CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
February 21, 1998
The Long Beach Planning Commission has voted 5 to 0 to close the Chief Motel by revoking its business license and nonconforming-use permit. The motel has a history of problems caused by its transient tenants, including drug addicts and others allegedly involved in criminal activity. Bud Sinclair, president of the Bixby Knolls Neighborhood Action Committee, which mounted a seven-month campaign to close the motel on Long Beach Boulevard, was delighted by the commission's ruling Thursday.
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
February 18, 1998 | DEBORAH BELGUM, SPECIAL TO THE TIMES
In grainy postcards from the 1930s, the Chief Motel was touted as "the Pride of Long Beach," where tourists vacationed in southern Los Angeles County to frolic on the wide, never-ending beaches. Today, this stucco building, with its turquoise-topped turrets and quaint pre-World War II look, is the temporary home for what community leaders describe as a revolving door of robbers, rapists, drug addicts, derelicts, wife beaters and other dregs of modern society.
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
January 8, 1995
A fumigation company employee making his way through the Vagabond Inn on Saturday discovered the body of a 37-year-old man on the motel's second floor, police said. The dead man, believed to be a transient, has not yet been identified, said Sgt. Tom Murrell of the Los Angeles Police Department's West Valley Division.
NEWS
July 24, 1994 | JOHN M. GLIONNA, TIMES STAFF WRITER
With a thousand-yard stare, Diane Haywood gazes past the rusty marquee of the Cloud 9 Motel in Cypress, scoffing at the sign's metallic, cartoon-like cloud turned neon nest for a family of pigeons. "Ha! This joint ain't no Cloud Nine, that's for sure," she says ruefully. "Cloud Nine means being on Easy Street, someplace like heaven. This place is more Motel Hell."
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
February 4, 1993
The Pasadena city prosecutor's office filed a 17-count criminal complaint Wednesday against owners of a low-income motel, citing multiple fire, health and building code violations. The complaint put the city's slumlord ordinance to use for the first time since it became law more than a year ago. The Pasadena Municipal Court case was filed against the Capri Motel at 1559 Lincoln Ave.
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
January 9, 1992 | CAROL WATSON and GREG BRAXTON, TIMES STAFF WRITERS
Valerie Bates wasn't going to let a closed road keep her from picking up her 4-year-old daughter from a day-care center in Palmdale. She took a plane home. Bates, 32, a computer consultant, was working in Sylmar when she learned, like thousands of others Tuesday, that snow had closed off all routes to the Antelope Valley. "I panicked," Bates said Wednesday. "I called the school and spoke to my daughter. She was upset.