Dave’s Hot Chicken launches sweepstakes for Drake concert tickets

• July 3, 2023

Dave’s Hot Chicken is also dealing in hot concert tickets.

The Pasadena-based restaurant chain has launched a sweepstakes that gives members of its “Frequent Fryer” loyalty program the chance to win ticket’s to Drake’s It’s All a Blur tour with 21 Savage.

This is Drake’s first North American tour since 2018.

Concerts include Kia Forum, Inglewood, Aug. 13, 15, and 16; Crypto.com Arena, Los Angeles, Aug. 21-22;  Chase Center, San Francisco, Aug 18; and T-Mobile Arena, Las Vegas, Sept. 1-2. There are several other dates throughout the United States between July 11, in Boston, and Oct. 5, in Toronto.

To enter, people need to download the Dave’s Hot Chicken app and then choose a preferred concert and date, according to a news release. They can then receive additional entries for the chosen concert by making purchases while logged into the loyalty program.

Winners will be notified about a week before each concert date, the news release said. For the Southern California dates, people have until early August to enter.

In addition to racking up 205 charted songs as a solo artist on the Billboard Hot 100, Drake is an investor in Dave’s Hot Chicken.

It was founded as an East Hollywood pop-up in 2017 and is now America’s fastest-growing restaurant chain, it announced in May, citing research by the firm Technomic that showed its sales  increased 156% over the past year.

An entry form and rules sheet, including entry deadlines for individual concerts, can be found on the company’s website, daveshotchicken.com.

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​ Orange County Register 

Traveling this summer: Is it time for a COVID booster?

• July 3, 2023

Sandy Klein looks forward to her European Cruise next month. At 78, she considers herself healthy. Still the Palm Beach resident wonders if she should get a COVID booster before her trip.

“I don’t want to spend my vacation sick — or worse, in the hospital,” she said.

This summer travel season has been forecasted to be one for the record books, and with so many people on the move, the risk of getting COVID-19 rises.

COVID still is circulating and people do seem to be picking up the virus during travel. However, for most people who get COVID now, the symptoms are more like a bad cold or flu, doctors say. Still, those symptoms — fever, aches, sore throat and cough — are enough to ruin a trip or force you to miss a family reunion.

Most people have some level of immunity, either from a shot or the virus itself. So is worth getting a COVID booster?

How to decide whether to get boosted

Let your activity over the summer months guide your strategy, along with your age and health, doctors say.

“It’s really a matter of how much risk you are willing to take because there is still COVID out there,” said Dr. Sergio Segarra, chief medical officer at Baptist Health’s Baptist Hospital in Kendall.

Segarra says only about 4% to 8% of patients in his hospital are there for COVID, but none are in the intensive care. He says the immunity gained from vaccination and prior infection seems to have lessened the severity of the disease for most people.

“But if you have health issues or are over 50 you might want to get the booster,” he said. “Also, it depends on where you are going. Airports are congested and cruise ships are close quarters. If you are going to a remote place, that’s different. For most people who are traveling, if you don’t want to spend a few days feeling miserable, I would recommend it.”

Immunity wears off

Booster uptake has been low in Florida — only 11.7% of all ages have received one, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. If you already had COVID or a vaccine, research has shown that immunity wears off over time and becomes less effective against new strains.

This fall, most likely the end of September, vaccine manufacturers will be releasing updated COVID booster shots to target  XBB 1.5, the predominant coronavirus strain in the United States that first arrived in late 2022. The new booster formulation will drop the original coronavirus strain, which no longer is in circulation. Some doctors believe that will optimize the immune response.

Along with mRNA vaccines, a third vaccine maker, Novavax, likely also will be an option for an updated booster that targets XBB.1.5. Novavax’s COVID shots are a protein-based vaccine.

Some scientists are hoping for a nasal spray option as well, although that could take until 2024. In September, India approved a nasal COVID-19 vaccine, and in October, China began administering an inhalable version.

Waiting for fall can be tricky, though, particularly when there’s currently a booster available even if it’s not targeted at the most current strain.

Who is eligible for a booster

At this time, the only COVID shots available to adults are the mRNA bivalent booster. Anyone 6 and older can get one. The bivalent booster blends an antigen aimed at the original strain of the virus with another designed for the BA.4 and BA.5 variants, which had been circulating when the shot became available. The latest data shows the effectiveness against symptomatic XBB infection, which isn’t a strain it was made to target, is about 43% for people 50 and older

“If you expect perfection from vaccines, you will be disappointed,” said Vanderbilt University infectious disease professor Dr. William Schaffner. “Just like with influenza, they need to keep updating them. They will never be perfectly up to date because it takes time to develop vaccines, package them, and get them into arms.”

Sometimes it can feel as if vaccines are pointless in avoiding infections, Schaffner acknowledges. However, research shows vaccines reduce severe outcomes from COVID, and the latest CDC data indicates they still offer some protection against mild infections.

When considering timing, the CDC recommends waiting four months between shots. That also applies to people 65 and older who are eligible for a second bivalent booster.

“If it has been more than four months since you had COVID or a shot, your immunity is not down to zero,” Schaffner said. “You still have some protection but it’s a matter of who you are, how robust your immune system is, how old you are, and do you have any underlying issues. The older you are, your risk goes up.”

Timing your booster

If you believe you are at risk, don’t wait for the fall, he says.

“If you are going to travel you should get the booster available now,” he says. “Come October you will be eligible for the new booster.”

If you decide get boosted before travel or a special event, you may want to time it for optimal protection.

The booster is most effective roughly two weeks to a month after getting the shot, according to Dr. Leanna Wen a professor at George Washington University’s Milken Institute School of Public Health. After a month, protection against infection begins to drop, she said. “Still, some people would value even a small, temporary reduction in infection risk,” she wrote in a column published in The Washington Post.

If you decide not to get boosted, Wen advises masking in crowded places. And making preparations can be important when traveling. Anyone older than 65 should travel with Paxlovid, says Segarra at Baptist Health South Florida. “It’s still recommended for mild to moderate symptoms and a good tool to have.”

Sun Sentinel health reporter Cindy Goodman can be reached at [email protected].

​ Orange County Register 

Twitter’s viewing limits: Will users and advertisers go elsewhere?

• July 3, 2023

By Matt O’Brien | The Associated Press

TikTok and Instagram users can scroll with abandon. But Twitter owner Elon Musk has put new curfews on his digital town square, the latest drastic change to the social media platform that could further drive away advertisers and undermine its cultural influence as a trendsetter.

Keeping up with a sports game, extreme weather conditions or a major news event is getting harder under Musk’s new rules, which cap the number of tweets you can view as part of an apparent attempt to relieve the company’s overloaded web infrastructure.

“The joke on Twitter is that people are going to go outside instead, but the reality is that they’re going to go to another app,” said Jasmine Enberg, an analyst with Insider Intelligence. “By sending users elsewhere, Musk is killing the main proposition Twitter has had for advertisers — a highly engaged user base, especially around news and events.”

SEE MORE: Twitter worst social media for LGBTQ+ safety, GLAAD says

Musk recently hired longtime NBC Universal executive Linda Yaccarino as Twitter’s CEO to try to win back advertisers annoyed by a host of changes since Musk bought the platform for $44 billion last year. But she’s been silent about the new restrictions that lock users out if they view too many tweets in a day, leaving Musk to announce and explain them.

The moves are “remarkably bad for Twitter’s users and advertisers,” decimating the reach and engagement that advertisers depend on, according to a statement from Forrester analyst Mike Proulx.

“The advertiser trust deficit that Linda Yaccarino needs to reverse just got even bigger. And it cannot be reversed based on her industry credibility alone,” Proulx said.

An Associated Press inquiry on Monday about how long the limits will last triggered a crude automated reply that Twitter sends to most media queries without addressing the question.

Musk had tried on Saturday to describe how the limits work, saying accounts that don’t pay for a monthly subscription will temporarily be restricted to reading 600 posts per day, while verified accounts will be able to scroll through up to 6,000.

After facing backlash, he tweeted that the thresholds would be raised to 800 posts for unverified accounts and 8,000 for verified accounts before later settling on 1,000 and 10,000 tweets, respectively.

Many unverified users are “going to hit that limit fast,” said Enberg, because most Twitter users are consuming, not creating posts, and “typically scroll through an enormous number of tweets in a short period of time.”

Enberg said Musk should be doing whatever he can to encourage engagement to show Twitter is still viable as it faces growing competition from upstart rivals, as well as a new Twitter-like service coming from Facebook and Instagram parent Meta. “Instead, he’s throttling it,” she said.

Proulx, of Forrester, said the “real reason behind Musk’s temporary rate limits” is still unclear.

Musk over the weekend explained the new restrictions as an attempt to prevent unauthorized scraping of potentially valuable data from the social media platform. He said it was a temporary measure that was taken because “we were getting data pillaged so much that it was degrading service for normal users!”

The site is now requiring people to log on to view tweets and profiles — a change in its longtime practice to allow everyone to peruse the chatter on what Musk has frequently touted as the world’s digital town square.

Musk has pushed back on what he calls misuse of Twitter data to train popular artificial intelligence systems like ChatGPT. They scour reams of information online to generate human-like text, photos, video and other content.

The higher tweet-viewing threshold allowed on verified accounts is part of an $8-per-month subscription service that Musk rolled out earlier this year in an effort to boost Twitter revenue. It has fallen sharply since the billionaire Tesla CEO took over the company and laid off roughly three-fourths of the workforce to cut costs and stave off bankruptcy.

Advertisers have since curbed their spending on Twitter, partly because of changes that have allowed more hateful or prickly content that offends a wider part of the service’s audience.

​ Orange County Register 

Seal Beach ends animal services contract with Long Beach, launches own program

• July 3, 2023

Seal Beach has officially implemented its own animal control services program — ending its nearly 20-year contract with Long Beach’s agency.

The Long Beach Animal Care Services Department previously provided shelter, rescue operations, and animal licensing and enforcement to neighboring Seal Beach — until the agency moved to increase the costs of those services. Seal Beach’s new local program went into effect on Saturday, July 1, less than a week after the City Council OK’d it.

The program, though, had been under development for more than a year, Seal Beach officials said.

“Approximately 18 months ago, Long Beach notified the city of Seal Beach of impending cost increases to provide animal control cervices,” Seal Beach police Capt. Nick Nicholas said at the June 26 council meeting. “Cost increases prompted review of the Long Beach animal control contract.”

Seal Beach spent the next year or so weighing its options, including sticking with the Long Beach contract and absorbing the cost increase; entering into an agreement with Westminster; or establishing its own animal control program within the Seal Beach Police Department from the ground up.

Seal Beach chose the last option.

The city enrolled SBPD’s senior community officer and police aides in animal control training programs, and secured contracts with organizations to provide sheltering and wildlife services. The city also worked to obtain the equipment necessary to launch an animal control program and formalized its procedures for licensing and enforcement.

“We’re confident that our personnel are trained, equipped and ready to go into service immediately,” Nicholas said. “With any program, we know that there will be growing pains and bugs to work through. But we know that based on the assistance we’ve received from other agencies and the large amount of research that we’ve done, we’ll be able to tackle any issues that arise.”

It’s a big change for both the Long Beach and Seal Beach communities. Seal Beach had contracted with the Long Beach Animal Care Services Department since 2004.

Related links

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What LA County’s new environmental regulations mean for coastal July 4th fireworks shows
Long Beach’s newest aerospace company has plans to expand — and clean up space
Long Beach to scale back Belmont Pool project, aims to open in late 2025

Now, Seal Beach residents who need assistance with animal care — be it a lost pet or an issue with wildlife — should contact the SBPD at its non-emergency number, 562-594-7232, rather than Long Beach.

The SBPD will handle all matters relating to animal care, such as investigating violations of animal welfare, licensing pets, issuing citations, treating animals, and conducting community outreach and education.

“We wish to thank the city of Long Beach, their animal care program, staff and volunteers for the service they provided to Seal Beach for many years,” SBPD Chief Michael Henderson said in a recent press release. “Without their assistance and guidance, we would not have been able to bring animal control services back in-house.”

Seal Beach has yet to update their animal care website with information about the new program. Tthat additional information, Nicholas said, will be shared with the public via social media and other communications in the coming weeks as the department works to implement the new program.

​ Orange County Register 

Fullerton College student receives scholarship in honor of late journalist John Westcott

• July 3, 2023

Fullerton College journalist Pedro Saravia was selected to receive the fourth annual John Westcott Memorial Journalism Scholarship.

The $350 scholarship is named in honor of Westcott, an Orange County Register staff member from 1981 to 2001 and an adjunct journalism professor at Fullerton and Saddleback community colleges. Westcott died in 2019 from brain cancer.

Saravia, 19, will be the news editor for Fullerton College’s newspaper, The Hornet, in the fall semester.

“Pedro is a hardworking journalist who wants to work in the field and has already amassed a body of work in sports, news, culture and multimedia production at Fullerton College,” Fullerton College journalism instructor Jessica Langlois said in a release.

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​ Orange County Register 

When TV game shows needs talent, they tune in to the radio

• July 3, 2023

Radio has a long history of sending its top personalities to host television game shows. Among the most famous include Wink Martindale, Jim Lange, Bob Eubanks, Gene Rayburn, and Pat Sajak, among many more.

To that list, add KIIS (102.7 FM) morning man Ryan Seacrest, who will replace Sajak on “Wheel of Fortune” at the end of the 2024 season. When Sajak leaves, he will end more than four decades with the show, after taking over for original host Chuck Woolery who left the show in a salary dispute in 1981.

Seacrest started in Los Angeles radio in 2004 at Star 98.7 FM (now known as Alt 98.7, KYSR). But he was only 16 when he started in the profession after winning an internship at his hometown radio station WSTR/Atlanta where he learned all aspects of radio … including filling in for ill or vacationing air personalities and eventually getting a regular weekend shift … while still in high school.

His show on Star was during the afternoon drive, and he was definitely a star (pardon the pun) on the station paired with Lisa Fox. He left for San Francisco’s K-101 in 2003, returning to Los Angeles less than a year later to replace Rick Dees in February 2004, a position he still holds and has held all the while taking on numerous other radio and television gigs, including hosting syndicated radio program “American Top 40” and television shows such as “American Idol,” “Live with Kelly and Ryan,” and the legendary “New Year’s Rockin’ Eve,” which he inherited from another radio personality, Dick Clark.

Many have compared Seacrest with Clark, primarily due to his boyish looks and on-air charm. He has always been able to engage his audiences, and Seacrest has often said that he idolized Clark growing up.

There was some pushback on the internet boards and social media over the announcement of the “Wheel” replacement. One comment on Twitter asked, “How many jobs do you need?” with another pleading with him to reconsider, writing “We don’t want you! Go away lol! You’re just going to ruin this amazing show.”

“Wheel” producers obviously feel differently, and are paying Seacrest a reported $28 million per season, $13 million more than Sajak reportedly earned from the show. Sajak, by the way, will stay on as a consultant for three years. For historical reference, Woolery was let go when he was asking $500,000 per season.

Salary issues aside, I do think Seacrest will be a good host. His radio duties including hosting KIIS mornings will continue at least through 2025, the end of his current contract. My hunch is that he will remain at KIIS for far longer. Radio stations often benefit from television exposure of their personalities, and you can’t get much more exposure than Seacrest.

Cardinal Rule

A wise programmer and consultant once told me that a general interest morning show should shun discussion or presentation of political viewpoints in order to avoid ticking off half of your potential audience.

Which is why I was surprised when I tuned in to KROQ’s (106.7 FM) morning Klein and Ally show last Friday. During a segment presented as news, co-host Ally Johnson launched into a short rant condemning a recent Supreme Court decision and lamenting the state of the country.

Remember, this was supposedly news, though the segment also devolved to include conjecture as to how couples can “hook up” behind the rows of port-a-potties at festival concerts. KROQ does not run editorials.

Personally, I don’t care what her opinion is, on any subject. She can think whatever she wants. But if I was the program director of KROQ, trying to build an audience for a dying station against competition that has been killing the morning show in the ratings for years, I’d be livid.

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​ Orange County Register 

What LA County’s new environmental regulations mean for coastal fireworks shows

• July 3, 2023

Several July 4 fireworks shows on Los Angeles County’s coast have fizzled this year — because of tighter environmental regulations.

Recently adopted rules regulating over-the-water fireworks displays in Los Angeles and Ventura counties have caused some tension between pyrotechnic companies and environmentalists, furthering an ongoing battle over the displays and potentially changing Fourth of July celebrations on the coast in the coming years.

The Los Angeles County Regional Water Quality Control Board, which is charged with protecting the water supply of the LA and Ventura regions, suddenly adopted a new fireworks-related permitting process in late May.

As a result, at least one major producer of fireworks shows that take place over the water has backed out of its commitments this year, citing the new regulations. That, in turn, has caused several major shows — including Redondo Beach’s popular King Harbor event — to be canceled, while a show in Long Beach had to find another producer.

The new rules have led to some sparring among those on both sides about the impact and benefits they will reap.

Water board officials and environmental advocates, on the one hand, say the new rules will help ensure pollutants from fireworks don’t end up in the ocean or other bodies of water.

“The permit requires implementation of best management practices,” water board Chair Norma Camacho said in a recent statement, “to ensure plastic and trash resulting from fireworks displays are captured and removed from our coastal waters.”

Those opposed to the new rules, on the other hand, say the regulations are unnecessary and that some of the recommended best practices could endanger those who set off the fireworks.

Jeff Ginsberg, for example, is a former Redondo Beach councilmember who for a couple of years has spearheaded a smaller Fourth of July fireworks show from that city’s Riviera Village neighborhood. That show has also been nixed.

The speedy implementation of the water board’s regulations, Ginsberg said, left everyone flat-footed.

“This is our country’s birthday and this is about freedom,” Ginsberg said, “and the freedom of having fireworks. And having them taken away from us goes against why we have the holiday in the first place.”

The new rules, though, are just the latest salvo in a years-long battle over coastal fireworks shows.

The impetus for the rules

The new rules quickly followed a federal judges’s ruling in a court case involving Long Beach’s popular Big Bang on the Bay, an annual fireworks show on Independence Day eve.

John Morris, owner of the Naples Restaurant Group, has put on that fireworks show over Alamitos Bay for years; it’s also a fundraiser for local charities.

The Coastal Environmental Rights Foundation, a nonprofit advocacy group, filed a lawsuit against Morris and the Naples Restaurant Group in 2021, arguing organizers had violated the Clean Water Act by disseminating pollutants into the water. CERF sought to ban the show.

But a federal judge ruled against the environmental group in April.

The court found there was sufficient evidence to prove fireworks discharge entered Alamitos Bay during last year’s show, a violation of the CWA. But the judge also said there was not enough evidence to show a continuous problem, or that such issues were likely to occur in the future.

Still, because CERF was able to prove that a Clean Water Act violation occurred, the nonprofit and water board officials said, the ruling set a precedent that fireworks shows should be regulated under that law via a National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permit — which aims to prevent water pollution by regulating the sources that cause it.

A little more than a month later, the water board adopted the new permit.

“CERF is proud that we have influenced that decision and, of course, influenced the conditions that the board has implemented in that general permit,” CERF attorney Amy Johnsgard said in a Friday, June 30 interview. “In general, the idea is, if you’ve discharged fireworks over water — you have to clean up after yourself.”

Water board staffers said they moved quickly on establishing the regulations to ensure upcoming Independence Day fireworks displays could continue lawfully.

But so far, several Fourth of July fireworks displays have already been nixed because of the new permit requirements. The producer for most of those shows was Pyro Spectaculars, a major Rialto company that organizes about 400 professional shows across the state and country every year.

Shortly after the water board gave notice about the plan to adopt the permitting requirement, Pyro issued a statement saying it wouldn’t comply — citing concerns that the stricter water-protection rules could put their workers’ safety at risk.

Pyro officials denied several requests for an interview to elaborate further about their concerns.

Since then, the company has pulled out of at least five Independence Day shows, including those at Redondo Beach’s King Harbor, the Bel-Air Bay Club, and the Santa Monica Beach Club, as well as fireworks that were set to be shot off from a barge behind Long Beach’s Queen Mary.

The Queen Mary show, though, will go on, Morris said in a Friday interview. After Pyro pulled out, he said, a different pyrotechnic company called Garden State Fireworks agreed to take over the show.

Morris uses Garden State for Big Bang on the Bay and helped connect that company with the organizers of the Queen Mary show, which is sponsored by the Long Beach Convention & Visitors Bureau.

In lieu of the popular and long-standing King Harbor display, meanwhile, the Redondo Beach City Council recently OK’d a drone show.

“We cannot and will not risk the safety of our staff and the public to comply with the restrictive regulations,” Pyro CEO Jim Souza said in a recent statement. “The water board instituted the new regulations quickly and unilaterally, with little input from us, one of the largest and most experienced firework show producers in the nation.”

Water board staffers, though, said they sent a draft copy of the permit to Pyro for review and input. They made changes before the final version was OK’d, based on the company’s input, to clarify that the rules set forth should only be implemented “to the extent practicable and economically achievable.”

The board’s staffers also said they made the relevant pyrotechnic companies aware of the coming change in April and offered them a chance to get their applications in before the rules were even formally adopted, to ensure they’d still be ready come Independence Day.

Still, there were others aside from Pyro who took issue with the changes and the quickness with which they were implemented — such as Redondo Beach Councilmember Nils Nehrenheim.

Nehrenheim works as an independent contractor for Pyro Spectaculars and other fireworks companies, and he, like Souza, said the permit regulations may put fireworks crews in harm’s way during shows.

Under the water board’s new rules, to get an NPDES permit, fireworks show organizers must submit a “best management practices plan,” which describes procedures they’ll use to avoid polluting water.

It lays out several recommendations for prevention, though opponents took issue with some specific ones, including:

Setting up three walls around the fireworks barges to prevent low-level pollution into the water.
Using cameras before, during and after the show to monitor pollution levels.
Employing a dive team or equivalent monitoring device to track pollution levels on the bay floor before and after fireworks shows.

Both Pyro and Nehrenheim said putting walls up around the barge, from which fireworks are launched, could put workers in danger by blocking their ability to exit the platforms in an emergency.

They also said requiring dive teams to check for fireworks discharge pollution on the ocean floor at night after shows could also put crews in harm’s way — and that visual recording equipment could create a tripping hazard.

But board staffers pointed out that the permit asks the pyrotechnic companies to submit a best practices plan that is doable — both practically and financially — for their specific shows.

“This Order prohibits discharge of plastic trash associated with firework displays into surface waters, and requires implementation of best management practices (BMPs) in lieu of traditional effluent limitations,” said the fact sheet for the water-quality board’s new regulations, “to ensure the discharges of residual firework pollutants do not cause pollution or nuisance conditions in surface waters within the Los Angeles Region.”

Water board officials also said that all of the listed recommendations, including the three walls around the barge, have been used in other shows, including Long Beach’s Big Bang, with no issues reported.

Johnsgard, meanwhile, also defended the speed with which the water board implemented the new rules.

While they may have been established quickly in LA, Johnsgard said, they have been in the works for years, and come on the heels of other regional water quality boards, including in San Diego and San Francisco, OK’ing NPDES permits with similar regulations in recent years. Generally, south Orange County is governed by the San Diego water board, while the rest is overseen by the one in Santa Ana; it doesn’t appear as if the Santa Ana board has such rules.

“It’s worth noting that before this general permit was developed, these fireworks dischargers were required to obtain an (individual) permit (to comply with the CWA),” Johnsgard said. “It’s really not that significant of a difference in terms of the method of compliance — the only difference is the enrollment process.”

The future of coastal shows

Still, Morris said, the new rules are frustrating — especially because of his recent lawsuit victory.

Big Bang also takes environmental protections seriously, he said. The event has had water-quality testing before and after Big Bang on the Bay for the last eight or nine years, Morris said. And Big Bang, he said, also uses fireworks with biodegradable shells, monitors potential impacts on the local bird population and routinely commissions a robotic camera to travel to the bottom of Alamitos Bay after the fireworks to search for any pollutants.

“There’s never been any pollutants in the water and we proved that in our trial,” Morris said. “You’d think we lost our trial, not won.”

And even though the water board included Morris in the permitting development process, he said, putting on this year’s show has proven to be the most difficult yet — as he attempts to comply with varying levels of regulatory requirements.

“I just don’t see the necessity to do a lot of the things that now we’re required to do,” he said. “It just doesn’t make any sense.”

It’s also costly, Morris said.

Sending a dive team to the bottom of the bay to check for pollutants will cost about $2,000, he said, on top of the combined $8,000 he paid for permits from the water board and the California Coastal Commission, not to mention the $40,000 cost of the fireworks themselves.

Big Bang also faces another challenge down the road: CERF recently filed an appeal against the court’s April ruling in Morris’s favor.

But, Morris said, he’s not planning to back down anytime soon.

“It brings the community together,” Morris said. “We take care of kids on the Westside with that money we raise, but nobody wants to look at that side of the equation.”

It’s unclear, meanwhile, whether Pyro Spectaculars will return to putting on coastal fireworks shows throughout LA County next year. The company didn’t address the future in its statement.

Water board staffers, though, said Pyro officials have agreed to meet to discuss their concerns about the permit’s requirements. The water board is confident, officials said, that Pyro will agree to the provisions before Fourth of July next year.

But even if Pyro decides not to apply for the new permit in the future, Johnsgard said, it won’t be the end of water-based fireworks in Southern California.

“Clearly,” Johnsgard said, “there’s other vendors that can and are willing to put on fireworks displays that comply with safety and environmental regulations.”

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​ Orange County Register 

Senior living: Dementia can take a toll on financial health

• July 3, 2023

By Sarah Boden, WESA,

KFF Health News

Angela Reynolds knew her mother’s memory was slipping, but she didn’t realize how bad things had gotten until she started to untangle her Mom’s finances: unpaid bills, unusual cash withdrawals and the discovery that, oddly, the mortgage on the family home had been refinanced at a higher interest rate.

Looking back, Reynolds realizes her mother was in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease: “By the time we caught on, it was too late.”

Reynolds and her mother are among a large group of Americans grappling with the financial consequences of cognitive decline.

A growing body of research shows money problems are a possible warning sign — rather than only a product — of certain neurological disorders. This includes a 2020 study from Johns Hopkins University of more than 81,000 Medicare beneficiaries that found people with Alzheimer’s and related dementias became more likely to miss bill payments up to six years before a formal diagnosis.

The reach of these conditions is enormous. One recent study found nearly 10% of people over age 65 have dementia; more than twice as many are living with mild cognitive impairment.

Missing the signs of declining cognition

One weekday in the spring of 2018, Reynolds sat next to her 77-year-old mother, Jonnie Lewis-Thorpe, in a courtroom in downtown New Haven, Connecticut. She listened in discomfort as strangers revealed intimate details of their own finances in a room full of people waiting their turn to come before the judge.

Then it hit her: “Wait a second. We’re going to have to go up there, and someone’s going to be listening to us.”

That’s because the family home was in foreclosure.

The daughter hoped if she explained to the judge that her mother had Alzheimer’s disease, which had caused a series of financial missteps, she could stop the seizure of the property.

Reynolds can’t pinpoint when Alzheimer’s crept into her mother’s life. A widow, Lewis-Thorpe had lived alone for several years and had made arrangements for her aging, including naming Reynolds her power-of-attorney agent. But Reynolds lived a 450-mile drive away from New Haven, in Pittsburgh, and wasn’t there to see her Mom’s incremental decline.

It wasn’t until Reynolds began reviewing her mother’s bank statements that she realized Lewis-Thorpe — once a hospital administrator — had long been in the grip of the disease.

Financial problems are a common reason family members bring their loved ones to the office of Robin Hilsabeck, a neuropsychologist at the University of Texas at Austin Dell Medical School who specializes in cognitive issues.

“The brain is really a network, and there are certain parts of the brain that are more involved with certain functions,” Hilsabeck said. “You can have a failure in something like financial abilities for lots of reasons caused by different parts of the brain.”

Some of the reasons are due to normal aging, as Reynolds had assumed about her mother. But when a person’s cognition begins to decline, the problems can grow exponentially.

Dementia’s causes — and sometimes ruthless impact

Dementia is a syndrome involving the loss of cognitive abilities: The cause can be one of several neurological illnesses, like Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s, or brain damage from a stroke or head injury.

In most cases, an older adult’s dementia is progressive. The first signs are often memory slips and changes in high-level cognitive skills related to organization, impulse control and the ability to plan — all critical for money management. And because the causes of dementia vary, so do the financial woes it can create, Hilsabeck said.

With Alzheimer’s disease, for example, comes a progressive shrinking of the hippocampus. That’s the catalyst for memory loss that, early in the course of the disease, can cause a person to forget to pay their bills.

Lewy body dementia is marked by fluctuating cognition: A person veers from very sharp to extremely confused, often within short passages of time. Those with frontotemporal dementia can struggle with impulse control and problem-solving, which can lead to large, spontaneous purchases.

And people with vascular dementia often run into issues with planning, processing and judgment, making them easier to defraud.

“They answer the phone, and they talk to the scammers,” Hilsabeck said. “The alarm doesn’t go off in their head that this doesn’t make sense.”

For many people older than 65, mild cognitive impairment, or MCI, can be a precursor to dementia. But even people with MCI who don’t develop dementia are vulnerable.

“Financial decision-making is very challenging cognitively,” said Jason Karlawish, a specialist in geriatrics and memory care at the University of Pennsylvania’s Penn Memory Center. “If you have even mild cognitive impairment, you can make mistakes with finances, even though you’re otherwise doing generally OK in your daily life.”

Some mistakes are irreversible. Despite Reynolds’s best efforts on behalf of her mother, the bank foreclosed on the family home in the fall of 2018.

Property records show that Lewis-Thorpe and her husband bought the two-bedroom Cape Cod for $20,000 in 1966. Theirs was one of the first Black families in their New Haven neighborhood. Lewis-Thorpe had planned to pass this piece of generational wealth on to her daughters.

Instead, U.S. Bank now owns the property. A 2021 tax assessment lists its value as $203,900.

Financial protections are slow to come

Though she can’t prove it, Reynolds suspects someone had been financially exploiting her Mom. At the same time, she feels guilty for what happened to Lewis-Thorpe, who now lives with her.

“There’s always that part of me that’s going to say, ‘At what point did it turn,’” she said, “‘where I could have had a different outcome?’”

Karlawish often sees patients who are navigating financial disasters. What he doesn’t see are changes in banking practices or regulations that would mitigate the risks that come with aging and dementia.

“A thoughtful country would begin to say we’ve got to come up with the regulatory structures and business models that can work for all,” he said, “not just for the 30-year-old.”

But the risk-averse financial industry is hesitant to act — partly out of fear of getting sued by clients.

The 2018 Senior Safe Act, the most-recent major federal legislation to address elder wealth management, attempts to address this reticence. It gives immunity to financial institutions in civil and administrative proceedings stemming from employees reporting possible exploitation of a senior — provided the bank or investment firm has trained its staff to identify exploitative activity.

It’s a lackluster law, said Naomi Karp, an expert on aging and elder finances who spent eight years as a senior analyst at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s Office for Older Americans. That’s because the act makes training staffers optional and it lacks government oversight.

“There’s no federal agency that’s charged with covering it or setting standards for what that training has to look like,” Karp said. “There’s nothing in the statute about that.”

One corner of the financial industry that has made modest progress is the brokerage sector, which concerns the buying and selling of securities, such as stocks and bonds. Since 2018, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority — a nongovernmental organization that writes and enforces rules for brokerage firms — has required agents to make a reasonable effort to get clients to name a “trusted contact.”

A trusted contact is similar to the emergency contact health care providers request. They’re notified by a financial institution of concerning activity on a client’s account, then receive a basic explanation of the situation. Ron Long, a former head of Aging Client Services at Wells Fargo, gave the hypothetical of someone whose banking activity suddenly shows regular, unusual transfers to someone in Belarus. A trusted emergency contact could then be notified of that concerning activity.

But the trusted contact has no authority. The hope is that, once notified, the named relative or friend will talk to the account holder and prevent further harm. It’s a start, but a small one. The low-stakes effort is limited to the brokerage side of operations at Wells Fargo and most other large institutions.

The same protection is not extended to clients’ credit card, checking or savings accounts.

A financial industry reluctant to help

When she was at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Karp and her colleagues put out a set of recommendations for companies to better protect the wealth of seniors.

The 2016 report included proposals on employee training and changes to fraud detection systems to better detect warning signs, such as atypical ATM use and the addition of a new owner’s name to an existing checking account.

“We would have meetings repeatedly with some of the largest banks, and they gave a lot of lip service to these issues,” Karp said. “Change is very, very slow.”

Karp has seen some smaller community banks and credit unions take proactive steps to protect older customers — such as instituting comprehensive staff training and improvements to fraud detection software. But there’s a hesitancy throughout the industry to act more decisively, which seems to stem, in part, from fears about liability, she said. Banks are concerned they might get sued — or at least lose business — if they intervene when no financial abuse has occurred, or a customer’s transactions were benign.

Policy solutions that address financial vulnerability also present logistical challenges. Expanding something as straightforward as the use of trusted contacts isn’t like flipping a light switch, said Long, the former Wells Fargo executive.

“You have to solve all the technology issues,” Long said. “Where do you house it? How do you house it? How do you engage the customer to even consider it?”

Still, a trusted contact might have alerted Reynolds much sooner that her Mom was developing dementia and needed help.

“I fully believe that they noticed signs,” Reynolds said of her mother’s bank. “There are many withdrawals that came out of her account where we can’t account for the money.

“Like, I can see the withdrawals,” she added. “I can see the bills not getting paid. So where did the money go?”

This article is from a partnership that includes the Pittsburgh radion station WESA, NPR and KFF Health News.

KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.

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