The $11.8 billion mistake that led to Bed, Bath & Beyond’s demise
- April 26, 2023
Bed, Bath & Beyond made plenty of mistakes that led to this week’s bankruptcy filing. Among the most consequential was the $11.8 billion it has spent since 2004 to buy back its own shares.
The company’s repurchase program wasn’t unique. But for a cash-starved business that announced it would likely be forced to close all of its stores if it couldn’t find an 11th-hour savior to buy it, the money could have been better spent. Instead, it fueled a desperate and ultimately failed effort to support its stock price.
The $11.8 billion Bed, Bath & Beyond spent on its own stock since 2004 comes to more than twice the $5.2 billion in debt it had on its books in its most recent SEC filing, a debt load that proved crushing for the company. It left the company unable to buy the inventory required to create the sales it needed to reverse losses.
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“The company’s stewardship of their capital failed,” said Declan Gargan, retail director and credit analyst who follows Bed, Bath & Beyond for S&P Global Ratings.
Pressure from shareholders
Bed, Bath & Beyond grew particularly active share repurchases in July 2014, taking on $2 billion in debt to finance share buybacks, as it started to face pressure from activist shareholders to improve the stock’s performance.
The company had carried relatively little debt to that point, and it put Bed, Bath & Beyond on a path toward a debt load that ultimately proved unaffordable.
“We understand they have the equity shareholders to serve. Generally, we would prefer to use their cash flow to invest back in business,” said Sarah Wyeth, the lead credit analyst for the consumer and retail sectors for S&P. “Even M&A would be less risky than a straight share repurchase.”
Bed, Bath & Beyond was engaged in an active share repurchase program right up until February of 2022, spending $230 million on shares in an accelerated repurchase program over the course of three months. It spent an average of $16.04 on each share.
But its efforts to support the stock price did little to help. Its stock plunged 83% last year, and another 88% so far this year before it closed at 29 cents a share on the Friday before the bankruptcy filing.
A stock repurchase blitz
Bed, Bath & Beyond’s buyback programs are hardly unique. Chevron recently announced plans to repurchase $75 billion worth of its stock with windfall record profits that came from high oil prices.
Across Corporate America, share repurchases reached a record $936 billion, according to S&P Dow Jones Indices, up from $882 billion in 2021. Share repurchases are forecast to top $1 trillion this year.
And Bed, Bath & Beyond isn’t even the first retailer to spend billions of dollars repurchasing its own stock on its way to bankruptcy court. Sears Holdings, which owned the Sears and Kmart brands, repurchased $6 billion of its stock between 2005 and its 2018 bankruptcy filing.
Share repurchases are a way for companies to return cash to shareholders indirectly, without them having to pay taxes as they would on a stock dividend. The idea is that by reducing the number of shares outstanding, each remaining share of stock in the hands of investors becomes more valuable.
For example, if a company earns $100 million in a quarter, and it has 100 million shares outstanding, it earned $1 a share. If it repurchases 10 million of those shares, its earnings per share increases to $1.11, or 11%, even if its total profits don’t increase at all.
Companies can often face market pressure to do share repurchases, especially from activist shareholders. In fact the Bed, Bath & Beyond share repurchases were not enough to stop activist investors from pushing out top management of the company in 2019.
But share buybacks are also increasingly under fire. President Joe Biden, a frequent critic of share repurchases, included a 1% tax on share repurchases in the Inflation Reduction Act passed by Democrats in Congress last year.
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Orange County Register
Read MoreAbraham Verghese says ‘The Covenant of Water’ dips into his family’s past
- April 26, 2023
When asked to describe the south Indian state of Kerala, the word that springs to mind for Dr. Abraham Verghese is this: “Water – 44 rivers, countless streams and lagoons and hundreds of miles of waterways.” More than a decade after the publication of his previous novel, “Cutting for Stone,” these waterways are where Dr. Verghese, author and professor of medicine at Stanford University, has set his latest book “The Covenant of Water,” out May 2 from Grove Atlantic.
Water is the “defining element” of Kerala, Dr. Verghese says, which is why the central tragedy of “Covenant” is one of a family cursed by inexplicable drownings. The novel begins with the arranged marriage of the family’s matriarch, known as “Big Ammachy,” or “Big Mother,” who discovers something is very wrong with the family she’s just joined: They’ve been fighting a war with the waters of their homeland for generations.
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Geography is intentionally a character in Dr. Verghese’s books. Just as “Cutting for Stone” brought to life the Ethiopia he connected with as a child, “The Covenant of Water” takes the audience to the lush tropical landscape of Kerala, the land of his parents and grandparents.
It’s also the land of my own forebears, and where my father, uncles, aunts and cousins grew up. When I visit India on summer breaks and winter vacations, Kerala is a stop I make to see family still living at our ancestral home. Days go like this: Waking up in the tropical heat and humidity mitigated by ceiling fans in large, airy rooms; taking lazy morning and afternoon dips in the river meandering past the family house; feasting on stew and lacy pancakes called “appams”; playing card games or music outside at sunset; watching farmworkers, schoolchildren and fishermen steer “vallams,” or small wooden boats, home for the night. Every visit is a reminder of my privilege and a vital reconnection with where I come from.
Kerala is a state where education is prized and the literacy rate is, at around 94 percent, the highest in India. Politics lean left, labor unions are influential and communist parties have strong showings in elections. A well-covered topic in “Covenant” is Christianity, which has had a foothold in Kerala since St. Thomas, a disciple of Jesus, is said to have arrived there and founded several churches in the first century A.D.
A vast and epic telling of the generations who face the curse known as “The Condition,” Dr. Verghese’s latest work weaves history and medicine together to welcome readers to the home of his ancestors.
This interview has been edited for clarity.
Q. Was there a specific motivating factor for setting the book in Kerala?
When my mother was in her 70s, my niece, who was five at the time, asked her: What was it like when you were a five-year-old girl? At the time, my mother was living in Florida, and trying to figure out how to answer that question for this little girl born in America.
So she wrote it in longhand: a 100-page-plus manuscript – with illustrations, because she was very good at drawing – of familiar, somewhat exaggerated stories about our eccentric cousins and escapades and whatnot. It just reminded me how rich that geography and that culture is, and how the history of our Christian community is really quite unique and unknown to many readers.
Q. How did you go about researching that time period, the early 1900s in Kerala and in South India?
When I used to visit Kerala as a child, which would have been the late ‘50s, early ‘60s, it was pre-electricity. The evenings were all lit by lamplight and there was no indoor plumbing – everything was well water drawn in a little outhouse. Still, by any standards, my family were very well off compared to, you know, people working for them. They weren’t very rich, but they had someone cooking and someone helping with cleaning. And so, in a funny way, I had a glimpse into what life would have been like in the pre-electricity, pre-gas stove kind of days for my grandmother and great-grandmother.
The rest of it was a lot of research and a lot of conversations with my parents. My mother passed away in her 90s, and my dad’s still alive, and vibrant, at 96. I also had access to uncles, aunts – not that they were alive in that period, but they certainly have vivid memories of being alive in the time of British rule. India gaining independence is a very recent thing for them, it happened after they were in college. So I was tapping into that.
You might be able to appreciate this detail: I wanted to play up how readily we label people by their talents or professions in our culture. There’s “Artist Kurien” and “Engineer Babu,” and then people live up to those roles, you know?
Q. My father likes to say he learned to swim when his father threw him in the river at age three. My sister and I were taught to swim early as well (we had actual lessons!) It’s why the “family curse” of drowning felt so devastating, like an actual supernatural curse.
Yes, something like “The Condition” is so, so bizarre in a place where everybody learns to swim. It’s an example of something people could only describe as a family curse and never know what it was. As time goes on, it becomes clearer what “The Condition” is because you have medical advancements – better imaging and more refined autopsies and so on.
That was also part of why I picked that particular time period (1900-1977). Not only was the world going through cataclysmic changes in World Wars One and Two, not only was India going through cataclysmic changes that culminated in Independence, but it was a tremendous period of medical advancement.
It was actually quite easy to research medicine in these time periods, because we have very vivid records in journals and elsewhere describing different conditions. And sometimes you can look at them and think, “Oh, my God, how naive they were.” Then you realize that 100 years from now, people are going to look at the way we describe certain diseases and think, “Oh, my goodness, they were so backward.”
I think readers have an inherent interest in things medical to some degree, because what is medicine but life lived at its most extreme?
Q. You don’t shy away from discussing caste and the inherent unfairness of it through some of your characters.
Yeah, my desire to talk about caste was in part because of the tensions that I felt it created in our world. For example, the older generation would never have really questioned why things were how they were. Being born outside of Kerala, however, and being more exposed to the more worldly view of equality and the French idea of egalitarianism, it would chafe me to see, for instance, how some people, some servants, weren’t permitted to come inside the house. There are all these little rules that you quickly become aware of.
It’s in the very fact that we were Christians and so devout, and yet no one thought to convert the people working for us to Christianity. We left it to the Anglicans to come and do that. And even when they were converted, it didn’t erase any of the barriers. I always thought that was intriguing. I truly wanted to put myself in the shoes of people on both sides of that divide.
The funny thing is I look around America, and in some ways, it’s the same. Kids play together when they’re young, but as time goes on, one kid goes to private school, the other goes to the public school, and suddenly it’s different roads depending on what their parents’ income levels are. So it’s not as though we’re equal in America, far from it. Issues of income and race are really very, very similar to issues of caste. A book on this I found very insightful was Isabel Wilkerson’s “Caste.” That was a powerful book for me.
Q. Reading this book was deeply personal for me, since I’ve experienced so much of the Kerala you describe. How do you hope readers will respond to this glimpse into a place they might never have heard of before?
I’m hoping that readers enjoy looking at a world that might feel alien to them, and yet recognize the things about family, about relationships, that are universal.
I love the idea of introducing them to a world that they have no familiarity with. I hope that the book awakens their curiosity, maybe inspires them to travel there. More than that, I hope that they will identify with the characters, because I think the underlying lesson is that wherever you are, whatever nationality, the molecular units of a life are the same – family and relationships and marriages and lineage and privilege. It’s all the same thing.
Live Talks Los Angeles: Abraham Verghese and Aimee Liu discuss “The Covenant of Water”
When: 8 p.m. Wednesday, May 3
Where: William Turner Gallery, Bergamot Arts Station, 2525 Michigan Ave. #E-1, Santa Monica
Tickets/Information: https://livetalksla.org/events/abraham-verghese/
Orange County Register
Read MoreOrange County sending several contenders to CIF-SS diving finals in Riverside
- April 26, 2023
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The return of the CIF-SS swimming and diving championships to Riverside begins Wednesday with the divers taking to the 1- and 3-meter springboards.
The Division 2 and Division 3 finals will be held Wednesday at Riverside City College with Division 1 and 4 set for Thursday.
Orange County could open strongly. Fullerton’s Abigail Ekstrom, a senior bound for Penn State, is the top seed in girls Division 3 and the defending champion.
Junior Isabella Chen of Cypress is seeded second.
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On Thursday, Mater Dei senior Ella Roselli, an Indiana commit, is the top seed in Division 1 girls while Capistrano Valley Christian sophomore Grant Schneider is the No. 1 seed in Division 4 boys.
The swimming and diving finals were last held in Riverside in 2019.
The swimming championships are next week.
Orange County Register
Read MoreDevin Booker, Suns eliminate Clippers with Game 5 win
- April 26, 2023
By DAVID BRANDT AP Sports Writer
PHOENIX — Devin Booker unleashed a torrent of offense in the third quarter rarely seen in NBA playoff history, hitting shots from every corner of the gym.
The Phoenix Suns needed just about every one of them.
Booker scored 47 points, including 25 in a spectacular third quarter, to lead the Suns past the Clippers, 136-130, on Tuesday night and win the Western Conference first-round playoff series in five games.
“It was spiritual,” Suns forward Kevin Durant said of watching Booker’s third quarter. “I don’t scream too much in games as I get older, but when he hit that (3-pointer) at the top of the key, I felt that energy and I know everyone in the crowd felt it. We feed off his aggression.”
The Clippers didn’t go quietly, nearly coming back from a 20-point deficit early in the fourth, hitting four straight 3-pointers at one point to quickly close the gap.
The Clippers had multiple chances to tie in the final three minutes, but could never convert. Durant made a layup to push Phoenix’s lead to 134-130 and then made two free throws to put the Suns up six with 31.3 seconds left.
“I think it’s a good lesson for us moving forward,” Booker said. “Don’t play with your food. Finish out as strong as you can. Keep playing all the way until the whistle blows.”
Durant finished with 31 points while Deandre Ayton had 21 points and 11 rebounds. Booker shot 19 for 27 from the field, including 4 for 7 from 3-point range.
Durant’s final free throws capped a wild back-and-forth second half that saw the Clippers take a 71-61 lead early in the third.
But the Suns – led by Booker’s stellar shot-making – unleashed a powerful wave of offense, pouring in 50 points in the third quarter to take a 111-94 lead into the fourth. Booker made 10 of 11 shots in the rally, including three 3-pointers and a tomahawk fast-break dunk.
“When he’s going like that, we’re not calling any plays,” Suns coach Monty Williams said.
Said Clippers coach Tyronn Lue: “We couldn’t stop him. We had no answer for him. We tried to blitz him, we couldn’t blitz him.”
The flustered Clippers had no answer until it was too late. Norman Powell led the Clippers with 27 points while Mason Plumlee scored 20 off the bench.
It was a tough night for Russell Westbrook, who scored 14 points on 3-of-18 shooting and had a costly turnover in the final minute, dishing a pass to Terance Mann, who wasn’t expecting the ball. Westbrook also missed a contested layup with 2:19 left that could have tied the score.
Westbrook said he was proud of the team’s effort. He added eight rebounds and eight assists.
“We stayed with our principles and kept fighting,” the nine-time All-Star said. “Kept competing. Didn’t give up on the next play and gave ourselves a chance.”
The Suns will play the top-seeded Denver Nuggets in the second round. Game 1 is Saturday in Denver.
LEONARD’S ABSENCE
The series took a turn last week when the Clippers announced Leonard had a sprained right knee. The two-time NBA Finals MVP suffered the injury in Game 1 and played through it in Game 2, but his condition worsened.
He missed Games 3 and 4 and the Clippers lost both contests. They were already playing without eight-time All-Star Paul George, who also had a sprained right knee and last played on March 21.
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But the Clippers stayed competitive despite those absences and Tuesday night continued that trend.
“We just ran up against a really good opponent,” Lue said.
HISTORIC BOOK
Booker became just the third player in the past 25 seasons to score at least 25 points in a quarter during a playoff game. The others were Damian Lillard (25 in 2019) and Allen Iverson (26 in 2001).
TIP-INS
Clippers: Had a 26-16 rebounding advantage in the first half. … Backup guard Bones Hyland scored nine points in the first half.
Suns: Backup guard Cam Payne played for the first time in the playoffs. He missed the first four games with a sore back. He played three minutes but didn’t score. … Phoenix hosted its 77th consecutive sellout, combining regular season and postseason games.
Orange County Register
Read MoreOcean View baseball tops Katella in battle for Golden West League crown
- April 26, 2023
ANAHEIM — Ocean View pitcher Spencer Johnson struck out 10 and scattered five hits over seven innings as the Seahawks defeated Katella 9-2 in a key Golden West League game Tuesday at Katella High School.
The Seahawks (17-10, 9-1) clinched a share of first place with the victory and will win the league title outright if they defeat the Knights (13-11, 7-2) again when the teams play in the league finale Thursday at Ocean View.
Regardless of the outcome of Thursday’s game, Ocean View will advance to the CIF SS Division 2 playoffs as the league’s No. 1 team because the Seahawks and Knights are in different divisions.
Katella needs to defeat Ocean View to force a first-place tie and advance to the CIF SS Division 5 playoffs as the first-place team.
Segerstrom (8-13-2, 6-3) is also in the mix and can finish in a second-place tie with Katella with a victory over Westminster on Thursday and a Knights loss.
The Jaguars defeated the Lions 15-1 on Tuesday.
“He’s a third-year guy on varsity,” Ocean View coach Tanner VanMaanen said of Johnson, a senior and the returning Golden West League MVP. “He’s started multiple playoff games for us. He gives us a good quality start every, single time.”
Ocean View pitcher Spencer Johnson pitched a complete game and struck out 10 in a 9-2 victory over Katella on Tuesday, April 25. (Photo by Lou Ponsi)
The Seahawks picked up 13 hits with eight of nine starters reaching base at least once.
Seth Churchwell went 3 for 5 with two RBIs and Peyton Perry was 2 for 5 with two RBIs and a run to lead Ocean View.
Ocean View was leading 3-1 with one out in the fifth when Cole Kenrich delivered a two-run double and then scored on Evyn Lewis’ fly out to give the Seahawks a 6-1 lead.
“It’s great to see when a senior steps up and does something like that,” VanMaamen said of Kenrich’s pinch hit.
After Nicholas Moreno doubled home Daniel Viramontes in the first for Katella’s first run, Johnson retired seven batters in a row, including three by strikeout.
Johnson walked the leadoff hitter in the fourth before striking out three in a row in the inning.
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“A lot of good command and a lot of first pitch strikes,” Johnson said. “I was confident coming into this one.”
The left-hander gave up an RBI double to Viramontes with two outs in the seventh and then retired the next seven hitters to earn the complete-game victory.
Viramontes went 2 for 3 with an RBI and a run scored.
Orange County Register
Read MoreSwanson: Clippers can’t complete Game 5 rally against Suns, close frustrating season
- April 26, 2023
PHOENIX — Hope is a four-letter word.
Sticks, stones, and four little letters with the power to break hearts and wreck dreams and spoil the best-laid plans.
The fifth-seeded Clippers mounted a wild, willful comeback on Tuesday night but finished just short, 136-130, against the fourth-seeded Phoenix Suns in Game 5 at the Footprint Center.
That wrapped up a valiant, undermanned effort in the best-of-seven Western Conference first-round playoff series that was reminiscent of scrappy efforts of years past. It also ended probably the most frustrating season in Clippers’ history – leaving them 0-4 since Kawhi Leonard and Paul George joined the team.
The Clippers, you remember, raised hopes precariously on July 5, 2019, the night the news that All-Stars Kawhi Leonard and Paul George were teaming up in L.A. It turned a historically downtrodden franchise into something previously unimaginable: A bona fide championship contender. The odds-on favorite, in fact.
But for all the excitement surrounding that announcement – for all the hope – there remained a streak of hard-boiled trepidation running through a fan base conditioned by nearly 50 years of failure and discord: “There’s really no reason for Clippers fans to think this is going to work out the way it should,” longtime Clippers devotee Matt Johnson told me a couple of days after the deal got done, a prescient sentiment shared by other fans too.
Four years – a presidential term – in, and there’s been no joint NBA Finals appearance for Leonard (No. 2) and George (No. 13).
Four years, a whole high school career, and only one Western Conference finals appearance.
Four years, an entire Olympic cycle, that will be remembered for Leonard’s torn anterior cruciate ligament, for George’s sprained UCL in his elbow, for Leonard’s on-off routine in back-to-back sets of games, for George’s hamstring issues. …
Year 4 started with the greatest expectations yet, Leonard and George both professing to be healthy, ready to lead their deepest supporting cast so far.
It ended Tuesday night in the desert with Leonard, the five-time All-Star and two-time NBA Finals MVP, and George, an eight-time All-Star, on the bench, nursing a pair of right knee sprains, the billboards around L.A. also proving prescient: “One of a kind, but we’ve got two!”
Without them, the Suns’ 50-24 third-quarter explosion served as the buffer to boost them into the second round for a showdown with the top-seeded Denver Nuggets, despite the Clippers’ desperate 36-25 fourth-quarter surge.
It’s wrong, it is, to feel any sort of way but bummed about injuries – though not about the Clippers’ bedside manner, the organization’s unsteady drip-drip-drip of painful news. Just tell your long-suffering fans: Is the patient going to make it back soon or what? By season’s end, or not!?
It’s not wrong to lament what coulda been. This season, the Clippers were 24-14 when Leonard and George both played. They were 3-9 when neither did – including 0-3 in three hard-fought postseason games, following Leonard’s surprise scratch hours before Game 3.
Said coach Tyronn Lue postgame: “The encouraging thing, with PG and Kawhi healthy, we haven’t lost a series yet.”
That left Russell Westbrook – in a plot twist no one could have seen coming to start the season, when he was still a Laker and the Clippers’ roster seemed impeccably set – sparking a short-handed Clippers contingent against a star-studded Suns squad that proved too much.
On Tuesday, the Clippers built a nine-point halftime lead, lost it and then clawed with all their might to save their season in the final few minutes, cutting a 20-point lead to 132-130 with 1:02 to play and missing several chances to tie the score.
So what now? How are the Clippers ever going to get over the hump?
Norman Powell, a champion with Leonard in Toronto, expects it will happen eventually — if the Clippers can stay healthy.
“In those teams when we (could finally) break through, we had a full healthy team,” he said. “We could figure out what happened this series, who do we need to bring in, what improvements we need to make… This group, even before I got here, haven’t had that togetherness and health to make a deep run and see what happens.”
As it stands, Leonard and George, the Clippers’ reliably unreliable top-tier talents, are signed for at least another season, with player options for 2024-25 – when Intuit Dome opens in Inglewood. They’re owed $94 million apiece in that span.
And the Clippers will continue paying Oklahoma City for trading them George, a bill that still includes three first-round draft picks and another possible first-round pick swap – and the ignominy of however many points former Clippers phenom Shai Gilgeous-Alexander drops on them going forward.
It’s hard to imagine that trading either of their injury-prone stars now would return players of commensurate skill sets or abilities – save for the crucial one: availability.
But rebuilding? In a new building? Seems unlikely.
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On Tuesday morning, before the Clippers’ final shootaround of the season, George said he thinks the 213 Era still has legs. He talked about the team’s future more like a marathon than a dash, the smooth-operating wing professing patience shared by few of the fans who let themselves hope four years ago, whether a lot or a little.
“I think I got a lot of good years in me,” George said. “I know Kawhi thinks he’s got a lot of good years in him. I mean, I’m not going to put any pressure on that anytime soon. The only thing I can do is continue to just work on my game, work on myself, and just try to be available as much as possible.”
Forgive Clippers fans if they don’t hold their breath, hoping.
As Johnson, who once penned a song about his Clipper fandom under the moniker Mattafact, rapped: “You think you got it bad / your team is making you sad / I’m a Clipper fan / sadness is all that I’ve ever had.”
Orange County Register
Read MoreYorba Linda baseball wins North Hills League title for the first time
- April 26, 2023
YORBA LINDA — Yorba Linda’s baseball team put together a six-run rally Tuesday in the fifth inning to defeat Brea Olinda 7-3 and clinch the North Hills League title at Yorba Linda High.
It is the first time the Mustangs (13-11-1 overall, 6-2 in league) have won the North Hills League crown.
“Brea is a heck of a team,” Yorba Linda coach Matt Case said. “They’re resilient and they fight back. They’re always our nemesis. They battle and battle, but these guys showed some character today and just fought back and fought hard. We got down 3-1 and it didn’t stop them. We had that big inning and I’m just so proud of them.”
For the first time in school history…WE ARE THE NORTH HILLS LEAGUE CHAMPIONS!!! #stangsarerollin
@YLHSathletics @ocvarsity @MAlvarez02 pic.twitter.com/XoDo1yLXSB
— Yorba Linda Baseball (@YL_Baseball) April 26, 2023
As for Brea Olinda (12-13-2, 4-4), it still has a chance to finish second and earn a guaranteed spot in the CIF-SS playoffs. They need to defeat Yorba Linda on Thursday or need Esperanza to lose to Canyon that day.
If Brea Olinda loses Thursday and Esperanza wins, the Aztecs will take second place in league.
Yorba Linda took the first lead of the game in the second inning with an RBI single from Jacob Talbott.
The Wildcats tied the game in the third inning when a balk was called on an attempted pick-off throw by Yorba Linda pitcher JJ Conrad. That allowed Christian Altamirano to score from third base.
Postgame interview with Yorba Linda coach Mike Case as the Mustangs win their first ever league title!@ocvarsity @YLHSathletics @Ylhs_Baseball @ylhigh pic.twitter.com/tLTSolGjI9
— Manny Alvarez (@MAlvarez02) April 26, 2023
Brea Olinda added a run in each of the next two innings, thanks to RBI doubles from Tanner Lo and Dustin Robinson, to make it 3-1.
The Mustangs took control in the bottom of the fifth inning thanks to a six-run inning where they sent 11 batters to the plate.
Yorba Linda scored a run on an RBI single from Jackson Magni that sent Josh Garza home to make it 3-2.
The Mustangs loaded the bases with one-out for Garrett Allen. He hit a fly ball that was dropped in the outfield and a run scored to make it 3-3.
Talbott cleared the bases with a double to give Yorba Linda a 6-3 lead.
Yorba Linda’s Jacob Talbott went went 2 for 3 with four RBIs in a 7-3 victory over Brea Olinda that clinched the North Hills League title Tuesday. (Photo by Manny Alvarez)
“I had to do something for the team,” Talbott said. “Bases loaded, had to come up and take a deep breath and just do my job.”
Talbott eventually scored on an RBI single from Raymond Kim.
The big inning was all Conrad needed.
He threw six innings, struck out nine, walked one and gave up three runs to get the win.
“It’s great having guys like that and having my back,” Conrad said. “They gave me great run support. It wasn’t my best start, I gave up a couple runs, but they picked me up today and got it done. I just go out there and do what’s best for my team.”
Yorba Linda’s JJ Conrad pitched six innings, struck out nine and gave up three runs in a victory over Brea Olinda 7-3 that clinched the North Hills League title. (Photo by Manny Alvarez)
Talbott went 2 for 3 with four RBIs and a double, while Garza, Magni and Jayden Flaig each went 2 for 4.
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For the Wildcats, Lo went 2 for 3 with an RBI double and Sam Dunbar went 2 for 3.
Nicco Rodriguez threw 4 1/3 innings for Brea Olinda.
“We’re just going to try to play hard,” Brea Olinda coach Rich Pohle said of Thursday’s game. “That’s all we can do. We had the hammer and we let it slip. We just have to play our best game, and hopefully Esperanza loses on Thursday.”
Orange County Register
Read MoreFormer OC Sheriff’s deputy accused of showing teens obscene video gets diversion program instead of jail
- April 26, 2023
A former Orange County sheriff’s deputy accused of showing teens an obscene video at Trabuco Hills High School in Mission Viejo was granted a request Tuesday to have his case diverted to a court-ordered program that allows him to avoid any jail time and petition to have the charge dismissed.
Former Deputy Justin Ramirez was charged with distributing or exhibiting pornography to a minor, according to court records. Ramirez, who was a school resource officer at the time, resigned from his position.
The court-initiated misdemeanor diversion program allows for defendants to perform community service or take a course and then after completing it petition to have the case dismissed.
Ramirez is accused of showing pornography to a teenage girl on Sept. 2.
The alleged victim’s attorney, Michael Guisti, filed a claim, which is a necessary precursor to a lawsuit, with the county last month.
Ramirez was not assigned to Trabuco Hills High School, but was in his patrol vehicle in the school’s parking lot near the lunch tables when he was showing teens “pornography that depicted sexual and violent acts including one of the sexual participants being stabbed to death,” according to the claim.
Two other students asked the alleged victim and two other girls if they wanted to see some “bad videos a cop was showing in his car,” according to the claim.
The teen was “shocked and horrified at what she saw,” according to the claim.
When the girl, who was 14 at the time, got home she told her mother, who “was struck with fear, anger and extreme emotional distress,” according to the claim.
The mother called authorities and asked that the deputy not respond to the call, according to the claim. But Ramirez was sent on Sept. 5 with another deputy to respond to the complaint, according to the claim.
The woman “reported the incident to Ramirez and relayed to Ramirez all the details of her personal life, including the fact that she and (her daughter) lived alone in their home,” according to the claim.
“On Sept. 13, 2022, an Orange County sheriff’s captain and an assistant sheriff came to (the woman’s) home and told her that Ramirez was not only the deputy who came to her home, but he was also the same deputy who had shown the explicit pornography to (the teen) and the other minors,” according to the claim.
“Later that same day, Sheriff (Don) Barnes personally called (the mother) and apologized to her for what happened. Sheriff Barnes assured her that Ramirez was not on active duty.”
The mother was informed that Ramirez’s gun and badge had been taken from him, according to the claim.
The mother became more frightened when she learned Ramirez was a defendant in a federal lawsuit that was settled that alleged he was involved in a violent struggle with a suspect who died, according to the claim.
“This pervert is targeting minors and showing them pornography that is both sexual and violent in nature,” the victim’s mother said in a statement released by Guisti.
“I want him off the street,” she added. “He was in a position of trust so that he could protect people in Orange County. But he abused his power and authority in the worst possible way. No child should ever see what this sheriff’s deputy showed my daughter.”
According to the Orange County District Attorney’s Office, the video showed a woman being stabbed to death and a video exhibiting “graphic drug use.”
Ramirez was a defendant in a federal wrongful death lawsuit stemming from the in-custody death of Chong Tok “Richard” Rha in La Mirada in 2019. A $1.5 million settlement with the man’s family was approved by the Orange County Board of Supervisors in October 2021.
Prosecutors cleared Ramirez and Deputy Laurie Schwartz of any criminal conduct in the arrest of Rha. The two were in a violent struggle with Rha as they tried to take him into custody on July 15, 2019.
An autopsy showed Rha had amphetamine, methamphetamine and marijuana in his system. The cause of death was considered accidental and “consistent with cardiac arrhythmia associated with a physical altercation,” according to a report from the District Attorney’s Office.
The doctor who performed the autopsy “concluded that Rha’s cause of death was acute exacerbation of chronic methamphetamine use, and noted as other conditions the struggle with law enforcement and the use of Taser, as well as eosinophilic pneumonia,” according to prosecutors.
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Orange County Register
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