Special Projects

Elvis Santiago moved to Los Angeles from Mexico in 2001 when he was 21 and after two years was able to start his landscaping business. He was able to branch out his business to Pacific Palisades where he has worked ever since. Unfortunately, due to the impacts caused by the fires, work for Santiago has […]

Malibu’s Reel Inn was more than a seafood restaurant. No one knows that better than Teddy Leonard, the Inn’s co-owner. “It seemed to be appreciated by many,” said Leonard. “I mean, we would have surfers in line with actors, in line with homeless people, in line with movie executives. You had families, you had everybody. […]

On a day that started like any other, Peter Lamden, owner of “Peter Lamden Salon” in the Pacific Palisades, noticed smoke billowing on the horizon just minutes after receiving emergency alerts. Having grown up in the area, he instantly recognized the danger. He reached out to his childhood best friend, whose home became the first […]

Business and community leaders in Pacific Palisades and Malibu have a deep love for their small towns. It’s inspired them to lead the charge for recovery after the Palisades Fire. This story is part of a semester-long investigative reporting project into the 2025 California wildfires. It was created by an advanced reporting class in the […]

This story is part of a semester-long investigative reporting project into the 2025 California wildfires. It was created by an advanced reporting class in the Journalism, Advertising, and Media Studies program at UW-Milwaukee. Other stories from the project are available here. This work was made possible through the support of MPC Endowment Ltd., the philanthropic […]

Lying on a hill, a 185-acre state park sits surrounded by the neighborhoods and the mountains that tower behind it. Charred Eucalyptus trees dot the mountain terrain, leaving traces of the bright green they once brought. Ashy wind blows the faces of workers traversing the now barren landscape. Debris-filled holes take the place of what once […]

The air is muggy and dense in downtown Pacific Palisades – more accurately, what’s left of it. A once-bustling Sunset Boulevard is now eerily vacant, with only a few charred buildings spared from destruction. Along the side of a parking lot that used to serve a now-ravaged Ralph’s grocery store, half-a-dozen food trucks line the […]

Joshua Simpson lost years upon years of photography work when his home went up in flames. Negatives, prints and equipment were lost, but those things are not what he thinks about the most.  “The thing I think about a lot is I had my grandfather’s and grandmother’s Bibles, like their Bibles they had for the […]

For the last 21 years, Cristina Carlos has lived in Altadena with her family in a small hacienda-style house. The interior was filled with life, with Carlos’s husband, two kids, and all their pets. The home where her kids had their childhoods, filled with family heirlooms that had been passed down over time and irreplaceable […]

Driving through the scorched streets of Altadena, residents look for remnants of homes, businesses, churches – some semblance of what their city once was.  Reporters walked the city’s streets with little police presence in their way. In a strip mall on the corner of Mariposa Street and Lake Avenue sits Ms. Dragon Print & Copy, […]

It’s a Wednesday morning in late February, and a light ocean mist rolls over Arizona Avenue in Santa Monica. It’s the city’s weekly downtown farmers’ market, and local vendors have set up booths or tents in the street to sell their fresh produce from all over Southern California. The festivities span almost two bustling city […]

Joe D’Amore’s story begins in Boston’s North End, where his Italian grandmother passed down her beloved recipes just before she died. Her legacy and his grandfather’s experience as a butcher laid the foundation for D’Amore’s culinary journey. After moving to California to pursue acting, he opened his first pizzeria in 1987 in the San Fernando […]