Matthew Heller

Search-and-Rescue Group Hits Turbulence With Regulators Over Drone Flights

FAA regulations on unmanned aircraft have effectively grounded a fleet of model aircraft used in volunteer search and rescue operations.

Matthew Heller
By Matthew Heller

LOS ANGELES --- For those whose loved ones have gone missing, the model aircraft operated by Tim Miller and his Texas EquuSearch nonprofit offer wings of hope. Hovering no more than 400 feet above the ground and equipped with a digital camera, the aircraft have, according to Miller, led to the discovery of the remains of 11 missing people since

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Feds’ Searches Of Private Planes Don’t Fly With Pilots, Lawmakers

Amid an uptick in searches of private aircraft, lawmakers and an association of aircraft owners and pilots see an overreach on the part of Customs and Border Protection.

Matthew Heller
By Matthew Heller
Jim Dees

LOS ANGELES --- When real estate investment banker Gabriel Silverstein landed his Cirrus SR22 single-engine general aviation aircraft for a fuel stop at the Iowa City Municipal Airport last May, he was greeted with a scene like something out of “Miami Vice.” More than half a dozen local law enforcement officers and federal agents in tan

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Commuter Buses For Tech Workers Inflame San Francisco Housing Rights Activists

San Francisco activists rally against buses carrying tech workers from the Bay Area to Silicon Valley, accusing them of pushing longtime residents out of quickly gentrifying neighborhoods.

Matthew Heller
By Matthew Heller
SF Tech Shuttle Buses

LOS ANGELES --- San Francisco has long been a venue for colorful protests but a demonstration earlier this month in the city's Mission District may have set a new standard for creativity. At the intersection of 24th and Valencia streets, protesters dressed in one-piece clown suits and bouncing exercise balls joined arms and danced a conga line

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Cesar Chavez Biographer Aims To Go Beyond Labor Activist’s Saintly Image

Cesar Chavez has been mythologized to the point of saintliness, but one biographer’s new book brings the activist’s image back down to Earth.

Matthew Heller
By Matthew Heller

LOS ANGELES --- Since his death in 1993, Cesar Chavez has become a national icon, his birthday is celebrated as a holiday in three states, thoroughfares in Los Angeles, Albuquerque and Portland, Ore., have been renamed in his memory. The Keene, Calif., headquarters of the United Farm Workers, the union that Chavez founded with Dolores Huerta, is

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Progressive or Chameleon? Corruption Case Targets Mysterious Calif. Lawmaker

A California politician has made a career out of telling people what they want to hear. Now he’s facing fierce allegations that could answer the question: Who is Leland Yee?

Matthew Heller
By Matthew Heller

LOS ANGELES --- Throughout his 26 years in politics, California state Sen. Leland Yee has been something of an enigma, even to his supporters. “[W]ho is Leland Yee?” the San Francisco Bay Guardian asked in August 2011, when Yee was running for mayor of San Francisco after eight years in the California Legislature. Yee, the first Asian-American to

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Calif. Student’s Stand For Trauma Survivors Triggers Furor Over Academic Freedom

A student calls for teachers to warn students before showing potentially distressing content in class, prompting debate over whether this is sensitive to students’ needs or simply coddling.

Matthew Heller
By Matthew Heller
College Class

LOS ANGELES -- When Bailey Loverin showed up for one of her classes at the University of California, Santa Barbara, in February, the material wasn't exactly what the second-year literature major was expecting. The instructor screened an independent film that, Loverin says, included several scenes of sexual assault and one “graphic” rape scene. No

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Ex-Gang Member, Author Rejects “Austerity Approach” In Bid For Calif. Governor

Forty years ago, Luis Rodriguez was running with gangs, spending time in jail and using heroin, but now he’s running as a third-party candidate in the California gubernatorial elections.

Matthew Heller
By Matthew Heller

SYLMAR, Calif. -- Luis J. Rodriguez's life has always been full of contradictions. His parents — one of them “an emotionally-charged, border woman,” the other a “stoic, unmoved, unfeeling intellectual” — were a “dichotomous couple” whose “two sides created a life-long conflict in my breast,” Rodriguez wrote in “Always Running,” his best-selling

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