Eric Garcetti's role in L.A. budget fixes is in dispute

Pressed in the race for mayor of Los Angeles to say how he would fix a persistent budget gap that has led to the gutting of many city services, Eric Garcetti urges voters to look at what he has done in the past.

The onetime City Council president claims credit for reforms that he said cut the City Hall shortfall to just over $200 million from more than $1 billion. He sees "tremendous progress," principally in reducing pension and healthcare costs, and asserts: "I delivered that."

But the truth is in dispute. Although there is not a singular view about any aspect of the city's troubled finances, most of those in the thick of recent budget fights depict Garcetti not as a fiscal hard-liner but as a conciliator who used his leadership position to chart a middle ground on the most significant changes.

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, city administrative officer Miguel Santana and one of Garcetti's rivals in the mayoral race, Councilwoman Jan Perry, were among those who pushed for bigger workforce reductions and larger employee contributions toward pensions and healthcare. Labor leaders and their champions on the City Council, including Paul Koretz and Richard Alarcon, sought to cushion the blow for workers.

Garcetti and his supporters say he moderated between those extremes. His critics said he worried too much about process and airing every viewpoint rather than focusing relentlessly on shoring up the city's bottom line.

"It was through the mayor's persistence and steadfast position that we got ongoing concessions," said Santana, the chief budget official for Los Angeles. "It was in collaboration with the council leadership that we finally reached agreements with labor."

The $1-billion-plus deficit Garcetti speaks of shrinking refers not to a single year but to the total of budget gaps that confronted Los Angeles over four years if no corrective action had been taken. The city's fiscal crisis worsened during that time because Garcetti and his fellow council members — including Perry and mayoral candidate Wendy Greuel — approved a city employee pay raise of 25% over five years just before the country stumbled into the recession. (Greuel left the council in 2009 when she was elected city controller.)

Although Garcetti focuses on his role, a portion of the financial improvements were outside his control. The state's elimination of redevelopment agencies in 2012 returned millions to L.A.'s general fund. Tax revenue also ticked upward with the economic recovery.

Garcetti's position as council president from 2006 through 2011 did put him at the center of debate about annual shortfalls that ranged to more than $400 million.

In 2009, he supported an early retirement plan that knocked 2,400 workers off the payroll. "I really pushed that through," the councilman said in an interview. Two participants in confidential contract talks at the heart of the deal had diametrically opposed views. "He made it happen, period," one said; the other offered: "I wouldn't say he was a major mover."

The plan saves the city a maximum of $230 million a year in salary and pension reductions in the short run. But Los Angeles borrowed to spread the costs of the program over 15 years, with current employees and retirees expected to shoulder the cost of the early exits.

The early retirements are expected to do nothing to resolve the long-term "structural deficit" — the $200 million to $400 million a year that Los Angeles spends above what it takes in. And early retirements could even be a net negative in the long run if, as city revenue recovers, new employees are put in those 2,400 empty positions too quickly.

In 2010 the city completed a budget fix that did attack the structural imbalance.

Garcetti's initial proposal called for upping the retirement age for new city employees to 60 from 55 and requiring workers to contribute a minimum of 2% of salary toward their retiree health care.

Budget chief Santana offered a markedly tougher plan. It required a 4% retiree health contribution, halved the health subsidy for retirees and capped pension benefits at 75% of salary instead of 100%. Santana's plan, also for new employees, became the basis of the reform.

Some who served with Garcetti on the council committee that leads employee negotiations pushed for even greater sacrifices. But Garcetti fought against ratcheting up demands on workers, saying it would be useless to approve a plan that would not survive subsequent union votes.

The councilman's greatest contribution may have come after city leaders set their position on pensions. Garcetti took the unusual step of visiting groups of workers. Some employees booed. Some asked him why city lawmakers, among the highest paid in the nation at $178,000 a year, didn't cut their own salaries.

"There was a lot of anger," said a labor leader who spoke on condition of anonymity because that union has not endorsed in the race. "But Eric talked to people as if they were adults and stayed until he answered all their questions. People appreciated him ... taking that kind of heat."

Matt Szabo, a former deputy mayor who helped negotiate with labor, said Garcetti deserved "every bit of credit" he has claimed for deficit reduction. "He knew he was running for mayor, and he was doing the right thing, but it was something that was going to cost him later" in terms of union support, said Szabo, who is running to replace Garcetti on the council.

Most of the employee groups that have endorsed thus far in the mayor's race have come out for Greuel. One political advantage for the controller: She left the council in 2009, before the city began making its toughest demands on workers.

Garcetti found himself stuck the middle again with another 2010 vote, this one over the elimination of 232 jobs — most of them in libraries and day care operations at city parks. Garcetti voted for the layoffs. Later he voted to reconsider, though he said recently that he intended only to re-air the issue, not to keep the workers on the job.

Labor leaders faulted Garcetti for giving the appearance he might be ready to save the jobs when he really wasn't. The reductions remain a sore point, because a "poison pill" in the contract required that any layoffs be accompanied by immediate pay raises for remaining city employees. Fierce disagreement remains over whether the layoffs saved the city any money.

"That became part of the negative picture" of Garcetti, said one labor leader, who asked not to be named out of concern about alienating a possible future mayor. The candidate said in an interview that he frequently found himself hewing a middle ground between some colleagues "who simply hope more revenue would come in" and others who wanted to use an "ax," making indiscriminate cuts. He added: "To me, both views were equally unacceptable."

Critics find Garcetti too malleable, ready to shift to the last argument he has heard. But others appreciate his quest for the middle, saying the fact he sometimes irritated both budget hard-liners and unions showed he had taken a reasoned approach.

"The criticism of Eric is also sort of the good news," said one of the union reps. "He has this very process-y, kumbaya, can't-we-all-get-along style. It drove us all crazy. But now I really miss it because it seems to be all politics over policy."

james.rainey@latimes.com

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Bulgarian Parliament Accepts Government’s Resignation

SOFIA, Bulgaria — The Bulgarian Parliament voted on Thursday to accept the government’s resignation after a week of mass protests and bloody clashes with police.

With deputies voting 209-5, with one abstention, the government of Prime Minster Boiko Borisov and his ministers will remain in their posts until an interim government is appointed by President Rosen Plevneliev. New elections are expected in April or May.

During the debate, Tsvetan Tsvetanov, the interior minister in resignation, said the resignation was in the best interest of Bulgaria.

"Most Bulgarian citizens don’t want violence on the streets," he said. "Bulgarian citizens,” he added, “absolutely do not support those who want to destabilize the country."

Opposition parties accused the government of corruption, economic mismanagement and cronyism.

The week of political chaos, nationwide protests and political maneuvers by opposition parties resulted in Mr. Borisov announcing his resignation Wednesday following violent clashes between police and protesters.

Despite the vote, around 1,000 supporters of Mr. Borisov, largely pensioners, stood outside the Parliament. Many waved the flag of Mr. Borisov’s political party and chanted "We don’t want a resignation" and "Boiko is number one!"

The protests — the biggest in at least 15 years — were set off by electricity price increases and corruption scandals, including one over the nominee to head the state electricity regulatory commission, which sets rates. She was accused of selling cigarettes illegally online and her nomination was later withdrawn.

Tempers were inflamed further when Bulgaria’s finance minister, Simeon Djankov, the architect of painful fiscal probity, stepped down on Monday. Rather than allaying anger, analysts said, the resignation was greeted by the public as an admission that the government’s economic policies had not worked.

Tens of thousands of Bulgarians took to the streets across the country to protest. Some yelled “Mafia!” Others burned their utility bills.

Though the country’s fiscal prudence has helped it to avoid having to seek an international bailout like Hungary or Romania, analysts said, rising unemployment and weak growth, coupled with wage and pension freezes and tax increases, had mobilized the country’s increasingly disgruntled middle class, who felt themselves squeezed during the financial crisis.

Daniel Smilov, program director at the Center for Liberal Strategies, a political research organization in the Bulgarian capital, Sofia, said that Bulgarians were disillusioned that the overthrow of Communism in 1989 and the country’s subsequent democratization had not delivered the expected prosperity.

Bulgaria has struggled to shed a reputation for lawlessness and corruption. It remains poor, with an average monthly wage of just $480, the lowest in the European Union.

“What we are seeing is the result of a general distrust in government and the political system,” Mr. Smilov said, noting than protests had engulfed wealthy as well as poorer regions of the country. “These are not the bottom layers of society, but people in the middle strata who been hit hardest by the financial crisis. They fear they are losing their status, and they might become poor very fast.”

Trying to appease the protesters, the prime minister said on Tuesday that the license of the Czech utility CEZ, which provides power to many residential customers in Bulgaria, would be withdrawn. Mr. Borisov cited beatings of protesters Tuesday by the police as one reason.

“Every drop of blood for us is a stain,” he said. “I can’t look at a Parliament surrounded by barricades, that’s not our goal, neither our approach, if we have to protect ourselves from the people.”

Mr. Smilov said that after the Parliament accepted the government’s resignation, President Rosen Plevneliev would then appoint a caretaker government. Mr. Borisov said his party would not participate in an interim government.

Mr. Borisov’s resignation could signal the political demise of one of the country’s most colorful political figures. A former karate instructor, bodyguard, fireman and mayor of Sofia with a shaved head and a talk-tough approach, Mr. Borisov was once viewed as being so invincible that Bulgarians called him “Batman.”

As the owner of a private security company, he provided security services for Todor Zhivkov, the former Communist leader of Bulgaria. Mr. Borisov was then the personal bodyguard for Simeon Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, the child czar who returned to be elected prime minister in 2001.

Mr. Borisov rose to oversee the police at the Interior Ministry, before being elected mayor of Sofia and then becoming prime minister in 2009.

“Mr. Borisov is a typical populist leader who came to power promising to take revenge against the transition on behalf of the poor,” says Andrei Raichev, a political analyst at Gallup International in Sofia. “Now the people realize that they were lied to.”

Mr. Raichev said that no one could predict how the public would react to the resignation. “We could even reach the absurd situation that the protests continue against no one,” he said. “Which means that they are against everyone.”

Matthew Brunwasser reported from Sofia, Bulgaria, and Dan Bilefsky from Paris.

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American Idol: Women Face Sudden-Death Round

American Idol

By Jamie Bufalino

02/20/2013 at 11:00 PM EST

Mariah Carey

Mario Anzuoni/Reuters/Landov

American Idol threw yet another new twist at its 40 remaining contestants: a sudden-death round.

"One song, one chance, no mercy," Ryan Seacrest said as the first group of 10 female contestants gathered in Las Vegas to try to finally sing their way – in front of a boisterous studio audience – through to the "America votes" phase of the competition.

Five women moved on, five went home.

Kentucky high school junior Jenny Beth Willis, whose rendition of a Trisha Yearwood song earned mixed reviews from the judges, was the first up. Although Keith Urban appreciated her "effortless confidence," Nicki Minaj said her performance lacked excitement (a comment that elicited the first audience boos of the season). Final result: It was the end of the road for Willis.

Tenna Torres, 28, – who attended Mariah Carey's camp for kids as a youngster – took the stage next and impressed the judges with her take on the Natasha Bedingfield's "Soulmate." But she lost style points with Minaj, who didn't like one particular aspect of her look. "Lose the hair," said Minaj, who felt the contestant's coif aged her. Final result: She made it through to the Top 20.

The three most powerful performances of the night all made it to the next round: Nashville's Kree Harrison, who despite taking a decidedly plain-Jane approach to styling, wowed the judges with her version of Patty Griffin's "Up to the Mountain." "You sang the hell out of that song," said Carey.

Angela Miller, 18, of Massachusetts, belted out Jessie J's hit "Nobody's Perfect." But she pretty much was.

And Amber Holcomb, an assistant teacher from Texas, closed the show with a rousing (and well received) rendition of "My Funny Valentine."

For the final spot of the night, it came down to Anchorage, Alaska, resident Adriana Latonio, 17, who tackled Aretha Franklin's "Ain't No Way," and Shubha Vedula, a Michigan high school senior who sang Lady Gaga's "Born This Way."

Although the judges saw potential in both contestants, they ultimately picked Lantonio's powerhouse vocals in a final emotional moment.

Thursday will bring out the guys. The first round of 10 will take the stage to try to make the top 20 – but once again, five will go home.

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Adults get 11 percent of calories from fast food

ATLANTA (AP) — On an average day, U.S. adults get roughly 11 percent of their calories from fast food, a government study shows.

That's down slightly from the 13 percent reported the last time the government tried to pin down how much of the American diet is coming from fast food. Eating fast food too frequently has been seen as a driver of America's obesity problem.

For the research, about 11,000 adults were asked extensive questions about what they ate and drank over the previous 24 hours to come up with the results.

Among the findings:

— Young adults eat more fast food than their elders; 15 percent of calories for ages 20 to 39 and dropping to 6 percent for those 60 and older.

— Blacks get more of their calories from fast-food, 15 percent compared to 11 percent for whites and Hispanics.

— Young black adults got a whopping 21 percent from the likes of Wendy's, Taco Bell and KFC.

The figures are averages. Included in the calculations are some people who almost never eat fast food, as well as others who eat a lot of it.

The survey covers the years 2007 through 2010 and was released Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The authors couldn't explain why the proportion of calories from fast food dropped from the 13 percent found in a survey for 2003 through 2006.

One nutrition professor cast doubts on the latest results, saying 11 percent seemed implausibly low. New York University's Marion Nestle said it wouldn't be surprising if some people under-reported their hamburgers, fries and milkshakes since eating too much fast food is increasingly seen as something of a no-no.

"If I were a fast-food company, I'd say 'See, we have nothing to do with obesity! Americans are getting 90 percent of their calories somewhere else!'" she said.

The study didn't include the total number of fast-food calories, just the percentage. Previous government research suggests that the average U.S. adult each day consumes about 270 calories of fast food — the equivalent of a small McDonald's hamburger and a few fries.

The new CDC study found that obese people get about 13 percent of daily calories from fast food, compared with less than 10 percent for skinny and normal-weight people.

There was no difference seen by household income, except for young adults. The poorest — those with an annual household income of less than $30,000 — got 17 percent of their calories from fast food, while the figure was under 14 percent for the most affluent 20- and 30-somethings with a household income of more than $50,000.

That's not surprising since there are disproportionately higher numbers of fast-food restaurants in low-income neighborhoods, Nestle said.

Fast food is accessible and "it's cheap," she said.

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Bulgari shows off Liz Taylor's gems

It isn't easy sometimes to be an ordinary person in Los Angeles, so near to and yet so far from the city's glamorous events.

You hear about the grand Oscar parties, but you will never be invited. The award ceremony may be taking place minutes from where you live, but you watch it at home, on TV, in your sweat pants — and you might as well be in Dubuque.

Rodeo Drive too can make you feel like a scrap on the cutting room floor. As you stroll the wide and immaculate sidewalks of Beverly Hills' iconic shopping street, you pass by boutiques you'd feel self-conscious walking into. In the windows are baubles and trinkets you could never in three lifetimes afford.

Which is why it is rather nice to be invited to make a private appointment at the house of Bulgari, the fine Italian jeweler that opened its doors in 1884.

Elizabeth Taylor loved Bulgari jewels. Richard Burton, whose torrid affair with her began during the filming of "Cleopatra" in Rome, accompanied her often to the flagship shop on the Via Condotti. He liked to joke that the name Bulgari was all the Italian she knew.

So it is fitting that starting Oscar week, the jeweler is celebrating the Oscar-winning star with an exhibit of eight of her most treasured Bulgari pieces.

They are heavy on diamonds and emeralds — of rare size, gleam and value.

And Bulgari knows their value well.

After Taylor's death, it reacquired some of the gems at a Christie's auction. One piece, an emerald-and-diamond brooch that also can be worn as a pendant, sold for $6,578,500 — breaking records both for sales price of an emerald and for emerald price per carat ($280,000).

That brooch, whose centerpiece is an octagonal step-cut emerald weighing 23.44 carats, was Burton's engagement present to Taylor. He followed it upon their marriage (his second, her fifth) with a matching necklace whose 16 Colombian emeralds weigh in at 60.5 carats. Bulgari bought the necklace back too, for $6,130,500.

They are in the exhibit, along with Burton's engagement ring to Taylor and a delicate brooch — given to her by husband No. 4, Eddie Fisher — whose emerald and diamond flowers were set en tremblant so that they gently fluttered as Taylor moved.

The jewels are not for sale.

On Tuesday night, actress Julianne Moore wore the Burton necklace, with pendant attached, at a gala for Bulgari's top clients. At the dinner hour, guests were escorted along a lavender-colored carpet to a nearby rooftop that had been transformed into a Roman terrace.

Those honored guests, of course, got private viewings of Taylor's jewels.

But so did Amanda Perry, a healer from West Hollywood who arrived the next morning for one of the first appointments available to the public.

Someone had emailed news of the collection to the 35-year-old Taylor fan. She walked in off the street Tuesday, when the exhibit was open only to press — and Sabina Pelli, Bulgari's glamorous executive vice president, fresh from Rome, was taking sips of San Pellegrino brought to her on a silver tray between back-to-back interviews that started at 5 a.m.

The camera crews were long gone when Perry came back Wednesday. She had the exhibit, and handsome sales associate Timothy Morzenti of Milan, entirely to herself.

In a black suit, still wearing on his left hand the black glove he dons to handle fine jewels, Morzenti whisked Perry off via a private elevator to the exhibit on the second floor. The jewels stood in vitrines mounted high off the ground. Behind them were photos and a slide show of Taylor, bejeweled.

"Which piece would you like to see first?" Morzenti asked her as a security guard stood by. "I personally love the emerald ring."

Then he proceeded at leisure to explain Bulgari-signature sugar-loaf cuts and trombino ring settings, while tossing in occasional Taylor stories.

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India Ink: Should British Politicians Apologize for Colonialism?

On Wednesday, Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain appeared in Amritsar, in the Indian state of Punjab, where he laid a commemorative wreath at Jallianwala Bagh, the site of a 1919 massacre of Indian protesters by British forces that killed about 1,000, according to the Indian government.

The incident was a “deeply shameful” event in British history, Mr. Cameron wrote in a visitor’s book at the memorial, marking the first time that a British politician has offered condolences for the massacre. Mr. Cameron stopped short of apologizing for the attack, though, which some Indians had hoped would happen.

His words of regret touched off a debate in India about what Britain’s current leaders owe India’s citizens, if anything, for the errors of their predecessors.

Here’s what a few historians and political science experts had to say:

Kamal Mitra Chenoy, professor of international studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi:

It was long overdue. It has been a century since the incident, where innocent people were herded into an enclosure that they could not escape. In today’s language it would be called a genocide.

I don’t think expressing regret is enough. There should be a sincere apology. You don’t just regret the massacre of hundreds of unarmed civilians. My point is either you do not bring it up, but if you are going to bring it up, then tender an apology — don’t just express regret.

Jallianwala Bagh is a big thing. It is symbolic. An apology would make up for a lot of things.

Basudev Chatterji, professor of history at University of Delhi:

It is something he is doing as a representative of a country. It is a diplomatic and human gesture.

It is, of course, a shameful thing to fire at unarmed people.

I personally don’t believe in correcting historical wrongs, but it is a perfectly decent thing to do on the part of the British prime minister.

Kuldip Singh, head of the political science department at Guru Nanak Dev University in Amritsar, Punjab:

An apology is long overdue. It has been historically established that innocent people were killed. I say it is long overdue because an apology could not have come during the colonial era, but that phase has long gone.

The gesture does not cost anything, but it does leave a good impression on the people of India.

Even if it has come late, speaking on behalf of the people of Punjab, I can say the regret also means a lot.

The British prime minister is on a mission to improve economic ties so it makes sense to address these troubling issues.

Sukhwant Singh, professor of history at Guru Nanak Dev University in Amritsar

Their policies should be criticized, but an apology is a different thing. It was their rule and policy at that time.

How it happened needs to be studied. Before going to any decision whether he should apologize or not, we must know what actually happened.

There are so many Indian rulers who committed atrocities against other Indians.

A question for our readers: Do Britain’s current leaders owe India an apology for events committed during Britain’s colonial rule?

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Mindy McCready Faced Losing Her Children Days Before Suicide

02/20/2013 at 07:00 AM EST

Just days before her apparent suicide, Mindy McCready was plunged into despair after she was served with court papers proposing that her two sons be sent to live with her long-estranged mother.

"The most important thing are my babies must come home," she wrote in an email to her private investigator friend Danno Hanks, who tells PEOPLE in this week's cover story: "She lost all hope."

McCready, 37, was found dead Sunday of an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head on the porch of her Heber Springs, Ark., home, the same spot where the body of her boyfriend David Wilson was discovered last month, also with a gunshot wound to the head.

The long-troubled country singer and mom to Zayne, 10 months, and Zander, 6, had recently gone to a court-ordered rehab center. She left for police a harrowing scene of death and filth.

The house reeked, food was left out and dog feces were everywhere. Bottles full of prescription pills sat on the nightstand and in the bathroom, according to a police source. Also found: the body of a dog, whom McCready apparently shot before taking her own life.

"People talk about a train wreck, but the world lost a real person, a human being, a mother," says country singer Chely Wright, a friend of McCready's from their early days in Nashville. "I'm praying for her kids."

For more on Mindy McCready's troubled life and tragic death, including inside accounts of her troubling behavior, the latest on the investigation into her boyfriend's death, and exclusive interviews with her closest friends and her former fiancé Dean Cain, pick up this week's PEOPLE, on newsstands Friday

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Drug overdose deaths up for 11th consecutive year

CHICAGO (AP) — Drug overdose deaths rose for the 11th straight year, federal data show, and most of them were accidents involving addictive painkillers despite growing attention to risks from these medicines.

"The big picture is that this is a big problem that has gotten much worse quickly," said Dr. Thomas Frieden, head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which gathered and analyzed the data.

In 2010, the CDC reported, there were 38,329 drug overdose deaths nationwide. Medicines, mostly prescription drugs, were involved in nearly 60 percent of overdose deaths that year, overshadowing deaths from illicit narcotics.

The report appears in Tuesday's Journal of the American Medical Association.

It details which drugs were at play in most of the fatalities. As in previous recent years, opioid drugs — which include OxyContin and Vicodin — were the biggest problem, contributing to 3 out of 4 medication overdose deaths.

Frieden said many doctors and patients don't realize how addictive these drugs can be, and that they're too often prescribed for pain that can be managed with less risky drugs.

They're useful for cancer, "but if you've got terrible back pain or terrible migraines," using these addictive drugs can be dangerous, he said.

Medication-related deaths accounted for 22,134 of the drug overdose deaths in 2010.

Anti-anxiety drugs including Valium were among common causes of medication-related deaths, involved in almost 30 percent of them. Among the medication-related deaths, 17 percent were suicides.

The report's data came from death certificates, which aren't always clear on whether a death was a suicide or a tragic attempt at getting high. But it does seem like most serious painkiller overdoses were accidental, said Dr. Rich Zane, chair of emergency medicine at the University of Colorado School of Medicine.

The study's findings are no surprise, he added. "The results are consistent with what we experience" in ERs, he said, adding that the statistics no doubt have gotten worse since 2010.

Some experts believe these deaths will level off. "Right now, there's a general belief that because these are pharmaceutical drugs, they're safer than street drugs like heroin," said Don Des Jarlais, director of the chemical dependency institute at New York City's Beth Israel Medical Center.

"But at some point, people using these drugs are going to become more aware of the dangers," he said.

Frieden said the data show a need for more prescription drug monitoring programs at the state level, and more laws shutting down "pill mills" — doctor offices and pharmacies that over-prescribe addictive medicines.

Last month, a federal panel of drug safety specialists recommended that Vicodin and dozens of other medicines be subjected to the same restrictions as other narcotic drugs like oxycodone and morphine. Meanwhile, more and more hospitals have been establishing tougher restrictions on painkiller prescriptions and refills.

One example: The University of Colorado Hospital in Aurora is considering a rule that would ban emergency doctors from prescribing more medicine for patients who say they lost their pain meds, Zane said.

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Stobbe reported from Atlanta.

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Online:

JAMA: http://www.jama.ama-assn.org

CDC: http://www.cdc.gov

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AP Medical Writer Lindsey Tanner can be reached at http://www.twitter.com

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L.A. Regional Food Bank is thriving at 40

David Navarro drove south from the Los Angeles Boys & Girls Club in Lincoln Heights on a recent sun-drenched day, headed to his weekly destination in a dust-gray Ford pickup.

As usual, he couldn't simply cruise into the crowded parking lot of the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank on 41st Street near Alameda. He was stopped by an employee who works miracles in the lot, arranging rigs in jigsaw patterns as drivers wait their turn to make food pickups.

The Salvation Army was already there, along with the Good News Central Church and the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles. Hollywood West Tenant Action Council was pulling in behind Navarro.

"I'll go in now and see what they have today," said Navarro, who told me that back at the Boys & Girls Club, people would be lining up for whatever he brought back.

Once inside the sprawling warehouse, Navarro moved as if he was in a race, trying to get his hands on as many perishables as he could before other drivers claimed them.

"They like any nice vegetables like this," he said, hoisting several crates of firm, stout zucchini onto his pushcart.

Over the course of an hour, Navarro worked up a sweat gathering boxes of bread and mounds of bananas, apples, lettuce and tomatoes. All of this tipped the scales at 556 pounds, and Navarro pushed the teetering cargo outside and loaded it onto his truck.

I thought he was done, but no.

"Now I go back," he said, "and fill the cart again."

In a region of staggering abundance, there is still desperate need. In a culture that wastes tons of food, there is still considerable hunger. And no charitable organization does more to balance the scales than the food bank, which began exactly 40 years ago, on Feb. 20, 1973.

It all began with a Pasadena cook named Tony Collier, who hated seeing perfectly good food getting thrown out at the recovery center where he worked. He began redistributing it to those in need, and the operation just kept growing. Today, it distributes some 200,000 pounds of food daily. A staff of 106 is backed up by 32,000 volunteers who pitch in at least one day a year, sorting food that includes non-perishables such as canned corn, as well as foods such as navel oranges and frozen chicken that have to be turned around quickly, before they go bad.

Each morning, a convoy of food bank trucks retrieves surplus food from farms, supermarket chains and other donors and brings it back to the warehouse, where it is picked up by about 650 agencies. Another 600 groups are on a waiting list to be included in the daily giveaway.

"Four hundred thousand of the 1 million people we serve each year are kids," said Michael Flood, president and chief executive of the food bank.

The challenge of the food bank has been to hook up with farmers whose harvest is sometimes bigger than the demand, or with supermarkets that have stocked more perishable food than they can sell. Ralphs and Vons are among the biggest donors to the food bank.

Still, billions of dollars worth of food ends up in dumpsters every year in the U.S., Flood said. He encourages citizens to be more conscious of waste and get involved in food donations or volunteering at a local pantry or the food bank (for more information, http://www.lafoodbank.org).

If you do happen to wander into the food bank, watch your step or you could get run over by a forklift. They zip around like bumper cars, honking horns as they wheel hulking loads toward the exits. And one of the employees who supervises the flow from delivery trucks to conveyor belts to palates is Valerie Rodriguez.

Rodriguez, like the food she processes, didn't get where she was supposed to go on the first try. The food bank is her second chance. As a teen growing up in South El Monte, she got it all wrong, becoming a drug addict, getting married way too young, losing kids she couldn't care for, and ending up in rehab at several skid row agencies, including the L.A. Mission and Union Rescue Mission.

But then she began straightening herself out, and as part of a welfare-to-work program, Rodriguez was assigned to volunteer at the food bank, not knowing anything about it. That's when she saw the trucks roll in from the missions and made the connection:

The food she'd eaten at the missions came from the food bank. She'd gone from recipient to supplier. And the food bank liked her so much that she was offered a temp job.

"It was after about a year of volunteering here," Rodriguez said.

Later, she was promoted to full time, and she's since remarried and regained custody of her children.

"It's still a struggle," she said. "But my hope and dream and desire is to save and buy a home. I want to have a home for my kids to grow up in."

While Rodriguez supervised volunteers, David Navarro finished loading his pickup and drove north from the food bank with more than 1,000 pounds of food. That evening, volunteers bagged the goods as men and women inched closer to the door of the Boys & Girls Club, eagerly awaiting their care packages.

Jo Ellen Kitchen, a volunteer at the club since the 1980s, told me she'd heard that the country has started to see an economic recovery.

"But it never really seems to get here."

It was Valentine's Day, and 20 people were in line. As dusk drew in around them, Alvina Rodriguez and Teresa Olmeda talked about the challenges of temporary work, low pay and hungry children. On this night, they and the others would go home with dinner because a simple act of compassion 40 years ago keeps rippling across the city.

steve.lopez@latimes.com

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IHT Rendezvous: Q and A: Nina Hoss, at Home at the Berlinale

BERLIN — The German actress Nina Hoss has been a fixture at the Berlinale in recent years. She won the best actress prize in 2007 for Christian Petzold’s “Yella,” served on the jury in 2011 and starred in one of the most acclaimed titles in last year’s competition, “Barbara,” also directed by Mr. Petzold (with whom she has made five movies in the past dozen years).

This year Ms. Hoss returned to the festival with “Gold,” her first film with Thomas Arslan, the German director often grouped with Mr. Petzold as a founding member of the Berlin School movement. A laconic and methodical neo-western, “Gold” chronicles the arduous expedition of several German fortune seekers into the Klondike hinterlands. Ms. Hoss plays Emily Meyer, a poised and somewhat enigmatic divorcée who may be the most driven member of the group, determined to forge ahead at all costs. It’s a typically restrained yet suggestive performance from an actress who has made an art of holding back.

Ms. Hoss, who will next be seen opposite Philip Seymour Hoffman in Anton Corbijn’s adaptation of John le Carré’s novel “A Most Wanted Man,” spoke about “Gold” and her collaborations with Mr. Arslan and Mr. Petzold in an interview at the Hotel Mandala during the festival.

Here are edited excerpts from the conversation:

Q.

When you take on a period role, as you’ve done with “Gold” and “Barbara,” do you approach it differently?

A.

As a character you always deal with the environment you live in — that helps you understand why they react the way they do. With Emily, for instance, she wears a corset at the beginning, so there’s a restriction right away, but eventually she lets go. These aren’t problems a modern woman would deal with. But they were only allowed to wear skirts in those days, and they even had to take care of the length of the skirt — the Canadian police would actually fine them if they weren’t long enough. Knowing that, even if we don’t talk about it in the movie, helps you to create the character.

Q.

What else did the research involve?

A.

There’s a Canadian writer, Pierre Berton, who wrote books about the Klondike Gold Rush with loads of photographs. But the thing that helped me the most was making a research trip to Dawson City [the destination in “Gold”] three weeks before shooting. I wanted to see where they wanted to go. When you get to this place in the middle of nowhere — really, you drive for six hours and maybe you see 15 cars, no houses, and it’s still wild — you have this feeling of wanting to stay for some weird reason. I understood what they were longing for.

The people who live there are adventurous, they’re open, and they have to work with each other because otherwise they’re never make it through the winter. I could feel it, this simplicity but also the possibility of a new society, which was particularly interesting for a character like Emily. There are not so many books on women during that time but in Dawson City I found some books on local history. There were women who went there looking for adventure and for freedom and to create themselves again. There was no one to tell you that you couldn’t, so women succeeded there and that was a very interesting perspective on those days.

Q.

What about physical preparations?

A.

We had riding lessons here outside of Berlin, and there were lots of preparations with all the props. There was a specialist who taught us how they made fire. We had to practice packing and unpacking the horses, how to saddle them properly. It was practical training more than intellectual discussions.

Q.

Was it a difficult shoot?

A.

It was quite exhausting. Because it’s a low-budget project there are not too many people around to help with the horses, for example. You can imagine, these seven actors in a dense forest, holding their horses for hours, until the camera is ready. They get crazy — the horses, I mean.

Q.

To what extent did you think of “Gold” as a western?

A.

More a road movie. I think it’s not as lawless as a western. It has parts of the genre in it, like revenge and a shootout. But what I found quite interesting is being German in this country, it’s as if they bring the law with them, and there are all these restrictions that they put on themselves. When you see this German group in the forests of Canada, it immediately tells you how far they’ve traveled. What I found interesting was thinking about what makes people follow their dreams, how hope keeps you going and how it can destroy you.

Q.

Did you see similarities between Emily and Barbara? They’re living in very different circumstances but both are extremely focused women, self-sufficient out of necessity.

A.

In that sense, maybe, and also in that they have principles. Emily has strong principles and is very pragmatic, and same with Barbara. They are women with principles and also they don’t want to let go. For me there’s something very positive underneath with both of them. They believe in life and they want to live, with all its ups and downs. They want to die and say, I lived. No one took it away from me.

But Emily doesn’t have to hold back as much. She does in the beginning because it was dangerous for women to be on their own, so she can’t just be too openhearted.

Q.

Since your characters often reveal little about themselves, do you create back stories for them?

A.

To be so restricted in some of these roles, especially in Christian’s films, can be a tough job. That’s why I need to do other types of films and theater — you become an actor to express yourself, and it’s tough to restrain yourself all the time. I love it, of course, because it’s a specific kind of task and I love the characters Christian writes for me. But I need to know everything about her. From the script I can guess that’s probably why she reacts a certain way, maybe because of the past, so I construct something.

With these characters you don’t just react and say what you think. It’s more like, oh, I would like to say this now but I can’t, so I’m saying this instead. There are so many things going on that I need to exactly know what she wanted to say. That has to be precise, otherwise I go crazy. But I don’t force it. I don’t feel like I need to tell the audience what I’m thinking right now. I love that it can be very precise for me, but when you watch it your mind creates your own story for her.

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