A Pasadena man dubbed the “Luger Bandit” was sentenced Monday to 14 years in federal prison for a string of bank robberies in Southern California. Ramsin Jonathan Malek, 35, was also ordered by U.S. District Judge Stephen V. Wilson to pay $85,000 in restitution and serve five years of supervised release after he serves his time.
Category: Local
👓 Caltech Mom Wins Nobel Prize, Son Is JPL Mars Flight Tech | Pasadena Now
“What the heck does Mom want? Oh, Mom probably doesn’t understand the time difference, she’s in Dallas right now and is probably still thinking it’s California time…maybe she just wants me to go check on her cats…” A litany of mundane explanations ran through James Bailey’s bleary mind at 3:23 a.m. on October 3 when he was awakened from a deep sleep by three phone calls from his mother’s cell number. Bailey silenced his phone for the first two, getting grumpier with each ring. Call #3 did the trick. He picked up the phone and said groggily, “What do you want?” With great excitement and maybe a tinge of impatience, his mother said, “I wish you had picked up your phone, but I just won the Nobel Prize.”
👓 Interim Police Chief to Tell City Committee Today Pasadena Experienced 3 Murders in Less Than 5 Weeks | Pasadena Now
Pasadena Interim Police Chief John Perez is scheduled to tell a City Committee today that three homicides that have occurred over the past month in Pasadena and that his Department has arrested the alleged killer in each case. Perez will present his Chief’s Monthly Report Wednesday before the City Council’s Public Safety Committee and is expected to include details about the homicides, all of which involved knife attacks between people who were familiar with each other.
👓 Pasadena Police Body Worn Camera Program Has Captured Over 311,759 Incidents, Committee Will Hear | Pasadena Now
Public Safety Committee Chair Vice Mayor John Kennedy, City Manager Steve Mermell and Pasadena Chief of Police John Perez at a recent Committee meeting. The Public Safety Committee of the Pasadena City Council will receive interim Pasadena Police Chief John Perez’s Monthly Report, which details statistics on crime in the City over the past year and the steps the Pasadena Police Department is taking to reduce crime incidents.
👓 Chaka Khan Selected as Rose Parade’s Grand Marshal | Pasadena Now
Khan, a 10-time Grammy Award winner, will both ride in 130th Rose Parade and perform in the pre-game celebration at the 105th Rose Bowl Game. Khan said she has been a fan of the Rose Parade for many years and is looking forward to performing.
👓 Celebrate the Season with a Thanksgiving Centerpiece from Los Altos Auxiliary Benefitting Hathaway-Sycamores | Pasadena Now
Members of Los Altos Auxiliary are creating beautiful handcrafted floral centerpieces, available to order for this Thanksgiving holiday. All proceeds from the centerpiece sales benefit the boys, ages 6-18, who reside at the Hathaway-Sycamores’ El Nido campus in Altadena. “Our popular Thanksgiving Centerpieces are a wonderful way to support the children served by Hathaway-Sycamores,” said Laurie Rodli, who is co-chair of the fundraiser, along with Connie Sutherland. “Each centerpiece is delivered to your door just in time for the holiday, is handcrafted with the freshest materials from the L.A. Flower Mart and is sure to add a seasonal touch to your holiday table. They also make a terrific hostess gift,” added Connie.
Reply to Introducing Alhambra Source’s new publisher
Staff (Alhambra Source)Jon Thurber, a veteran journalist whose long career at the Los Angeles Times included serving as managing editor of the print edition, has been named publisher of the Alhambra Source.
Thurber held a number of other management positions at the Times, including news obituary editor and editor of the book review, and he was also a leader of the paper’s reinvention committee as the Times transitioned from a predominantly print product to refocus its efforts on digital publication.
“Jon has the experience and vision to move the Alhambra Source forward to an even more dynamic civic institution in Alhambra and the larger SGV,” said Sandra Ball-Rokeach, Professor of Communication and Sociology Emerita at USC Annenberg School for Communication and one of the founders of the Alhambra Source.
Congratulations both to and on the new publisher!
I’ve recently begun reading a variety of more local news sources, most of which are built on the WordPress CMS, as is your publication. As a digital native, I often prefer reading my news via RSS feeds, but I find it surprising that many local SGV sources have (accidentally?) broken or are mismanaging their feeds.
I notice that the Alhambra Source’s main feed only contains the “News Round up” articles which primarily feature news in other outlets. While this type of advertising for and promotion of others’ work is nice, I’m subscribed to many of them already and would prefer a single feed with all of the Alhambra Source’s own original work instead! In fact, because I automatically subscribed to the AS’s main feed without looking at the site first, I was under the mistaken impression that it only did aggregation rather than original reporting, an impression which is obviously the opposite of reality.
Because a “main” feed is not available, I’m forced to subscribe to 8 separate feeds to attempt to get all of the great work coming out of AS. This feels like a bit much and could be easily fixed on your back end. A better solution would be to have your main feed include all of your articles (perhaps including the News Roundup), and then still provide the separate category-based feeds for those who are only interested in the subsections of news. (This would typically be the default for an out of the box WordPress installation.)
Finally, I’ve noticed that your feeds don’t include any of the photos featured in the articles, which is a shame since the site has some generally nice photography (particularly in comparison to competitors) to go along with the stories.
If you need any technical help, I’m happy to assist as I’d love to see better local news and events coverage in the Pasadena/SGV areas.
Congratulations again!
👓 Introducing Alhambra Source’s new publisher | Alhambra Source
Jon Thurber, a veteran journalist whose long career at the Los Angeles Times included serving as managing editor of the print edition, has been named publisher of the Alhambra Source.
👓 Alhambra’s Fosselman’s Ice Cream to ditch ’70s look for 100th birthday | Pasadena Star News
Fosselman’s Ice Cream Co. is set to close Sept. 24-27 for construction to update the shop’s look.
I haven’t been in a while and can’t wait to see what the renovations look like now.
👓 Young African American Male Conference | Black News | Pasadena Journal
The Young African American Male Conference is here again. The Conference is designed to expose young Black men to the various professions and serves as a one day mentoring event. The conference began in 2003 and is a product of the Metropolitan Community Action Services Corporation. It is generally held at Pasadena City College. This year will be held on October 20, 2018.
I’m kind of surprised this wasn’t tied into Connect Pasadena 2018 somehow.
👓 Pasadena Busing Controversy, 9/14/70 | ColoradoBoulevard.net
In 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court declared racial segregation in public schools unconstitutional. In the 1970s and 1980s, under federal court supervision, many school districts implemented mandatory busing plans within their district.
Are they revisiting this story every few years as an evergreen? This coverage of it seemed more interesting than the shorter story in 2018… hmmm.
👓 ‘Halloween’ Cinematographer Dean Cundey returns to the scene of the crime | Alhambra Source
Evil is real. The excitement happens when it invades our safe areas. Dean Cundey understands this well. Back in 1978, the legendary cinematographer expertly used shadows to illustrate the encroachment of evil into the otherwise idyllic small town of Haddonfield, Ill. in the original “Halloween.” The film — which revolutionized horror cinema when it introduced the sadistic Michael Myers and scream queen Jamie Lee Curtis as student Laurie Strode — celebrates its 40th anniversary on Oct. 25.
👓 A Follow-Up on a Beloved La Cañada Trailhead | ColoradoBoulevard.net
Warnings from a few determined hikers, amplified by ColoradoBoulevard.net and the La Canada Valley Sun, have brought a so-called ‘temporary fix’ to the huge ruts on the dirt road through the Angeles National Forest that services the antennae on top of Mt. Lukens.
👓 Wealthiest Person in Pasadena – 2017 | ColoradoBoulevard.net
The Los Angeles Business Journal published its 58 Wealthiest Angelenos list (expanded with 8 more people from last year’s), and Pasadena (and the San Gabriel Valley) still had one of its own on it.
Reply to Pasadena Busing Controversy: Sept. 14, 1970 by Roxanne Elhachem
Roxanne Elhachem (ColoradoBoulevard.net)The busing proposition in Pasadena brought mixed emotions for its citizens. Although many were happy about the social progression that was occurring in this town, it may have indirectly kept, if not increased, some of the segregation within the city. Private schools were not included in this new plan, and because of that, people who didn’t agree with the plan — and could afford it — sent their kids to affluent private schools. This lead to around 30 private schools (currently 53) being present in the city of Pasadena.Students arriving by school bus in early 70s (Photo – The U.S. National Archives).In 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court declared racial segregation in public schools unconstitutional. In the 1970s and...
Thanks for highlighting this archival news footage. I’ve always wondered why it seemed like Pasadena had so many private schools given its relative size, though I do wonder how it compares to the rest of southern California on a private school per capita basis. I’d never considered that this may be one of the largest driving factors.
I’m curious what the numbers for the city’s public and private schools are? Perhaps a follow up with some graphs, charts, and further analysis would be worthwhile? I’m definitely curious.
In the meanwhile, the topic reminded me of this relatively recent segment of Jon Oliver’s show which focused on school segregation and which also featured Ronald Reagan:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8yiYCHMAlM