It’s Free for ALL Friday! Each week I keep track of some of the off-the-path things I've found, and work extra-hard to make sure you never hit a paywall, using my own subscriptions, gift links, and other (legal) hocus-pocus.
Can Anyone Rescue the Trafficked Girls of L.A.’s Figueroa Street?
Inside the effort to pull minors from ‘the Blade,’ one of the most notorious sex-trafficking corridors in the United States.
t takes a lot to shock me -- but this shocked me. In short, it seems there’s a three-mile zone in L.A. (and probably a lot of other cities) where trafficking and exploitation are apparently tolerated, with girls being strong-armed into this life are as young as 13. On top of that, everyone seems to know this is happening, and yet the police unit assigned to try to stop it can barely get funding.
The 77th Street Division was supposed to have six investigators at Officer Elizabeth Armendariz’s rank in its vice unit. Instead, she was the only one.
On Thursday night, Armendariz stood at 70th and Figueroa in a black mesh top and pumps, her purse outfitted with a recording device. She dangled a strip of condoms from her bra strap. She knew there was only so much evidence she could gather secondhand, and at 4-foot-10, Armendariz could pass as a juvenile in the dark. Now cars were lining up for her.
Once they made a deal, Armendariz told each customer to wait for her around the corner, then dropped a signal to other officers that he could be followed and arrested there. She sighed. She didn’t want this petty stuff: The city attorney’s office rejected about half of the case filings against customers Armendariz caught on Figueroa, she said, and most others who were convicted ended up with probation. What she really wanted was to clinch another trafficker.
Homeland Security Asked a Judge to Deport a Man to Afghanistan, Where He Expects the Taliban to Kill Him
The U.S. government asked a judge this month to deport a father of two to Afghanistan, where he expects the Taliban to kill him. To make its case, the Department of Homeland Security did not accuse him of any crime or disloyalty or act of terrorism. Instead, attorneys argued that Afghanistan — a country U.S. forces rescued him from in 2021 — is safe for his return.
The man, whom The Washington Post is identifying as H because of concern for his safety, has sought asylum because he so publicly supported the United States’ cause in Afghanistan. Before fleeing, he worked for a U.S.-based nonprofit and attended an American university in Kabul.
“There is no chance of living,” he testified at the asylum hearing on his 99th day in federal custody.
To be eligible for asylum, H needs only to establish a “well-founded fear” — even just a 10 percent chance — that he would be persecuted because of his religion, politics or family ties, a threshold set by the Supreme Court nearly 40 years ago. If H’s claim is granted, his attorney worries that Homeland Security will ask for a review from the Board of Immigration Appeals, which can set a legal precedent all immigration judges must follow.
The immigration court system is under intense pressure from the Trump administration. Unlike federal judges, who receive lifetime appointments meant to ensure independence, immigration judges work for the Justice Department. More than 80, according to their national association, have been fired since Trump took office, an unprecedented shift from past practice.
A Skills Gap Is Turning Cleaning for the Rich Into a $100,000 Job
As the wealthy get wealthier and fuel a boom in luxury furnishings, highly trained household staff are in high demand.
Gina began her career as a housekeeper in the homes of the merely well-to-do. Today, after 26 years climbing the ladder of domestic service, she works in the San Francisco Bay Area as an executive housekeeper for ultra-high-net-worth families.
“It’s a lot of levels of cleaning that I’ve done to get where I am right now,” says Gina, who asked to be identified only by her first name because of the sensitivity of her position. “You’ve got to know about art. You’ve got to know about antiques. There’s a lot of custom pieces, and of course they’re not replaceable.”
Salaries have risen accordingly. Before the Covid-19 pandemic, experienced housekeepers might make $60,000 a year, MacPherson says. Now they can easily command over $100,000, plus benefits. “Rich people are richer, and they’re buying more delicate things,” says Charles MacPherson, who runs an eponymous staffing and training agency in Toronto. “They want their homes to be more museum-quality, versus just normal stuff. And then there’s a lack of supply of trained people. You put those two together — it’s supply and demand — and salaries go through the roof.”
The Health Insurance Prior Authorization Memo That You Helped Write
Recently, we put together a template to help medical professionals explain a confusing process. Readers gave us very pointed feedback, so we updated it.
Two months ago, I shared my tale of getting a letter in the mail from UnitedHealthcare informing my wife that it was partly denying coverage for her breast cancer surgery.
If you’ve never been through the “prior authorization” process, well, we hadn’t, either. But we sure learned about it quickly, given that the note arrived just 36 hours before the operation was scheduled to take place.
Patients cheered me on and shared harrowing stories of navigating the prior authorization system. Some doctors said they were putting my memo to work immediately.
Many other medical professionals, however, told me that the memo needed to be shorter and simpler.
They are right. I think this revised version is better. Here it is.
We Spent the Night Shift With the Repo Man, Who Is Busier Than Ever
Car repossessions are on the rise as delinquency rates on some auto loans hit record levels; drivers hunt for cars and opportunity as business model shifts.
From the cab of his tow truck, George Dowdy clicked a remote control to slide the boom under a parked Chevy Trax and grab its front tires. In seconds, the veteran repo man dragged the blue SUV into the cool night.
Soon after, colleague Jay Caviness hooked a Jeep Grand Cherokee in a nearby town. The men dropped their respective hauls at a Maryland lot crammed with cars whose owners couldn’t—or didn’t—make their payments. Then they went hunting for more.
They aim to make good on the message affixed to Dowdy’s tow truck: “Don’t Make It We Take It.” Lately there is plenty for the taking, as some car-loan delinquency rates reach record highs.
An estimated 1.73 million vehicles were repossessed last year, the most since recession-wracked 2009, according to automotive-service business Cox Automotive. There are signs the surge continues: This year’s repo volume at Cox’s Manheim auctions unit was up 12% through the end of September compared with the same period last year.
“It’s like history repeating itself,” said Detroit repossessor George Badeen, president of Allied Finance Adjusters, a trade group.
Marathons are Booming — Can the World’s Top Races Keep Up?
Fueled by the rise of run clubs, social media influencers and a growing interest in wellness, demand for marathons has surged in recent years.
Most people will never run a marathon. Then there’s Adrian Decunto.
Decunto has not only run the six most popular marathons in the world, he’s done them all seven times each.
“If my body allowed me, I would run a marathon every week,” he said. His dedication may be singular, but his interest in running the world’s “Majors,” as these races are known, is part of a much larger movement.
Interest in running has never been higher, fueled by the rise of marathons, run clubs and social media influencers. That running boom has pushed demand for entry into the world’s premier races to unprecedented levels.
At the center of the frenzy is the Abbott World Marathon Majors, a circuit of seven of the sport’s most coveted races: London, New York, Berlin, Chicago, Tokyo, Boston and, most recently, Sydney. For many runners, completing all six of the original races has become the sport’s ultimate achievement, a feat that comes with a giant doughnut-shaped “six-star” medal and bragging rights for completing the equivalent of the “Amazing Race” for marathoners.
More than 22,000 people have completed the medal, according to Abbott, and hundreds of thousands more are chasing it.
Amid Federal Shutdown, BASE Jumpers Converge on Yosemite’s El Capitan
Rock climber Peter Zabrok was enjoying his morning coffee, dangling from a slab of granite hundreds of feet off the ground, when he heard a sound he likened to a jet engine and saw a flash of color overhead.
“There’s one now!” he yelled. “There’s two now!”
Zabrok, a 66-year-old Canadian, had just completed his 924th career evening bivouacked on El Capitan. And yet this was new to him.
Day after day during the government shutdown, Zabrok has watched parachutists in Yosemite National Park hurl themselves off the world’s most famous climbing wall, risking a $5,000 fine and up to six months in jail, at a time when half the staff is furloughed and the park gates are wide open.
These are not furtive leaps. The two parachutes — one black, one white — drifted down on a sunny Friday morning, floating over the heads of tourists and climbers already lined up in the valley, before alighting gently in the meadow. Yosemite veterans say that in the past, illicit BASE jumping, a sport in which people parachute from fixed objects — the acronym refers to buildings, antennas, spans and earth — was typically done by one or two daredevils under the cover of dusk or dawn. These days, teams of jumpers are throwing themselves off the summit in broad daylight.
Bill, this will be my weekend reading when I have more time to relax. In the meantime, because I wrote so much yesterday about the possible damage to Jamaica, here’s a link in case other news has taken precedence.
https://youtu.be/WjI0RD2s0To?si=a2tXPT5lgrqTySK-
Thanks for your always entertaining and informative newsletter. I wish I could afford to upgrade to premium, but, well.... I'm surrendering all of my paid subscriptions
Meanwhile, I had trouble accessing the NYT article about the medical preauthorization. This is a subject of great personal interest. But even with the Free Friday, I couldn't seem to access it. Any suggestions for where to read more. Thanks.