TimesOC: Anaheim’s Gustavo Arellano becomes sixth Latino columnist in L.A. Times’ history

Good morning, and welcome to the TimesOC newsletter. It’s Friday, Sept. 18.

My name is David Carrillo Peñaloza, the author of the TimesOC newsletter and an editor for Los Angeles Times Community News.

Gustavo Arellano never got the chance to meet Rubén Salazar, the trailblazing Los Angeles Times journalist.

Salazar was dead by the time Arellano was born.

Salazar, who lived in a middle-class neighborhood in Santa Ana, chronicled the issues affecting the Mexican American community in the 1960s. One assignment drew him to the National Chicano Moratorium, an anti-Vietnam War protest in East Los Angeles on Aug. 29, 1970. At the time, a disproportionate number of Latinos were dying in the war, and on that summer day, about 20,000 demonstrators came out to protest.

That assignment cost Salazar his life and turned the columnist into a martyr of the Chicano movement. Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies fired several tear-gas projectiles into a bar where Salazar was sitting, and one struck him in the head, killing him instantly.

Fifty years later, Arellano visited Salazar last month at Pacific View Memorial Park in Corona del Mar, where Salazar’s cremains are in a mausoleum.

“I thought there would be a gigantic plaque for someone as pioneering as Rubén,” Arellano said. “Instead, I encountered his small plaque. He was as forgotten as everyone else there.”

There was a reason behind Arellano’s trip to Salazar’s final resting place.

On the same day The Times announced Arellano was becoming a columnist, he came to pay his respects and for a blessing. Fifty years after Salazar’s death, he’s passing the torch to Arellano.

Arellano, the former editor of the OC Weekly, is just the sixth Latino columnist in the 139-year history of The Times. Most columnists debut with one column, but Arellano cranked out two for Wednesday’s paper, one introducing himself and the other on a Latino family dealing with COVID-19. Then he wrote another column for Thursday’s paper.

Arellano is 41 and a columnist. Salazar was 42 when he was killed. Both Mexican. Both called Orange County home.

Arellano, from Anaheim and the son of immigrants, wants to tell the stories about the people who call Southern California home: Latinos. As Arellano points out, Latinos have been in California since 1848. Their stories have often been ignored by the media, including The Times.

As for pressure in his new role, Arellano admits there’s a lot — much of it put on by himself. In case he needs some inspiration, he knows of someone to visit, at a place not too far from the Pacific Ocean.

“I hope to go there once a month and splash wine in front of his niche, and continue to ask for his blessings and guidance,” Arellano said.

Mayors call on Gov. Newsom to let Disneyland and Knott’s reopen

When can parkgoers visit Mickey and Snoopy again in Orange County?

Gov. Gavin Newsom said an announcement as to when theme parks like Disneyland and Knott’s Berry Farm can reopen for the first time since March is coming soon. Reporter Hugo Martín wrote that Orange County politicians, trade-worker union leaders and tourism promoters are frustrated that the state has yet to give Disneyland and Knott’s Berry Farm a path to reopen during the pandemic.

“It’s a disaster right here,” said Anaheim Mayor Harry Sidhu, who on Wednesday joined Buena Park Mayor Fred Smith and Garden Grove Mayor Steve Jones on a hotel rooftop overlooking Disneyland. “How long are you going to keep us closed?”

Officials say the sixth-month park closures have cost the cities millions.

For cities around Disneyland, they have lost $1.3 billion in taxes and other revenues, according to Todd Ament, president of the Anaheim Chamber of Commerce.

Advocates walk for World Patient Safety Day

Even though World Patient Safety Day was two days away, a dozen or so people came out for a walk Tuesday near the Balboa Pier in Newport Beach to raise awareness for it.

The Patient Safety Movement Foundation, a nonprofit based in Irvine, wanted the turnout to be low because of the pandemic. In a single-file line, with everyone socially distant and holding an orange cord in one hand and a tiny orange flag in the other, staff and volunteers walked to the Newport Pier.

When they stopped, reporter Lilly Nguyen wrote that they placed the orange flags — orange, being the color for patient safety and the flags, symbolic of lives lost as a result of preventable medical errors, some with names and others without — in the sand and took a moment of silence.

World Patient Safety Day is every Sept. 17.

More O.C. stories

— Former Orange County Sheriff Mike Carona, convicted for witness tampering, has been out of prison for five years, and he’s still collecting an annual pension of more than $200,000.

— Work on Orange County’s first electric rail system has stopped due to human bones being discovered in Santa Ana.

— A Garden Grove man has died from complications from the West Nile virus, marking Orange County’s first confirmed death this year from the mosquito-borne disease.

— Fashion Island’s StyleWeekOC is still happening — even without the participation of models, runways and social media influencers — in Newport Beach.

— A Huntington Beach man who fled to Thailand in an apparent attempt to evade police was sentenced to more than 24 years in prison for his involvement in a drug trafficking and money laundering scheme.

— The Laguna Beach Unified School District has applied for an elementary school waiver, in hopes of reopening its schools for in-person learning.

Get in touch

Have any questions or suggestions for the TimesOC newsletter? Email me at david.carrillo@latimes.com.

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Enjoy your weekend and see you next week.