It was Kang’s 29th birthday.

The swimmers, however, found no cause for celebration.

“She got us in the water and announced that we would be celebrating by doing 29 50s in the lap lane timed on 29 seconds for the 50 yards,” recalled Miranda Marquez, a member of the Aquabelles at the time. “One way would be butterfly and the way back would be an underwater lap. No breathing.”

There was one more thing, Kang, one of the sport’s most influential coaches and a current member of the U.S. Olympic team staff, told the swimmers that day.

“We had to start the 29 (sprints) over if we took a breath,” Marquez said in an interview. “Coach Kang told us that blacking out was not an excuse not to finish the drills and that we would have to finish them before she allowed any medical attention. She even remarked that she didn鈥檛 want us passing out and messing it up for everyone else by making our teammates rescue us and make us all start from the top.”

Marquez, then 16 and considered a potential U.S. national team member, was especially apprehensive. Only days earlier she had been rushed to a local emergency room to treat a kidney stone. The kidney stone remained trapped causing infection and leaving her in agonizing pain.

“I was riddled with infections,” Marquez said.

Exams later revealed that her kidney was twice the size of a normal kidney and a stint was needed to drain the infections. Marquez later required surgery.

But Marquez also knew how Kang treated athletes who couldn’t finish practice or drills, or who made a mistake in training or suffered an injury.

Former U.S. national team members, La Mirada Aquabelles swimmers and their parents allege in interviews and complaints to the U.S. Center for SafeSport provided to the Orange County Register that Kang over the course of more than a decade has allegedly routinely physically, verbally and emotionally abused athletes as young as 9, many of whom have been driven hours each day or relocated from other parts of the state or country to join a program that has become a pipeline to the U.S. Olympic and national teams.

Kang repeatedly bullied, laughed at or ignored swimmers sobbing or screaming in pain and in at least one instance personally dislocated an athlete’s toe during stretching drills and training, 14 current and former Aquabelles swimmers, including former U.S. national team members, and parents as well allege in interviews,聽 formal complaints filed with the U.S. Center for Safe Sport, other confidential Safe Sport documents and athlete interview recordings and transcripts, and USA Artistic Swimming documents obtained by the Register over a months long period.

As many as 18 swimmers, including former and current U.S. national team members, have filed complaints with the U.S. Center for SafeSport since 2022, according to interviews and SafeSport documents.

Kang in January was named assistant coach for the Los Angeles-based U.S. national team and tasked with playing a leading role in preparing Team USA for the Olympic Games in Paris later this summer. It was the latest in a series of Team USA promotions for Kang, who has been part of U.S. national team staffs since 2011.

“It’s terrible,” said a former U.S. national team member, who asked not be identified out of fear of being retaliated against by Kang or U.S. Artistic Swimming officials. “I don’t know how she’s allowed to continue to coach on the highest level of the sport.

“This has been going on for so long. This is not a secret” in the sport.

The appointment came 16 months after Adam Andrasko, chief executive officer of USA Artistic Swimming, the sport’s national governing body, was presented with complaints alleging “psychological and emotional misconduct and abuse” by Kang, that she forced injured athletes to practice or compete, routinely body shamed young athletes and committed child labor abuse by punishing athletes as young as 11 by making them teach swimming to and monitor children between ages 5 and 7 for up to two hours per day while otherwise unsupervised by adults or any certified lifeguard, according to USA Artistic Swimming documents, interviews and video recordings of small children struggling to stay above water while supervised by pre-teen Aquabelles. One parent alleged in a complaint that their 11-year-old daughter witnessed a small child nearly drown while being “taught” by another Aquabelle team member.

In a previously undisclosed and unreported move, Kang was suspended indefinitely on May 9 pending the outcome of the SafeSport investigations “on the same timeline as you were building your investigation,” Andrasko told the Orange County Register.

Andrasko said he was notified on May 8 by SafeSport of additional allegations against Kang “that were much more concerning.”

“Still these are just allegations,” Andrasko continued. “This is not an admission of Coach Kang’s guilt. But at the end of the day, my responsibility is to the (safety) of the athlete.”

USA Artistic Swimming hired Kang in the run-up to the World Championships in February where Team USA qualified for its first Olympic Games since 2008 even though Andrasko and other USAAS officials were aware that Kang has been under investigation by the U.S. Center for SafeSport for more than a year, according to USSAS and SafeSport documents.

SafeSport has received complaints from as many as 18 swimmers and parents against Kang detailing more than 80 specific allegations over the course of the past 13 years ranging from physical, verbal and emotional abuse, bullying, body shaming, forcing athletes to compete or train while injured or suffering from medical issues that required surgery, and child labor and endangerment abuses, according to SafeSport documents obtained by the Register and interviews.

“Hiea Yoon Kang’s coaching has resulted in physical and mental suffering for myself and many others,” a swimmer who competed for Aquabelles as recently as 2022 wrote in a complaint to the U.S. Center for SafeSport.

The allegations undercut assertions USAAS officials made when Kang and Stanford coach Megan Abarca were named to the Team USA coaching staff in January that the coaches would have a “positive impact” on the Olympic and World Championship teams’ culture.

“The two coaches will bring their strong skill sets to enhance the abilities of the country鈥檚 best athletes in their pursuit of Olympic success,” USAAS said in a statement in January. “These positions will also enhance our commitment to a healthy attitude that fosters the development of the best all-around athlete. The goal is to help each athlete become the most well-rounded individual in and out of the sport.”

Andrasko said he was unaware of abusive behavior by Kang while coaching various U.S. national teams.

Andrasko disputed the characterization of Kang’s U.S. national and Olympic team appointment as a promotion.

“It was a contract extension,” he said.

In a press release at the time of the move, USASS said, “Due to recent changes in the USAAS Senior National Team coaching staff, the organization will add two talented assistant coaches to serve the senior national team in preparation for the 2024 Paris Olympic Games. The new hires will work directly with the senior national team head coach Andrea Fuentes, high performance director and assistant coach, Lara Teixeira, acrobatics coach Victor Cano and the incredible support staff at USAAS training facilities in Los Angeles, CA.”

The belief that Kang could also make Marquez an Olympian someday is what led her to join the Aquabelles in the summer of 2011.

“When I had joined, I had told Coach Kang of my goal to be on the national team,” Marquez said.

Her parents also bought into her Olympic dreams, looking past the toll Kang’s pushing swimmers through as many as 40 hours of training a week had on their daughter and her teenage and pre-teen teammates, some still in grade school.

“They understood my need to push myself until I was throwing up in the gutters and go back to it and keep working in the pool,” Marquez said of her parents.

It is why Marquez carpooled 90 minutes each way, each day to train in what she and other Aquabelle swimmers and their parents characterize as a “culture of abuse” created by Kang.

It is why Marquez ignored Kang’s alleged body shaming, her taunts, her screaming, the isolation, why she ignored being called a “loser” by the coach, why she ignored the intense pain that day in 2011 and jumped into the pool and began the grueling, potentially dangerous, workout.

“Before practice, I had told (Kang) that my kidney was hurting horribly and that I had been vomiting from the pain. She said something very close to, ‘That sucks but you鈥檙e here so you鈥檙e going to do what I said,’” Marquez said. “Again, I prioritized my getting better over my health and I was only 16. I didn鈥檛 know what to say or do. So I started the drills with everyone else.”

By the 19th 50, after more than a half-mile of swimming, a quarter-mile underwater without breathing, Marquez realized she couldn’t continue.

“Those are both hypoxic exercises so the pain in my back and my kidney was getting so excruciating,” she said. “Because I knew I was peeing blood and I knew I was going to throw up and I ran to the bathroom.”

Marquez informed Kang of what was going on and as she dashed to the bathroom she heard the coach yell behind her, “We’ll wait until you鈥檙e back in the pool but everyone has to restart because of you.”

Kang followed Marquez into the bathroom where she found the swimmer “collapsed on the bathroom floor vomiting and sobbing,” Marquez said.

Marquez asked Kang to call her parents so they could take her to the emergency room.

“She acted like I hadn鈥檛 said anything and instead said, ‘You know everyone has to start over because of you now, right?’”

Marquez said in an interview, repeating an account she made in a complaint to the U.S. Center for Safe Sport. “I was too stunned and in too much pain to respond.”

What also stung, Marquez said, was Kang’s next comment in which she questioned both the athlete’s truthfulness and her desire to make the U.S. national team while the swimmer was doubled over in pain.

“Kang told me, ‘I think you鈥檙e a liar. I don鈥檛 think you actually want it bad enough,’” Marquez recalled.

Marquez’s parents finally arrived and as they were leaving the pool to take their daughter to receive medical attention Kang made one final comment.

“She said, ‘This is not what I wanted for my birthday,’” Marquez said. “‘How dare you do this on my birthday?’”

The incident was confirmed by Elisa Marquez, Miranda’s mother, and another Aquabelles swimmer.

“Miranda was throwing up from the pain and (Kang) still didn’t believe her,” Elisa Marquez recalled. “It was just awful. No empathy, nothing, nothing. It was like it was an inconvenience that Miranda was in pain and throwing up.”

Kang isn’t the first abusive coach Marquez and other Aquabelles swimmers said they have encountered.

“Mostly synchro coaches are psychologically abusive,” Miranda Marquez said in an interview. “That鈥檚 kind of their whole deal.”

But “Kang is different,” continued Marquez, who had previously competed for Riverside Aquattes before joining the Aquabelles. “She is crueler and was cruel right off the bat. Didn鈥檛 want to know the first thing about us. And the few questions that she did ask were what our goals were and I remember the conversation that we had when me and my teammates first came from Riverside, basically telling her we wanted to be on the national team. We wanted to be the national team. We wanted to reach the highest levels and eventually go to the Olympics and she replied something to the effect like, ‘Alright, that means I鈥檓 going to be really hard on you.’ And none of us were strangers to working hard. We were high level athletes who pushed ourselves to the point of illness, past the point of what we should be doing. I already competed when I was not medically cleared by nine different neurologists because I had suffered a concussion in the pool and I competed anyway. I bring this up because it was not a lack of drive and determination and we were not strangers to any of this.

“But what Kang was like was so beyond the pale.”

Among the allegations current and former Aquabelles swimmers and their parents have made against Kang:

*Swimmers and their parents said athletes lived in constant fear of Kang’s volatile temper, never knowing what might set the coach off into a rage resulting in Kang screaming and belittling them as a team or as individuals, or kicking them out of practice, according to USAAS and U.S. Center for SafeSport documents, interviews and recordings of SafeSport interviews with Aquabelles swimmers. Kang could be set off by small mistakes in routines, athletes struggling in endurance or core drills, athletes talking to each other, references to a swimmer who was on vacation or even by an athlete who had just suffered an injury in practice or competition, athletes and parents allege in interviews and complaints to SafeSport. Sometimes, swimmers and parents allege, Kang would become so enraged she would leave the pool in the middle of practice.

“During my time at La Mirada when Hiea-Yoon got furious she would just leave my teammates and me alone at the pool while she left somewhere,” Nicole Meza, a former U.S. champion swimmer for the Aquabelles, said in an interview. “We would all be in the water not knowing what to do alone. Wondering if we should get out or send someone to get her. It was always nerve wracking because we did not know how to please her.”

鈥� Swimmers suffered regular physical abuse by Kang ranging from being required to train as much as 40 hours per week, being forced to train or compete while recovering from surgeries, injuries that required other medical treatment and concussions, to being subjected to hypoxic training that put athletes at risk of losing consciousness under water, athletes and parents allege in interviews, SafeSport complaints and recordings. Swimmers have suffered dislocated toes and hyperextended knees and other leg injuries during drills in which Kang has manipulated their legs or feet to the point where some swimmers scream in pain or are left in tears, athletes and parents allege in interviews, complaints and recordings.

A U.S. national team member recalled Kang laughing as 11- and 12-year-old swimmers cried in pain during a two-chair drill designed to create greater flexibility. In the drill, a swimmer does the splits, resting the bottom part of her front leg on the front chair, her lower part of her back leg on the chair behind her, her torso and upper part of both legs suspended between the two chairs with Kang sitting on the hamstring area of a girl’s unsupported back leg.

“The girls are crying, tears running down their faces and Hiea is laughing about it and saying, ‘Suck it up.’ That turns it from helping to being malicious.”

“Kang insisted on a slavish adherence to the 30-40 hour practice week and any deviations upset her, resulting in retaliatory behavior (ignoring my daughter upon her return, requiring punitive workouts, making passive-aggressive comments, etc.),” the mother of a swimmer who competed for Aquabelles from 2019 to 2022 wrote in a complaint to SafeSport.

鈥� Kang routinely verbally abuses athletes, swearing at them or calling them “dumb,” “stupid,” or “losers,” according to interviews, SafeSport complaints and recordings.

“‘Losers’ is her favorite word,” Marquez said.

鈥� Kang regularly body shames swimmers, making critical and demeaning comments about their weight, appearance, physiques and diet, according to interviews and complaints. In April 2020, Kang required swimmers as young as 13 to regularly send her photos of them wearing sports bras or bikini tops and leggings so she could track changes in their physique over a month-long period. Kang has denied swimmers water breaks and limited their lunch break to five minutes even on days where the athletes are training eight hours, swimmers and parents allege. Kang at times has refused to let swimmers leave the pool to eat or even touch the pool’s walls while in the water, leaving swimmers to consume snacks like cheese sticks while egg-beating to stay afloat in the middle of the water, athletes and parents said in interviews.

“My daughter was even scared to eat her dinner a few times on the way home in the car because she thought Kang was driving next to us,” an Aquabelles parent said. The parent asked not to be identified because of concerns that Kang or USAAS officials would retaliate against their daughter.

鈥� While swimmers and parents said no Aquabelle is exempt from Kang’s outbursts, the coach targets certain swimmers for regular bullying, subjecting them to screaming and degrading comments in front of the team, trying to turn the rest of the team against her targets, isolating swimmers from the rest of the team, according to interviews and SafeSport complaints.

‘It was just torture’

Parents said in interviews and complaints that Kang also retaliated against their daughters after they spoke up about injuries, questioned the length of weekly training or requested that their children be allowed to miss practice to join family vacations or take part in holiday activities.

“Now as an adult, I recall it as torture sessions,” Marquez said of her training under Kang. “There was no discussion of choreographing routines, she wouldn鈥檛 hear of it from any of us. It wasn鈥檛 synchro. It was just torture.”

A former U.S. national team member was asked how often Kang was abusive.

She laughed.

“All the time,” she said.

Kang did not respond to multiple requests for comment made over the course of several weeks.

Kang has been named to a series of U.S. national team posts over the past 13 years and USAAS officials have regularly praised her even when confronted with abuse allegations against the coach.

“When we previously spoke Coach Kang held the assistant coach position with the senior national team. I shared this openly with you at that time. Her performance and behavior with that level of athlete has been exemplary. This is not to dismiss the information you provided,” Andrasko, the USAAS CEO recently wrote to an Aquabelles parent who had complained that Kang had been named to the U.S. Olympic team coaching staff in the wake of a SafeSport investigation and the nature and volume of allegations against her.

U.S. national team member Megumi Field, a World Championships bronze medalist who trains with Kang at Aquabelles, acknowledged in an interview that the coach is “strict” but said she has not witnessed what she considered abusive behavior by Kang.

But in interviews and their complaints to the U.S. Center for SafeSport, swimmers and parents maintain that Kang’s decades-long reputation for abusive behavior is well known within the upper echelons of the sport in this country.

A former Aquabelles swimmer recalled a 2023 incident at a UCLA pool where the U.S. national team trains. A group of 11-year-old Aquabelles swimmers were standing outside in the rain shivering after a work-out at UCLA when U.S. Olympic and national team head coach Andrea Fuentes came upon them, according to the swimmer.

“What are you guys doing,” Fuentes said, according to the swimmer. “Why don’t you come inside and shower?”

“No, we’re not allowed to,” the Aquabelles told Fuentes, according to the swimmer.

Fuentes said she did not recall the conversation.

“My experience with coach Kang has been always very positive and I never have seen any bad behavior from her part in my team otherwise she would not be able to join us,” Fuentes said in an email. “She has been very helpful and professional since the first day she has come to help the team.”

Parents tell a different story.

“Overall this emotional abusiveness, psychological abusiveness has been going on for a very long time. She’s well known to the whole artistic swimming world that that’s how she is,” said an Aquabelles parent, who also asked not to be named out of concern their daughter would be retaliated against by Kang and USAAS officials and coaches. “So many kids … they cannot deal with her hours. They cannot deal with her excessive abuse, emotional manipulation and control. She’s basically, if she cannot control a situation, she loses it. She targets a student, an athlete that she can abuse, She could say stuff to make them feel low self esteem, feel guilty and ashamed constantly.

“She looks for anything and everything to punish you, to point out you are getting on my nerves, you are annoying or you didn’t listen. Therefore I’m going to make your life miserable. Or ignoring her, isolating her. That’s huge.

“With Kang it’s been going on for decades.”

Kang, 41, competed for Ohio State, one of the nation’s oldest and most successful artistic swimming programs. Founded in 1928 as the “Swim Club, ” the Ohio State artistic swimming program was one of the first sports clubs for women in the U.S. and has won 34 national collegiate titles.

Kang headed west after college, taking a job as the under-12 team coach for Cerritos Synchronettes in 2005. A year later Kang went out on her own, starting the Long Beach Aquabelles. Two Aquabelles won national age group titles that first year. The club relocated to La Mirada in 2007. The club trains at Splash! La Mirada Regional Aquatic Center.

Kang was named USAAS age group developmental coach of the year in 2008. In 2011, she received her first Team USA post, named U.S. junior national team coach. She coached the U.S. at the 2013 and 2014 Junior World Championships.

A demanding coach in a demanding sport

Kang’s coaching stock continued to rise in the ensuing decade as the sport became more physically demanding and technical in the decades since it was introduced as an Olympic sport at the 1984 Los Angeles Games as “synchronized swimming.”

“I think a lot of people still think it’s like with the flower caps and side dives and things from way back then,” Field said. “But it’s evolved.

“Imagine having to hold your breath do 50 jumping jacks, 20 burpees, dance around and then after a minute and a half you can breathe.”

And in an increasingly more demanding sport, Kang was considered a game changer by athletes, their parents and top levels of U.S. Artistic Swimming.

“By adding Hiea-Yoon’s technical expertise, I anticipate a significant improvement in our execution under her guidance,” Fuentes said when Kang and Abarca were named to her U.S. national team coaching staff in January. “I value unity in a team, and鈥痠t all begins with the coaching staff. Bringing on coaches developed in the United States system adds an extra layer of excitement, contributing to the team’s culture and strength. It’s an exciting phase ahead, and I can’t wait to witness the positive impact they’ll make!”

Kang has already had an impact.

Team USA won a pair of bronze medals at the World Aquatic Championships in Doha in January clinching a spot in the Olympic Games for the first time in 16 years. Doha was the first World Championships contested under a new scoring system implemented by World Aquatics, the sport’s governing body, in 2023. In an attempt to make judging more objective, the sport adopted a scoring system similar to those used by figure skating and gymnastics where point values for certain elements are pre-determined and technical panels decide whether an element is fully performed.

World Aquatics described the judging overhaul as the “biggest change in the history of the discipline.”

Kang’s emphasis on technique and “going back to basics” Field said was “a huge help” to Team USA’s success in Doha.

Yet Kang’s rise up the Team USA coaching ranks has also coincided with her increasingly abusive coaching methods, swimmers and parents allege in SafeSport complaints and interviews.

An Aquabelles swimmer told SafeSport that “I noticed more dangerous mental and physical abuse patterns between” Kang and the athletes she coaches.

Nevertheless, USAAS described the U.S. performance in Doha as a “fairytale.”

It was the pursuit of that Olympic dream that led Marquez and a group of her Riverside Aquattes teammates to join the Aquabelles in the summer of 2011 after their Aquattes coach retired.

“We all wanted to be on the national team,” Marquez said. “That was the goal and Hiea Kang, the coach of the La Mirada Aquabelles was the coach of the national team so we all decided this would be the best course of action. We鈥檇 get to know the coach, we鈥檇 get the results from nationals from many previous years that proved if we trained we’d get on national team, best team in the nation.

“We were the kind of people who were like, ‘Fabulous, that is exactly what we want. We want to be pushed to be the best.’”

Other families made similar decisions as Kang’s athletes piled up the national titles and Team USA selections, leaving their previous clubs, in some cases driving two hours each way to training or relocating to Orange County from the East Coast, ignoring or tuning out the coach’s reputation for abusive behavior, convinced that Kang would make all of it worth it.

Field and her mother relocated from Delaware to train with Kang when Field was 10 after meeting the coach at a U.S. national team development camp.

“After (my) first year I was not good, not anything,” Field said of her introduction to the sport. “But I immediately knew I wanted to go to the Olympics so for me from there, how was I going to take the next step to get there?

“It was a huge step for our whole family. She was the coach. She’s so strict and really good with basics. But I was so mesmerized by her and couldn’t stop staring at her. So you’ll see these pictures of when I was 9 and in all the pictures I’m looking up to her.”

“My daughter made the conscious decision to transfer to La Mirada Aquabelles from another team to challenge herself,” an Aquabelle mother said in a SafeSport complaint. “We were fully aware of Hiea-Yoon Kang鈥檚 reputation as being tough and demanding, but were under the impression that she was fair and respectful of the athletes.”

But the mother, echoing other Aquabelles parents and swimmers, said Kang’s treatment of young athletes crossed the line between tough and demanding and abusive and physically and emotionally damaging.

Marquez was asked how soon after joining Aquabelles did Kang’s alleged abuse start?

“Immediately,” Marquez said.

“We were forbidden from speaking the entire time (at practice),” she said. “And she would hold that over our heads that we wanted to be on the national team and she said any amount of talking was absolutely unacceptable. We couldn鈥檛 greet each other (at practice). We couldn鈥檛 say we were on this number lap or if someone lost track (of the number of laps or reps). It was so far beyond anything we鈥檇 experienced. And then we got punished if we talked.”

‘Blacking out is not an excuse’

One practice shortly after Marquez and her Riverside teammates joined Aquabelles, she said, “sticks out the worst for me.”

“We were all having a good day. We were all coming directly from school after and we all carpooled together and we were talking setting up our mats and that really set Hiea Kang off and she was like, since everyone wants to talk today we鈥檙e going to work out so hard you can鈥檛 talk,” Marquez said. “And again, I was no stranger to hard work. So instead of, oh, you鈥檙e going to do a hundred of this, you鈥檙e going to do a hundred of that, as in like a hundred repetitions, that practice she had us do four hundred of each and there were like 10 different exercises so we were doing like 4,000 reps.”

The exercises went on for 3 1/2 hours, Marquez said.

“Almost the entirety of practice and Hiea Kang was saying things like, ‘blacking out is not an excuse to not finish the exercise or the drill.’”

It’s not just the physical pain from Kang’s workouts that stand out to current and former Aquabelle swimmers.

“I don鈥檛 want to get emotional,” Marquez said. “And she would yell at us during this whole time saying, ‘If you鈥檙e talking, I don鈥檛 think you鈥檙e that serious about what it is you want. I think that you鈥檙e liars. I think that if it really mattered to you, you would shut up.’ We spent a lot of time together. We spent a lot of time driving at that point an hour and a half in one direction for those practices. And she would get very emotional.

“She basically said our goals were not obtainable because of who we were as people and we didn鈥檛 take things seriously. And she鈥檚 really into withholding attention from anybody she thinks is not taking it seriously enough and (administrating) physical punishment at the same time as well.

“And the punishments would get worse and worse. She would just start off right off the bat with an insane level of physical punishment.”

The physical punishment was usually accompanied by verbal abuse, swimmers and parents allege in interviews and USAAS and SafeSport documents.

Kang on an almost daily basis screamed at swimmers for mistakes while practicing routines or struggling during conditioning. All the swimmers interviewed said they were verbally abused by Kang but interviews and documents also reveal a pattern of the coach allegedly targeting specific swimmers for almost daily bullying.

“She had favorites,” Meza said. “I was one of her favorites so I never got the brunt force that other kids did.”

In addition to screaming at a swimmer or belittling them in front of the rest of the team, Kang regularly tried to turn the rest of the team against certain swimmers the coach had targeted for bullying, swimmers and their parents allege, creating what one parent described as “Lord of The Flies” environment within the team, according to interviews and documents.

“I didn鈥檛 really worry about my other teammates,” Meza admitted. “I think that was everybody鈥檚 mindset, which was just survive. If you don鈥檛 survive you get the brunt of the force and that鈥檚 it.”

Turning swimmers against each other

One of the frequent ways Kang tried to turn swimmers against a targeted teammate was to require the team to do additional excessive amounts of training or conditioning when a targeted swimmer made a mistake, swimmers and parents said.

“During a team routine when an athlete who was not on her top favorite list messed up she would embarrass them in front of the whole team and make us do punishments such as run-throughs for an excessive amount of time because a teammate may have misunderstood the correction or was nervous because the amount of pressure that has been placed upon her to not mess up or we would continue to do run throughs,” Meza said.

One incident in particular stands out to Meza.

“There was this other girl, the scapegoat of the team,” Meza said. “She made a mistake and Kang punished us as a team.

After practice, Meza continued “We all go in to shower and we all ganged up on her. We鈥檙e all young, we鈥檙e all frustrated because we see our coach bashing on this kid, so we started bashing on her too, thinking that it would work so we wouldn鈥檛 have to be doing all this (expletive) we鈥檙e doing.

“‘Why aren鈥檛 you getting it?’ ‘We鈥檙e having to do all this over because of you. Why can鈥檛 you just follow her orders?’ But Kang wouldn鈥檛 give her good corrections on how to fix it.

“So we’re going into showers to yell at her because she was getting us all in trouble and Kang would be yelling at her all the time. Pitting us all against her

“So that occurred a lot.”

Meza was asked if Kang knew about the girl being bullied by her teammates in the showers?

“She was well aware of it,” Meza said.

Did Kang ever tell the swimmers to stop harassing the girl?

“No,” Meza said.

The girl quit the team soon after the showers incident and no one from the club checked up on her after she left, Meza said.

Meza was asked if looking back if she felt badly about the incident and other similar confrontations.

“One hundred percent,” she said. “I get really sad when I think of the kids who have quit the team over stuff like that.”

Injuries not allowed

Mistakes weren’t the only thing that sent Kang into a rage, swimmers and their parents said.

“Hiea-Yoon was always heavily irritated when an athlete gained an injury,” Meza said.

“Any time a kid got an injury or any time someone wouldn鈥檛 be able to make to practice she wouldn’t talk to them for a a good amount of weeks. So the kid would be going to practice but she just wouldn鈥檛 pay attention to them.

Another Aquabelles swimmer agreed.

“Injuries were another big issue for Kang and her swimmers,” the athlete said.

“If there’s an injury she can’t control,” an Aquabelles parent said. “If there’s a girl out with concussion, she takes it out on the other girls because she can’t do anything about this girl. Because this girl, the doctor says she cannot do it because she has a concussion, so then that’s it.”

But a former Aquabelles swimmer recalled a training session when a group of athletes on the club’s Under 12 team were covered with KT tape because of injuries.

Some of the girls were as young as 10.

“I just knew these girls were far too young to be going through such physical problems. Nevertheless, practice was still enforced, and those who tried to get out of it faced verbal and emotional consequences in the most demeaning way,” the swimmer said in a SafeSport complaint.

The swimmer told SafeSport that Kang pushed her to train despite severe back and shoulder injuries.

“Both led me to the ER,” the swimmer wrote. “Specifically for my back injury, Kang was quite upset at me due to my limitations in the water and would pressure me into doing everything she had our team do, despite the pain. Throwing up or tears were not an excuse to stop training.”

An Aquabelles swimmer suffered a severe knee injury in practice during the 2021 Junior Olympics in Colorado Springs, according to two Aquabelles parents who were with the team at the competition. Crying and in pain, the swimmer said she couldn’t do the routine in competition, the two parents said in an interview.

Kang “wanted to cancel the competition,” a parent of one of the team’s older standouts said.

The parents suggested to Kang, “Let’s calm her down.”

Kang responded, a parent said by saying, “No, she’s lying. Don’t even bother.’ And I said, ‘No, even if she’s lying, we need to show concern.’ (Kang) didn’t want to talk to the athlete, didn’t want to deal with anything. This went on three or four hours.

“The coach was literally ignoring her,” the parent of a young swimmer interjected.

At that same Junior Olympics competition another Aquabelles swimmer fainted on the way to the competition, the two parents said.

“She had breathing issues during the warm-up,” a parent said.

Kang, the women said, was enraged.

“(Kang) isolated her from other girls,” the parent of the younger swimmer said. “Nobody was allowed to approach her. Nobody was allowed to talk to her.”

The girl, the parent of the older swimmer recalled “wasn’t called to the team meal. Kang gave her a dirty look. She didn’t ask her how she was. (Kang) completely ignored her and isolated her. People were told (by Kang) not to help her.”

Kang, the two parents said, had a similar reaction when a member of the Aquabelles junior team suffered a concussion shortly before a competition.

Kang said, “It’s so annoying,” the parent of the older swimmer said. “She said it so that people know she’s upset. Kang got real upset.”

Screaming in pain

Sometimes the injuries were inflicted by Kang herself, athletes and parents allege in complaints to SafeSport and in interviews.

“The final straw and definitely the worst moment of all was during a normal practice, Coach Kang called us all to the wall of the pool and said we would be doing toe point stretches and warned us that she wasn鈥檛 going to let our feet go until each of us was literally screaming in pain,” Marquez wrote in her complaint to SafeSport. “I thought she was joking. We all did.”

She wasn’t.

“I told her that no one had been able to make toe point stretches hurt me yet and I had trained with Cirque Du Soleil and the French national team and no one had been able to stretch me so I probably wouldn鈥檛 scream,” Marquez wrote. “My teammates giggled and backed me up saying that was true. They had been there for it. Coach Kang said nothing, just glared at us for talking and giggling. One by one we put our feet out of the water to be stretched and discovered that she was not joking at all about making us scream.”

Swimmers were instructed to hang onto the pool wall, do a vertical split with one leg out of the water straight up with their toes pointed and their pelvises flat up against the wall, according to SafeSport complaints and interviews.

“Hold onto the wall by your knee and when you hold onto the wall you鈥檙e pressing, you鈥檙e pulling forward so basically your stomach touches your thigh and your thigh and your pelvis touch the wall so you鈥檙e very, very flat with the toe out of the water up over the edge of the deck,” Marquez said.

Kang had one more instruction.

“No talking,” Marquez said.

“We all laughed because we all thought that was a joke 鈥� that鈥檚 the most ridiculous thing to say and I think (when the first swimmer) went first it became very clear that she was not joking,” Marquez said in an interview referring to an athlete the Register is not identifying because she was a minor at the time.

The first swimmer “stuck out her foot and Kang grabbed her and pushed her feet until (she) really did scream in pain

“And then Hiea Kang made her switch and I can never forget the look of fear on (the swimmer’s) face as she switched her legs and gave Coach Kang the other leg to do the same thing. We were all 15 and 16. We had no idea what we were supposed to do and did not have the ability or the courage to say no, stop it. So then Shea (Ramsey) went and she did the same thing until Shea was in so much pain she was trying to rip herself away from Coach Kang and I think that was the only time I saw Coach Kang happy and she went, ‘Yeah, that鈥檚 how we do it,’ when Shea was reeling in pain.”

Shea Ramsey, later a standout at Ohio State, declined to be interviewed for this article.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” she said in an email.

Finally it was Marquez’s turn.

“I went last, unafraid because I had hyper-flexible feet,” Marquez wrote to SafeSport. “She stretched me and tried and tried and I contemplated screaming just so it would stop because Coach Kang was getting frustrated and angry.

“Then, suddenly, in front of all of my teammates, she yanked on one of my big toes and dislocated it. I screamed and ripped myself away from her and she spat at me, ‘NOW they鈥檒l hurt!’ My toe popped back in on its own but my teammates and I were all shocked into silence. I didn鈥檛 know what to do. I didn鈥檛 know what just happened.”

Marquez, concerned about Kang’s influence in the sport, said she did not report the incident to anyone in the sport.

“When I got home I had a huge deep purple ring around the socket of my big toe,” she said in an interview. “I was scared if I said something I would never make it to the national team. Not ever and that was my dream. So I didn鈥檛 tell anyone.”

The bruising eventually faded away. The physical and emotional pain from the alleged incident, however, have continued to stay with Marquez.

“Today, 12 years later, my dislocated toe still hurts weekly,” she wrote to SafeSport. “My toe point was ruined irreparably. I used to be able to walk around on my folded over toes and to this day, I cannot point it without pain on that toe鈥檚 tendons and ligaments. It has never been the same.

“None of me has been the same since.”

Elisa Marquez confirmed her daughter’s dislocated toe.

“Coach Kang broke her (toe) trying to prove a point,” Elisa Marquez said alluding to Miranda telling Kang about her flexibility. “She did it just out of spite.”

A nine-year Aquabelle suffered a hyper-extended knee when Kang pushed on the girl’s leg during a similar exercise in July 2020, the girl’s parent told SafeSport.

“Coach Kang made my daughter’s one leg against the wall and pushed her knee to be overextended even though she screamed in pain and told her to stop multiple times,” the parent said. The girl “was in pain for the next three weeks, and the knee pain came back easily.”

A U.S. national team member recalled another incident that she alleged demonstrated Kang’s alleged lack of concern for athletes’ safety. Kang was running a timed work-out when lightning began striking near the pool, the Team USA member said.

“And she wouldn’t let them get out of the pool,” the swimmer said. “The lifeguard told them to get out of the pool and Kang just ignored (the lifeguard) and then pretended she didn’t hear them. ‘What? I can’t hear you.’”

Parents of an Aquabelles swimmer informed Kang when the girl joined the club in 2019 that their daughter had previously sustained several concussions and continued to be pre-disposed to headaches,” the girl’s mother wrote in a SafeSport complaint.

“We knew water breaks were vital to helping prevent headaches, be they related to concussion or dehydration,” the mother continued. “Despite that, Kang often blamed my daughter for drinking water and refused to let her refill her bottle. Lunch breaks did not provide much respite either, as they were usually minimal (a five-minute lunch during an eight-hour weekend practice was not uncommon).”

The short meal breaks, swimmers and parents allege, are reflective of Kang’s obsession with food, weight and physical appearance.

Body shaming

Kang regularly made critical comments about swimmers’ diets and bodies, according to SafeSport documents and interviews. Lunch breaks were limited to 15 or only five minutes during practice sessions that could last eight hours, swimmers and parents allege.

“Kang would make inappropriate remarks about their body and food during lunch breaks. She would say in her condescending tone to the girls who were practicing eight hours and in their lunch break: ‘Do you need to eat all of the food?’ or, ‘Don’t bring that kind of food because you are not skinny enough,’” the mother of a former Aquabelles swimmer told SafeSport. “By the way, all the swimmers always brought healthy lunches.”

Meza said she had a similar experience.

“It鈥檚 an eight-hour practice, you need to eat,” Meza said. “And she鈥檇 make comments like, ‘Oh, that鈥檚 a lot of food you鈥檙e eating. Are you sure? That might be too much.’ Make a lot of comments about people鈥檚 weight in front of the team. It didn鈥檛 make sense. All of us are really skinny, we鈥檙e training 8 hours, eating for 15 minutes.”

Said another Aquabelles mom in a SafeSport report, “Kang also body-shamed my daughter and the other athletes by critiquing their body fat and criticizing their food choices – no matter how healthy. After Kang reprimanded the swimmers for having carbohydrates (even a balanced amount), my daughter increased the protein in her salads, only to be ridiculed for eating too much red meat.”

On April 4, 2020, Kang sent a text to Aquabelles team members.

“Please send me a photo of yourself in your bikini top/sport bra and leggings, flexing your arms and abs. I want to keep a progression log for the next month.

“Like this…”

Below the text was a photo of a woman wearing a sports bra and flexing her right bicep.

Marquez said Kang made it clear that she didn’t have the body type Kang was looking for.

“I鈥檓 Hispanic and the rest of the girls are white and that was always a problem with every coach but for her, she even mentioned at one point, ‘How am I supposed to pair you up with anyone on this team when your body looks like that?” Marquez said in an interview. “I was so unbelievably muscular.

“I had, basically my back muscles rippled like a horse. And at my previous team, I was able to, I was so strong, that I was able to do things other girls couldn’t do, or it would take teams of girls to do, so I worked hard. Nobody鈥檚 touching the bottom of the pool and they could lift girls out of the water with two or three people working at once and I could do it by myself. I didn鈥檛 have any body fat on me but I had breasts and I had a butt and that is not the synchro body type. So she said, ‘How am I supposed to pair you up with anyone to do a routine when your body looks like that?’

“I can鈥檛 possibly imagine speaking to little girls or doing to little girls,” Marquez continued, her voice breaking as she began to weep, “at that age what she did to us. Just using our dreams and hopes and aspirations against us, saying that we鈥檙e not the kind of people that would ever succeed. Or we didn鈥檛 look like the people who could ever succeed because I had a very different body type from the rest of the girls as well.”

Inattention to youngest swimmers

Kang did not display a similar attention to detail with young children, some pre-school aged, she was being paid to teach to swim, swimmers and parents said.

Instead of teaching the children herself, Kang would have some of her artistic swimmers supervise the children, some of them not much older than the child they were watching, while Kang worked with the Aquabelles, according to SafeSport complaints, interviews and two videos. Sometimes Kang ordered Aquabelles swimmers to supervise the small children as punishment for mistakes during practice or being injured, according to SafeSport complaints and interviews.

The mother of two Aquabelles students wrote to SafeSport that she removed her children from the club in 2022 because of “safety concerns that I have personally witnessed.”

Kang, the woman wrote, agreed to teach her 5-year-old son how to swim. Instead, the boy and other small children were left by Kang to be supervised by grade school and middle school-aged artistic swimmers while she coached the Aquabelles teams.

“This situation was not only unfair to (her son) but also the students who were told to watch (her son) who had yet to learn to swim on his own,” the mother wrote.

“I was later made aware that Coach Kang did not have a regular assistant coach to handle the many young children like (her son). The young students who were told to watch and assist (her son) in swimming had no experience in teaching. Coach Kang did not properly monitor the young kids as she was too busy coaching the older kids. (Her son) at times were left in the water for long periods of time unsupervised by her which I think was very unsafe. I believe Coach Kang created an unsafe environment for the young novice swimmers as Coach Kang primarily concentrated on the synchronized swimmers.”

One incident in particular angered the woman “very much.”

“One day, (her son) was in the pool holding on to one of the students for a long time because he did not know how to swim on his own. He was scared and was crying. (Her son) was floating on his back and Coach Kang told the student to help (her son) to swim on his stomach. (Her son) began crying and wanted to get out of the pool. However, Coach Kang made (her son) stay in the water and had the student help (her son) to stay afloat and flip him on his stomach. (Her son) continued to cry wanting to get out of the water. All the students including Coach Kang all laughed at (her son) when he was crying wanting to get out of the water. This incident was video recorded.

“It seems like Coach Kang and the older students were getting a kick out of (her son) struggling in the water.”

On a video of the incident obtained by the Register, Kang can be heard instructing a swimmer, appearing to be grade school or middle school age, to approach the 5-year old who was flailing while trying to float on his back.

“Come over here and flip him over,” Kang said.

“What are you doing?”

Kang is then heard laughing.

“Just flip him over on his stomach,” she said before continuing to laugh.

“OK,” she said.

She then continued laughing.

Three parents confirmed it is Kang’s voice on the video.

The 5-year-old, the mother wrote, consumed a lot of pool water. After this incident, (her son) was sick for three days with fever and missed school. He had stomach pains and vomited numerous times. I believe this was due to (her son) drinking a lot of pool water. It is fortunate that there were no serious accidents during the practice sessions.

“I strongly believe Coach Kang should have regular assistants that are properly trained to handle the novice swimmers. Otherwise, there is bound to be consequences.”

Long-lasting scars

Meza and other Aquabelles swimmers said they already bear the physical and emotional scars of their time training with Kang.

“We were good but at what cost? Because in the end, a lot of kids quit and were unhappy. It was just hard,” Meza said. “A lot of kids didn鈥檛 want to quit because our friends were on the team. We didn鈥檛 want them to be suffering through that alone, so we kind of just put our heads down and just kept going and there wasn鈥檛 a lot of teams around that did synchro.”

Meza was a national Junior Olympic champion at 12. Two years later she left the sport, physically and emotionally broken she said.

“There was a time where I was really going through it mentally where I was like, ‘Yay, we won!’ But I just wanted to go home. I didn鈥檛 want to be there anymore. I was just ready to go home because I was so tired mentally and physically.

Meza later switched sports. She is now a freshman at UC Santa Cruz where she is a member of the swim team specializing in the backstroke. She still trains at Splash when she’s in Orange County and sometimes sees Kang.

“It hurts that a lot of kids quit that team because of her,” Meza said. “I still go to that same pool. So I see her and it still hurts because she doesn鈥檛 look at me anymore. I gave my blood, sweat and tears for her and I don鈥檛 even get a ‘Hi’ from her.”

Also see: Video appears to show Sean 鈥楧iddy鈥� Combs beating singer Cassie in hotel hallway in 2016

“We are aware of the video that has been circulating online allegedly depicting Sean Combs assaulting a young woman in Los Angeles,” the District Attorney’s Office said in a statement posted on social media late Friday. “We find the images extremely disturbing and difficult to watch. If the conduct depicted occurred in 2016, unfortunately we would be unable to charge as the conduct would have occurred beyond the timeline where a crime of assault can be prosecuted.

“As of today, law enforcement has not presented a case related to the attack depicted in the video against Mr. Combs, but we encourage anyone who has been a victim or witness to a crime to report it to law enforcement or reach out to our office for support from our Bureau of Victims Services,” the statement continued.

, obtained by CNN, was taken at the then-InterContinental Hotel in Century City, the network reported.

The video shows Ventura exiting a hotel room and walking down a hallway toward a bank of elevators. Combs, wearing only a white towel wrapped around his waist and socks, is then seen following her down the hallway then forcefully grabbing her by the head or neck and throwing her to the ground. As she lies on the ground, Combs kicks her. After picking up a suitcase nearby, he kicks her again.

Combs is then seen trying to drag Ventura back down the hallway toward the hotel room, but he lets go of her after pulling her into the hallway from the elevator area. He then continues back toward his room.

Combs re-appears in the video and appears to shove Ventura again, before sitting in a chair and grabbing something from a nearby table and throwing it at her. He then returns to his room.

Ventura had claimed in a lawsuit in November that Diddy physically assaulted her in 2016, saying the rapper was drunk and punched her in the face. She alleged that when she tried to leave, Diddy followed her and eventually threw glass vases that were on display in the hallway at her. According to the suit, Ventura eventually got into an elevator and took a cab back to her apartment.

The lawsuit also made more serious allegations of sexual assault and other acts of physical abuse inflicted by Diddy. The lawsuit was settled one day after it was filed, but no details were released.

The rapper had issued a statement vehemently denying the suit’s allegations, suggesting Ventura was looking for a “payday.”

Responding to the release of the video, Ventura’s attorney, Douglas H. Wigdor, issued a statement to CNN saying, “The gut-wrenching video has only further confirmed the disturbing and predatory behavior of Mr. Combs. Words cannot express the courage and fortitude that Ms. Ventura has shown in coming forward to bring this to light.”

Also see: Home of rapper, music mogul Diddy raided by federal authorities in Los Angeles

There has been no immediate response from Diddy to the video.

In late March, federal agents raided Diddy’s homes in Miami and in the Holmby Hills area of Los Angeles.

According to a statement from the Department of Homeland Security, the raids were “part of an ongoing investigation,” but no details were released.

The nature of the probe was unclear, but several reports indicated it was part of a federal sex trafficking investigation. Diddy has been targeted in multiple lawsuits in recent months 鈥� including Ventura’s 鈥� accusing him of sex abuse. In addition to Ventura, two other women filed lawsuits alleging sexual abuse.

Music producer Rodney “Lil Rod” Jones Jr. filed a lawsuit earlier this year accusing Diddy of groping him while the pair worked together on Diddy’s album “The Love Album: Off the Grid.” The lawsuit also included allegations that Diddy and his son engaged in a “sex-trafficking venture.”

Also see: 鈥楥ulture of silence鈥�: Lawyer calls Diddy鈥檚 NDA terrifying, purposefully intimidating

“We have overwhelming, indisputable proof that his claims are complete lies.”

Following the federal raids in March, Combs attorney Aaron Dyer insisted on the rapper’s innocence and accused authorities of a “gross overuse of military-level force as search warrants were executed at Mr. Combs’ residences.”

“There is no excuse for the excessive show of force and hostility exhibited by authorities or the way his children and employees were treated. Mr. Combs was never detained but spoke to and cooperated with authorities,” Dyer said.

“Despite media speculation, neither Mr. Combs nor any of his family members have been arrested nor has their ability to travel been restricted in any way. This unprecedented ambush 鈥� paired with an advanced, coordinated media presence 鈥� leads to a premature rush to judgment of Mr. Combs and is nothing more than a witch hunt based on meritless accusations made in civil lawsuits. There has been no finding of criminal or civil liability with any of these allegations. Mr. Combs is innocent and will continue to fight every single day to clear his name.”

Riverside County Sheriff’s Department detectives began investigating on April 24, after deputies were called to a business in the 32100 block of Temecula Parkway and learned that multiple suspects had stolen $1,000 worth of merchandise, sheriff’s officials said Friday, May 17.

The location is an area with large shopping centers on both sides of Temecula Parkway.

Authorities identified the suspects and learned they were responsible for other thefts of Southern California retail stores, officials said. The Robbery/Burglary Suppression Team took over the investigation, which led to the arrest of the suspects on May 13 at a home in the 6800 block of Valley Way in Jurupa Valley.

The suspects were identified as Thomas Balandran, 50, Sherri Alvarez, 48 and Brianna Balandran, 19, officials said. They were booked into jail on suspicion of organized retail theft, burglary, conspiracy and grand theft. A 17-year-old boy was also identified as a suspect, but was released to a family member while charges are filed with juvenile probation.

Authorities did not offer specifics into how the suspects were identified, nor did they specify the relationships among the four suspects.

During their arrest, investigators searched the home and found “a large amount of merchandise from the retailers with tags still affixed,” totaling an additional $7,000, officials said. Narcotics and paraphernalia were also found inside the home, they said.

Detectives learned others had knowingly bought some of the stolen merchandise with the intent to resell it for profit, officials said. Two more search warrants were served in Moreno Valley, where an additional $3,000 worth of stolen merchandise was found.

Officials believe the three adult suspects may have been responsible for additional thefts and were asking anyone with information to contact Deputy Christina Weber of the Southwest Station Robbery/Burglary Suppression Team at 951-696-3133.

Information about the stores affected and their locations was not disclosed.

The 3.5 million acres located north of Los Angeles and the Inland Empire received the distinction this week in an announcement from the Sentinel Landscape Partnership, a collaboration between the departments of Defense, Agriculture and Interior that was formed in 2013. The area includes multi-use public lands, farmlands, recreational lands and military training areas and lies in the desert between Ridgecrest and the Morongo Basin.

The new designation is a “force-multiplier” for Marine Air Ground Combat Center 29 Palms聽and the other Mojave Desert military installations supporting conservation efforts in range resilience and sustainability, Marine officials said.

Other bases in the Mojave Desert include the National Training Center Fort Irwin, Edwards Air Force Base, Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake and Marine Corps Logistics Base Barstow.

“As an example, it amplifies the combat center鈥檚 commitment to the tortoise (repopulation), habitat restoration and other recovery efforts on and off the installation,” said Chief Warrant Officer 2聽 Brandon Owen, a 29 Palms base spokesperson.

The tortoise population has declined 50% to 90% in the Mojave Desert due to a wide range of threats, including ravens, coyotes, habitation degradation, disease, being run over by vehicles and invasive plants.

A major component of the base’s program to restore the tortoise population is to have pregnant females brought in to nest in captivity so the babies hatch in a protected environment. This allows them to grow larger with predator-resistant shells before being released into the wilderness as juveniles. The base has released more than 100 babies into the wild in the last few years.

Base ecologists at 29 Palms said the tortoise program has resulted in a 96% survival rate of turtles inside the facility each year. In the wild, the survival rate is less than 50%, base officials said.

The tortoises are tagged and tracked over several years to monitor their growth, movements and survival rates. The research shows scientists which methods work best for raising baby tortoises, and this information benefits other installations, too, Marine officials said.

The new designation encourages the involved federal agencies to work more closely together and remove bureaucratic roadblocks, helping to bring together coalitions that include multiple nonprofits in the area and federal, state, county and local organizations who can now work together more easily in restoring habitat and ecosystem function by creating species corridors and improving soil health, and managing watersheds to build resilience to a warmer, more arid climate.

Some of the groups will include California State Parks, Death Valley National Park, Desert Tortoise Council, Joshua Tree National Park and the University of California Riverside.

In addition to better collaboration it also prevents development around military installations with the aim of protecting those areas, but not interfering with training. The federal designation lets local government agencies and nonprofits pay farmers to keep farms and wildlife habitats as thy presently are.

“The program provides DOD with the unique opportunity to expand and diversify our partnerships to enhance the resilience of military installations and the local communities that support them,” Brendan Owens, assistant secretary of defense for energy, installations, and environment, said in a statement. “This year, the department is excited to support the five newly designated landscapes in achieving their dual priorities of safeguarding national defense and enhancing installation and community resilience, particularly in the Pacific and Western regions.鈥�

There are now 17 Sentinel Landscapes, the other newly designated areas are in Hawaii, New Mexico, Pennsylvania and Utah.

Among the goals centered around the new designation in the desert are reducing vehicle strikes that kill threatened, endangered, or sensitive species and reclaiming and protecting 50,000 acres of priority habitats through restoration, officials said.

The groups will also work through community outreach to promote conservation through education, including preventing illegal off-highway vehicle use and illegal cannabis growth. There will also be efforts to work with growing cooperatives to develop climate-resilient seeds.

The stock market’s venerable yardstick, the Dow Jones Industrial Average, just made history 鈥� crossing 40,000 for the first time.

Yes, this milestone set Thursday, May 16, is only a brief emotional victory for shareholders. Yet it can be seen as a historical milepost for the broader business climate, especially in California.

To honor the moment, the trusty spreadsheet reviewed the Dow’s 5,000-point markers and how California fared in those periods using an economic metric (California unemployment), an interest rate (the average 30-year fixed mortgage), and home prices from the California Association of Realtors.

As we begin our data-filled voyage, let’s note the Dow first crossed 5,000 in November 1995 鈥� back when you could buy the median-priced California single-family home for $176,000.

5,000-point mileposts

Dow passes 10,000 in December 1999: It took the stock index just over four years to double from 5,000 compared with a 28% gain for California homes to $225,000 in the same timeframe. This was an era when the economy broke loose from its early 1990s slumber. California unemployment dipped between 1995 and 1999 to 5% from 7.9% while mortgage rates rose to 7.9% from 7.4%.

15,000 in May 2013: The Dow needed more than 13 years to gain 50% to hit this benchmark vs. an 85% surge for homes statewide to $417,000 in the same period. This extended gap came during the financial rollercoaster ride from the bubble period in the early 2000s bursting into a Great Recession and then the economy’s slow recovery. So, California unemployment was 9.2%, up from 5% at the beginning of this crazy period. Yet, cheap money was one salve: 3.5% mortgages vs. 7.9% in 1999.

20,000 in January 2017: The Dow took under four years to gain 33% to gain the next 5,000 while homes statewide gained 18% to $492,000 as the post-crash rebound continued. California unemployment fell to 5.2% from 9.2%聽 as mortgage rates ticked up to 4.2% from 3.5% in 2013.

25,000 in January 2018: The Dow needed just one year to gain 25% for its next benchmark vs. a 7% gain for California homes to $528,000 as the recovery hit full stride. California unemployment dipped to 4.4% from 5.2% while mortgage rates slipped to 4% from 4.2% in 2017.

30,000 in November 2020: The index took just under three years to gain 20% vs. 32% for California homes to $699,000 in the middle of the pandemic’s business wild gyrations. California unemployment surged to 9% from 4.4%聽 鈥� but investors cheered historically cheap money such as mortgages hitting 2.8%, falling from 4% in 2018.

35,000 in July 2021: It took the Dow less than a year to gain 17% vs. 16% appreciation for California homes to $811,000 as the pandemic’s economic surge was in full force. Statewide unemployment fell to 7.4% from 9% and mortgages remained cheap 鈥� 2.9% vs. 2.8% in 2020.

40,000 in May 2024: The Dow took almost three years to gain 14% vs. an 11% gain for California homes to a record $904,000 in April. The economy struggles to find its new normal as statewide unemployment fell to 5.3% in April from 7.4%. But mortgages got expensive as the Federal Reserve fought and overheated economy 鈥� 7% in April from 2.9% in 2021.

Bottom line

So, the Dow is up eight-fold since crossing 5,000 just over 28 years ago. California homes are only five times more expensive.

That’s not the point, though. This stroll down memory lane reminds us that the markets typically need a solid economy for stocks or homes to appreciate. Cheap money is the icing on the cake.

Jonathan Lansner is the business columnist for the Southern California 色情论坛 Group. He can be reached at jlansner@scng.com

The trade group’s semi-annual conferences are epic; the destinations are glorious; the education is unparalleled; and the networking unsurpassed!

A little background on SIOR: The organization has been around for 80 years, a global office and industrial real estate association. It has 3,900 members in more than 50 countries.

I returned from a spring鈥檚 gathering last week, and I鈥檝e now had time to decompress and reflect on what I learned. This column will share some insights.

Industrial technologies

I spent time with industrial real estate brokers from around the United States and the world. One conversation was quite eye-opening.

We learned about the automated storage and retrieval systems, or ASRS for short. This high-tech inventory management system help a logistics provider to be more efficient and timely, requiring fewer employees.

Many in the cold storage space are using ASRS to more strategically manage their inventories. In one instance, an occupant called AmeriCold constructs their new buildings around such a system, and in many cases, they stretch 150 feet in height. To put this in context, that is approximately 12 stories high, and roughly four times the height of the modern concrete behemoths we see being erected in the Inland Empire.

Data centers, which power artificial intelligence, are springing up around the US, as well as chip manufacturing fabs, as they referred to.

The underlying challenge for industrial real estate applications is the acute need for power. Developers of these buildings seek power first and communities that can provide the power, as opposed to the cost of land under which the building is constructed.

A new concept called mini-grids is appearing around the nation. These systems are encapsulated power, serving a specific site with the juice generated by solar, wind or other forms of renewable energy.

Industrial roundtable

We heard from agents representing Mexico, Tampa, Florida, Atlanta, Georgia, Charlotte, North Carolina, Nashville, Tennessee, Dallas, Texas, Houston, Texas, Rotterdam, the Netherlands, Toronto, Canada, Laredo, Texas, Columbus, Ohio, Indianapolis, Indiana, and Los Angeles.

Curiously absent from this roundup was anyone from the middle part of the West, such as Denver, Salt Lake City and Phoenix.

Certain themes were repeated. Much like Southern California, large-scale inventory between 100,000 and 500,000 square feet has been dramatically over built, and therefore more supply than demand exists.

In buildings larger than 500,000 square feet, a shortage exists. And there is still quite a demand for large boxes. The most robust size range nationally are buildings under 50,000 square feet. Most mentioned power and the lack of a sustainable source as a future challenge.

All of the markets have experienced occupant demand waning as a result of inflation, higher borrowing rates and the exit from inventory after the Covid pandemic. The representative from Los Angeles opined that we are at the bottom in terms of rental rates as rents have decreased 30% to 40%.

He also echoed that 800,000 square feet and larger is a hot size range as well as buildings below 50,000 square feet. The Los Angeles ports are doing a record amount of business.

Third party logistics operators – or 3PLs – are renegotiating leases they originated in 2020, 2021 and 2022.

Finally, some local insurance carriers are requiring electrical panels be replaced in order to lessen the possibility of fire.

It鈥檚 very interesting to hear about the successes and struggles of other SIOR brokers around the nation. I鈥檒l look forward, with great interest, to our fall conference, which will be a home game in Hollywood.

Allen C. Buchanan, SIOR, is a principal with Lee & Associates Commercial Real Estate Services in Orange. He can be reached at abuchanan@lee-associates.com or 714.564.7104.聽

Every day, the scene plays out in hospitals across America: Older men and women lie on gurneys in emergency room corridors moaning or suffering silently as harried medical staff attend to crises.

Even when physicians determine these patients need to be admitted to the hospital, they often wait for hours 鈥� sometimes more than a day 鈥� in the ER in pain and discomfort, not getting enough food or water, not moving around, not being helped to the bathroom, and not getting the kind of care doctors deem necessary.

鈥淵ou walk through ER hallways, and they鈥檙e lined from end to end with patients on stretchers in various states of distress calling out for help, including a number of older patients,鈥� said Hashem Zikry, an emergency medicine physician at UCLA Health.

Physicians who staff emergency rooms say this problem, known as ER boarding, is as bad as it鈥檚 ever been 鈥� even worse than during the first years of the COVID-19 pandemic, when hospitals filled with desperately ill patients.

While boarding can happen to all ER patients, adults 65 and older, who account for nearly 20% of ER visits, are especially vulnerable during long waits for care. Also, seniors may encounter boarding more often than other patients. The best estimates I could find, published in 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic, suggest that 10% of patients were boarded in ERs before receiving hospital care. About 30% to 50% of these patients were older adults.

鈥淚t鈥檚 a public health crisis,鈥� said Aisha Terry, an associate professor of emergency medicine at George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences and the president of the board of the American College of Emergency Physicians, which sponsored a summit on boarding in September.

What鈥檚 going on? I spoke to almost a dozen doctors and researchers who described the chaotic situation in ERs. They told me staff shortages in hospitals, which affect the number of beds available, are contributing to the crisis. Also, they explained, hospital administrators are setting aside more beds for patients undergoing lucrative surgeries and other procedures, contributing to bottlenecks in ERs and leaving more patients in limbo.

Then, there鈥檚 high demand for hospital services, fueled in part by the aging of the U.S. population, and backlogs in discharging patients because of growing problems securing home health care and nursing home care, according to Arjun Venkatesh, chair of emergency medicine at the Yale School of Medicine.

The impact of long ER waits on seniors who are frail, with multiple medical issues, is especially serious. Confined to stretchers, gurneys, or even hard chairs, often without dependable aid from nurses, they鈥檙e at risk of losing strength, forgoing essential medications, and experiencing complications such as delirium, according to Saket Saxena, a co-director of the geriatric emergency department at the Cleveland Clinic.

鈥淚t鈥檚 a public health crisis.鈥� 鈥擜isha Terry, president of the board of the American College of Emergency Physicians

When these patients finally secure a hospital bed, their stays are longer and medical complications more common. And聽聽finds that the risk of dying in the hospital is significantly higher for older adults when they stay in ERs overnight, as is the risk of adverse events such as falls, infections, bleeding, heart attacks, strokes, and bedsores.

Ellen Danto-Nocton, a geriatrician in Milwaukee, was deeply concerned when an 88-year-old relative with 鈥渟trokelike symptoms鈥� spent two days in the ER a few years ago. Delirious, immobile, and unable to sleep as alarms outside his bed rang nonstop, the older man spiraled downward before he was moved to a hospital room. 鈥淗e really needed to be in a less chaotic environment,鈥� Danto-Nocton said.

Several weeks ago, Zikry of UCLA Health helped care for a 70-year-old woman who鈥檇 fallen and broken her hip while attending a basketball game. 鈥淪he was in a corner of our ER for about 16 hours in an immense amount of pain that was very difficult to treat adequately,鈥� he said. ERs are designed to handle crises and stabilize patients, not to 鈥渢ake care of patients who we鈥檝e already decided need to be admitted to the hospital,鈥� he said.

How common is ER boarding and where is it most acute? No one knows, because hospitals aren鈥檛 required to report data about boarding publicly. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services retired a measure of boarding in 2021. New national measures of emergency care capacity have been proposed but not yet approved.

鈥淚t鈥檚 not just the extent of ED boarding that we need to understand. It鈥檚 the extent of acute hospital capacity in our communities,鈥� said Venkatesh of Yale, who helped draft the new measures.

In the meantime, some hospital systems are publicizing their plight by highlighting capacity constraints and the need for more hospital beds. Among them is聽聽in Boston, which announced in January that ER boarding had risen 32% from October 2022 to September 2023. At the end of that period, patients admitted to the hospital spent a median of 14 hours in the ER and 26% spent more than 24 hours.

Maura Kennedy, Mass General鈥檚 chief of geriatric emergency medicine, described an 80-something woman with a respiratory infection who languished in the ER for more than 24 hours after physicians decided she needed inpatient hospital care.

鈥淪he wasn鈥檛 mobilized, she had nothing to cognitively engage her, she hadn鈥檛 eaten, and she became increasingly agitated, trying to get off the stretcher and arguing with staff,鈥� Kennedy told me. 鈥淎fter a prolonged hospital stay, she left the hospital more disabled than she was when she came in.鈥�

When I asked ER doctors what older adults could do about these problems, they said boarding is a health system issue that needs health system and policy changes. Still, they had several suggestions.

鈥淗ave another person there with you to advocate on your behalf,鈥� said Jesse Pines, chief of clinical innovation at US Acute Care Solutions, the nation鈥檚 largest physician-owned emergency medicine practice. And have that person speak up if they feel you鈥檙e getting worse or if staffers are missing problems.

Alexander Janke, a clinical instructor of emergency medicine at the University of Michigan, advises people, 鈥淏e prepared to wait when you come to an ER鈥� and 鈥渂ring a medication list and your medications, if you can.鈥�

To stay oriented and reduce the possibility of delirium, 鈥渕ake sure you have your hearing aids and eyeglasses with you,鈥� said Michael Malone, medical director of senior services for Advocate Aurora Health, a 20-hospital system in Wisconsin and northern Illinois. 鈥淲henever possible, try to get up and move around.鈥�

Friends or family caregivers who accompany older adults to the ER should ask to be at their bedside, when possible, and 鈥渢ry to make sure they eat, drink, get to the bathroom, and take routine medications for underlying medical conditions,鈥� Malone said.

Older adults or caregivers who are helping them should try to bring 鈥渢hings that would engage you cognitively: magazines, books 鈥� music, anything that you might focus on in a hallway where there isn鈥檛 a TV to entertain you,鈥� Kennedy said.

鈥淓xperienced patients often show up with eye masks and ear plugs鈥� to help them rest in ERs with nonstop stimulation, said Zikry of UCLA. 鈥淎lso, bring something to eat and drink in case you can鈥檛 get to the cafeteria or it鈥檚 a while before staffers bring these to you.鈥�

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On Tuesday, May 14, Adriana Galindo, 34, of Mexico, was driving a 2015 black Chevrolet Malibu along the 10 Freeway in Indio with her son when Border Patrol agents stopped her vehicle, authorities allege in a criminal complaint.

According to an affidavit, Galindo, a U.S. citizen, told authorities she was driving to Los Angeles to purchase clothing for a retail store in Mexico and then returning home later that day.

After Galindo consented to a search of the car, a trained narcotics K-9 alerted law enforcement to the presence of narcotics odor, the DOJ said.

Agents initially found a single blue pill of suspected fentanyl, but after seizing the vehicle for further search, 93.3 pounds of fentanyl pills were discovered in a “non-factory compartment” under the car鈥檚 front seats, Thursday’s statement said.

Galindo was arrested and admitted to knowingly transporting illegal drugs but not knowing which drug. The affidavit alleges that she was paid $4,000 to do so.

Her son was released to the custody of his aunt, a California resident, according to the DOJ.

According to Thursday’s statement, the DOJ charged Galindo on with possession with intent to distribute a controlled substance.

“If convicted, Galindo would face a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years in federal prison and a statutory maximum sentence of life imprisonment,” the DOJ said.

A Banning jury in March found Angel Martine McIntire, 29, of Beaumont guilty of one count of voluntary manslaughter and acquitted him of two counts of first-degree murder.

McIntire was arrested in 2022 after a nearly two-year Riverside County sheriff’s investigation into the disappearance of Diana Perez Gonzalez.

According to a trial brief filed by the District Attorney’s Office, McIntire and Gonzalez had a conflicted relationship that began in August 2018. McIntire and Gonzalez聽moved in together, but within a year, he became abusive, prompting Gonzalez, who was pregnant with their daughter, to obtain a restraining order against him and to move out of their shared residence in December 2019, according to the brief.

The abuse inflicted on the woman culminated in a domestic violence conviction against McIntire. However, because the two had a baby together, they continued to communicate, ultimately resulting in her welcoming the defendant into her home in the 3000 block of Crooked Branch Way in the fall of 2020, the brief said.

Gonzalez then became pregnant again, which fueled discord, and McIntire again turned physically abusive, according to court papers.

On Dec. 4, 2020, with Gonzalez eight weeks pregnant, investigators theorize McIntire attacked her, inflicting fatal injuries, though the method remains unknown.

According to the brief, relying on mobile phone signal pings and social media activity, detectives were able to track McIntire’s movements that day, which took him through Cherry Valley, Beaumont, Gilman Springs, Aguanga, Cahuilla, Palm Desert and back home. At one point during the circuit, he dropped his and the victim’s daughter at his mother’s home in Beaumont, telling her that he didn’t know where the victim was, relaying the same information to Gonzalez’s family over the following week, according to court papers.

One of her relatives finally reported her missing on Dec. 11, 2020, and detectives immediately suspected foul play. However, McIntire was adamant in statements to detectives that he had no clue of his girlfriend’s whereabouts, suggesting she had returned to her native Mexico.

McIntire’s attorney, Daniel DeLimon, said he told jurors during the trial that there was not enough evidence to convict his client of murder.

“There was an absence of evidence as to where, when, how, and why she was murdered,” DeLimon said in an interview Friday. “The prosecution argued that those things didn鈥檛 matter as long as they believed he killed her and argued a killing under those circumstances could only be murder. They relied heavily on prior instances of domestic violence and his conduct after her disappearance. We argued there was insufficient evidence to show he did it and insufficient evidence to set what crime he committed.”

While someone can be charged with murder for the death of a fetus, DeLimon noted, there is no charge of manslaughter of a fetus, so there was no conviction related to the fetus’ death.

appearing in Superior Court in Rancho Cucamonga, received the bulk of the term, 10 years, for his conviction on a county of gross vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated. Five years was added to that term as a sentencing enhancement for fleeing the collision. Charges related to DUI and causing injury accounted for the other five years.

Wicks, in which was dropped, did not receive any credit for time served. He has been held without bail since his arrest in June of 2022. Wicks had a previous DUI conviction in San Bernardino County.

The collision happened just before 1 a.m. on March 31, 2022, on the northbound 15 Freeway near Jurupa Avenue, the California Highway Patrol said. Gary Boeldt II was driving in the left lane when Wicks struck the Oceanside resident’s car from behind 鈥渋n excess of 100 mph,鈥� a CHP news release said. Boeldt鈥檚 car plunged down an embankment and overturned. He was killed and his wife, Christine Lynn Carroll, was injured.

The San Bernardino County District Attorney’s Office said Wicks was co-owner of Wicks Brewery, a statement that operators of the brewery disputed after his arrest. He was, however, involved in the creation of the brewery’s beer. .