Redondo Beach: a postal crisis, tragedy, and sardines
Reported and Chelsea Sektnan
Tragedy and turmoil were in the headlines in Redondo Beach this year, as an ebullient little boy named Jeremy Perez lost his life after a delivery truck accidentally ran him over on his bicycle and two families were forced to leave their homes on Knob Hill when stray voltage was discovered emanating from an electrical substation. The city also coped with millions of dead sardines suddenly appearing in King Harbor and an ongoing crisis at the Redondo Beach Main Post Office that led postal carriers to deliver late into the night for the last three months of the year. And the city’s most successful restaurateur, Paul Hennessey, coped with the theft of more than $1 million by his former CFO.
Dead sardines covered the harbor after millions were chased into the area and died of oxygen deprivation. Photo
The sardine swarm
In early March, hundreds of thousands of sardines swam into King Harbor and died. Their dead bodies carpeted the harbor, surrounding boats and covering the channels.
“I heard what sounded like rain about 4 a.m. I looked out and saw thousands of sardines flopping against my boat,” said Lisa Burke, who lives aboard her 29-foot Erickson sailboat on P dock in King Harbor Marina.
Redondo Marina operations manager, and Voyager captain Craig Stanton speculated that the sardines were chased into the harbor by dolphins in such numbers that they depleted the oxygen in the water. A team of USC biologists were able to confirm that oxygen depletion was indeed the culprit, but it remained a mystery why the sardines entered the harbor in the first place.
The sardines were scooped up by the city’s public works department with nets, wheel barrels and loaded to fill dumpsters. The dead fish were composted and citizens were later welcomed to retrieve some of the product made by the fish for their gardens.
Redondo Councilman Steve Diels was able to come up with a positive spin. “Following up on all the Blue Whales we saw in September, it shows the bay is teeming with life,” he said.
The city’s response earned high marks from the California Department of Fish and Game, which deemed it among the best emergency responses it had ever seen – which was even more remarkable because surges from the Japanese tsunami caused docks to raise and fall and delayed clean-up efforts for two days.
“Next, we’re expecting locust,” joked Redondo Beach Mayor Mike Gin.
Thanks to over 700 city workers and volunteers, the estimated 2.5 million dead sardines, weighing over 140 tons were finally trucked to American Organic in Victorville for composting into fertilizer.
Tragedy in North Redondo
Seven-year-old Jeremy Perez lost his life in an accident in a grocery store parking lot only weeks after saving the life of a drowning 4-year-old girl.
A 7-year-old boy was killed a morning in early August as he bicycled near the Albertson’s grocery store on Artesia Boulevard in North Redondo Beach. A truck making a delivery accidentally ran over the boy near the store’s loading bay.
“He thought, ‘You know, something is not quite right,’” Freeman said. “He gets out to look and unfortunately discovers this 7-year-old boy under the truck.”
Jeremy had been bicycling to the grocery store to give his mother, a recently hired Albertson’s employee, a kiss during her 15-minute morning break. Paramedics had already taken Jeremy to the hospital when somebody told her that a little boy on a blue bike had been run over. She reportedly ran out to the parking lot to find a bent blue bike and her son’s little flip flops near a pool of blood.
On a Saturday afternoon eight days after the incident, his family and members of the community where the boy so vibrantly lived his life gathered at the beach to remember him.
Jeremy was remembered as a happy-go-lucky student who paid attention to those less socially adept than himself. He was remembered as a loving son, an inspiring little brother, and an irrepressible sprite of a neighbor who made himself known and well-loved throughout a wide swath of territory near his North Redondo Beach home.
“He had a personality bigger than most people, ages 20 to 50,” said Joshua Perez, Jeremy’s 19-year-old brother, speaking to the roughly 70 people who gathered for a memorial service on the beach. “He had so much panache and so much life, and energy just to be exuded, and it just seemed to rub off on everybody. He was just such a strong, caring, loving individual, more than I’ve ever seen in anybody. It’s just really incredible that a child can have such amazing potential and just such pure intentions.”
Only two weeks earlier, family members recalled, Jeremy had saved the life of a 4-year-old girl who had been drowning in Canyon Lake.
Jeremy’s “aunty and godmother all rolled into one,” Linda Sue Swadener, called him “my little man” in an emotional, homespun eulogy.
“You brought so much joy and happiness to all that knew you, and even to those who didn’t know you very well, you showered them with your thoughtfulness and kind ways, because that is the kind of little man you were,” Swadener said. “I will forever be able to look into the heavens and see your smiling face shining down on us.”
Simona Wilson and her boys, Brendan, 7, Nicholas, 4, and Drew, 1. The family moved out of their home after Simona Wilson suffered from low voltage electrocution. Photo by Alexandra Mandekic/AlexandraMandekic.com
Stray voltage
Simona Wilson could not have been much happier in her south Redondo Beach home until the day in March when a new shower was installed in her master bathroom. Her life thereafter included an agonized series of trips to emergency rooms and doctors as well as the relocation of her entire family away from their home. Wilson, a mother of three boys under the age of seven, would only later discover that she was suffering from what is sometimes described in medical literature as low voltage electrocution.
“I couldn’t feel anything in my hands and feet,” Wilson said. “I just felt fatigued all the time, and nauseous, and my body was off. I couldn’t function. I couldn’t hold my children.”
The problem, it turned out, emanated from her neighbor, a Southern California Eclectic substation. Her home was subject to “stray voltage” that had electrified her shower head and two dozen other points within her home. Wilson, 32, had suffered burnt nerve endings and was diagnosed with a rare disease affecting her uterus that may eventually require a hysterectomy.
Councilman Steve Aspel, in whose district Wilson’s home is located, called for Edison to conduct an investigation of the safety of the entire block.
“Based on what we have found so far, it’s just not right,” Aspel said. “Edison has to investigate that whole block. It looks like corporate irresponsibility. They have got to make somebody whole.”
Edison had formerly owned Wilson’s home and four others on the 900 block of Knob Hill but had sold them a decade ago. A former Edison management employee who spoke on the condition of anonymity said that stray voltage has been an issue on the block more than two decades. He said that previous problems were confined more to “annoyances” – such as people getting shocked by their appliances – but that the sale of the homes generated internal debate within the company.
“We never should have sold those homes,” he said. “It was a wise thing to acquire those properties to begin with.”
By year’s end, another family had been forced out of their home. Neighborhood meetings revealed health problems throughout the neighborhood, and additional readings showed high levels of electrical exposure in several households., as well as the disturbing fact that several gas lines carried voltages. Edison technicians did readings, but did nothing to assist the two families forced from their homes.
“I genuinely feel for the family,” the former Edison employee said. “I just wish Edison would do the right thing. I am embarrassed, being an Edison man, that they are not doing the right thing. Let’s settle this thing.”
James Cram pled guilty to embezzling $1.14 million from his former employer. Photo courtesy of the Redondo Police Department
Friend turned fraud
In early October, the former Hennessey’s CFO James Cram was arrested for embezzling $1,146,000. According to Redondo Beach police, detectives obtained an arrest warrant consisting of 19 felony counts of grand theft, money laundering and tax evasion. The arrest was the culmination of an investigation concerning Cram’s alleged embezzlement both of monies from Hennessey’s. Inc. as well as directly from the owners, Paul and Jennifer Hennessey. According to detectives, Cram worked for Hennessey’s between 2006 and 2010.
Following his arrest, Cram pled guilty to embezzling the money and paid Hennessey $610,000 in restitution. If Cram repays the $536,742 balance of what he took within the next 12 months, he will be released from jail next November and put on three years probation. If he fails to repay, he will be sentenced to five years.
According to Hennessey, Cram made unauthorized transfers from Hennessey’s Las Vegas restaurants’ lines of credit to the Hennessey parent company, and from there, transferred funds to Hennessey’s personal accounts. Withdrawals from the personal account were made with forged checks that Cram made payable to himself or his own creditors. He said Cram attempted to mask the withdrawals by making the amounts close to Hennessey’s mortgage payments.
“It was clever but stupid, because he was bound to get caught,” Hennessey said.
Years ago, he said, he had been warned by fellow club owner Mike Lacey, after a bookkeeper embezzled money from Lacey’s Comedy and Magic Club, to personally examine his company’s bank statements.
“But I thought to myself, it will never happen to me,” Hennessey said. ER
Postal pains
Pounding the pavement late into the dark, postal workers complained about route changes and a difficult work environment while citizens wrote outraged letters to the questioning why their letter carriers were delivering their mail with headlamps late into the evening.
“I used to think I had a simple job,” said one letter submitted online. “Get the mail delivered; satisfy my customers and get my carriers back safely so that they can return to their families safe and sound.”
According to some carriers, due to a new sorting system that wasn’t working as promised, some mail was not being delivered at all and was allegedly being sent straight to the recycling bins. Staffing had also been reduced and mail routes lengthened based on the supposed efficiency of the new machines. The result was for the last three months of the year postal workers braved new routes every night into the dark.
“We can’t see in the dark,” said one carrier. “There is misdelivered mail all over the place out here, and your carriers are out in the dark…[Management] won’t allow earlier starting times. Somebody is going to have to get killed for anyone to pay any attention. If we get hit by a car or raped or shot, then they’ll say, ‘Oh, we should do something about that.’”
In December, postal employees took action. Over 70 grievances were filed against management for what was described as a hostile workplace. Investigations are on-going. As well as pressure to get mail out before dark, the North Redondo Galleria post office was closed, as well as a potential processing plant closure in Long Beach that will change delivery times for first class mail.
“We need help,” a carrier said. “I don’t know where we are going to get it from. You just can’t do it – your back is going out, you are tired. This has been going on for two months. I mean, how much can you do? It wears on you. Somebody in Washington D.C must like FedEx or something, because they are destroying the Post Office.”