Essays:

ONE IS ENOUGH
By Wendy Thomas Russell | June 25, 2010

I’m in the back room of my local nail salon, where a petite Vietnamese woman is shaping my eyebrows with hot wax and strips of cotton. My 4-year-old daughter, Maxine, is with me. I lay on the table; she stands beside me, holding my hand. The woman looks at Maxine then back at me. “How many children you have?” she asks. “Just her,” I say. “When you have another?” she asks. “We’re not having more,” I tell her. “We just want the one.” She looks at me like I’m crazy. “But you have to have more!” she tells me. “She so cute!” (Read more…)

News Articles:

Like most working journalists, I’ve written thousands of news stories over the course of my career. Here are some of my favorites.

JUDGING KIDS IS A MIX OF HOPE, HEARTBREAK
By Wendy Thomas Russell | May 21, 2008

Gibson Lee’s day could be boiled down to names on a worn-out chalkboard. Each morning, the Long Beach Juvenile Court judge slides on his black robe and strides four steps to a raised bench at the front of his fifth-floor courtroom. The names of juveniles are scrawled on a chalkboard near the door. Each name signifies a criminal case ready to be called and a child ready to be judged. “Every day has a routine,” says Lee, 60. “And every day is different.” (Read More…)

A CASE OF ABUSE AND MURDER
By Wendy Thomas Russell | Oct. 7, 2007

Two weeks had passed since his mother’s murder, and 14-year-old Charlie Schockner was looking to share one haunting thought. His mother, Lynn Schockner, had been stabbed to death during an apparent burglary attempt on Nov. 8, 2004, as police surrounded her Bixby Knolls home to investigate a prowler call. Officers caught the killer fleeing the yard with a bloody dagger and a cap full of jewelry. Now it was late November, and Long Beach Police Detectives Chris Cardoza and Richard Birdsall had arrived to update Charlie and his father on the status of the unusual case. After the briefing, Charlie made an excuse to talk to Birdsall in the front yard — out of his father’s earshot. He lowered his voice and shared the haunting thought. “How’s my Dad involved?” he asked. “I know he’s involved somehow.” (Read More…)

OFFICER DOWN! HOW THE LBPD WON A RACE FOR LIFE
By Wendy Thomas Russell | March 30, 2007

Long Beach Police Chief Anthony Batts had seen this emergency room countless times. But this was different. It was three days before Christmas, and two of Batts’ officers had just been shot during a traffic stop on a downtown thoroughfare. Both had been hit above their bullet-proof vests. Blood was everywhere. The doctors and nurses at Long Beach Memorial Medical Center moved in a tense choreography — pressing, cutting, retrieving, hovering. Their stern faces conveyed a grim, unspoken truth. (Read more…)

BRUCE KOKLICH SENTENCED FOR KILLING HIS WIFE
By Wendy Thomas Russell | March 24, 2007

A successful real-estate agent was sentenced to 15 years to life in prison Friday for killing his wife, the daughter of a late state senator. Bruce Koklich, 44, pursed his lips and clasped his hands tightly together as Norwalk Superior Court Judge Philip Hickok imposed the sentence mandated for second-degree murder. Hickok also denied a defense motion for a new trial and a request to release Koklich on bail pending his appeal. Despite repeated claims of his innocence, Koklich was convicted last October of killing Jana Carpenter Koklich , the daughter of Paul Carpenter, whose dying wish was that his son-in-law be charged with murder. (Read more…)

COUNCILMAN RESIGNS AMID BUSINESS-DEAL SCRUTINY
By Wendy Thomas Russell | Feb. 8, 2006

Embattled City Councilman Dan Baker abruptly resigned his position at the beginning of Tuesday’s council meeting, leaving behind a panel of stunned colleagues and apparently ending a once-promising political career. “I’m going to step aside and I’m pretty much done,” Baker said before walking out of the nearly empty Council Chambers. “The council, I hope, will be able to move on with its business and move on with the very important things of this city. So effective tomorrow, I will be resigning my position on the City Council.” (Read more…)

COUNCILMAN, POA BOSS in $7.5 MILLION DEAL
By Wendy Thomas Russell | Feb. 2, 2006

City Councilman Dan Baker and Steve James, the head of the city’s police union, formed a limited partnership last year that led to the purchase of a $7.5 million apartment complex in Missouri, the Press-Telegram has learned. Longtime political allies Baker and James, president of the Long Beach Police Officers Association, formed Sunset & Woodland Properties on Aug. 5, 2005, according to Missouri Secretary of State records. The arrangement was made less than two weeks before the council approved a new labor contract giving city police officers a 21 percent pay raise over four years. (Read more…)

JUDGING THE JURY
By Wendy Thomas Russell | Nov. 1, 2004

Daniel Poston quit jury duty on a Tuesday morning. The Whittier postal carrier rode his motorcycle to downtown Los Angeles — just as he had done every weekday for nine months. He stepped through the familiar set of stately double doors at the U.S. District Court, took an elevator to the fifth floor and entered the small, empty jury room that had become his second home. He walked to the dry-erase board and picked up a marker from the ledge below. Then he scrawled the words that would end his jury service: “We should change the name of this court to United States Dairy Court,” he recalls writing, “because you guys are milking this thing to death.” (Read more…)

BELMONT SHORE RAPIST SENTENCED TO 1,030 YEARS
By Wendy Thomas Russell | Sept. 16, 2004

A serial rapist who terrorized East Long Beach for five years was sentenced to 1,030 years in prison Wednesday after several of his victims — some of them elderly — gave dramatic, tearful statements to the court. Long Beach Superior Court Joan Comparet-Cassani imposed the maximum sentence allowed for “Belmont Shore rapist” Mark Wayne Rathbun, 34, convicted last month of 54 felony acts on 14 victims between 1997 and 2002. Rathbun, who was linked to the crimes through DNA evidence, is considered the most notorious and prolific serial rapist in the city’s history — attacking women of all ages as they slept in their homes. (Read more…)

UNITS OF SORROW
By Wendy Thomas Russell | Dec. 6, 2001

Look around Long Beach and you’ll find plenty of Cambodian refugees who have overcome obstacles and won success in their adopted country. You’ll find those who learned English, attended college, gained citizenship; those who got jobs and bought homes; those who sent their children to Stanford, Berkeley and Harvard. But you probably won’t find them here, in the courtyard of this pink, stucco apartment building at Eleventh Street and Walnut Avenue in Long Beach. (Read more…)

A SCHOOL OF THEIR OWN
By Wendy Thomas Russell | March 14, 2001

It’s silent-reading time at Mary McLeod Bethune School, but Carlos Mololey isn’t reading. Instead, the stocky 10-year-old skips to the center of the classroom, turns and takes a running leap onto a big, blue beanbag. He lies there, sprawled out and grinning proudly. In other schools, Carlos’ rambunctiousness might be reprimanded. But here, in this West Long Beach school designated for homeless children, the diversion barely registers a blip on the radar screen of teacher Brian Dilts. As far as Dilts is concerned, Carlos has earned the privilege of a little tomfoolery and so have the 10 other homeless kids attending Bethune on this chilly November day. (Read more…)

WEIGHING LIVES: JUDGES USE DISCRETION TO CUT THREE-STRIKES TERMS
By Wendy Thomas Russell | Oct. 30, 2000

Gerry Tyrone Brown’s best chance to escape the three-strikes law was staring him in the face. But he didn’t much like the way it looked. ¶ Brown, a 44-year-old with a 15-year history of burglaries, had been charged with stealing tools from a residential garage in Long Beach. Under California’s three-strikes law, he faced a mandatory 25-year-to-life sentence. But on this day in 1998, a Long Beach Superior Court prosecutor had offered him a deal: seven years in prison in exchange for a plea of guilty or no contest. If he turned down the deal and was convicted at trial, only a judge’s mercy could save him from the more ominous three-strikes sentence. (Read more…)