Santa Ana High School

Alex Bassinne, Ex-School Teacher, Gets Year in Jail After Copping to Molestin' & Kiddie Pornin'

Alex Bassinne has accepted a plea deal that has the 50-year-old former math teacher in Santa Ana schools pleading guilty to molesting two teen girls and possessing child porn in exchange for a one-year jail sentence, three years of probation and lifetime registration as a sex offender. If Bassinne h ... More >>

OC Pioneers Who Were Klan Members: Edmund J. Finley and Tom J. Simmons, Santa Ana World War I Vets

Remember that controversy a couple of years ago, when the Southern Poverty Law Center released a report talking about the increase in white-power movements in the military, a report that conservatives immediately demonized to the point where the SPLC eventually had to backtrack on its findings even ... More >>

OC Pioneers Who Were Klan Members: Burton Y. Neal, Yorba Linda Pastor

The First United Methodist Church in Yorba Linda has served the city's Methodists for 92 years now, and a good overview of it is in Yorba Linda: Its History, a book written in 1970. In it, author March Butz gives a thorough telling of the city's pioneer churches; with the Methodists, they first orga ... More >>

OC Pioneers Who Were Klan Members: Eugene Edmund French and Harry E. Byerrum, Huntington Beach Mayor and Fullerton Parks Superindentent with Parks Named After Them

Do you ever really think about the names given to parks, specifically those named after people? Most of them are named after former city officials, whether mayors, councilmembers, pioneers, and the like. But Orange County being Orange County, you're going to have some parks named after Klan members, ... More >>

Daniel Alvarez Wanted for the Bumping Off of Another Santa Ana 18 y.o., Bruno Lopez Ugalde

Have you seen the man at right? According to the Santa Ana Police Department (SAPD), Daniel Alvarez murdered another 18-year-old on May 8, Bruno Lopez Ugalde, who was remembered at the "Walk for Peace" Latino Health Access and Santa Ana Building a Healthy Community staged near Santa Ana High School ... More >>

OC Pioneers Who Were Klan Members: Harvy A. Stryker, Famous Dentist

In the world of dentistry during the 1920s, Harvey A. Stryker of SanTana was a bit of a superstar. His articles on the science of orthodontics appeared in the International Journal of Orthodontia, Oral Surgery and Radiography, The Journal of the National Dental Association, and the American Journal ... More >>

Jose Rodriguez Jr., 14, Apparently Commits Suicide-by-Cop

The Orange County District Attorney's office is investigating a bizarre shooting involving a 14-year-old boy killed by Santa Ana Police after he apparently called cops to say an armed man was in his neighborhood. Jose Rodriguez Jr. was holding a shotgun with a pistol grip when officers arrived to th ... More >>

OC Pioneers Who Were Klan Members: Joe H. Royer, Fullerton Oil Baron, Namesake of Street

In the 1920, what wasn't orange groves in North County was oil derricks, speculators, or plain ol' wildcatters. One of the big players in those days was the Royer family, for whom Royer Avenue in Fullerton is named after (technically, it's named after his brother Max, but hold on...). Joe was the ma ... More >>

OC Pioneers Who Were Klan Members: Harry Ipsen and E.A. Long, Placentia Treasurer and Councilmember

Amazingly, for a city that was founded on apartheid, for a city that has the most severe Mason-Dixon line in Orange County, Placentia didn't have many Ku Klux Klan members during the 1920s.It wasn't as if the city's Mexicans and gabachos got along. In the 1930s, the city would explode with racial vi ... More >>

OC Pioneers Who Were Klan Members: Jo Lowell, Santa Ana Rancher, Namesake of Street

Lowell Street in SanTana is one of those fascinating streets that skips across the city's various economic realities. It cuts through the muy muy neighborhoods of Washington Square and Floral Park (where, true to its exclusionary background, they call it Lowell Lane) and shady barrios, single family ... More >>

OC Pioneers Who Were Klan Members: Lawrence A. Stevenson, Orange Councilmember

The surviving membership roster of the Orange County Ku Klux Klan during the 1920s isn't perfect. There are pages missing, not all the Klukkers have home addresses assigned to them, and some of the names are misspelled--which makes the mystery of finding out which local pioneer was Klan and which me ... More >>

OC Pioneers Who Were Klan Members: Roscoe Gulick Hewitt, Former Chairman of the OC Republican Party Central Committee

"Child of father is man," goes that well-worn aphorism, and that was definitely the case for Roscoe Gulick Hewitt. He lived a good-enough life, finding a career as an agent for New York Life Insurance Company and being heavily involved with the Masons in SanTana, his hometown. His self-written biogr ... More >>

OC Pioneers Who Were Klan Members: Oswald Richard Meissner, Brea Councilmember

All good things must eventually pass, and so it came to be that by the end of the 1920s, the power of the Ku Klux Klan in Brea was on the wane. They had a good run, having set up in 1922 as part of the original KKK in Orange County and weathering the jihad that District Attorney Alexander P. Nelson ... More >>

OC Pioneers Who Were Klan Members: Maurice Enderle, County Assessor

I have a couple of tricks to do this series. Since I'm chained down to this desk, it's a bit difficult for me to dive into microfilm, but thankfully I'm enough of a nerd so that I have nearly every book about the history of Orange County--on a city, county, familial, regional, and national level--wr ... More >>

OC Pioneers Who Were Klan Members: Stanley Edward Goode, Santa Ana Councilmember

You can call Stanley Edward Goode a member of SanTana's sleeper Klan cell. He was a member of the first OC iteration of the Invisible Empire, the one that issued death threats and was about to lynch a man if not for heroic district attorney Alexander P. Nelson. That first KKK supposedly disbanded in ... More >>

OC Pioneers Who Were Klan Members: Albert Ore, La Habra Pastor

The dirtiest secret about the Ku Klux Klan in Orange County during the 1920s--more than all the councilmembers and trustees and city fathers put together--is that one of the most-represented professions among their ranks were ministers.You had virtually every Protestant denomination represented--Con ... More >>

[UPDATED with Texas Sales:] Freedom Communications Sells MORE Papers That Are Not the Register

UPDATE, MAY 18, 12:32 P.M.: The Freedom Communications' fire sale continues.A day after announcing the sale of four Midwest newspapers, the Irvine-based parent company of the Orange County Register disclosed it is also dumping all its Texas papers.

[UPDATED with District Reaction:] Alex Bassinne, Ex-Santa Ana Teacher, Accused of Molesting Teen Girls, Possessing Child Porn

UPDATE, MAY 4, 12:39 P.M.: The Santa Ana Unified School District has released a statement regarding the charges pending against former district math teacher Alex Bassinne for alleged child pornography possession and, while working at Santa Ana High School and Raymond A. Villa Fundamental Intermediat ... More >>

Top 10 OC Comics...So Far!

Ahhh Orange County. We might be known for our beautiful weather, pristine coastlines, and gorgeous people but we are soooo much more than that! Orange County is also the stomping grounds of some of the funniest comedic talent. With that said, we thought we'd do a little bragging on some of O.C.'s fi ... More >>

Oscar Hernandez, Who Backed Up Killer of 13-Year-Old Boy, Gets 16 Years in Prison

​It took a jury in September less than an hour to convict Ramon Diaz of murdering 13-year-old Rodrigo Valle after the pair stared one another down near Santa Ana High School in September 2008.Last week, Oscar Hernandez, the 24-year-old who essentially served as Diaz's lookout man and backup muscle ... More >>

Two Sets of Santa Ana Teens Staring One Another Down, Two Murders

​Dead: Rodrigo Valle, 13Killer: Ramon Diaz, then just shy of 17.Dead: Manuel Raul Orozco, 17.Killer: Andrew Cervantes, then 14.What do the two murders have in common other than they happened two years apart in Santa Ana and the teen killers were tried as adults?Stare downs.

DA Tony Rackauckas Gets Half a Wish: Parole Denied for Uciel Murgo, OK'd for Raul Puente Robles

​Orange County District Attorney Tony Rackauckas is batting .500 this week in the state prison board's Gang-Banger Parole Homerun Derby.The paroles of gang members Raul Puente Robles and Uciel Murgo--who traded warm beds in Santa Ana for cold cell bunks at Chuckawalla Valley State Prison in Blyth ... More >>

Neftali Pena Procopio Gets 3 Years and Ugly Police Mugshot of the Week for Sex With 12-Year-Old Girl

​As Neftali Pena Procopio spends the next three years in prison for having sex in his car with a 12-year-old girl he plied with marijuana, the Santa Ana 32-year-old can at least warm his heart knowing that he is an award-winner--of our ugliest police mugshot of the week contest.But first, a messag ... More >>

Justin Burns, Former Cal State Fullerton Hoops Star, Arrested in Ex-Girlfriend's Murder

Justin Burns​Yesterday, Gustavo brought the sad tale of Bobby Joyce, a former Santa Ana High School basketball star and University of Nevada-Las Vegas (UNLV) Running Rebel arrested for allegedly robbing a Vietnam War vet confined to a wheelchair. Now comes word that another young Orange County hoo ... More >>

Sal Duenas Is a Handball Wizard

The Santa Ana native is king of Orange County's handball courts—but can he go further and bring the sport some much-needed respect?

[UPDATED:] 3 MORE Santa Ana Schools Among California's Worst

UPDATE: Three more Santa Ana schools have been added the list of the worst of the worst schools in California (details below) . . . Valley High School blogFreshmen engineering students at Valley High School put the pieces together.​Valley High, Century High and Willard Intermediate schools, which ... More >>

Forty Years Later, the Clash Between the Black Panthers and Santa Ana P.D. Still Influences OC Life

'Gay Panic'

Three men go wilding; the gays made them do it

Live Review

Music Center Monopoly! Pacific Symphony at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, Segerstrom Hall, Wednesday, June 7

Hail the Hesitant Hero

Robert Acosta joined the Army looking for a life. Thanks to an ambush in Iraq, he found it