees the drugs as the problem. If you can get the drugs out of the picture, problem solved. If you can get people to just say no to drugs, problem solved.

Not much evidence exists to show that these approaches work.

“We have really good evidence that substance use disorders are chronic diseases caused by a large number of underlying factors,” Stockton says.

Some of those factors include childhood trauma, lack of opportunity, intergenerational trauma.

“When you have people raised in high trauma environments, it changes the way their brain develops,” Stockton says.

These people may not learn healthy coping skills or how to regulate emotions.

“When you take somebody who’s had traumatic upbringing – all these high stress events – their brain has never felt safe and normal,” Stockton says. “And you give them a drug that boosts their dopamine level and makes them feel safe and powerful for a while. That’s reinforcing.”

The next time the stress comes, so does the substance of choice.

“We are a country that loves our substances,” Stockton says. “If you go to an addiction conference — right? — the morning starts with coffee and sweet rolls — sugar and caffeine! – and ends with dinner and a wine mixer.”

The substances vary, she says, given issues of access, legality and social environments. But the bottom line is universal.

“We all like that chemical modification,” Stockton says. “The problem comes not because of substance itself but because individual has that need to correct their internal balance.”

Drugs may work, at first, for a person who has experienced chronic stress and traumatic experiences. A child who grows up with what Stockton calls “a dysregulated dopamine access system” may not ever feel normal or right. That person finds a drug that boosts dopamine in their brain and, well, it’s fabulous.

“Taking drugs that boost your dopamine level may be first time you feel anything approaching normal,” Stockton says. “That’s the reason people become addicted and use them over and over again.”

Over time, the process becomes less effective. The drugs that boosted the system burn it out even more.

“We have to look at supporting children and families and increasing opportunities for people to have to have better life,” Stockton says.

Quitting fentanyl without pharmaceutical support — one cold rabid turkey

For perspective, a 43-year-old Eureka man, a father of three, quit heroin several times.

“With heroin withdrawal, he’d throw up,” his girlfriend Vanessa tells me. “He’d have a runny nose and be achy.”

Robert quit fentanyl once. Once was enough.

Day one was relatively ok. Day two – withdrawal symptoms made his life a living hell.

“He had fits,” Vanessa says. “He couldn’t keep his body from contorting and thrashing. He was like a rabid animal, out of his mind. I tried to talk to him. He couldn’t talk back to me.”

She describes her boyfriend head-butting and screaming at the friends who were helping him.

Robert says he doesn’t remember most of his experience detoxing from fentanyl. He remembers thinking that the only thing he wanted was for the pain to stop. When he came to, he was full of bruises from banging his body into objects.

Robert quit cold turkey, which he does not recommend.

“Everyone’s saying, you should have had medical help,” he says. “Everybody’s different but I’m never going to do that again.”

Robert and Vanessa asked to use their first names only.

Vanessa has never used opioids at all except after two surgeries. Even then, she asked the doctors not to give her fentanyl. She was told that fentanyl is used after all surgeries because it’s fast-acting and moves through your system quickly.

“I was mortified,” she says. “I told them I don’t want fentanyl. But they gave it to me. I felt stuck in quicksand.”

The day after the surgery, she felt severely depressed.

“They said that’s a common thing with opiates,” Vanessa says. “I hate it. It’s poison.”

Robert moved to Humboldt in 2021 to get away from San Bernardino and start fresh. But he got bored. It wasn’t hard to slide into Humboldt’s community of users.

“I can find people in the life,” he says. “I scored fentanyl one time, and everyone said it’s better and lasts longer. I got hooked on it.”

Some mornings before Vanessa left for work, Robert would ask her for $20. Then it was every morning. She saw the pattern. He’d be irritable and mean. He’d go out, come home and disappear into the back room.

“He’d nod out for hours,” Vanessa says. “This was my first experience with someone on fentanyl.”

Robert has lost three friends to overdoses. Vanessa says the drug-using community seems almost to expect those losses. “Yup, it took so-and-so now.”

Robert has also survived two overdoses. The first time, a friend revived him with two doses of Narcan. The second time, he ended up in the hospital.

“I died twice,” he says.

But nothing has been as bad as his cold turkey detox in August.

“You don’t understand what I went through. I’m never going to touch that stuff again.”

Getting help

I told Stockton about Robert’s rough experience quitting fentanyl cold turkey.

She reiterated that medication can help with withdrawal symptoms for a person who’s trying to quit opioids. Stockton points to research that shows a more beneficial long-term outlook for patients who undergo medication-assisted treatments.

If a person wants help with a substance use disorder, the county has a screening site and can do referrals. Here’s where to start that journey.

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Deidre Pike is a journalism professor at Cal Poly Humboldt.

Starla Kay Lozensky (Star) was born on January 22, 1974, in Crescent City and passed away unexpectedly from natural causes on November 11, 2022, at her home in Carlotta, at the young age of 48.

Starla worked for many years as an owner-operator commercial truck driver transporting logs, equipment and construction materials. She later worked for the US Postal Service as a clerk at the Carlotta, Bridgeville and Fortuna Post Offices. Starla loved her post office customers and they loved her. They routinely brought her coffee and other goodies. She always took time out of her day to greet, listen and care for her customers.

In 2007, Starla married Jeremy Lozensky. Jeremy was the love of her life, and she devoted her time to raising their three children. She was a proud mother and adored her children, never missing a game or a performance. Starla loved her family deeply and was always delighted with the successes of her children.

Starla was an amazing and fiercely loyal friend. She treated everyone like they were her best friend. She loved people for who they were, never trying to change anyone. Starla was a loud, fun-loving football fan and her infectious laughter brought a smile to all who knew her. Starla was selfless and always did what she could to help anyone in need.

Starla is survived by her husband Jeremy, and their children, Hailey (19), Kali (15) and Jesse (13), as well as countless members of her extended family. She will be dearly missed. Friends and family are invited to attend a memorial service on December 16, 2022, at 11 a.m., at the Seventh Day Adventist Church, 2301 Rohnerville Road, Fortuna.

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The obituary above was submitted on behalf of Starla Lozensky’s loved ones. The Lost Coast Outpost runs obituaries of Humboldt County residents at no charge. See guidelines here. Email news@lostcoastoutpost.com.

Jerry Oscar III
August 27, 1950 - November 25, 2022

Jerry Oscar III left this world peacefully on November 25, 2022. Jerry was born on August 27, 1950 to Jerry Oscar II and Harriet “Shorty” Oscar in Eureka, California. Jerry was a kind soul that will be missed by all. Jerry was a loving husband, father, uncle, cousin and friend. Jerry was a proud Bear River Band of the Rohnerville Rancheria Tribal member and spent much of his life residing on the Rancheria in Fortuna.

One of Jerry’s favorite pastimes was going to Bear River to play his favorite games. He spent much of his time maintaining his home which he meticulously built for his family. Jerry spent countless hours building his home on the land that his mother left behind.

Jerry was 18 when he enlisted to the Marines, he went on for four years serving his country in which he translated morse code for the military. Jerry went on to work as a Certified Nurse’s Assistant (CNA) at St. Luke’s Manner, where he met his long time partner Yvette Kemp. Jerry later went on to be a night-shift cashier at the Chevron in Fortuna for the next 19 years. On August 7, 2006, Jerry married his long-time girlfriend Yvette Kemp. Together Jerry and Yvette raised two daughters; Susan and Ginger. Jerry loved to provide for his family and his long time wife Yvette Oscar.

Jerry is preceded in death by his siblings; Michael, Larry, and Linda, along with his mother and father Harriet and Jerry Oscar II.

Jerry leaves behind his loving wife Yvette, two daughters; Susan and Ginger. He also leaves behind several nieces and nephews, 25 grandkids and his five cats he loved dearly; Minnie, Patches, Mickey, Jasmine and Bandit.

Jerry’s celebration of life will be held on December 15, 2022 at noon at the Bear River Band of the Rohnerville Rancheria and his burial will be held on December 16, 2022 at noon at Ocean View Cemetery.

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The obituary above was submitted on behalf of Jerry Oscar’s loved ones. The Lost Coast Outpost runs obituaries of Humboldt County residents at no charge. See guidelines here. Email news@lostcoastoutpost.com.