BUSINESS
May 4, 2009 | Stuart Pfeifer
Lloyd Charton recalls a fateful knock on the door. At his Dana Point home stood a cheerful man with an impressive knowledge of Charton's personal life. It was a neighbor, Dan J. Harkey. Harkey congratulated him on his retirement and asked about a recent vacation. He told him about his company, Point Center Financial Inc., which raised money from private investors and lent it to real estate developers.
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
June 20, 2009 | Esmeralda Bermudez
Khadijah Williams stepped into chemistry class and instantly tuned out the commotion. She walked past students laughing, gossiping, napping and combing one another's hair. Past a cellphone blaring rap songs. And past a substitute teacher sitting in a near-daze. Quietly, the 18-year-old settled into an empty table, flipped open her physics book and focused. Nothing mattered now except homework. "No wonder you're going to Harvard," a girl teased her. Around here, Khadijah is known as "Harvard girl," the "smart girl" and the girl with the contagious smile who landed at Jefferson High School only 18 months ago. What students don't know is that she is also a homeless girl.
NEWS
June 5, 1989 | DANIEL WILLIAMS, Times Staff Writer
The first thing one noticed about the students traveling eagerly to Beijing early Sunday was how sure they were that they would not be punished for opposing the government. "We have been promised by our teachers that the army would do nothing to harm us if we remained peaceful," said Chai Chishan, an engineering scholar from the prestigious Qinghua University in Beijing. "We are not afraid of the soldiers," added Wang Binghai, a classmate who studies nuclear engineering. The students had not heard.
NEWS
June 9, 1989 | JOHN H. LEE and JACK JONES, Times Staff Writers
Students and teachers returning from China complained Thursday that the U.S. Embassy in Beijing was not helpful in getting them out of the strife-torn nation, leaving them waiting futilely for instructions while citizens of other countries were being evacuated. "We got nothing," said Roxanne Sylvester, 37, a teacher in UCLA's English-language program at the Chinese Academy of Social Science Graduate School in Beijing. She said she saw Canadian, Portuguese, Irish and French embassy personnel arrange charter flights and airport transportation for their respective citizens while the U.S. Embassy remained silent and unreachable.
NEWS
May 19, 1989 | MARITA HERNANDEZ, Times Staff Writer
Odir Romero, 12, and his best friend, Hugo Ruiz, roamed aimlessly across the crowded playground at Le Conte Junior High School on Thursday morning, discussing the teachers' strike that has turned their school lives upside down. The boys, who immigrated to the United States less than a year ago, casually dodged balls and ballplayers as they ambled through basketball and volleyball courts, never breaking stride or losing the thread of their conversation. While more and more of their classmates are staying home each day the strike continues, these two keep showing up for class.
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
July 7, 2011 | By Teresa Watanabe, Los Angeles Times
In a corner of the San Fernando Valley, amid auto body shops and Salvadoran pupusa restaurants, a Hawaiian summer is in full swing. At Camp Akela, located at Noble Avenue Elementary School in North Hills, kindergartners read about rainbow fish and draw them. Other students study volcanoes, create travel journals, dance the hula and even play in a portable pool. But the students, most of them low-income English learners, are also learning literacy, math facts and science and are honing writing skills with "coaches" dressed in leis, tropical shirts and grass skirts.