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Officially, Jacqueline Jackson, wife of presidential candidate Jesse Jackson, was not among the 69 passengers aboard a Midway Airlines 737 that made a one-engine landing in Pittsburgh on the way from Washington to Chicago recently.

“Our passenger name list did not include anyone by the name of Jackson,” Midway Airlines said after the emergency.

But she was, said Mark Horrell, a fellow passenger and former neighbor of the Jacksons’, adding, “I saw more of the Jacksons on that plane than I saw of them in two years living across the street from them.”

A couple of days later, Jesse Jackson quietly confirmed his wife and one son had been on the plane. By then, however, the news value had faded.

That’s probably the way Jacqueline Jackson wanted it.

Though the incident faded with hardly a notice, it spoke volumes about Jacqueline Jackson–elusive, private and largely unknown to the public, including fellow travelers on an airplane in trouble.

While Jesse has spent the last 20 years thrusting himself into the limelight, Jacqueline has been almost as successful at avoiding it.

When she doesn’t feel like talking, requests for an interview, directed to her personal secretary, to her home, to the Jackson campaign might just as well be made to dial-a-joke. Calls weren’t taken seriously.

When she does decide to talk, pausing to accommodate an interviewer during the events surrounding the college graduation of her 61-year-old mother, she is articulate, charming, charismatic even.

Yet Jacqueline can be intimidating and combative when discussion drifts into areas she decides are off limits. Once she has made a statement, follow-up questions bounce off an invisible barrier defined by riveting eye contact and pointed repetition.

For instance, does she get a fee for her public speaking?

“Often I do.”

“Now, on the campaign. . . . ?”

“Often I do.”

“Before. . . ?”

“Often I do.”

“But. . . .”

“ Often . . . I . . . do .”

Jackson has little patience for reporters who would pry into her life.

“My friends do not discuss me with the media,” she says flatly.

And she has even less patience with the suggestion that, for an aspiring First Lady, she is elusive if not evasive.

“I would be willing to say to you that my family has been scrutinized far more than any family that’s in this public situation that we’re in today. . . ,” she says, sitting in her hotel suite in Hampton, Va., last weekend. She has granted interviews to a few news organizations lately, and she and her husband are completing a book about themselves. So she sees no reason to talk to everyone who asks.

“I am not private or protective. But there’s a point that you can’t give any more. I can’t permit you to move into my home with me. I must have my family.”

Jacqueline Lavinia Davis Brown Jackson was born 43 years ago, in Ft. Pierce, Fla. Like the man she would eventually marry, she was born out of wedlock. Her mother was Gertrude Davis, a teen-age migrant worker who earned 15 cents an hour picking beans.

Of those early years in Florida, Jacqueline remembers only talking and laughing a lot, and listening to her “little red radio.”

Her mother eventually married Julius Brown, a civilian employee of the Navy who would later work for the post office. Brown soon moved his family to Newport News, Va., where he bought a two-story, clapboard-and-shingle home in the quiet neighborhood in which Jacqueline and her four siblings were raised.

Lined with green lawns and tall crepe myrtles filled with chirping birds, it’s the kind of street where sticky spring afternoons lure folks to the front porch to chat and watch the baby carriages passing on the sidewalks.

The street hasn’t changed much since the days when the Brown children would press their noses up against his window to hear his jazz band rehearse, says De Witt Cooke, 72, who has lived his whole life across the street from the home Julius Brown still owns.

Cooke remembers the Browns as a friendly but very private family, not adverse to visiting, but not much for socializing either. “There was a togetherness in the family,” he says.

Gertrude Brown raised the children while working full time at the local Veterans Administration Hospital.

“When Gertrude spoke, that was it,” says Cooke. Jacqueline remembers that her mother was strict–too strict she thought then–but loving. She taught her daughter how to crochet and do needlework, and Jacqueline made all her own clothes. “I was very fashionable in church,” she says.

Dinner–”simple food: pork chops, corn, green beans”–was served around a big table. Everyone said grace. And the children were in bed by 8:30, Jacqueline says.

Besides church and Sunday school and Baptist Youth Training, the Brown children didn’t get out much. “I didn’t date really,” Jacqueline says. But Julius Brown was the leader of the local Boy Scout Troop, and Jacqueline remembers going to the prom “with my father’s Eagle Scout, some young man he liked.”

Sara Green, who lived next door to the Browns, recalls that Jacqueline “was different. She was the kind of person who would always talk to older people. And she always could talk. . . . She was always a girl who was going to get ahead. She had that drive.”

After graduating from the all-black Huntington High, Jacqueline went on to North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College.

Because blacks and whites worked together in the shipyards, segregation in Newport News was not as dramatically defined as in some parts of the South. But the local stores did not serve blacks in their cafeterias, and in clothing stores, Cooke says, “if a black tried something on, it was his, whether it fit him or not.”

Jacqueline says that as a girl she never really had cause to confront the injustice of what Jesse Jackson now calls American apartheid. In college, however, she quickly became active in the civil rights movement. And, she has said, it was political discussion that attracted her to Jackson, a top athlete and campus hotshot.

Jackson, she says, was “my first courting boyfriend.”

When she was 18, they were married. He received his degree and went on to the Chicago Theological Seminary. She began her career as a mother.

“During my day, you either came home with a degree or a husband and you were considered successful . . . I got a husband,” she says.

Jackie is certain she will get her degree some day. “But that will be after my 12-year-old gets hers,” she says.

The Jacksons, who live in a two-story, 15-room house in Chicago’s South Side, have three sons and two daughters in their 25-year marriage. The oldest is daughter Santita, 25, a senior at Washington’s Howard University. Jesse Jr., 23, and Jonathan, 22, are graduates of their father’s college, North Carolina A&T.; A third son, 17-year-old Yusef, recently was graduated from a private school in Washington, D.C. The youngest, 12-year-old Jacqueline, goes to a school in Massachusetts.

Over the years the children have traveled with Jesse. And when Jacqueline headed off to march or boycott or pass out flyers, they often went with her. “They are extremely political because they were never separated from what we thought, or from our conversations,” Jacqueline says. “When we had parties that were political parties, they were at liberty to mingle with the guests. . . . So their conversations became political conversations, they (became) interested in issues.”

It was Jacqueline’s job to hold things together, everyone involved agreed.

“She’s what we call the backbone,” says Yusef. “She’s really there to keep the family together.”

“She stayed out of the way and Jesse kept her out of the way but she gradually has moved forward,” says Edwina Moss, the wife of Rev. Otis Moss who is chairman of Operation PUSH, a Chicago-based civil rights organization founded by Jesse Jackson. Moss went on to say that Jacqueline has somehow found a balance between maintaining her own identity and being overshadowed by her husband. She remembered once telling Jacqueline that she felt at loose ends because her husband was away a lot, just like Jesse. Jacqueline responded, she recalled, “Why don’t you just throw yourself into good books?”

The nature of the marriage is hard to discern. The topic and most personal questions are basically off-limits with both Jacksons. Reporters traveling with the presidential candidate contend that the marriage seems to be showing stress during the few appearances the two make together. Friends, however, disagree.

“She has great influence on him. I think she has a great influence on anyone she’s around,” says John J. Hooker, a Nashville politician who has spent a lot of time with Jacqueline during the campaign. “She once said to me (and she says often), ‘He is, after all, my hero, my political hero.’ I think she has this real feeling for him, and I think she communicates with him on all different levels, as wife, in conjunction with fact that they’re parents, about children, also on political basis.”

“She is able to stand in the background, yet stay on the same level intellectually,” says Moss, who calls herself a longtime friend.

The Jacksons also share the financial burden. According to their latest tax returns, the couple had income of almost $210,000 in 1987, $159,000 of which came from Personalities International Inc., the public-speaking management firm Jacqueline heads, and through which both Jacksons book their appearances.

Widely traveled, Jacqueline is a forceful speaker on issues. At the same time, though, her mission is by its nature linked to her husband and his mission.

In December, 1983, Jacqueline, former Rep. Bella Abzug (D-N.Y.) and a dozen or so other women went to Central America as part of a self-appointed “alternative Kissinger commission,” to further explore the information that had been compiled in that bipartisan commission’s controversial report, which recommended increased military aid to El Salvador and implicitly backed the Nicaraguan Contras.

International Tensions

The trip was difficult and sometimes frightening, with guerrilla wars raging and international tensions at a peak, others in the delegation said.

Especially in Nicaragua, many people saw Jesse Jackson as a hero and extended their enthusiasm to Jacqueline, swarming around her, shouting out affectionately and wanting to touch her each time the entourage went into the streets, the others recalled.

Likewise, the Central American press tended to focus its cameras and attention on Jacqueline, says Sonja Johnson, the 1984 presidential candidate on the Citizen’s Party ticket. A continuing and sometimes heated feud developed over Jackson’s open endorsements of her husband’s candidacy. Supporters of then-Vice President Walter Mondale, including Abzug and former Assemblywoman-now-Los Angeles City Councilwoman Gloria Molina “tried to get Jackie not to promote her husband’s candidacy down there . . . They were quite certain he couldn’t get nominated and saw it as divisive.”

“She said, ‘That’s nonsense,’ ” Johnson recalled. “ ‘Obviously I want my husband to win. What a silly thing to ask me not to talk about him . . . . You can tell them we’re not all for Jesse, but I’m always for Jesse.’ ”

“I hadn’t been around many women who were so strong and self-assured, but who didn’t attribute anything to the women’s movement,” says Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz, an anthropology instructor at Cal State Hayward who was Jackson’s roommate and frequent companion on the Central American trip. In late-night talks and on long bus rides, however, Jackson told Ortiz that she had been affected by her childhood experiences in the South, and the hardships of the the civil rights movement, rather than organized feminism, sharing a view among some black women that feminism is “a white woman’s thing–feeling sorry for ourselves,” Ortiz says.

“I would say, ‘You had all these kids. They must have limited your involvement,’ ” Ortiz says. “But she said it didn’t at all. She said, ‘I raised these kids to have free minds to fight for themselves. My greatest contribution to the civil rights movement was how I raised my kids.’ Her greatest pride was in her role as mother.”

Her Views

“I am mainly concerned about children and women. Equal pay, comparable pay. I am concerned that women are shouldering the burden of poverty,” Jacqueline said last weekend, her arms slicing through the air. But, she added, “I think I approach the issues of women from a, let me say, a darker perspective.

”. . . Through the slave-ship experience women did the same work and provided the same services as men . . . rather than being protected and shielded and taken care of . . . . So we had a longer relationship with the work force and the economy and politics in this country.”

This heritage has led Jacqueline to a view she calls “progressively old-fashioned.” She embraces equal pay but also certain traditional religious values. She is, for instance, pro-choice on the issue of abortion but she doesn’t believe teen-agers should have that option. Nor does she believe birth control pills and condoms should be dispensed by churches and schools.

“I believe children should be taught abstention . . . They should be taught that there are some dos and don’ts . . . I believe, young people should be taught to keep their zippers up on their pants, and girls should be taught to keep their panties up.”

That she and her mother both became pregnant at an early age does not mean that she finds such behavior acceptable, she says. In overcoming the odds against teen-age mothers, she and her mother were “one out of a million,” she says.

“I’m not terribly liberal when it comes to raising a family,” she adds.

People also observe at deep empathy in Jacqueline when she travels, an empathy that apparently is working its way through the candidate’s wife into the process of American party politics. H. H. Brookins, a power broker in Los Angeles’ black community who calls himself a close friend of the Jackson family for 20 years and a bishop of the A.M.E. Church, recalls a policy discussion among a handful of advisers in the Jackson home a few months back. When talk turned to Nicaragua, Jacqueline made herself heard, he says.

Does the candidate listen?

“Sometimes he does, and sometimes he doesn’t. He’s my husband . . .,” Jacqueline says. “I have never taken advantage of my relationship with my husband. If it is an important decision, I sit at the same table with everyone else. Sometimes I am defeated. And I love to tell them, ‘I told you so.’ ”

Many of her political opinions have been shaped by her extensive travels–to the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America.

A Different World

“The Third World is no longer as naive as it was 40 years ago,” she says, no longer willing to be pushed around. “America is extremely vulnerable to being perceived as a nation that has military might, and bully behavior. . . .

“In our country, we sing ‘God Bless America.’ We place our hand on the Bible when we go to court. We speak of another force that we suggest should protect us because we are good. And we disrespect it in the same breath when we place so much emphasis on war and building weapons that will destroy other human beings . . . What is it? Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition. It’s a contradiction.”

Jackson calls herself a traditionally religious person. On the trip to Central America, Jackson got up each morning and said her prayers, Ortiz recalled. “I’d still be sleeping and overhear her. It was very much felt. Not just ritual.”

During the bitter New York primary election when Jesse Jackson was attacked by New York City Mayor Edward Koch, Robert T. Starks, who calls himself a personal and political friend of the Jacksons’, said the couple “relied a great deal on their religious beliefs and convictions to pull them through.”

What kind of First Lady would she be?

“She’d be the replacement of Jackie Kennedy . . . in terms of style and flair,” says Brookins.

Last Sunday in Hampton, that is just how she was introduced: America’s next First Lady. She stood up in the bleachers of the Hampton Virginia Coliseum, waving to the cheering graduates and alumni of this school that was founded in 1868 to educate newly freed slaves.

On the dais, Jesse Jackson raised Gertrude Brown’s hand, saluting his mother-in-law for overcoming great odds to achieve her dream. It was in an electrifying speech of hope through education and family.

Then the Jacksons went back to the hotel for a reunion party with family and friends. After an hour, Jesse Jackson said a quick goodby to his wife and, flanked by Secret Service men, headed off for more campaigning.

Jacqueline Jackson returned to her family.

A MANIPULATIVE fraudster who fleeced an elderly woman out of almost £300,000 before fleeing to Tenerife is facing down a six-year prison sentence.

Pamela Gwinnett, 62, continued to steal money from Joan Greene, 89, after the pensioner passed away, treating her as a “cash cow to be milked.”

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Gwinnet claimed she was the grandmother’s carer but isolated frail, vulnerable Joan from her family.

She accused family members of mistreating the widow and did everything she could to keep them away while she fleeced her “golden goose.”

She would steal hundreds of thousands of pounds from the elderly woman, using the money to pay for botox and expensive meals before fleeing to Tenerife after getting caught.

Gwinett denied charges of fraud and theft but was found guilty by a jury at Preston Crown Court.

After discovering ex-accountant Joan was wealthy Gwinett concocted a lie, convincing Joan that her family were stealing from her pension.

Gwinett even moved Joan into a care home to keep the pensioner close when Covid hit in March 2020.

After the pandemic ended she took Joan home but padlocked the gates of her bungalow and changed the landline number in a bid to stop Joan’s family from getting in touch.

A court heard that the last months of Joan’s life had become “pock marked with increasing periods of bewilderment and confusion.”

Joan also became doubly incontinent, but instead of looking after the elderly woman Gwinett “bullied” her.

Gwinett would cover for Joan’s professional live-in carers for two hours a day, billing the pensioner for the time.

Judge Michael Maher said: “On one occasion, [one of the carers] found to her horror that you had left Joan covered in her own faeces in bed at the end of your two-hour shift.

“On another occasion, you barked at her to relieve herself in her incontinent pad.”

Eventually one of Joan’s carers became so concerned that she arranged for Joan’s family to visit.

The meeting sparked a massive argument with video from the incident featuring Joan complaining that she doesn’t know what’s going on.

Footage also picked up Joan mentioning money problems despite her being a well off woman.

By the time Gwinett’s power of attorney over Joan was suspended she had already robbed £161,000 from the pensioner.

She even managed to steal a further £119,000 by opening a joint account and transferring Joan’s cash into that.

Judge Maher said Joan’s family “are devastated by the fact that Joan in the fog of her deteriorating mental health may well have believed the lies you were pedalling and made her isolation all the more solitary and lonely.”

Joan’s step-daughter Katherine Farrimond, 65, said Joan believed in her final years that her family “hated her” and “didn’t want to see her’” because to Gwinett’s “lies.”

In April, Gwinett applied to vary her bail conditions so she could fly to Tenerife, saying she hoped to scatter her late brother’s ashes there.

Her request was denied but she still brazenly boarded a plane just hours later and has remained there since.

The judge added: “I sincerely hope that Ms Gwinett is extradited back to the UK to serve this sentence for these egregious offences.

“It is an affront to justice and the rule of law for this defendant to be allowed to remain in Tenerife.”

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I’m less tempted to dip into savings

A cool side benefit I’ve learned since setting up my HYSA is that I’m way less tempted to dip into my savings when it’s kept at a completely separate bank.

When all my money is piled together in one account, it’s easy to blur the line between spending and savings. But with a dedicated HYSA, the barrier is enough to keep me disciplined. I know the cash is there if I really need it, but it’s not staring me in the face every time I log into my regular banking app.

Plus, my high-yield savings account is FDIC insured up to $250,000. So I’ve got both mental security and financial security in one place.

It doesn’t cost me anything to keep

Fintech banks are amazing these days. They don’t nickel-and-dime you like traditional banks tend to do.

My HYSA has no monthly fees, no balance requirements, and no surprise charges that pop up randomly. So even if my bank balance drops to $0 for a few months, it won’t cost me anything to keep the account open. And all the interest I earn is pure profit.

The tech is better, too. My bank’s mobile app is super clean, simple, and doing transfers is really easy.

It’s still the best home for short-term cash

At the end of the day, my HYSA is where I keep money I can’t afford to risk. I don’t want to invest it because I might need it in a pinch.

Since it’s sitting idle most of the year, I want it earning the highest APY possible. Even if the Fed continues to drop rates and we get down to a measly 1.00%-2.00% APY in the next couple years, it’s still better than earning almost zero in a checking account.

Check out today’s best high-yield savings accounts and start earning more on your money.

IF you’re wondering where your money’s going each month, it might not be big bills or bad luck to blame but small, repeated mistakes that add up fast.

From letting your savings sit in low-interest accounts, to underestimating the real cost of long mortgage terms, financial experts warn that common habits could be quietly emptying your bank accounts.

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We asked money experts and behavioural scientists to reveal the biggest habits that are holding people back.

1. Not knowing what’s coming in and going out

It’s hard to feel in control of your money when you don’t know where it’s actually going.

Many people assume they have a rough idea, but the reality is that forgotten subscriptions, auto-renewing services and small daily purchases quickly add up.

Without visibility, your budget can slowly unravel, and by the time you realise, you’ve slipped into the red.

Vix Leyton, consumer expert at Thinkmoney, says the fix starts with routine: “Take time to know what your outgoings are and what is coming in.

“Some apps, like Thinkmoney, offer a snapshot of what you’re spending, and can even ringfence bill money for you so you don’t accidentally end up facing penalties and late fees.”

Even a five-minute weekly check-in can help avoid nasty surprises and highlight where cutbacks are needed.

2. Living without a savings buffer

It’s hard to save money – but not having a buffer can leave you exposed to high credit when you need cash quickly.

Whether it’s a broken boiler, a car that won’t start or a sudden cut in hours at work, not having a cushion means falling back on credit cards or payday loans just to stay afloat.

The result is a constant feeling of stress, and a budget that can be thrown off by the smallest shock.

Thomas Mathar, behavioural researcher and host of The Money:Mindshift Podcast, says a little slack goes a long way.

He said: “Even a modest buffer, like one month’s rent, can give you the breathing space to make better decisions and avoid high-cost debt.

“It’s not just about the numbers, it’s about having mental and financial slack when life throws you a curveball.”

3. Letting debt pile up month after month

More and more people have credit card debt, which means it can be easy to think it’s business as usual, especially when the minimum payments are low.

But ultimately, you’re paying interest to the bank instead of putting that money toward your own goals. Over time, that can add up to hundreds or even thousands of pounds in lost savings.

“Too many people accept credit card debt as a normal state of affairs. It’s not,” says Mathar.

“Paying down high-interest debt quickly is one of the most powerful things you can do for your long-term well being. It’s buying yourself back freedom, and peace of mind.”

If you’re juggling multiple debts, focus on the most expensive ones first and look into 0% balance transfer options if your credit score allows.

4. Having psychological armour to support you

In the age of side hustles and flashy online success stories, it’s tempting to ditch steady work for riskier pursuits.

But without a reliable income it’s hard to build long-term security.

Inconsistent earnings often mean falling behind on bills, using credit to bridge the gap, and struggling to plan ahead.

Mathar warns that it’s important to have some sort of regular income, even if you’re pursuing other hustles on the side.

He says: “A steady income isn’t just about covering bills, it’s psychological armour.

“When you’re living month-to-month or under-earning compared to your potential, the stress compounds.

“You don’t need to chase big money, but you do need income that’s ‘good enough’ to support a resilient, happy life.”

5. Leaving savings in a dead-end account

You might feel good about putting money aside, but if it’s sitting in an easy-access account earning barely any interest, your savings are losing value in real terms.

With inflation still high, the cost of leaving cash in low-yield accounts is higher than many realise.

Adam French, head of news at Moneyfactscompare.co.uk, says this mistake is all too common.

Adam said: “The likes of HSBC, Lloyds Bank, Santander, NatWest and Barclays all have easy access accounts paying around 1.1 to 1.2 per cent interest, far below the typical returns savers could expect, which is currently 3.51 per cent.”

The top performing options can pay even more, and shopping around and switching accounts only takes a few minutes online.

6. Not making the most of your ISA allowance

More savers than ever are being hit with tax bills they could have avoided.

Frozen tax thresholds mean that even modest savers can end up over the personal savings allowance, paying tax on any interest they earn.

That means, if you’re not using your ISA allowance, you’re potentially giving money away for free.

French explains: “Saving and investing are some of the best ways to build wealth over time.

“But it’s important that savers are aware of their tax liability on any profits they make – which can add up over the course of a few years.

Plenty of savers can avoid this tax bill by making use their yearly ISA allowances.

You can save or invest up to £20,000 a year tax-free, and every pound sheltered from tax is a pound that keeps working for you.

7. Only saving for retirement, and nothing else

Putting money into a pension is smart, but it shouldn’t be your only savings plan.

Many people now take career breaks, retrain, care for relatives or start businesses, and those transitions need funding too.

Mathar says ignoring this reality can leave people exposed.

“We don’t live three-stage lives anymore – education, work, retirement… A ‘transition fund’ – even just a few months’ salary – makes those big life pivots possible without financial panic.”

8. Being too harsh on yourself when things go wrong

Money mistakes happen. But too often, people fall into a cycle of guilt and avoidance, especially if they’re already struggling.

That mindset can stop you from facing your finances or reaching out for help, which only makes things worse in the long run.

Mathar believes the solution starts with self-empathy. “Here’s the truth: we’re all a bit messed up when it comes to money.

Our brains are wired for short-term wins, not long-term planning.

The goal isn’t to be perfect with money; it’s to build enough slack, mental and financial, so that one mistake or setback doesn’t knock you flat.”

9. Not overpaying your mortgage when you could

With mortgage rates still high and household budgets under pressure, many borrowers are choosing longer terms to keep monthly payments manageable.

But unless you’re also making overpayments, that strategy can come at a serious long-term cost.

French says small changes now can lead to huge savings later: “Overpaying by £200 per month on that same £250,000 40-year mortgage could shave almost 13 years off the mortgage term, saving them around £123,000 in interest payments.

“This is all without being tied to having to consistently make higher payments every single month – boosting the flexibility of their budget and their financial resilience.”

Most lenders allow up to 10 per cent overpayment each year.

Even £50 a month can help you become mortgage-free sooner and pay far less in interest overall.

She shops for groceries at a neighborhood supermarket in suburban Sacramento, usually in the company of a plainclothes state policewoman who could pass for her sister, and for months she went unrecognized. Only lately have people begun to take note of who she is.

As First Lady of California, Gloria Deukmejian might have passed her shopping list on to someone else, but she said no thanks , she preferred doing the family marketing herself–as the woman who is listed on the Deukmejian joint tax return as “housewife” has always done.

When their 18-year-old son, George, the second of their three children, went to UC Berkeley last September, Gloria Deukmejian, like any mother might, visited the dormitory room he had arranged to share with two friends, and encountered other students who rather excitedly wondered whether she had heard the governor’s son was going to be staying on their floor. Why no, she hadn’t, she said at first, straight-faced.

Parents’ Night And when it came time for Parents’ Night at Rio Americano High School, where their youngest, Andrea, who’ll be 16 next month, is a sophomore, the state’s First Couple stood in line–like everyone else. So unassuming were the Deukmejians that another mother, who had been in a rush, didn’t realize she had accidentally bumped into them until the principal announced he was “honored to have Gov. and Mrs. George Deukmejian” in the audience–and they stood up.

Such is the low-key, low-profile life style of Gloria May Deukmejian, who pursues privacy with the same driven intensity that her husband has courted votes for two decades.

Now, after California’s eight mate-less years under former Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr., she has become successor–an Administration once removed–to the peripatetic Nancy Reagan, who even then was forever at her husband’s side and in the public eye.

Yet despite George Deukmejian’s 22 years in public office–four in the Assembly, 12 in the state Senate, four more as state attorney general, and with his current four-year term half over– she is still Gov. Deukmejian’s wife who?

Meet Gloria Deukmejian–at 52, she has been married to George (whom she had met at a big family wedding) nearly 28 years–and the most striking thing, indeed the surprise, is her sense of humor. It is quick, spontaneous–and rather irreverent.

She’s somewhat taller than you might expect, a solid-looking 5-feet-6 or so. Photographs, however, do not do her justice. They fail to reflect her vivid coloring: merry black-brown eyes, apple cheeks and flawless olive skin. She has the kind of looks a slash of bright red lipstick only enhances.

B.T. Collins, Brown’s last chief of staff, a Republican, now executive vice president for Kidder-Peabody in Sacramento, experienced her humor more than a year ago. They had corresponded, mentioning a lunch, and at one point she hand-wrote: “I would like to meet you but George won’t let me. He thinks you’ll corrupt me–but then I don’t always listen to George!” And they lunched.

‘Surprise Roaster’ She also floored them at a roast of her husband in Sacramento–a benefit dinner for the Coro Foundation, a national public affairs training program, and the California Journal, a magazine about governmental affairs. The “surprise roaster,” the presumably staid Republican’s wife, more than held her own against the likes of State Treasurer Jesse Unruh and State Atty. Gen. John Van de Kamp.

Donning a Groucho Marx mask–a jab at the dark, mustachioed lineup of her husband’s top aides–Gloria Saatjian Deukmejian, first-generation Armenian-American like her husband, told how George was a man who “never forgets birthdays or anniversaries.” One year she got a screwdriver, another a wrench set. “As a result I have a complete tool set.”

The governor was surprised. So, perhaps from another point of view, was the audience. “She stood up there against her image,” recalled 31-year-old Robin Kramer, Coro’s director and a former aide of the Southern California Democratic Party. “I didn’t know her at all, other than she was this quiet, churchly lady who lived in Long Beach. She was not timid, and she was not square.”

Nor did she appear intimidated Dec. 5 on “Look Who’s Talking,” a morning television show, part listener call-in, part interview, on KCRW, the Sacramento NBC affiliate. In her first, and, thus far, only solo television appearance, she defied image by talking about an issue–speaking out, as her husband had in a press conference the day before, on behalf of the death penalty–while sidestepping questions on government cutbacks.

‘Just Moved In’ And she candidly discussed her husband’s future. A second term? “Of course,” she smiled. “I just moved in.” Beyond the governorship? “We’ve really given many many years to political office. I think not . . . one more term and I think it’s our turn (to relax).”

Yes she had heard, “they do have a house in Washington, a little different than ours,” and smiled. And she’s not interested? “No, not at all.”

The next day in the anteroom of the governor’s office in San Francisco, Gloria Deukmejian was back to her image–the self-described “traditional wife.” Her voice is mellow, soothing. At times her answers sound almost memorized.

“I just believe in everything he does, and I just believe that anything I can do to further the cause I will do.”

Do they ever disagree on issues? “Oh occasionally–but I’ll never tell .”

Traditional Role Has she ever tried to sway him? “Have you ever tried to sway an attorney over to your side? . . . “

Elaborating on the traditional-wife theme, Gloria Deukmejian, an art school graduate, who came of age before Gloria Steinem had a cause and women’s liberation a name, said she simply feels “more comfortable” with the traditional. “Like family, three teen-agers (actually Leslie, the oldest, a junior at the University of Colorado in Boulder, turned 20 last September), dogs (three beagles), neighbors, organizations, some relating to the family, some relating to volunteer work . . . like the Bluebirds, Campfires, oh yes PTA, I put my time in all those things.”

No Interviews at Home As comfortable as she is at home, she does not allow interviews at home, whether in Sacramento or her native Long Beach. Home is for privacy, for family. As the governor’s wife she’s been interviewed in his Sacramento office, in the sunny glass-encased coffee shop at the Long Beach Hyatt Regency or in Long Beach’s St. Mary’s Community Hospital gift shop, still dressed in her pink volunteer’s smock. And she just about never allows more than 45 minutes.

She is easiest talking about family. “Our oldest is majoring in communications and she is interested in the public relations aspect. Our youngest daughter, at 15, I don’t think too many of them know what they want to do, other than meet Rick Springfield, Matt Dillon and all those people. She can be very dramatic at times. And our son, he doesn’t know what. . . . They are sort of very independent thinkers.

“We’ve been fortunate, we’ve never really had any great problems with them,” she said in response to a question.

She said she does not know what she has done right. “I have heard of people doing the same thing as I. It hasn’t happened that way for them.” But she added with a laugh that she knows how to say no. “They say I know how to say no too often but you can’t be afraid to. . . . Later they respect you for it. I’ve had comments come back.”

Like Betty Ford, Gloria Deukmejian has had the burden of raising her children much of the time on her own. Only the governor’s wife never viewed that–or their commuter marriage–a burden.

Baby Comes Early For about a decade, from the time Leslie was of school age until George Deukmejian got elected attorney general and used the Los Angeles office as his base of operation, she raised the children from Monday morning through Thursday nights, and sometimes Friday during the legislative session. When it came time to give birth to Andrea, her next-door neighbors drove her. The baby was earlier than expected, and George, a state senator then, was in Sacramento.

It is like a litany among family and close friends, that most protective network that surrounds Gloria Deukmejian, and you hear it constantly: Gloria never gets angry or upset. Gloria never complains–be it about parental burdens or her husband’s rather paltry (by comparison to other states) $49,100-a-year gubernatorial salary, or vacations spent in their Long Beach backyard. “She doesn’t bitch,” said Darlene Thornton-May, the former next-door neighbor and one of her closest friends. Anna Ashjian, Deukmejian’s sister, said the last real vacation they had was in Hawaii where he had a speaking engagement “and they took the kids.”

Alice Deukmejian, who will be 87 on Valentine’s Day, said it best: Gloria, she said upon her son’s election two years ago, has “the patience of Job.”

As the parent at hand, as her own mother was to a degree when she was growing up, Gloria Deukmejian became, of necessity, the stricter one–while carrying out the general’s orders. “And also George, he’s very softhearted, especially with the girls. . . . It’s funny,” she said with a smile. “I can raise my voice. I would have to do it several times. When George raises his voice, he has that very deep voice. Only once ! Just like with the dogs. Same way. They listen to him.”

The middle child and only daughter of the late Krikor and Mary Saatjian (pronounced Say-chen), Gloria Saatjian was born Nov. 1, 1932, in Long Beach and, though raised in a traditional way, hardly came from an average immigrant family.

Her father Krikor, a carpenter’s son who grew up in Aintab, Turkey, graduated with honors from Yale, Class of 1914, became a civil engineer, worked on the Panama Canal, and for most of his career was a middle-management executive in the purchasing department at Texaco in downtown Los Angeles–and an active member of the Petroleum Club in Long Beach.

Today, Gloria Deukmejian’s elder brother Clarence Saatjian, 56, is chief of thermal power engineering for Southern California Edison, and her younger brother, the Rev. Lloyd Saatjian, 50, is Santa Ana district superintendent of the United Methodist Church, responsible for 57 congregations in the Orange County area. (As minister of a Palm Springs congregation for 17 years, he was in the Coachella Valley in 1968 at the time of the table-grape boycott in the dispute between the growers and Cesar Chavez and his migrant farm workers. In the critical years between 1970 and 1973, Saatjian served as mediator. He still is the arbitrator on certain contracts.)

Graduates of USC Both Saatjian brothers are graduates of USC.

Gloria had an interest in art that included years of piano lessons and classical recitals–Lloyd has said she might have become a concert pianist. After graduation in 1950 from Long Beach Poly High School, she went to the old Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles and completed the three-year course in interior design. “Then I got out and never did pursue it. I guess I just didn’t have that real interest. . . . Someday, maybe, I’ll get back to it.”

Instead, having already taken some typing and shorthand in high school, she took a job as a secretary for Howard Zink Seat Covers, a large car-seat upholstering company in Long Beach. She worked there for several years until just about the time she met George.

Diane Hansen Roslee, a Chouinard classmate who was maid-of-honor at Gloria and George’s wedding, noted that it wasn’t easy getting a job in the art world in the ‘50s. “So she went to work for the seat-cover king. Closest to home was the easier thing to do. They (the family) didn’t want her to live in an apartment or something, because the family was so close. And she was perfectly happy. . . . Gloria was more domesticated.”

Occasionally while at Chouinard, said Roslee, who owns a dress boutique south of Tucson, Gloria would “spend the weekend with me at my apartment. But they (the family) were very protective of her. They made sure she was a good girl. . . . “

Five Languages Krikor Saatjian, who came to America in 1911 as a scholarship student, spoke five languages–Armenian, Turkish, French, English and German, his English learned from a Christian missionary–and helped pay his way by working in the school cafeteria.

During that early period, he also served with the Army Corps of Engineers at the Panama Canal. Meanwhile in 1915, back in his hometown, his family was being dispersed, and worse, during the Armenian massacre. He volunteered for service in France during World War I, rose to the rank of sergeant, and while in the Army found his mentor in Clarence Olmstead (for whom his eldest would be named). Olmstead brought him to Texaco.

The war over, Saatjian, the eldest of four brothers, set about bringing his family to America. The immediate family had escaped the massacre, but as Eddie Saatjian, the youngest brother, recalled: “After the war was over we returned home. . . . The rest of the family were either gone or dead, or we didn’t know where they were.”

On Gloria’s mother’s side today are uncles, aunts and first cousins living in Beirut.

In 1921, Krikor brought his brother Charles; in 1923, his mother, Sadie; the last two brothers, Jack and Eddie, and in the party his future wife, Mary, a distant cousin 13 years his junior, whom he married a year later– after she started learning English.

After settling briefly in Lockport, Ill., where Olmstead ran a small Texaco refinery, Texaco bought California Petroleum, “and within less than a year,” Eddie recalled, “we were here, the whole gang of us.”

Throughout the Depression, none of the brothers was without a job, and there was always a decent car in the garage. By 1941, the car was a Cadillac. Until they married, Krikor Saatjian’s brothers lived in his house, a large Victorian-style 2 1/2-story frame house on a corner in central Long Beach.

Until her marriage, Gloria Deukmejian shared a bedroom with her grandmother Sadie. In 1941, when Eddie and Alice Saatjian married, there was a portent for her own future. Before coming to California to meet Eddie, Alice Saatjian lived across the street from the Deukmejian family in Menands, N.Y., outside Albany, the state capital. She remembered George, “a beautiful, handsome boy. He had rosy cheeks.” In this intertwining of family-tree branches, Alice also was a second cousin of Isabelle Melkasian. It was at Isabelle’s wedding in San Marino on May 27, 1956 that Gloria and George met. Isabelle’s mother knew the Deukmejians too. (George and Gloria were married Feb. 16, 1957. His sister’s husband, Noubar Ashjian, is Gloria’s second cousin once removed.)

Mary Saatjian–the person Gloria Deukmejian had been closest to, the woman she confided in and is said to emulate–provided the warmth. “An Armenian mother who cared for her children . . . a saint,” said Lloyd. “An amazing cook. She didn’t have the education my dad did, but her relationship to her children and anyone who came into our home was one of love, caring and generosity.”

With her husband at work from 6 in the morning until 6 at night, she was “the one we told the bad things to,” said Clarence, “she was our confidante.”

One gets fleeting, cozy images of Gloria’s girlhood. Isabelle remembers taking the Red Car down to Long Beach with her twin, Annabelle, for weekends at the beach, and Gloria at 10, a junior bridesmaid at her Aunt Alice’s wedding in their home, getting out the carpet-sweeper to clean up a batch of the inevitable pistachio nuts. And whenever the Saatjians would visit her house they would pile out of the Cadillac bearing a box of See’s candy.

Lloyd remembers her getting up early in the morning, before anyone else in the house, practicing piano, and accompanying him at recitals while he played the violin.

And Diane, for whom Gloria would name her third child, Andrea Diane, remembers weekends at Gloria’s house:

“Every time I would come, her mother would tell us our fortunes. She always made something special–meat rolled up in grape leaves and a dessert, baklava, and after dinner, over Turkish coffee, she would tell us our fortunes. Later I realized she knew everything that was going on in our lives, and what we wanted to hear something about a tall, dark, handsome stranger that was coming into our lives.”

Diane also remembered how Gloria would have a new dress before big family weddings, because invariably there was someone they wanted her to meet. The girls never talked politics.

“I happen to come from a Middle Eastern heritage and ancestry. In my background and culture . . . ladies were always sort of kept in the background,” Gov. Deukmejian was saying lightly at a reception honoring his women appointees. “The husbands would go out in front and the ladies would follow behind; they would take care of the things at home. . . . It was always a very peaceful relationship.”

Deukmejian was explaining why Gloria was not in attendance. The joke was that ever since his wife had seen Queen Elizabeth walking ahead of Prince Philip on the royal visit to California, and had spoken about it, he wasn’t taking her “to any more of these.”

The joke notwithstanding, the Deukmejians always had that peaceful relationship.

In the first two years of their marriage, he worked as a deputy county counsel before setting up his own practice. They lived in a small apartment near the Crenshaw district for about a year, and she took a job as a secretary in the public relations department of the California Bank.

Moved to Apartment Later, they moved to an apartment in Long Beach, and she “commuted from Long Beach to Los Angeles. After a while there was the traffic and all, it was very tiring . . . “ and she quit. In 1959, Deukmejian opened a law office in Belmont Shore. The Ashjians remember that Gloria’s father bought Deukmejian his desk. Meanwhile, he plunged into community life, becoming active in the Lions. And she joined the Lady Lions.

In 1960, they bought the rather modest house they still live in Belmont Shore–today driving past one sees a mustard-colored house, second from the corner, with a large picture window and lamp in front.

Her husband’s entry into politics came as a surprise to Gloria Deukmejian. “There wasn’t any mention of politics at the beginning.” But she went along. As she said on the Sacramento television show: “I just said, ‘Whatever you would like to do.’ It’s better to have a husband happy at the job that he’s doing, doing something that he enjoys.”

She’s very much in tune with his career. Ask in the private interview what about it has given her the most satisfaction, and after saying she doesn’t “know where to begin there ,” she talks about his “transformation” of state finances from deficit to surplus. And the biggest disappointment?

A Lost Race “Losing the one attorney general’s race years ago. Remember that one? It was a four-man (GOP primary) race, and that was the last (loss).”

Gloria Deukmejian is down-to-earth, unpretentious, the same person she has always been. “I don’t think you will hear one negative”–it is all a constant refrain. She doesn’t drink–”if you see a glass in her hand it’s tonic or diet soda,” said Aunt Alice. She doesn’t swear. And she is content.

“I don’t think Gloria feels she’s given up anything,” said Joan Lucas, wife of Judge Malcolm M. Lucas, Deukmejian’s first, and, thus far, only appointment to the California Supreme Court. “She’s a very happy, secure person. I’m sure she has a lot of problems that she doesn’t discuss; but I can’t think of her having any big problems.”

Joan Lucas has known Gloria casually since high school and better since their husbands formed Lucas, Lucas & Deukmejian in 1963. “She doesn’t discuss other political people or wives, or anything like that, ever. Gloria is a very refined person, very classy–and closemouthed. “

She is an excellent listener. “She’s always a lady,” said Willie Tauscher, a fellow hospital volunteer who’s known her 20 years.

“I’ve had a great deal of trauma over the years,” said Darlene Thornton-May, “and there is no more stauncher friend. When I get down, she’d say, ‘You do what you have to do.’ ”

There is a genuine niceness. When decorators Dennis Murphy and June Given first went up to see the Sacramento residence–purchased with surplus funds from the governor’s inaugural and which will be given to the next governor and successors, or sold with the proceeds going to charity–she met them at the airplane gate. Moreover, said Murphy, though she wanted to move in during the last week in August to prepare Andrea for school, “she never once applied pressure about getting it done unlike a lot of clients.”

When she hosted the luncheons for the Western governors’ wives in Palm Springs she went out of her way to invite others along who had helped her make the social events a success. And when her mother was dying in December, 1983, she stayed at the governor’s side to host the annual Christmas party before rushing to the Long Beach hospital. It was the same kind of “devotion to duty” her own mother had practiced in preparing the elaborate funeral feast after Krikor Saatjian had died 1 1/2 years earlier at 92.

As much as anything else, Gloria Deukmejian is a private person. After her mother’s illness, Aunt Alice took over the role as chief confidante. “If there were things to complain about,” allowed Alice Saatjian in connection with the search for the gubernatorial home, “we used to talk. It didn’t go out from my house; it didn’t go out from her house.”

California’s First Lady is by all accounts an excellent cook. She likes to golf, needlepoint, garden. She reads Erma Bombeck, and watches “Hill Street Blues” and “60 Minutes.” She hates the soaps. She plays the piano, Mozart still her favorite. But Gloria Deukmejian plays only for herself. “When I was growing up and took piano for over 10 years, I had a recital every month and had to memorize so I played for enough people I think.”

Time with the governor’s wife is nearly up. She grows fruit, vegetables? “No flowers . . . just whatever you think.”

Toward the end she had been asked to define Gloria Deukmejian. “Being myself. My door is open for coffee to friends who want to stop by. Just because I’m First Lady doesn’t mean the door is locked. And just doing the things I’ve always done. Shopping. . . . It’s just life as usual; it’s just that my husband has a different job. . . . We’ve always kept a low profile.”

May we come by for coffee?

“Leave your pad behind,” she said.

President Trump’s fourth week in office got off to a rough start with the resignation of his national security advisor. Michael Flynn resigned late Monday in the wake of revelations about conversations he had with a Russian official during the transition between the Obama and Trump administrations. Here’s a look at what’s happened so far:

Last weekend

• While Trump was dining with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe at Mar-a-lago Club in Palm Beach, Fla., the world leaders got word of a ballistic missile test in North Korea. Photos of the men discussing the situation in the dining room left many wondering if cybersecurity procedures were in place.
• The leader of Hezbollah called Trump an “idiot.”
• Again with the (debunked) voter fraud claim. Trump’s senior policy advisor Stephen Miller said that “the noncitizen voting issue is pervasive and widespread,” but offered no evidence.

Monday, Feb. 13

• Mr. Unpopular. A new Gallup poll found that Trump’s approval rating has already dropped. (While we’re on the subject, take a look at our “Grade the president” project to see how people are judging his leadership.)
• Back to the immigration ban: The Trump administration will not take the case to the U.S. Supreme Court … yet.
• Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau stopped by the White House for a joint-presser with Trump. There was a stark difference in their delivery, eh?
• Wall Street executive Steven Mnuchin is taking over as Treasury secretary. The Senate narrowly voted to confirm him 53 to 47.
• Kellyanne Conway said Trump has utmost confidence in Flynn after reports surfaced that the national security advisor had misled the White House administration on previous contact he’d had with a Russian diplomat. Hours later, Flynn resigned, which brings us to:

The Flynn controversy

• Nov. 18: Trump names Flynn as his choice for national security advisor. The decision was controversial from the start. Flynn had attended a lavish dinner in Moscow in 2015 at which he sat next to president Vladimir Putin and also received a speaking fee from a Russian television network that U.S. officials consider a propaganda outlet.
• Dec. 6: Trump’s transition team cuts ties with Flynn’s son, who had spread false stories on Twitter.
• Dec. 29: The Obama administration imposes sanctions on Russia in retaliation for Russia’s hacking of the Democratic National Committee in the summer. Flynn contacts Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak several times that day and the day before, including more than one telephone call.
• Dec. 30: Putin says he will not retaliate against the U.S. sanctions, surprising the Obama administration. Trump praises Putin.
• Early January: Intelligence officials, looking for clues to why Putin decided not to retaliate, discover Flynn’s conversations with Kislyak, whose communications the U.S. government routinely monitors.
• Jan. 11: At a news conference, Trump denies that he has ties with Russia.
• Jan. 12: Washington Post columnist David Ignatius first reports on Flynn’s contacts with Kislyak.
• Jan. 13: White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer denies that Flynn and Kislyak discussed sanctions.
• Jan. 15: Vice President Mike Pence, in a television interview, denies that Flynn discussed sanctions.
• Jan. 20: Trump is inaugurated.
• Jan. 22: Flynn is sworn in as national security advisor.
• Jan. 26: Acting Atty. Gen. Sally Yates tells White House officials that Flynn and Kislyak had discussed the sanctions and that Flynn, having misled Pence and others, might be subject to Russian blackmail.
• Feb. 8: Flynn, responding to questions from the Washington Post, once again flatly denies any discussions with Kislyak about sanctions.
• Feb. 9: A spokesperson for Flynn retracts that denial, saying he does not remember talking about the sanctions, but “can’t be 100% sure.”
• Feb. 10: Trump, asked by reporters on Air Force One, says he is not familiar with the Post report.
• Feb 10: White House officials say Flynn has called Pence to apologize for misleading him.
• Feb. 12 : White House official Stephen Miller, dispatched by the administration to appear on several Sunday TV interview programs, declines to say if Trump has confidence in Flynn.
• Feb. 13, about 4 p.m. EST: Trump advisor Kellyanne Conway says Flynn has Trump’s full confidence.
• Feb. 13, about 5: p.m. EST: Spicer says Trump is “evaluating the situation.”
• Feb. 13, about 9:30 p.m. EST: The Post and the New York Times disclose that Yates had warned the White House about Flynn’s conversations.
• Feb. 13, 11 p.m.: White House announces Flynn’s resignation. Officials say he chose to step down.

Tuesday, Feb. 14

• Don’t you love politics? Spicer says the White House has been investigating Flynn’s conduct for more than two weeks and that he had been fired because of an “eroding level of trust.”
• Several hours after Spicer’s briefing, Pence’s spokesman, Marc Lotter, says that the vice president “became aware of incomplete information that he’d received on Feb. 9 — last Thursday night — based on media accounts. He did an inquiry based on those media accounts.”
• Kellyanne Conway is in hot water. The Office of Government Ethics recommends that the White House investigate and possibly discipline Trump’s counselor for telling people last week to buy from Ivanka Trump’s fashion line.
• Are you ready to rumble? Linda McMahon is. The Senate confirmed the former wrestling entertainment executive to lead the Small Business Administration.

Wednesday, Feb. 15

• Back to the Flynn saga. Trump blamed the media and leaks for Flynn’s dismissal from office. “Gen. Flynn is a wonderful man. I think he’s been treated very, very unfairly by the media,” Trump said.
• And another one bites the dust. Amid growing opposition from Republicans, Trump’s pick for Labor secretary, Andy Puzder, withdrew his nomination just one day before his confirmation hearing.
• Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held a joint news conference at the White House. Neither leader committed to a two-state solution for peace between Israelis and Palestinians, marking a major change from decades of U.S. policy.

Thursday, Feb. 16

• Now that’s the Trump we remember from the campaign trail. The president held his first solo news conference. At times, he was combative, aggrieved, funny and nostalgic. He also had his puzzling moments.
• Puzder is out and Alexander Acosta is in. Trump nominates a new Labor secretary. If confirmed, he would be the first Latino in Trump’s Cabinet.
• No, thank you. Navy Vice Adm. Robert Harward turned down Trump’s offer to be his new national security advisor.
• The 9th Circuit Court’s latest word on the travel ban? Your move, Mr. President. They’re taking no further action while the White House prepares a new executive order that addresses the legal objections.
• Trump may show sympathy for ‘Dreamers,’ but his aides have quietly found ways to end protection for the hundreds of thousands of immigrants brought to the U.S. illegally as children.
• More confusion on our Mideast policy: Contrary to Trump’s comments, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N. said the U.S. “absolutely” supports a two-state solution.

Friday, Feb. 17

Can’t get enough? We’ve got you covered for all of Trump’s first 100 days. » »

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UPDATES:

11:15 a.m. Feb. 17: This article was updated with Thursday’s and Friday’s events.

1:30 p.m. Feb. 15: This article was updated with Wednesday’s events.

This article was originally published at 5:50 p.m. Feb. 14.

Five years after her son was beaten so badly by Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies that he needed more than 30 stitches and staples to his face and head, Vanessa Perez is still looking for answers. So are county officials tasked with holding the department accountable for misconduct.

Despite a subpoena and an ongoing legal battle, obtaining a complete account of what happened to Vanessa’s son Joseph Perez has proved impossible — at least so far.

The sheriff’s department has released a heavily redacted report outlining its version of what transpired in the San Gabriel Valley community of East Valinda on July 27, 2020.

According to the report, deputies from the Industry Station stopped Joseph, 27, on suspicion of breaking into a car. He punched and kicked them multiple times, the document states. Three deputies injured their hands and a fourth broke his leg falling off a curb. Six deputies punched Joseph and deployed various holds and takedowns before he was arrested and charged with five counts of resisting an executive officer, court records show.

But entire pages of the department’s “use of force” report are blacked out, leaving Vanessa and members of the Civilian Oversight Commission wondering what details are being kept secret.

County oversight officials issued three subpoenas in February for cases under scrutiny, including one seeking an unredacted copy of the Perez file. The County Counsel’s Office has resisted, arguing the files should remain confidential, and the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department has declined to hand them over.

Amid the subpoena standoff, Vanessa, 43, shows up to speak at nearly every monthly meeting of the oversight commission in a black T-shirt with a picture of her son’s bloodied face.

“Surviving an arrest shouldn’t look like Joseph. And it shouldn’t look like 121 punches either. That’s what they admitted to,“ she told The Times, referring to an unofficial tally she made based on the deputies’ statements in the redacted document.

Vanessa Perez holds a photograph of her son, Joseph Perez, taken after he was beaten by Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies in July 2020.

(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

The beating was so severe, she said, it left her son struggling to carry on a conversation.

“He’s not able to do that anymore,” she said. “It’s just hard for him to socialize, period, with the constant fear.”

A month after the oversight commission‘s subpoena, L.A. County Sheriff Robert Luna responded by filing a lawsuit, asking a court to determine whether his department must comply. Luna said at the time that the County Counsel’s Office had advised the department that releasing the documents “violates the law.”

In a statement to The Times, the sheriff’s department said it is “taking deliberate steps to resolve the dispute and ensure its actions align with both the law and the principles of transparency.”

Last month, the County Counsel’s Office said in a statement that it “has fully supported” the commission “in its efforts to seek the information it needs to play a powerful oversight role on behalf of LA County citizens. This includes assisting with a declaratory relief action that will hopefully bring judicial clarity to the commission’s ability to obtain the information it seeks.”

Joseph maintains he was not the aggressor in the July 2020 incident. His mother said he was in the middle of a “mental health episode.”

Court records show Joseph has been jailed multiple times since on a range of charges, including methamphetamine possession and damaging a vehicle. In August 2022, he pleaded no contest to one of the five charges from the beating incident and was sentenced to 32 months in state prison.

He is currently incarcerated at Pitchess Detention Center in Castaic after violating his probation from a separate case in which he was convicted of resisting two West Covina police officers.

He has struggled with addiction and been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, depression and psychosis, according to his mother.

Anne Golden, Joseph’s public defender, said in a recent court hearing that he suffers from impaired executive functioning due to a traumatic brain injury inflicted by the deputies.

In a brief phone call last month from jail, Joseph told The Times he believes the full report about what happened to him should be released to “show that I was in the right.”

Vanessa Perez holds a photo of her and her son, Joseph Perez.

(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

“They’re lying about a lot of stuff with my case,” he said. “They lied about how it went down; they’re saying I’m the aggressor when I wasn’t. The reality is they beat me up — they left me for dead.”

The sheriff’s department said the deputies involved in the incident declined to comment.

The department said in a statement that every use of force “incident is thoroughly reviewed to evaluate if policies and procedures were followed,” adding that in “this incident, the use of force … was determined to be within policy.”

Oversight officials seeking records related to Joseph’s case and others have been stymied at every turn, according to Loyola Law School professor Sean Kennedy. Kennedy resigned from the commission in February following a dispute with county lawyers over another matter.

“To have effective and meaningful civilian oversight, it’s necessary for the commission to be able to review confidential documents about police misconduct and use of force,” Kennedy said. “Without that, this is all just oversight theater.”

Last month, Robert Bonner, the oversight commission’s chair, revealed that L.A. County Supervisor Kathryn Barger intended to replace him despite his desire to stay on and finish ongoing work.

Barger said in an email last month that the move “reflects my desire to continue cultivating public trust in the oversight process by introducing new perspectives that support the Commission’s vital work.”

During the commission’s June 26 meeting, Bonner, 84, alleged that powerful people in county government do not want meaningful oversight over the sheriff’s department. A former federal judge who once served as U.S. attorney in Los Angeles and led the Drug Enforcement Administration, Bonner was fiery in his remarks.

He said he believed the County Counsel’s Office was advising the sheriff to withhold documents as a means of “telling this commission what it can and can’t do, and that goes over the line.”

“They treat our subpoenas like public record requests,” Bonner said.

The Civilian Oversight Commission has said it is willing to go into closed session to review the full reports, but the county’s lawyers argue that’s not legal.

On Tuesday, the state Senate’s public safety committee approved a bill previously approved by the state Assembly that would allow oversight commissions across California to conduct closed sessions to review personnel records and other confidential materials.

But the proposal, AB 847, still requires approval from the full state Senate and governor. And even if it does become law, the county counsel’s office argues that the L.A. County code explicitly bars the commission from reviewing sensitive documents in closed session.

Robert Bonner, chair of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department Civilian Oversight Commission, speaks during the commission’s meeting at St. Anne’s Family Services in L.A. on June 26.

(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

Bonner has pushed for the county code to be changed, saying he and other members of the oversight body “vigorously disagree with County Counsel’s interpretation” of it.

“This commission needs subpoena power to be effective, and it needs to have effective subpoena power, which means it needs to be able to go into closed session,” Bonner said during the commission’s June meeting.

The sheriff’s department said it “will abide by the ultimate judicial determination as to whether those records can be lawfully disclosed.”

Whether the oversight body can issue subpoenas is not in dispute. In March 2020 — four months before Joseph was beaten — L.A. County voters overwhelmingly approved Measure R, a ballot initiative that granted the commission subpoena power.

But the county is thwarting the legal orders, according to Bert Deixler, former special counsel to the Civilian Oversight Commission. That intransigence, he said, contributes to a culture of impunity in the sheriff’s department.

“More momentum will be built in the wrong direction, the county will continue to get sued, the county continues to have more and more financial challenges, and it’s a race to the bottom,” he said.

On June 3, Vanessa Perez drove in from her home in West Covina to attend a hearing for her son at the Stanley Mosk Courthouse in downtown L.A.

After waiting several hours for him to emerge, she became emotional as Joseph finally walked into the courtroom through a side door. His hands were cuffed in front of his wrinkled yellow jail T-shirt and his ear lobes were stretched with white paper plugs over his tattooed neck.

Vanessa Perez stands at the location in East Valinda where her son, Joseph Perez, was beaten by Los Angeles County Sheriff’s deputies in July 2020.

(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

But despite his lawyer’s pleas for the court to allow Joseph to enter a job training program and immediately begin receiving treatment for his mental health problems, Judge James Bianco ordered him to remain behind bars pending a mental health diversion reinstatement hearing.

“Mr. Perez has been given all the chances that I’m inclined to give him,” Bianco said.

Joseph looked back at his mother once before being escorted back out of the courtroom.

While her son remains locked up for now, Vanessa is demanding the unredacted version of the beating report be made public. She wants to understand why his beating didn’t warrant an internal affairs investigation or discipline for the deputies involved.

“We know Joseph wasn’t the first and won’t be the last,” she said. “With Joseph’s story exposed we … will know how they lied, how they covered their asses, from the deputies to the sergeant to the captain.”

US envoy says Syria strategy ‘will not be like the last 100 years’ as troops pull out.

The United States will shut down most of its military bases in Syria, consolidating operations to a single location, as part of a policy overhaul announced by its new special envoy.

Thomas Barrack, appointed by President Donald Trump last month as the US ambassador to Turkiye and special envoy for Syria, said the shift marks a rejection of Washington’s past century of failed approaches in Syria.

In an interview with the Turkish broadcaster NTV on Monday, Barrack said the troop drawdown and base closures reflect a strategic recalibration.

“What I can assure you is that our current Syria policy will not be close to the Syria policy of the last 100 years because none of these have worked,” he said.

US forces are expected to withdraw from seven of eight bases, including those in Deir Az Zor province in eastern Syria, with remaining operations centred in Hasakah in the northeast.

Two security sources told the Reuters news agency that US military hardware and personnel have already started relocating. “All troops are being pulled from Deir Az Zor,” one source told Reuters in April.

A US Department of State official later said troop levels would be adjusted “if and when appropriate”, depending on operational demands.

Roughly 2,000 American soldiers remain in Syria, largely embedded with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a key partner in the US-led campaign against ISIL (ISIS).

The SDF, dominated by the People’s Protection Units (YPG), a Kurdish militia, has been a longstanding point of contention with NATO ally Turkiye, which views it as linked to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

The PKK, which recently announced its disbandment, fought a decades-long armed rebellion against the Turkish state.

Barrack called the SDF “a very important factor” for the US Congress, stressing that integrating the group into Syria’s national army is now a priority. “Everyone needs to be reasonable in their expectations,” he said.

Since the ouster of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in December, international engagement with Damascus has resumed under new President Ahmed al-Sharaa. Barrack recently raised the US flag over the ambassador’s residence in Damascus for the first time since 2012.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan criticised the SDF last week, accusing it of “stalling tactics” despite its agreement to join the Syrian armed forces.

A viral TikTok has reignited the long-standing debate of airplane decorum while flying with kids. Now, cabin crew have shared their top secret tips for keeping little ones calm on flights.

Airplane decorum, especially while travelling with kids, has long been a point of contention.

Recently, the subject came to the forefront on social media after a TikTok video prominently featuring an exasperated traveller and the antics of a young child behind her who couldn’t stop kicking her seat garnered over 240k views.

The divisive clip reignited the long-standing debate among viewers as audiences were split over who should address the issue. While one user suggested confrontation was key: “You gotta be confrontational and tell them to stop, unfortunately”, another proposed seeking cabin crew assistance: “Just call the flight attendant”.

Yet another user offered advice suggesting the direct involvement of the parent: “Just tell the mother to get them to stop”.

Luckily, a cabin crew manager has now weighed in. Travel experts at Netflights conferred with Cabin Crew Manager, Francesca, and received insights into the preferred course of action by crew members, parents, and fellow passengers in such circumstances.

Delving deeper into aviation secrets that can be employed for maintaining mid-flight serenity, Francesca shared some insider tips with the travel company.

Cabin crew secrets for child management

Engaging activities as distractions: Francesca shares: “If the children are aged between three to four and are walking around, then we will get them to help with rubbish to distract them.”

Incentivising positive behaviour: The cabin crew manager reveals another trick of the trade when it comes to flying with kids: “If kids are playing up, we will say that if they behave well, we can give them treats from the bar; however, this is at the cabin manager’s discretion, so it shouldn’t be expected.”

Keeping one’s cool: Francesca stresses the importance of remaining calm and shares: “We have to remain calm, considerate and approachable. We always put ourselves in the shoes of our customers.”

Tips for parents

Supply numerous distractions: Sharing the gold-standard of in-flight tactics that can be deployed on kids, Francesca advises: “Parents should bring colouring books onto the flight, as bringing things that stimulate their minds will help the situation, and minimise children from getting agitated when flying”.

Stash nutritious nibbles: It’s important for parents travelling with kids to ensure their children are well-fed and snacking on healthy options. Francesca says: “Make sure your kids have eaten beforehand or have healthy snacks when flying. Snacks help to keep little ones settled and can be a nice treat to lift their mood.”

Strategise slumber: The flight attendant shares another top tip: “Making sure to plan naps for your children is a useful tip, so children don’t become tired and irritable. Planning your child’s sleep in advance can ensure you are organised and feel prepared for long travel days.”

Seat switcharoo

As a cabin crew manager, Francesca is all too aware of some passengers’ demand for a seat switch, but asserts that shouldn’t be the default expectation. She explained: “Some passengers complain that they don’t want to be seated near children, however, we remind them that families are also paying customers. If there are available seats, then we can move them there, however, passengers shouldn’t presume they will be able to move, as the aircraft can often be full, with no spare seats available.”