Elliot Blair, 33, of Orange was found early Saturday below a third-floor balcony at the Las Rocas Resort and Spa in Rosarito Beach. Family and colleagues said on a GoFundMe page that Blair was “tragically killed” and the victim of a “brutal crime.”

However, after an autopsy, officials at Baja California’s Attorney General’s Office said the death appeared to be the “result of an unfortunate accident from a fall by the now deceased from a third-story floor.”

In a brief three-paragraph statement, Mexican authorities said they are investigating Blair’s death and are in contact with American authorities through the U.S. Justice Department and the FBI, which in turn is informing Blair’s family.

David Scarsone, an attorney hired by Blair’s family, said they continue to be skeptical that he just fell off the balcony and will do their own investigation.

“There are many unanswered questions,” Scarsone said. “(The family) is pushing back on that conclusion (by Mexican authorities).”

Blair and his wife, Kimberly Williams – also a deputy public defender – were at the resort celebrating their one-year wedding anniversary.

Blair was known for his friendly nature and his intelligence. “Elliot was known for a smile on his face and his clever mind,” said the GoFundMe page organized in Blair’s memory.

Blair would now be with his father, Tom, who died two years ago, it added.

“Elliot and Tom were thick as thieves,” it said. “They spent countless hours together in the garage working on cars, dirt bikes, and dune buggies.”

Blair was “a compassionate lawyer who dedicated his life to serving indigent clients,” the GofundMe page said. “Elliot was known as a patient and caring advocate. He was the best of us and was loved by countless members of our office and the Orange County legal community. We are heartbroken.”

As of Monday night, the fundraiser had generated $97,552 in donations.

At the time, they said it was a health emergency.

But Tuesday, nearly 116 years to the day that Santa Ana deliberately burnt down its Chinatown, elected officials gathered to apologize to Chinese immigrants and their descendants for “acts of fundamental injustice and discrimination.”

Santa Ana Mayor Vicente Sarmiento and fellow council members condemned the shameful episode in Santa Ana’s history, when city leaders directed the fire marshal to burn down the area on 2nd, Bush and Main streets.

“This is a momentous occasion for the city of Santa Ana, recognizing and seeking to atone for the racist and xenophobic actions of our predecessors,” Sarmiento said before signing a resolution apologizing to Chinese immigrants and their descendants “who came to Santa Ana and were the victims of systemic and institutional racism, xenophobia, and discrimination.”

Councilman Johnathan Ryan Hernandez said the decision to burn down Chinatown “crippled and hurt the Chinese community that helped build this city.”

Councilwoman Nelida Mendoza called it “one of the greatest tragedies in Santa Ana’s history.”

Santa Ana was home to some 200 Chinese men, who began arriving in the late 1800s to work for a fruit company, according to the book, “The Burning of Santa Ana’s Chinatown,” by Stephen Gould, a former Cal State Fullerton student who researched the topic for decades. (Gould died last year.)

As described in Gould’s book, this is what happened:

In 1903, city leaders planning to build a new City Hall purchased some land for $850 – a bargain price because it sat right next to the city-block-wide area known as Chinatown. But after building City Hall, they weren’t happy that just outside their windows sat a neighborhood with live animals, inadequate sewer facilities and labeled by some as “a menace to health.”

Police regularly raided Chinatown looking for illegal activity, but found none, Gould said in the  book.

Then, on May 24, 1906, city officials inspecting the area said they found a Chinese man with “‘horrible sores’ of leprosy.” Emergency meetings were called, and Chinatown was placed on quarantine. Most of the men left, but those who remained were “thoroughly fumigated” and placed in a tent. The man believed to have leprosy was moved to a second tent, with “the town character” as his guard.

In one meeting, a city official said: “Purge that plague hole once and for all! Burn the damn place down and do it tonight.”

And so it was done, before as many as 1,000 onlookers, on May 25, 1906, Gould described.

“This is the only instance in state history I can find where this was done by city employees, and it was civically sponsored by city leaders,” said Dylan Almendral, a local historian at Tuesday’s ceremonial signing.

Throughout the American West, mobs burned down Chinatowns from Anaheim to Los Angeles, San Francisco and elsewhere, Almendral said.

“Most of the other instances of anti-Asian or anti-Black or other minority crime is basically guys in white hoods or an angry mob,” Almendral said, holding one of the few remaining copies of Gould’s book.

City officials said they were eager to adopt the resolution, unanimously passed on May 17, during this Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month.

The resolution resolves, among other things, “to rectify the lingering consequences of the historical discriminatory policies of the City of Santa Ana, and to use this resolution as a teaching moment for the public to move forward towards justice for all.”

Almendral, the historian, said recognition of Chinatown’s history had been in the works for many years, but he didn’t find a receptive council until this past year, when council members Hernandez and Thai Viet Phan took the lead on the topic.

A monument also is in the planning, Sarmiento said.

For Walt Lau, 67, and his brother, Guy Lau, 75, the city’s stance is symbolic.

“We see a healing process started,” said Guy Lau, who runs the Santa Ana Food Market with his brother. The store opened in 1948 and is one of the oldest Chinese businesses in town if not the oldest. Both men were at the signing ceremony.

Almendral also spoke of healing.

“A piece of our history was destroyed in 1906. Our legacy has been scarred,” Almendral said. “And today is the first day of healing after 116 years.”

Aidan Palicke, a 17-year-old junor at Yorba Linda High, has not attended classes since January, when he was told not to return to campus without a protective face covering.

Chris Palicke’s lawsuit in Orange County Superior Court says that the school’s “targeted harassment and discrimination” led to his son’s “expulsion” into a home-based study program.

The complaint was filed by Palicke and the California chapter of Children’s Health Defense, a non-profit organization founded by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. that promotes an anti-vaccine agenda. It names Yorba Linda High, the Placentia-Yorba Linda Unified School District and various district and school officials, including six teachers.

District spokeswoman Alyssa Griffiths declined to comment on the lawsuit. She said no students have been expelled from the district for failure to comply with the face mask rules.

For much of the pandemic, students and staff on school campuses across California have been required to cover their faces to protect themselves and others from COVID-19. That state mandate was lifted on March 12.

The lawsuit alleges Aidan Palicke was singled out in retribution for his parents’ vocal opposition to face masks and other district policies.

Chris Palicke, like some others who are against the use of face coverings, said it is unhealthy – even harmful – for children to wear masks for prolonged periods. Aidan Palicke said he finds it difficult to breathe and that he can’t concentrate on schoolwork when he’s wearing a regular mask.

For nearly two years, Aidan wore his mesh mask, as did many other students and even some staff members, according to Chris Palicke, who has photos from indoor school events showing many students either wearing masks improperly or not at all.

In a Jan. 14 letter, Superintendent Jim Elsasser updated families and staff on mask policy: “Masks with holes and mesh masks are not acceptable.”

Aidan Palicke said in an interview Monday that the experience has affected his schooling and his relationships with fellow students.

About two weeks after he was told he must wear a non-mesh mask on campus, he was allowed back to take final exams. But he said several teachers forced him to take the tests outside when the temperature was in the 40s and he had not brought a jacket.

“It was cold. It was awkward. All of my peers were looking at me. My fingers went numb from the cold,” he said. “I couldn’t concentrate.”

According to the lawsuit, the younger Palicke has been ridiculed and mocked by other students – sometimes at the encouragement of teachers. As a result, he left the Yorba Linda High cross-country team, where he was a captain, as well as the track team.

And although he could have returned to campus after the face mask requirement was lifted, Aidan and his father said too much has happened since. They plan to look at other academic options in the coming fall.

The lawsuit argues that school officials violated various education codes and constitutional rights while inflicting emotional distress. The lawsuit seeks, among other things, a court order barring the district from suspending or expelling students from in-person instruction for failing to comply with mask policy.

Aidan Palicke said he wants to ensure that other students – particularly younger ones – don’t experience what he did.

“I’m trying to protect those kids who can’t protect themselves,” he said.

Those are some of the words Santa Ana City Council members used early Wednesday morning to describe the actions of a local police officer who blared copyright-protected music from his squad car as a way to prevent video of his on-the-job actions from being spread over social media.

The April 4 incident, which took place late at night in a previously quiet neighborhood, has gained national attention as a possibly widespread police tactic.

As the April 19 council meeting extended beyond midnight, council members condemned the officer’s behavior. They also told the city manager to come back with an official policy that addresses the right of the public to film the police.

“This is a practice that no officer should engage in. There’s no reason to ever behave this way with members of the public, especially if you’re an officer with a badge and a gun,” said Councilman Johnathan Ryan Hernandez, who brought up the matter before his colleagues.

“The practice of utilizing music to deter members of the public from recording (police) isn’t something we’re going to allow to continue,” he added.

Hernandez had a first-hand view of the incident. He was in his home in the Artesia Pilar neighborhood around 11 p.m. on Monday, April 4, when he said he heard loud Disney songs playing over a P.A. system. He said he put up with it for about half an hour, then went outside to find out about the source of the music. As he did that he saw older residents and kids in their pajamas doing the same.

What happened next was caught on a video — which, despite the music, has gone viral — made by a member of the public.

“Guys, what’s going on with the music?” Hernandez asked the officers blasting the music. “Why are you playing Disney music?”

One officer told Hernandez that social media platforms take down video that includes copyright-protected music, and that playing such music loudly would prevent any video of his work from being shared online.

After Hernandez established that he was a member of the city council, the officer apologized repeatedly.

Hernandez noted that the music, played on a school night, was keeping children and others awake.

“Have some respect for my community,” Hernandez told him.

The videographer is a local resident who films police for his YouTube channel, Santa Ana Audits. He’s part of a growing movement of “auditors” who want to see more transparency and accountability from police.

But the playing of copyrighted music could prevent the blogger, or others, from posting the video online. Last year, law enforcement officers from Alameda County Sheriff’s and Beverly Hills Police also were seen on video playing copyrighted music, allegedly to prevent the videos from going online.

RELATED: Santa Ana police blasted Disney songs to prevent a resident from filming them

Councilman David Penaloza said that public auditors sometimes cross the line and antagonize police while recording video.  But, he added, the public has a right to film city employees while they are working for the public.

“That was one of the most embarrassing things I’ve ever seen,” Penaloza said Wednesday.

In an interview last week, Santa Ana Police Chief David Valentin said the incident is under investigation and that he’s not aware of any similar incident in the department.

Valentin emphasized that Santa Ana has a specific policy to address videotaping of officers. The policy states that the public can photograph and film officers on the job and police are not allowed to “intentionally interfere” with those recordings.

During the council meeting, City Manager Kristine Ridge said the officer playing loud music was “completely outside” official policy.

“It’s a violation currently (of a noise ordinance,) so the investigation that’s ongoing will determine, did that officer violate policy? If so, he will be held accountable. Did he violate the Municipal code? If so, it will be referred to the city attorney. Did he violate a criminal code? If so, it will be referred to the D.A.”

Hernandez said he was also bothered by the fact that other officers at the scene, investigating a stolen Porsche, did nothing to turn down the music.

Councilwoman Thai Viet Phan noted that beyond playing loud music late at night, there was the bigger picture issue of why the copyrighted music was being played at all.  Even a soft playing of a copyrighted song, she noted, can get a video pulled from social media and prevent people from exercising their First Amendment right to record public employees on the job.

“What bothers me most about this practice is that we’re trying to build trust with the community,” Sarmiento said. “We’re trying to establish this relationship where we say, ‘When you see something, say something.’ Well, sometimes, all you can say is to videotape something or to document something.  And this really chills that sort of activity.”

Sarmiento and several other council members thanked Hernandez for his intervention. “He handled it extremely professionally, with restraint, with a lot of class but a lot of also respect for his neighbors…” the mayor said.

Hernandez said he has been deluged with emails and calls after the video made national and international news. A number of those emails, he said, have a “very violent intent.”  Some in the community have accused Hernandez of being anti-police, dating back to last year when he accused Anaheim police of killing his cousin during a stand-off.   But Hernandez said that “couldn’t be further from the truth.”

“To be pro-justice is not to be anti-anything,” Hernandez told his colleagues.

“It pains me that I had to show up in order for this to stop.”

The idea, according to the videographer and others, was that because social media platforms remove home-made videos with copyright-protected music, any video made by the blogger wouldn’t spend much time online and wouldn’t be seen by many people.

The video was shot anyway. And it wound up starring Santa Ana police and a city councilman, Johnathan Ryan Hernandez, who chastised an officer for waking his neighbors and disrespecting his community.

“Guys, what’s going on with the music?” Hernandez asks officers in the video, which was shot around 11 p.m. on April 4. “I’m embarrassed this is how you’re treating my neighbors. There are children here. Have some respect for my community.”

Now, Hernandez wants to make it illegal for police in Santa Ana to play loud music while working.

“This is a serious civil rights violation,” Hernandez said in an interview this week.

Santa Ana Police Chief David Valentin on Thursday called the video concerning, and said the incident is under investigation. The department, he said, has a policy that acknowledges members of the public can photograph and video record police officers, and that police “will not prohibit or intentionally interfere with such lawful recordings.”

“I’m disturbed by what’s apparently on the video,” Valentin said.

He said there’s no policy or directive in the department that tells officers to avoid being videotaped by playing copyrighted music. Instead, he said, officers are told to assume they are being recorded.

“What is apparent in the video is the playing of music allegedly from a PA system,” Valentin said. “That’s not something that we train to (do). That is not something that is appropriate. And that’s what I’m concerned with.”

This is what happened in the Artesia Pilar neighborhood, as recorded in a video that’s been posted to social media and has since made national news:

A resident who runs the YouTube channel Santa Ana Audits — which focuses on police videos — began filming after at least six patrol cars, with lights flashing, arrived up near Civic Center and North Western, where officers surrounded a Porsche they believed to be stolen.

In reference to the car, the resident videographer speculated: “It must have been a high speed chase or something.”

Soon, the song “You Have a Friend in Me” — a Randy Newman hit from the 1995 movie “Toy Story” — could be heard playing at an extremely high volume from one of the patrol cars. Several other Disney songs followed during the course of the video.

The resident videographer complained that police played the Disney tunes on purpose to prevent him from posting his videos online, since videos can be pulled down if accompanying music violates copyright infringement laws.

“You guys get paid to listen to music and stand around?” he yelled at officers.

A neighbor also turned up at the scene, asking officers: “Can you turn the music down? I want to go to bed.”

In his home, about half a block away, Hernandez also heard the music, and he soon appeared at the scene.

“Guys, what’s going on with the music?” he asked. “Why are you playing Disney music?

An officer mentioned, as the videographer suspected, copyright infringement laws.

“He knows I have a YouTube channel!” the videographer told Hernandez.

“You’re using our resources?” Hernandez asked police.

The officer said he wasn’t. Hernandez noted that they were on the job, working on the taxpayers’ dime.

“Do you know who I am?” he then asked.

The officer said he recognized him: “You’re a city council person.”

“Absolutely,” Hernandez said. “And this is my district. You’re not going to conduct yourself like that in front of my neighbors.”

“I apologize,” the officer responded.

Pointing to the resident with the YouTube channel, Hernandez added: “Apologize to him.”

And he did, one of several apologies that followed. “I realize my mistake,” the officer said.

“I’m embarrassed that this is how you’re treating my neighbors,” Hernandez said. “There are children here. Have some respect for my community.”

The officer responded: “I am.”

After asking whether the officer lives in Santa Ana, (he doesn’t,) Hernandez told him:  “My people live here, brother. Please treat them with respect. There’s kids that need to go to school. There’s people that are working. You chose to use our taxpayer dollars to disrespect a man with your music, that’s childish, sir.”

The resident piped in that he has a First Amendment right to film police. “You do,” Hernandez told him.

In the end, the officer repeated he made a mistake. He and Hernandez shook hands. And the videographer soon stopped recording.

Since then, the video has been widely shared on social media, local TV stations and some national news sites.

A growing movement of “First Amendment Auditors” – like the Santa Ana resident who videotaped on April 4 – have taken to filming police officers on the job.  Some applaud such efforts and say it promotes transparency and open government, and protects citizens’ constitutional rights. Critics, however, say the videotaped “audits” can be confrontational and interfere with police work.

In an interview Wednesday, April 13, Hernandez said he wants to see “clear direction” from the police department that it will not tolerate similar incidents in the future.

“This has to be a practice that’s being taught by somebody,” Hernandez said. “I don’t understand why there isn’t clear direction that this policy should be banned.”

“What is the purpose of infringing on people’s First Amendment rights?” he added “What are we doing while the public is recording us that we don’t want the public to see?”

Next Tuesday, Hernandez plans to ask his colleagues on the City Council to discuss and consider “a resolution, policy or ordinance to ban loud music for use by police officers.”

Valentin, the police chief, would not directly say what he thought of Hernandez’s proposal other than to emphasize that the councilman has a right to bring up topics to his council colleagues and that there’s already a policy against preventing citizen videos in the books.

That policy, titled “Public Recording of Law Enforcement Activity,” states that the department “recognizes the right of persons to lawfully record members of this department who are performing their official duties.” It prohibits officers from intentionally interfering with recording of their work, but it also stipulates that under some circumstances the recordings could be deemed evidence and seized.

Valentin said Thursday, April 14, that his department’s administrative investigation will involve interviewing the officer Hernandez spoke with. The investigation also will reach out to other officers who were on the scene and possibly to other community members who were present.

A previous statement from the Santa Ana Police Department said the department is “committed to conducting complete, thorough, and objective investigations,” but it did not acknowledge an official investigation into the events of April 4, saying only that officials were aware of the video, are committed to serving the community, and understood “the concerns as it relates to the video.”

Jennifer Rojas, policy advocate and organizer at the ACLU Foundation of Southern California, said that the public has a First Amendment right to record law enforcement officers on the job.

“We have repeatedly seen those recordings provide accurate accounts in the face of distorted police reports. In the absence of a bystander video of George Floyd’s murder, the public would still believe police statements that he died of ‘medical distress’,” she wrote in an e-mail Thursday.

Rojas also referred to an incident involving Santa Ana police who eventually were prosecuted for stealing from a local marijuana dispensary during a raid. That incident, she wrote, “would not have been discovered without third-party surveillance that caught them red-handed.”

She also criticized the idea that at least some police might be using a tactic to evade public oversight.

“Obstructing the right to record by playing copyrighted music is a troubling, bad faith attempt to avoid the most basic measure of transparency — the public simply observing what they are doing. Indeed, officer hostility to video recording or publishing suggests they are engaging in or want to engage in activities they don’t want the public to see.”

The incident, Rojas continued, underscores the need to create a civilian-led independent oversight commission for the Santa Ana police departments. The Santa Ana City Council is discussing creating an oversight commission.

The resolution stating that the district “will not include Critical Race Theory as a framework in any course offerings” passed by a 3-2 vote, at least momentarily ending a fiery debate about race, academic freedom and parental control of education that has embroiled the district for months.

The board — facing impassioned pleas from parents, students and others representing all sides of the issue — made some final tweaks to the resolution before passing it. One change was specifically aimed at convincing the College Board to keep its critical Advance Placement designation on some courses in the district even if certain topics cannot be discussed.

“This resolution will not alter the existing content currently taught in all certified AP and IB courses so as to not jeopardize the integrity of the coursework and risk losing certification.”

In early March, the College Board — which oversees the Advanced Placement instruction and testing used by many high school students as a way to improve their chances of getting into college — issued a  “statement of principles” in which it threatened to withdraw the AP designation from courses where required topics are banned.

Trustee Marilyn Anderson noted that AP classes haven’t disappeared in states where the teaching of critical race theory recently has been banned.

On Tuesday, Anderson was joined by trustees Leandra Blades and Shawn Youngblood in voting for the resolution.

Board President Carrie Buck and Trustee Karin Freeman voted against the ban, calling it a politically driven tool that will limit academic discussion.

“There’s no place for censorship or bans in our district,” Freeman said.

The resolution does not specify what would happen if a teacher violates the policy, prompting Freeman to ask: “What are the consequences?”

The academic concept CRT, as it’s become widely known, is a framework for teaching that looks at the role that race plays in society and how racism has been historically embedded in institutions and policies. It’s typically used in law schools and graduate-level courses.  District administrators across Orange County and elsewhere say CRT is not being taught at the K-12 level. Opponents say it is.

“To say that it’s not being taught, it’s just not true,” Blades said. Even if it’s not explicitly in the curriculum approved by the district, it’s in supplemental curriculum, she argued. “My kids have been taught CRT.”

Blades said the new rule won’t stop the teaching of important topics and historical moments related to race. Instead, she argued, it will prevent race shaming — the idea that one race is to blame for the historical oppression of another.

During the board discussion Tuesday night, Anderson doubled down on an argument she made during a recent public meeting, that “racism is a human issue…not an American issue.”

She brought up slavery during the Viking-era in Scandinavia as well as human trafficking that continues today. She also pulled out a family history book and described Danish ancestors who traveled to Brazil around 1885 and felt trapped there before escaping back to Denmark. Finally, she pulled out a fair trade chocolate bar from Trader Joe’s to note that slavery continues to exist in the cocoa bean and coffee industry.

“Human trafficking and slavery has been part of our human society since the dawn of time and continues today,” Anderson told a crowd of some 200 attendees.

Priya Shah, an adjunct professor at Cal State Fullerton who has taught CRT concepts, called Anderson’s comments offensive.

“It’s deeply insulting for Marilyn to conflate multiple historical eras of slavery as part of this conversation,” Shah, a parent in the district, said after the meeting.

“Yes, human trafficking is definitely an issue that is important and needs to be addressed,” she added. “But in this case, the issue at hand is the U.S. slave trade (and)… its unique role in the world in its influence on American institutions.”

During Wednesday night’s meeting, students and parents spoke — for and against — the resolution.

“Teaching race-related topics is not about blaming any one group,” an 8th grader from Kraemer told the board. “Instead, it’s trying to understand different perspectives, especially those different from our own, so we can understand how past history affects our current society. This is critically important for us, as the next generation, to not repeat past mistakes.”

Placentia-Yorba Linda Unified’s resolution is not the first in California to ban CRT but there don’t appear to be many others. Paso Robles Joint Unified School District passed a resolution last August that prohibits the teaching of critical race theory and specifies certain elements it doesn’t want to see in its schools.

Meanwhile, the Placentia-Yorba Linda School Board also heard a presentation Wednesday on a multicultural studies course proposed as a year-long elective beginning in the 2022-23 school year.  The course, created by the district’s staff, is geared to meet a state mandate that all high school students take an ethnic studies class before they graduate in 2030.

She roused her husband, Jacob, and climbed out of bed to look through the window.

“What are you doing?”

“I just heard bombs go off.”

“Are you sure?” he asked.

Seconds later, more explosions. It was clear. The city was under attack.

The couple from Orange County had come to Kyiv for the surrogate birth of their daughter, Vivian. But starting on the morning of Feb. 24 they were caught up in the biggest military invasion on European soil since World War II. The explosives outside their window launched them on a harrowing journey of escape.

For the next 34 hours, the two parents and their days-old daughter would travel by car and, for nearly eight miles, on foot, in freezing weather. They would eventually arrive at Ukraine’s border with Poland, a place teeming with desperation, as thousands of other refugees waited to escape the war.

Through it all, Jessie literally wore her baby, carrying Vivian under heavy coats in a sling that hung against her chest. At one point, a guard looked at the newborn and asked just one question:

“Is she alive?”

Russian invasion

This wasn’t the first time the Costa Mesa couple traveled to Ukraine to expand their family. In 2019, their older daughter, Mary – named after both of her grandmothers – was born in Ukraine, also through a surrogate.

But that was a completely different experience than what the Boeckmanns encountered this time. From the instant the bombs went off, Jesse Boeckmann said, life went “from business as usual — normal, everyday things — to complete chaos.”

The attack, they both added, seemed to surprise many Ukrainians.

“We were aware of media reports and were monitoring what was happening,” said Jacob Boeckmann, 40, a plastic surgeon who owns Pacific Coast Facial Plastic Surgery in Laguna Niguel and also works at the UC Irvine Medical Center.

“But once we arrived in Kyiv (on Feb. 13,) we found that no one was really believing that Russia would ever invade,” he added. “It was, literally, business as usual.”

Vivian was born two days before the first explosions – a 2/22/22 baby. In Ukraine, unlike the U.S., newborns are required to stay two to three days in the hospital to ensure they’re OK before going home.

On Thursday, after the explosions, the couple contacted their driver and asked to be picked up ASAP. But the driver’s wife also was pregnant, so he backed out. Still, he got them another driver, Val, who spoke only Russian, forcing them to communicate via a Google translation app.

Jessie called Val one of the “angels” on their journey.

“I told Jacob several times, ‘I don’t understand why this driver doesn’t make us get out of the car and just leave us,” said Jessie, 39, an ophthalmologist with Acuity Eye Group in Costa Mesa.

The ride from Kyiv to the U.S. Embassy in L’viv, Ukraine was supposed to be six hours.  But when they got word that the embassy shut down, they turned toward the border between Ukraine and Poland. Val drove them for some 27 hours in heavy traffic on two-lane highways.

All the while, the driver’s family was calling him.

“A female kept calling him on the phone and yelling at him in Russian. I assume it was his wife or daughter. He would yell back at her and hang up,” Jessie said.

The driver’s family wanted him back home, the couple surmised.

“I knew what that tone meant,” Jacob said.

Maybe it was the tiny baby in her arms that prompted the man to take such risks and stay with the couple. Maybe it was routine decency. Jessie says, “I can’t thank him enough, from the bottom of my heart.”

As they drove, the couple spotted huge lines snaking around gas stations and ATMs. They drove past tanks and soldiers; they saw young children walking on the side of roads carrying luggage. The temperatures hovered mostly in the 20s.

‘She has a baby, 4 days old!’

As they came near the border, the traffic simply stopped. It was around 2 a.m. Friday, Feb. 25, and they all decided to sleep in the car for a few hours. At daybreak, cars resumed moving — but only briefly. By 9 a.m. traffic again was at a standstill.

They faced a decision. They still had about eight miles to reach the border, and the air was below freezing. But travel by automobile was no longer viable.

So Jessie put Vivian in her sling and Jacob picked up their two backpacks and luggage. And they joined the human line of newly minted Ukrainian refugees hoping to stay alive by fleeing their homeland.

The smell of auto fumes was overwhelming. They stopped frequently to check on the baby. And they walked.

“We were so close to the border,” Jacob said. “We thought things would improve.”

That did not happen.

“It was a big… crowded area without any crowd control or anyone directing traffic,” Jessie said. “Everybody would slam into each other. Think of a mosh pit…  But here, there was desperation.”

“There’s no food, no blankets, no water, no bathrooms, no order, no calm,” she said. “There’s no hope.”

Time passed and tensions grew. So did the crowd trying to get through two gates.

As they waited, Jacob traded emails with officials with the U.S. Embassy. Jacob said they suggested that he “plead our case” with the border guards.

As Americans, they were told, they should be able to get through the gate.

But first they had to get close.

As they stood in the crowd a man asked Jessie how old the baby was. Four days old, she said, before breaking down in tears.

That bit of information seemed to change things.

“You know how crowds take a life of their own?” Jacob asked.

“(The man) started yelling ‘She has a baby! Four days old! Let her through!”

“The crowd decided Jessie and our daughter deserved priority,” Jacob said. “They literally pushed Jessie and the baby through hundreds if not thousands of people to get her to the front.”

“It was an act of God,” he added. “People found it in their hearts to push her to the front of the lines.”

But as she moved forward, Jessie, already worried that the baby could suffer from hypothermia, feared a different disaster.

“They were pushing me into the people in front of me. I was so worried that my baby would be crushed. I was yelling at them ‘I have a baby.’ I was crying.”

Jacob, meanwhile, was left behind.

“I pleaded my case,” he said. But his situation was not unique. “We’re all trying to get through,” he was told.

Hours later, their luggage left behind, Jacob edged closer to the gates.

“There was increasing volatility in the crowd.  A lot of people were yelling at each other. There was a sense of desperation,” Jacob said.

Only women and children were being let out.

Meanwhile, Jessie had found her second set of angels with a Ukrainian American family that had also crossed over. While they were processing through customs, they helped her with the baby and held her spot in line. She turned back to yell to Jacob that she needed him to pass over baby formula, baby clothes and some documents. 

Unlike the war-driven chaos of Ukraine, Poland offered order. The Red Cross was on hand.  There was water and currency exchange. A volunteer driver – Jessie said her third angel – took Jessie, and Vivian and their new friends to a hotel some 90 minutes away. Jessie’s mother, Mary Miller of Arkansas, working with a friend who’s a travel agent, had secured them a room.

Jacob not allowed to cross

Jacob, meanwhile, was in Ukraine. The guards weren’t letting him cross; they told him his American passport was fake.

“I pleaded and pleaded,” Jacob said. “After several hours, I made the guard mad because I wouldn’t shut up.”

It eventually took the intervention of the U.S. Embassy and Congress members (Reps. Steve Womack and Rick Crawford) from the couple’s home state, Arkansas, to get Jacob out of Ukraine.

“The… embassy emailed a picture of my passport to the head guard, along with my phone number,” Jacob said. “I got a call from a guard and he escorted me across.”

Jessie escaped Ukraine at 5 p.m., 34 hours after they had left Kyiv. Jacob crossed five hours later.

It’s unclear how many Americans are still in Ukraine.

A State Department spokesperson wrote in an e-mail that the U.S. government doesn’t provide that information.  The government has opened a welcome center for U.S. citizens at the SPA Gloria Hotel in Przemyśl , Poland, near the border. Other support teams also are working in other countries near the Ukrainian border, she wrote.

Back in Kyiv, the surrogate who gave birth to Vivian saw the apartment building she was staying in bombed. She was unharmed and able to travel to her hometown, several hours away, to be with her husband and their two children.

“Her husband wants to fight the Russians,” Jessie said. “He’s going to war.”

The Boeckmanns added that news accounts, as dire as some may look, do not begin to convey the scope of the unfolding tragedy.

“What we’re able to see on TV is just a sliver of the reality of what’s going on in Ukraine.

“We’re praying these people can find peace,” he said. “They’re just like you and me. They live in a democracy that was just attacked for no reason.”

Jacob said he feels guilty that he and his wife and new baby have a home to return to.

“We know we’re lucky because we get to go home.”

The family is hoping to fly back home Tuesday.

School staff and most board members walked out. But Trustees Leandra Blades and Shawn Youngblood remained and held an unofficial “town hall” with some 70 residents in the auditorium.

For more than two hours, those residents spoke with Blades and Youngblood about the mask mandate, saying there’s little uniformity on how it’s enforced in local schools. Blades claimed the official meeting was called off as a way to prevent her from bringing up the issue. Youngblood questioned whether the district should have accepted millions in federal COVID money and he suggested it be returned.

At one point, a woman in the post-meeting audience said, “There’s not a deadly virus anywhere in the country.” The crowd cheered and someone said, “Amen.”

In the United States, more than 858,000 people have died of COVID-19. In Orange County, 5,946 people have died of the virus. And in recent weeks, local schools have struggled to stay open as they battle skyrocketing absenteeism among students and teachers due to the surging omicron variant.

Wednesday night, the meeting kicked off with Board President Carrie Buck reading from a prepared statement that reminded the audience that the state Department of Public Health ordered masks indoors in public buildings through Feb. 15. She also specified that mesh masks do not meet that requirement, and offered free masks to anyone who wanted it. People who didn’t wish to wear a mask were told they could watch the meeting outside via a live stream.

Trustee Blades, pulling down a bandanna, attempted to speak. Buck stopped her: “You also need to have your mask on.”

“Well, I’m speaking now,” Blades said.

Responded Buck: “You have to wear it, no matter when you’re speaking.”

Blades said that Dr. Anthony Fauci, the chief medical advisor to President Biden, has spoken without a mask.

Buck told her: “In this building, we have to wear a mask.”

Turning to the audience, Buck said many were not wearing face coverings correctly. She then adjourned the meeting — two minutes and 39 seconds after it began. A similar scenario played out on Jan. 19, when Buck closed the meeting after four minutes and 33 seconds, also because of mask rules.

“This is illegal. You can’t just do that,” one person screamed out, as recorded in a video by one attendee and shared on Facebook.

Youngblood and others questioned whether parliamentary procedures were violated. One resident yelled about violation of law and said he had already complained to the Orange County District Attorney’s Office. On Thursday, a spokeswoman for that department said they don’t comment on complaints submitted to the D.A.

Blades said she had a number of issues she planned to bring up at the meeting, including the idea of board members having a greater say in the hiring of principals. “Don’t you want to know what their values are? What their beliefs are?”

Blades, a retired police officer, became the target of a petition last year after it became known she was at the U.S. Capitol with friends on Jan. 6.  She denied any involvement in the violence that took place that day.

RELATED: School board meetings become verbal battle zones in COVID era

In recent years, the Placentia-Yorba Linda School Board has attracted large crowds at many of its meetings, with debates raging over pandemic-related issues, ethnic studies and the college-level study of racism known as critical race theory.

Who’s on what side is not hard to figure out. First, there’s the mask – a clear give-away of who is following safety protocols. Many residents also wear either green shirts, in support of ethnic studies and face masks, or red shirts, against mandatory vaccines, face masks and ethnic studies.

The tone of the meetings “can be pretty toxic, and a little scary, because they’re yelling,” said Samiya Hai, a Yorba Linda parent who has attended several meetings. “It’s not like you can go and be comfortable,” she said.

“There’s a guy who comes with underwear on his face.”

Another parent, Brian Sarno, said meetings tend to be dominated by what he called “a loud minority.” Parents who are more cautious of the virus are more likely to stay away, he noted.

At Wednesday night’s unofficial gathering with Blades and Youngblood, many of the people who stuck around wore red shirts. Few wore face coverings.

One woman wearing a red shirt emblazoned with “I’ll pull them” – meaning she will take her kids out of public school – complained to Youngblood and Blades that there’s little consistency about mask enforcement. Blades agreed. She pointed to a large poster of a group of students inside a high school gym showing that many did not have face masks on.

Another topic that emerged is whether the district could have avoided face mask mandates had it not accepted several million dollars in federal COVID relief funds. Youngblood suggested the board could consider returning the money.

Alyssa Griffiths, the district spokeswoman, wrote in an e-mail late Thursday that the Placentia-Yorba Linda district still would have to abide by any guidelines, including a mask mandate, set by the California Department of Public Health and the Orange County Health Care Agency.

Kindra Britt, spokeswoman for the California County Superintendents Educational Services Association, also said schools have to follow state face mask rules regardless of whether they accept federal relief dollars.

Another point that has been repeatedly brought up, and which led to a protest outside Travis Ranch School in Yorba Linda earlier this month, revolved around mesh masks.

Dr. Clayton Chau, who heads the Orange County Health Care Agency, said in an e-mail Thursday that there’s no specific guidance from the state regarding mesh masks. But fabric masks “that are not tightly woven or with inadequate layers provide little protection,” he wrote. The Centers for Disease Control and the state’s health department note that it’s important to wear masks that fit well; N95 masks offer the best protection.

That’s because at the time of the C-section birth, Yamaguchi was in a coma and suffering from COVID-19.

And that’s just part of the story.

The Seal Beach resident soon would become the first COVID-19 patient at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles to undergo a double lung transplant. She also was one of the hospital’s first COVID patients to be placed on a life support machine often described by experts as a “Hail Mary.”

Yamaguchi suffered a series of mini-strokes. And she had to relearn how to walk. At one point, her feet were put into casts so she could again push flat against the ground.

In August, after some eight months in hospitals and a rehab center, Yamaguchi went home.

Since then, every week has brought a new milestone. And as she has settled into life with husband Danny Levin and their daughter, Maren Marie, Yamaguchi has developed a strong appreciation for things that are easy to take for granted.

“Just to be home is a joy. Just sitting at the table with the family,” she said. “Now, we have an extra member. It’s been nice to get to be a mom.”

“We’re settling back into what life should be.”

When COVID-19 hit

On Dec. 1, 2020, the day she tested positive for COVID-19, Yamaguchi was nearly 36 weeks pregnant. She and her husband had been careful to wear face masks and follow safety measures, but at the time there was not yet a vaccine and the pandemic was cranking into what would become a deadly winter surge.

For several days, Levin monitored Yamaguchi, tracking her increasingly dire symptoms. When her oxygen levels dropped dangerously low, he took her to Orange Coast Medical Center in Fountain Valley.

Because of health protocols in effect at the time, Levin and Yamaguchi couldn’t visit face-to-face. Two days after she was admitted, before her emergency delivery, they texted and chatted on their cells.

“We were telling each other we loved one another and said we would see each other soon, with the whole family,” Levin said.

Then… silence.

“That was the last time I spoke with Amy until February.”

The C-section delivery brought a healthy baby – and marked the beginning of Yamaguchi’s coma.

Doctors thought that the surgery would help Yamaguchi heal faster by freeing space for her lungs. It didn’t. Soon, Maren was sent home with her father and Yamaguchi was airlifted to Cedars-Sinai.

The future looked potentially dark.

“Who’s this guy?”

About mid-January, while on life support at Cedars-Sinai, Yamaguchi began coming out of her coma.

She was strapped to a hospital bed that could be made vertical as a way to help her regain strength. Although she was still on a ventilator, she managed to speak around it. Food was delivered via a tube, first through her nose and later through her stomach.

In March, with the help of a favorite nurse, Yamaguchi arranged to get her husband an anniversary gift from the hospital gift shop. It was a T-shirt, emblazoned with the hospital name, made of cotton, the traditional material for a third anniversary.

“She’s fighting for her life, on life support, and she still gets me an anniversary gift,” Levin says.

While Yamaguchi’s “sassy personality” was coming back, physical problems remained. A blood clot formed in her arm for one. And her lungs still weren’t working.

Doctors had placed her on a machine known as ECMO, extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, which pumps a patient’s blood out of their body, through an artificial lung, and back in.

At the time, the length of her treatment was rare for the hospital’s COVID patients. Patients placed on ECMO are usually treated, at most, a couple of weeks; Yamaguchi was on ECMO for 119 days.

Still, her lungs didn’t improve.

Dominic Emerson, her lead physician at Cedars-Sinai, described her lungs as fibrotic, meaning they were unable to expand the way normal lungs do.

“A normal lung should feel like a marshmallow. These felt like a piece of shoe leather,” said Emerson, associate surgical director of Heart Transplant and Mechanical Circulatory Support in the Smidt Heart Institute.

In April, Yamaguchi became the hospital’s first COVID patient to undergo a lung transplant. Nationally, Emerson said, more than 200 COVID patients have received lung transplants.

Why COVID hit Yamaguchi as hard as it did is unknown.

“She was a totally healthy, normal, 35-year-old active woman,” Emerson said. “That’s why it’s important for people to get vaccinated. You may think that because you’re young you will be safe. But, unfortunately, I’ve seen a lot of people who are young and got really sick and died from Covid.”

Yamaguchi’s pregnancy may have been a factor, “but we don’t know,” Emerson said. According to the Centers for Disease Control, pregnant women “are more likely to become severely ill from COVID-19 compared to people who are not pregnant.”

Doctors dubbed her recovery as remarkable, a testament to the powers of technology and the evolving ways health tech is being used to save lives during the pandemic.

During the transplant surgery, Yamaguchi suffered mini-strokes. Those, in turn, affected her memory.

When she got out of surgery, Yamaguchi said she asked her mother a question:

“Who’s this guy who hangs out with the nurses?’” She said, ‘Amy, that’s your husband.’”

“I said, ‘I’m married?’”

Her mom then asked her daughter if she knew her age.  Yamaguchi, 35 at the time, said she was 22.

“I was a little off.”

Yamaguchi soon learned that not only was she married, she also had a baby.

Still, while some memories came back others did not.

“I don’t remember being pregnant with Maren,” Yamaguchi said. “Some stuff is getting better, as I look at videos and pictures, but I don’t remember the tummy.”

Meeting her baby

After the April surgery, Yamaguchi went off ECMO. But she remained on a ventilator, which was still needed to pump oxygen into her body.

Over the next two months she slowly improved.

Even little things became mini-celebrations.

“She reached up and scratched her nose, and she did it without thinking,” Levin said. “I remember being so happy about that.”

In May, a few days before Mother’s Day, Yamaguchi saw Maren for the first time.

Yamaguchi was in a wheelchair, in the hospital plaza, and still using an oxygen tank and a ventilator.

And she was nervous. She’d missed the initial mother-infant bonding. She worried over how her daughter would react.

“I felt like I was going on a date. Is she going to like me?”

“But then I got to meet her and everything fell into place,” Yamaguchi said. “It sounds cliché, but it was like love at first sight.”

After that, Sundays became baby day for Yamaguchi. The rest of the week was filled with therapy – physical therapy, occupational therapy, speech therapy. But Sundays were set aside for “Maren therapy.”

“It was the best therapy,” Yamaguchi said.

On June 1, doctors removed the tube in her windpipe that had helped her breathe. Later that month, she was transferred to a rehabilitation center, where she walked for the first time since the coma: eight steps on the first day.

On Aug. 3, Yamaguchi went home.

Since then she’s continued therapy and continued making strides. She went from using a walker and wheelchair to a cane to walking on her own. Picking up Maren, by herself, was a huge deal.

Wednesday, Jan. 5, marked yet another milestone: “Today was the first day I’ve gotten her out of her crib and changed her.”

“I’m doing well,” she added. “Making big improvements.”

The couple goes back and forth between their home in Seal Beach and her parents’ home in Garden Grove. Levin, 35, works online as a teacher for a charter school. And Yamaguchi, a former customer service representative for hemophilia treatment centers, is focusing her energies on her health and on being a mother.

Aware of the rapid, easy spread of the Omicron variant, the couple rarely ventures out. And when they do they wear face masks. Both are vaccinated.

“We haven’t really gone anywhere,” Yamaguchi said. Instead, she’s enjoying time with her daughter and family.

“I have to give myself that grace and forgiveness that life didn’t go as we planned. Now, I have a lot of time with her.”

Last month, the couple celebrated Maren’s first birthday. The party was very small. The theme was Alice in Wonderland.

Her daughter is now 38 years old.

Thanks to a 2019 California law that gives survivors of childhood sexual abuse a three-year window to sue, no matter when the alleged abuse occurred, Steen filed a lawsuit against Santa Ana Unified School District. Her attorneys said Tuesday that the lawsuit was recently settled for more than $1 million, though they declined to give an exact figure.

Steen, now 53, said she will “always have to live with the trauma of the sexual abuse” she endured as a child.

“I went to school expecting to be safe. Instead, I was robbed of my innocence by a predator that the school protected. The settlement is just one step in my long journey to heal,” Steen said in a news release.

A lawsuit filed last year describes how her teacher, Gary Satrappe, began grooming her for sexual abuse in 1983, when she was in 10th grade. What began as forceful unwanted hugs and kisses when they were alone in the classroom led to him taking her to a motel, giving her alcohol and having sex, according to court documents.

“Satrappe began routinely demanding that (Steen) meet him at various locations on and off the school grounds,” where the teacher “forcefully engaged” in sex at least 13 times, according to court documents.

Satrappe, who resigned from his teaching post in 1985, died in 2004. He was 60.  He was never prosecuted for his sexual relationship with a minor.

A Santa Ana Unified spokesman declined Tuesday to comment on the case or settlement.

According to court documents, the school principal at the time learned what happened to Steen. But he did not take action against the teacher and he did not report their relationship to police.

After Steen had the baby, the principal and another school employee went to her home and threatened she “would go to jail” and “likely have her child taken away” if she said that Satrappe was the father, according to court documents.

“The principal of this school valued a reputation over safety and he and they made the wrong choice,” said attorney Mike Reck, of Los Angeles-based Jeff Anderson & Associates, which along with the Greenberg Gross firm of Costa Mesa represented Steen.

The principal cited in the lawsuit died in 2015.

As a teenager, Steen was told that “no one would believe her should she choose to speak out, in part because of her race, and because Satrappe was a well-respected teacher within the Santa Ana community.”  Steen is black. Satrappe was white.

At first, Steen agreed to keep quiet. But she later filed a civil lawsuit against the teacher, resulting in a four-day trial in 1990 in which a jury awarded her $275,000.

At the time, the jury found that the teacher’s relationship with his student was “so vile, base, contemptible, miserable, wretched or loathsome that it would be looked down upon and despised by ordinary decent people.”  One juror said: “He could have had a positive impact on this girl’s life, but he took advantage of her.”

After the assaults, Steen went through some hard years, Reck said. But today, he said, she has a career, a family that includes three more children, and is working on a book about her experiences to help other other survivors.

“She was able to bring a case under this window, which provides some healing, some accountability, and some financial stability to help make up for the path that he put her on,” said Reck, referring to a California law known as the California Child Victims Act.

Beginning on Jan. 1, 2020, the law – Assembly Bill 218 – permits lawsuits through the end of 2022 in childhood sexual assault cases that exceed the statute of limitations.

Other states that have had similar laws include New York and New Jersey. California also had a similar law in 2003 and some 1,000 lawsuits were filed, mostly against Catholic clergy.

“There is nothing more powerful to stop the cycle of child sexual abuse than allowing survivors to use the court system to hold predators and institutions accountable,” said Casteix, who in the 1980s was abused by a former choir at Mater Dei High.

“The #metoo (movement) and public awareness about abuse and survivors have made it safer than ever for people to stand up and speak out.”