Guest Commentary written by Joshua Hernandez Joshua Hernandez is an English teacher and academic decathlon coach at St. John Bosco High School in Bellflower. On a recent trip to the Inglewood Park Cemetery to visit my best friend Mike, I noticed that his tombstone was dirty. St. John Chrysostom was less than two miles from Beulah Payne but it felt like another universe, one where I was convinced I wouldn’t fit in. The summer of seventh grade, Mike left St. John and joined a gang—and I made the painful decision to distance myself from him. The last time I saw Mike was at the St. John fall carnival in 2019.

Source: Los Angeles Times January 15, 2026 13:38 UTC