Lakers focused on containing Ja Morant in first-round playoff series

• April 14, 2023

EL SEGUNDO — The question was direct and to the point, and D’Angelo Russell wanted no part of it. He said he didn’t wish to reply to a query about the challenges the Lakers might face from Memphis Grizzlies backcourt counterpart Ja Morant in their first-round Western Conference playoff series.

“I’d rather, honestly, talk about us,” Russell said before the Lakers departed Friday for Memphis. “Honestly. I’m sure everybody is talking about them. I don’t want to give you (reporters) any headlines.”

OK, fair enough.

Next question.

So, how about this: What do you guys need to do to split the first two games?

“Contain Ja Morant,” Russell deadpanned.

Funny, man.

When the laughter died down, Russell grew serious again.

“Nah, I think they’re a tough team all the way around,” Russell said. “So, I don’t really want to worry about too much, put all our eggs in one thing because they can capitalize from other areas, too. They’re a well-rounded team. Simple as that.”

True enough.

Morant is, as Lakers superstar LeBron James so aptly put it the other day, “the head of the snake.” Morant averaged a team-leading 26.2 points to go with 5.9 rebounds and 8.1 assists during the regular season, leading the Grizzlies to a second consecutive Southwest Division championship.

Morant, 23, has had his share of off-the-court issues, drawing an eight-game suspension from the NBA after he was captured on video waving a gun around during a visit to a strip club in Denver. On the court, he’s the face of a talented young team looking to make a breakthrough in the playoffs.

The Lakers’ defensive plan, like every other team in the league, is to slow the Grizzlies and make them play a half-court game. Allowing them to run, with Morant directing the attack, is not a winning formula. Memphis ranked 22nd in half-court points and third in transition scoring.

“It’s huge, man,” Lakers coach Darvin Ham said. “Ja gets a lot of that attention, but it’s all of them. They’ve got multiple guys that can start the break with a couple, three dribbles. Some of the guys can take it all the way. But transition defense is going to be a huge key defensively in us trying to get past this team.”

When it comes to Morant, the Lakers are likely to play defense by committee. Certainly, Ham could put Russell on Morant. Or he could go with Dennis Schröder. Or maybe Jarred Vanderbilt could get the assignment.

“Well, it’ll be a lot of people,” Ham promised.

Is there a detailed defensive plan that Ham would share?

“Just make Ja see bodies, you know what I mean?” he said. “Without giving up too much. That’s any NBA game, for that matter. And now, with the stakes being even higher. What he likes to do is live in the paint. Attacking downhill repeatedly, constantly, with force. We’re gonna have our hands full.

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“Our job has to be to not let them get inside of our defense continuously.”

WHAT’S YOUR HURRY?

The Lakers departed Friday for Memphis in order to get acclimated, planning to practice Saturday in preparation for Game 1 on Sunday. They could have stayed home to practice Saturday and traveled later in the day, but since Game 1 starts at noon (PT), they wanted to arrive early.

“I like to get there early, get acclimated to the city and just that whole new environment, and kind of get guys away from their home situations, just to lock in and get a clear mind and I think the earlier we get there the better,” Vanderbilt said. “We need to …  just get familiar with that whole atmosphere, that whole city.”

SCHRÖDER UPDATE

Ham said everyone on the roster but Schröder practiced when the Lakers returned to the court Friday, after two days of rest after their play-in tournament victory over the Minnesota Timberwolves on Tuesday night. Ham said it was just precautionary after Schröder tweaked his foot during the game.

​ Orange County Register 

California condors killed by avian flu for first time, increasing risk to famed species

• April 14, 2023

A new and growing threat is facing America’s largest bird, the California condor, a famed species that has been slowly recovering from the brink of extinction.

A highly contagious strain of avian influenza has killed at least 18 of the massive birds around the Grand Canyon in Arizona over the past month. And now California biologists are scrambling to address what could be a catastrophic setback if condors in Big Sur and other parts of the state become infected.

“The disease has moved so quickly, and a vaccine development has not,” said Kelly Sorenson, executive director of the Ventana Wildlife Society, a non-profit group that has released condors into the wilds around Big Sur and San Simeon since 1997. “We are in a very tough spot.”

“We are preparing for a worst-case scenario,” he added. “It has the potential to be devastating to the population.”

As of Tuesday, officials have recorded 363 cases of all types of wild birds in California being infected by avian influenza — more than in any other state except Minnesota and Florida, which had 566 and 415.

In California, the disease has also killed bald eagles and golden eagles, turkey vultures, ducks, geese, ravens, gulls, sanderlings, grebes and other birds and has shown up in most Bay Area counties. So far, no condors have been found infected in the Golden State. Avian influenza had not been known to kill condors until the first bird in the Grand Canyon died on March 20.

Embed from Getty Images

If the disease spreads widely across California, scientists say they could begin capturing wild condors to protect them until a vaccine is developed.

“That’s not really a great option,” Sorenson said. “It’s not something they would enjoy, to put it lightly. But it’s better than losing a large number of birds. We are trying to prepare for all scenarios.”

Sorenson’s organization this week purchased 10 large steel quarantine pens, each 12 feet long, so they can care for condors, whose wingspans can stretch 9 feet.

The pens are located on land donated by the Monterey County SPCA along Highway 68 between Salinas and Monterey.

Condors once ranged from British Columbia to Mexico. But because of habitat loss, hunting and lead poisoning, the majestic birds reached a low of just 22 nationwide by the early 1980s.

In a desperate gamble to stave off extinction, federal biologists captured all the remaining wild condors in 1987 and began breeding them in the Los Angeles Zoo, San Diego Zoo and other facilities. The birds’ offspring have been gradually released back to the wild in Big Sur, near the Grand Canyon, at Pinnacles National Park, in Kern County, in Baja, Mexico, and most recently near Redwood National Park. The first condors in modern times to be born in the wild hatched in 2007, and today there are 561 California condors, with 347 in the wild.

According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, on March 9, employees of the Peregrine Fund, a non-profit group that manages the flock of 116 wild condors that fly in the Grand Canyon and parts of Utah, saw a female condor that appeared to be sick.

They thought it had lead poisoning, a common cause of death among condors who eat deer and other animals that have been shot by hunters and ranchers, ingesting bullet fragments.

On March 20, they found the bird dead below her nest. Tests confirmed the animal died from Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza, a type of “bird flu” that has killed millions of chickens and wild birds across the world.

As of Wednesday, 18 condors from the Grand Canyon area have died, with 6 confirmed from the disease and the other 12 suspected to have died from it. Another five are in veterinary care and undergoing testing for the disease, which veterinarians and biologists call “HPAI.”

The 18 deaths amount to nearly 1 in 6 condors in the Arizona-Utah population and is more than the total number of wild condors that died in each of the past four years from lead poisoning in all locations across Western North America where they have been released.

Scientists think the condors were exposed through contact with wild birds, potentially birds migrating from South America.

The disease’s particular strain, known as H5N1, is considered low risk as a human health concern, according to the Centers for Disease Control. But it is highly contagious in wildlife and can spread quickly by bird-to-bird contact and contamination from birds’ fecal material. The virus can also spread from exposed clothing, shoes and vehicles.

“It’s scary,” said Ashleigh Blackford, California condor coordinator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. “This is a program where people have invested a lot of time in this recovery effort. This is a monumental blow in a short amount of time. You can go backward so quickly.”

A California condor basks in the Big Sur sunshine, Friday, Nov. 18, 2022, at the Ventana Wildlife Society’s condor sanctuary. (Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group)

Blackford said scientists are still learning about the disease, how it spreads and how to care for condors who might be exposed.

“This is like the first two weeks when COVID first came out,” she said. “Things are happening rapidly. We don’t have enough data, but we are collecting it rapidly.”

Biologists who deal with condors have been wearing protective coveralls, washing their shoes and taking steps such as not leaving out dead animals for them to feed on so they don’t congregate.

The Central California population of 94 wild condors is still recovering from the Dolan Fire in Big Sur in 2020, which killed 12 of the endangered birds.

It was unclear Thursday, however, what steps Pinnacles National Park in San Benito County is taking to prepare for the spread of the disease in its flock of 29 condors. Park officials referred calls to the National Park Service media office in Denver, and spokesman Naaman Horn said he would not make park scientists available for interviews Thursday, saying all national parks needed to have a coordinated message to the public.

Sorenson expressed concern about the threat in California. “Lead poisoning has been the number one threat to the recovery of the species,” he said. “But this is quite worrisome because condors are highly social, and this disease is very contagious.”

​ Orange County Register 

Suspect and Cash App founder Bob Lee appear to have argued before the murder, documents show

• April 14, 2023

Nima Momeni, the man accused of killing Cash App founder Bob Lee appears to have gotten into an argument with Lee before his death, according to documents released by the San Francisco District Attorney’s office.

A message from Momeni’s sister to Lee from sometime that evening showed the sister checking in on Lee after the disagreement. The text message, per the documents from the district attorney’s office, stated: “Just wanted to make sure your doing ok Cause I know nima came wayyyyyy down hard on you And thank you for being such a classy man handling it with class.”

The motion-to-detain documents also cite a witness interviewed by police and security camera footage, offering a detailed timeline of where Lee and Momeni were leading up to Lee’s death.

Bob Lee (Photo courtesy of Mobile Coin)

A witness, described as a close friend of Lee’s, said he went over to an apartment after being invited by Lee on April 3, where Lee was drinking with a woman later identified as Momeni’s sister, the document states.

The witness told police the woman was married but her “relationship was possibly in jeopardy,” and the witness was unsure if the woman and Lee had an intimate relationship, according to the document. Lee later told the witness that they were going to go to his hotel room, where he invited the woman but she had declined.

While at the hotel room, the witness said Lee was having a conversation with Momeni, which involved Momeni saying he was picking up his sister from the apartment Lee and the witness were previously at, according the document. Momeni asked Lee “whether his sister was doing drugs or anything inappropriate,” the document states. Lee had told Momeni nothing inappropriate happened, according to the document.

Lee was stabbed to death in the Rincon Hill neighborhood of San Francisco early in the morning of April 4. An autopsy found Lee was “stabbed three separate times, once in the hip and twice in the chest,” according to the documents. One of the stab wounds “directly penetrated” Lee’s heart, causing his death.

Momeni appeared in a San Francisco court earlier Friday for an arraignment that came one day after police announced his arrest. Momeni’s arraignment is set to continue on April 25. He will be held without bail in the meantime.

A timeline of events leading up to Lee’s death

After the conversation with Momeni, Lee and the witness went to Lee’s apartment until about 12:30 a.m. on April 4, when Lee left, the document says.

Surveillance footage shows Momeni arriving at his sister’s apartment building in a white BMW around 8:30 p.m. on April 3, and later shows Lee entering the building around 12:39 a.m. on April 4. A little after 2 a.m., security footage shows Lee and Momeni entering an elevator together and getting into Momeni’s BMW. Additional footage from the area shows the two driving around in the car together.

Video then shows the BMW drive to a “dark and secluded area” on Main Street, just out of view for the video to see the interaction between the two men, per the document.

Eventually the two subjects, who are unidentifiable by their faces but seem to be wearing the same clothing, appear back in frame. After about five minutes, the subject wearing a white colored top, consistent with what Momeni appeared to be wearing, “suddenly move(s) toward the other subject,” the document says. The two subjects then separate.

The subject in dark-colored clothing, who authorities believe to be Lee, walks northbound, while the subject in the light-colored clothing walks south and stops along a fence, where a knife was ultimately recovered, the document says. The BMW then “leaves at a high rate of speed,” the document states.

Lee’s family calls for justice

When Momeni entered the courtroom on Friday, members of his family sitting in the front row held up heart signs with their hands. Momeni, who was not cuffed, acknowledged them and smiled back.

In announcing his arrest Thursday, law enforcement described Momeni as a 38-year-old man from Emeryville, California and said Momeni and Lee knew one another, but didn’t provide further details about their connection. California Secretary of State Records indicate that Momeni has been the owner of an IT business.

Many in the tech world and beyond responded to news of Lee’s death with an outpouring of shock and grief.

Lee’s family issued a statement Thursday thanking the San Francisco Police Department “for bringing his killer to Justice” after Momeni’s arrest.

“Our next steps will be to work with the District Attorney’s office to ensure that this person is not allowed to hurt anyone else or walk free,” the statement said.

In the statement, the family described Lee’s upbringing, his career, and the impact of the technology he helped create.

“Every day around the world, people interact with technology that Bob helped create. Bob will live on through these interactions and his dreams of improving all of our lives,” the statement reads.

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​ Orange County Register 

Supreme Court temporarily blocks restrictions on abortion pill

• April 14, 2023

By MARK SHERMAN and JESSICA GRESKO

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court said Friday it was temporarily keeping in place federal rules for use of an abortion drug, while it takes time to more fully consider the issues raised in a court challenge.

In an order signed by Justice Samuel Alito, the court asked both sides to weigh in by Tuesday over whether lower court rulings restricting the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of the drug, mifepristone, should be allowed to take effect while the case works its way through federal courts.

The order expires late Wednesday, suggesting the court will decide that issue by then.

The justices are being asked at this point only to determine what parts of an April 7 ruling by U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk in Texas, as modified by an appellate ruling Wednesday, can be in force while the case continues.

The court finds itself immersed in a new fight involving abortion less than a year after conservative justices reversed Roe v. Wade and allowed more than a dozen states to effectively ban abortion outright.

President Joe Biden’s administration and New York-based Danco Laboratories, the maker of the pill, asked the justices to intervene.

The type of order issued by the court Friday, an administrative stay, ordinarily is not an indication of what the justices will do going forward. It was signed by Alito because he handles emergency filings from Texas. Alito also is the author of last year’s opinion overturning Roe v. Wade.

The Justice Department and Danco both warned of “regulatory chaos” and harm to women if the high court doesn’t block the lower-court rulings that had the effect of tightening FDA rules under which the drug, mifepristone, can be prescribed and dispensed.

The new limits would have taken effect Saturday if the court hadn’t acted.

“This application concerns unprecedented lower court orders countermanding FDA’s scientific judgment and unleashing regulatory chaos by suspending the existing FDA-approved conditions of use for mifepristone,” Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar, the Biden administration’s top Supreme Court lawyer, wrote Friday, less than two days after the appellate ruling.

A lawyer for the anti-abortion doctors and medical organizations suing over mifepristone said the justices should reject the drugmaker’s and the administration’s pleas and allow the appeals court-ordered changes to take effect.

The Biden administration and Danco now want a more lasting order that would keep the current rules in place as long as the legal fight over mifepristone continues. As a fallback, they asked the court to take up the issue, hear arguments and decide by early summer a legal challenge to mifepristone that anti-abortion doctors and medical organizations filed last year.

The court rarely acts so quickly to grant full review of cases before at least one appeals court has thoroughly examined the legal issues involved.

A ruling from the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals late Wednesday would prevent the pill, used in the most common abortion method, from being mailed or prescribed without an in-person visit to a doctor. It also would withdraw the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of mifepristone for use beyond the seventh week of pregnancy. The FDA says it’s safe through 10 weeks.

Still, the appeals court did not entirely withdraw FDA approval of mifepristone while the fight over it continues. The 5th circuit narrowed an April 7 ruling by U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, whose far-reaching and virtually unprecedented order would have blocked FDA approval of the pill. He gave the administration a week to appeal.

“To the government’s knowledge, this is the first time any court has abrogated FDA’s conditions on a drug’s approval based on a disagreement with the agency’s judgment about safety — much less done so after those conditions have been in effect for years,” Prelogar wrote.

Erin Hawley, a lawyer for the challengers, said in a statement that the FDA has put politics ahead of health concerns in its actions on medication abortion.

“The 5th Circuit rightly required the agency to prioritize women’s health by restoring critical safeguards, and we’ll urge the Supreme Court to keep that accountability in place,” said Hawley, a senior counsel with Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative legal group that also argued to overturn Roe v. Wade.

Mifepristone was approved by the FDA more than two decades ago and is used in combination with a second drug, misoprostol.

Adding to the uncertainty, a separate federal judge in Washington on Thursday clarified his own order from last week to make clear that the FDA is not to do anything that might block mifepristone’s availability in 17 Democrat-led states suing to keep it on the market.

It’s unclear how the FDA can comply with court orders in both cases, a situation that Prelogar described Friday as untenable.

Use of medication abortion jumped significantly after the FDA’s 2016 rule expansion, according to data gathered by the Guttmacher Institute, a research group that supports abortion rights. In 2017, medication abortion accounted for 39% percent of abortions, but by 2020 it had increased to become the most common method, accounting for 53% of all abortions.

Experts have said the use of medication abortion has increased since the court overturned Roe.

When the drug was initially approved, the FDA limited its use to up to seven weeks of pregnancy. It also required three in-person office visits: the first to administer mifepristone, the next to administer the second drug, misoprostol, and the third to address any complications. It also required a doctor’s supervision and a reporting system for any serious consequences of the drug.

If the appeals court’s action stands, those would again be the terms under which mifepristone could be dispensed for now.

At the core of the Texas lawsuit is the allegation that the FDA’s initial approval of mifepristone was flawed because the agency did not adequately review safety risks.

Mifepristone has been used by millions of women over the past 23 years. While less drastic than completely overturning the drug’s approval, the latest ruling still represents a stark challenge to the FDA’s authority overseeing how prescription drugs are used in the U.S. The ruling late Wednesday overturned multiple decisions made by FDA regulators after years of scientific review.

Common side effects with mifepristone include cramping, bleeding, nausea, headache and diarrhea. In rare cases, women can experience excess bleeding that requires surgery to stop.

Still, in loosening restrictions on mifepristone, FDA regulators cited “exceedingly low rates of serious adverse events.”

More than 5.6 million women in the U.S. had used the drug as of June 2022, according to the FDA. In that period, the agency received 4,200 reports of complications in women, or less than one tenth of 1% of women who took the drug.

Associated Press writers Paul Weber in Austin, Texas, and Lindsay Whitehurst in Washington contributed to this report.

​ Orange County Register 

Political consultant Melahat Rafiei pleads guilty to attempted wire fraud

• April 14, 2023

A former executive director of the Democratic Party of Orange County pleaded guilty today to a felony charge for attempting to defraud one of her political consultancy firm’s clients.

Melahat Rafiei, 45, of Anaheim, entered her plea to attempted wire fraud in Los Angeles federal court. Sentencing was set for Oct. 13, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

“Ms. Rafiei appeared in court today and per her plea agreement entered her plea before the judge. She is proud that the work she has done was instrumental in bringing down the Anaheim cabal,” said Alaleh Kamran, Rafiei’s attorney. “It is worth noting that her plea was not to bribery charges, but to attempted wire fraud.”

Rafiei, the principal and founder of Progressive Solutions Consulting, a Long Beach-based political consulting firm, admitted that she agreed to bribe two members of the Irvine City Council — both on cannabis-related matters, court papers show.

The two councilmembers were not named in the plea agreement, nor were any allegations against any councilmembers documented in the agreement. No current councilmembers were serving at that time.

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Melahat Rafiei, who was central to the FBI’s Anaheim investigation, takes plea deal
Political consultant Melahat Rafiei agrees to plead guilty to attempted wire fraud
Former Irvine official says she’s working with FBI in consultant Melahat Rafiei case

Rafiei was a longtime leader in Orange County’s Democratic Party and formerly served as secretary of the California Democratic Party and state representative to the Democratic National Committee.

According to her plea agreement, from April to June 2018, Rafiei agreed to give at least $225,000 in bribes to Irvine City Council members in exchange for their introducing a city ordinance that would allow Rafiei’s clients to open a retail cannabis store in Irvine.

In April 2018, Rafiei presented a business opportunity to an individual who was then employed in the medical cannabis industry and offered to introduce the person to an Irvine politician, who was not identified in court papers, prosecutors said.

The next month, Rafiei met with the unnamed elected official to discuss introducing an ordinance in Irvine that would legalize retail medical cannabis and ultimately benefit the individual’s business, court papers state.

Following the meeting, Rafiei asked the person’s business partner to pay her between $350,000 and $400,000 in exchange for getting the cannabis ordinance introduced, according to her plea agreement.

Irvine only allows marijuana testing laboratories in industrial, medical and science districts. No other type of commercial cannabis business is permitted.

In September and October of 2019, Rafiei falsely represented to a commercial cannabis company owner that, in exchange for a payment of at least $300,000, she would work to pass a cannabis-related ordinance in Anaheim that would benefit and be specifically tailored for the company owner’s business, her plea agreement says.

However, Rafiei already had been working on such an ordinance for other paying clients, court papers show.

Rafiei then falsely represented to the victim that she would keep only $10,000 of the payment in exchange for her purported work. In fact, Rafiei intended to keep $100,000 of the payment, prosecutors said.

Rafiei faces a possible sentence of up to 20 years in federal prison, prosecutors noted.

City News Service and Staff Writer Yusra Farzan contributed to this report.

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​ Orange County Register 

CIF-SS boys and girls track and field rankings, April 12

• April 14, 2023

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The 2023 CIF-SS boys and girls track and field midseason rankings, released Wednesday, April 12.

CIF-SS TRACK AND FIELD MIDSEASON RANKINGS

(Compiled by PrepCalTrack)

BOYS DIVISION 1

1 Long Beach Poly

2 Great Oak

3 Cajon

4 Vista Murrieta

5 Long Beach Jordan

6 Redondo Union

7 Warren

8 Trabuco Hills

9 Paloma Valley

10 Los Alamitos

BOYS DIVISION 2

1 Mater Dei

2 Westlake

3 Ventura

4 Thousand Oaks

5 Canyon/CC

6 Simi Valley

7 South Torrance

8 Royal

9 Santa Barbara

10 Shadow Hills

BOYS DIVISION 3

1T JSerra

1T Cathedral

3 Santa Margarita

4 Harvard-Westlake

5 Servite

6 Orange Lutheran

7 Monrovia

8 Notre Dame/Sherman Oaks

9 Moorpark

10 St. Francis

BOYS DIVISION 4

1 Oaks Christian

2 Serra

3 Alemany

4 Foothill Technology

5 Sierra Canyon

6 Muir

7 Providence

8 Crespi

9 La Salle

10 Chadwick

GIRLS DIVISION 1

1 Vista Murrieta

2 Long Beach Poly

3 Long Beach Wilson

4 Etiwanda

5 Orange Vista

6 Chino Hills

7 Quartz Hill

8 Ayala

9 Newbury Park

10 Redondo Union

GIRLS DIVISION 2

1 Culver City

2 Calabasas

3 Ventura

4 JW North

5 Mater Dei

6 Dana Hills

7 Canyon/CC

8 Thousand Oaks

9 Golden Valley

10 Westlake

GIRLS DIVISION 3

1 JSerra

2 Notre Dame/Sherman Oaks

3 Mission Viejo

4 South Pasadena

5 Santa Margarita

6 Harvard-Westlake

7 La Canada

8 Corona del Mar

9 Yorba Linda

10 Monrovia

GIRLS DIVISION 4

1 Oaks Christian

2 Serra

3 Rosary

4 St. Mary’s Academy

5 Sierra Canyon

6 Archer School for Girls

7 Marlborough

8 Providence

9 La Salle

10 Viewpoint

​ Orange County Register 

This is why a nonprofit brought 20 college students to Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach

• April 14, 2023

Amid the hustle and bustle at the Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach‘s Lifestyle Expo on Friday, April 14, was a group of about 20 college students in bright orange T-shirts.

They watched itently as pit crew members from the Arrow McLaren NTT IndyCar Series team spoke about their positions and how they got into motorsports careers.

But the group didn’t happen upon the pit crew by accident.

RELATED: For more Day 1 coverage, click here.

Rather, they were part of a program put on by Path to the Pits, a relatively new nonprofit that aims to train a more diverse roster of motorsports employees, who have historically skewed older, White and male.

Path to the Pits and McLaren Racing Engage — a new sect of that company aimed at diversifying talent in the industry — announced a new partnership in late March.

“We’re committed as an organization to grow accessibility and inclusivity in motorsport and the paddock, and to do so requires investment and creative solutions,” Kate O’Hara-Hatchley, McLaren Racing’s head of diversity, early careers and development, said in a March announcement. “Partnering with Path to the Pits helps us do both.”

The partnership essentially launched at the Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach, with the college students — mostly men, with a smattering of women, but also predominantly people of color — getting an immersive experience. That experience includes touring the paddocks, networking and career guidance from Arrow McLaren’s professionals.

“It’s all about providing exposure to racing and the careers in motorsports for young people from underserved communities,” Vicky Martinez Muela, founder, president and CEO of Path to the Pits, said in a Friday interview. “We are really focused on increasing gender and racial representation in motorsports.”

The partnership also marks McLaren Racing Engage’s first partnership with a North American nonprofit, Martinez Muela said. This is the first time Path to the Pits has brought students to the Long Beach Grand Prix.

Students who are part of the nonprofit’s program will also attend the GMR Grand Prix at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in May and the Chevrolet Detroit Grand Prix in June.

“The access they have directly to the Arrow McLaren team members is unprecedented,” Martinez Muela said. “There’s nobody who has access like we do — where they really get a chance to ask questions and understand some of the career paths.”

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That exposure is among the most crucial aspects of the program, she added, noting that many people are often excluded from even experiencing a race in person because of financial limitations.

“A race experience is typically $500 for a weekend,” Martinez Muela said. “How many of our young people from underserved communities can afford a ticket to the race, food, transportation and parking?

“If you can’t see it,” Martinez Muela added, “you can’t be it.”

​ Orange County Register 

Orange County swimming records, leading times, April 14

• April 14, 2023

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Leading times in O.C. swimming and diving marks through April 13. Submit updates to [email protected].

BOYS SWIMMING

200-yard medley relay (O.C. record 1:29.97, Santa Margarita 2023) — SM 1:29.97

200 free (O.C. record 1:33.26 Shoults 2016 SM) — Cehelnik (SM) 1:38.65

200 IM (O.C. record 1:45.42 Okubo 2014 Uni) — Verdolaga (SM) 1:48.72

50 free (O.C. record 19.69 Cavic 2002 Tus) — Chang (MV) 20.80r

100 butterfly (O.C. record 47.13 Cavic 2002 Tus) — Verdolaga (SM) 47.75

100 free (O.C. record 43.85 Buyukuncu 1994 Wood) — Cehelnik (SM) 44.68

500 free (O.C. record 4:12.87* Shoults 2016 SM) — Maksymowski (Nor) 4:33.79

200 free relay (O.C. record 1:22.76 SM 2023) — SM 1:22.76

100 back (O.C. record 47.50 Buyukuncu Wood 1994) — Teh (CL) 49.99

100 breast (O.C. record 53.40 Pellini DH 2017 ) — Wu (SM) 55.80

400 free relay (O.C. record 3:01.96 SM 2022) — SM 3:03.23

Diving — Schneider (CVC) 589.70

GIRLS SWIMMING

200 medley relay (O.C. record 1:39.04 SM 2022) — SM 1:47.40

200 free (O.C. record 1:43.01 McLaughlin SM 2015) — A. Kozan (SM) 1:45.82

200 IM (O.C. record 1:53.90** E. Eastin CL 2015) — O’Dell (SM) 1:57.32

50 free (O.C. record 22.53 Engel CL 2013) — Salvino (SM) 22.77r

100 butterfly (O.C. record 51.53 McLaughlin SM 2015) — C. Stinson (SM) 55.36

100 free (O.C. record 48.63 A. Spitz NH 2019) — A. Kozan (SM) 49.47r

500 free (O.C. record 4:37.30 Evans ED 1988) — O’Dell (SM) 4:42.90

200 free relay (O.C. record 1:29.61* SM 2023) — SM 1:29.61

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100 back (O.C. record 51.85 Tran Edi 2010) — O’Dell (SM) 53.28

100 breast (O.C. record 59.73 O’Dell SM 2023) — O’Dell (SM) 59.73

400 free relay (O.C. record 3:14.80* SM 2022) — SM 3:16.84

Diving — Roselli (MD) 563.60

Legend: r = relay leadoff, * =  overall national high school record, ** national private high school record

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