Rather than hanging around the criminal court, I went next door yesterday to check out the married and soon-to-be unmarried lives. We were hoping to find someone actually filing for divorce, to see if it was joyous ("He was cheating on me and I'm out of here!") or jerky ("I wanted her to always remember this day!"). But, since the five filers (it's not a big divorce day, that comes later) did so when I was elsewhere, the angle had to change. So we got this:

VAN NUYS - For Valentine's Day, Edgar J. Gutierrez buttoned up a black dress shirt, took the hand of Jessica Sanchez and got himself married.

On the same day the county brought in extra clerks to handle the rush of new nuptials, five sad souls filed for divorce only yards away at Los Angeles Superior Court.

If you're into this kind of thing (and judging by the hits and the one comment, not many of you are), click here. It was a good idea, but, alas, I couldn't pull it off.

Posted by Brent Hopkins at 9:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Back in my It's a Crime days, I had the pleasure of working with Hans Gutknecht on a series on LAPD Officers Kristina Ripatti and Tim Pearce. She was shot and paralyzed stopping an armed robber in South LA back in June of 2006 and we watched them rebuild their lives together.

We found ourselves back out with them on Wednesday for a very different, very joyous reason. Here's the beginning:

TORRANCE - The doctors and nurses gathered around Kristina Ripatti, waiting and hoping for a miracle.

At 4:37 p.m. today, the paralyzed ex-cop gave birth to a blue-eyed, black-haired, 5-pound-8-ounce, 19-inch, healthy baby. Nurses swabbed and swaddled him and the family went back up to her private room at the Little Company of Mary Hospital.

Check out the rest here. I wish I could go into more detail, but deadline's got me caught up right now. I can tell you, however, that there's never been work I've been prouder to do in my career than this series. It may not be my best work, it may be too long, I might have been able to tell it better if I had more (or less), but I can truly say that this was a story that mattered. I hope you'll enjoy it, as well.

Posted by Brent Hopkins at 12:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Hey folks-- I've been out of the office on stories the last few days and have neglected the blog. My apologies and I'll get some more stuff up soon.

In the meantime, divert yourselves with David Simon's take on the news business. As we were discussing just the other day, industry conditionsare lousy, and that ain't a good thing for the legal system.

Simon says:
Yet here were the veterans -- the labor reporter, the courthouse maven, the poverty-beat specialist, the second medical beat guy and the prisons and corrections aficionado -- damned if they weren't walking out the door forever. There would be fresh hires, and some serious players would remain, of course. But no longer would it be practical to argue that newspapers were going to become more comprehensive, and better written -- the product of experienced and committed people for whom print journalism was a life's calling.
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Yeah, this isn't an upbeat day for news. Stay tuned, I'll be back with more posts soon.

Posted by Brent Hopkins at 12:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)