Site Visit and More!

Hello everyone!

This week was a unique one! It started with Ranger Fernandez and Mr. Luongo coming for a site visit and then ended with very interesting law enforcement contacts.

Ranger Fernandez and Mr. Luongo visited for two days to get a feel for the Santa Monica Mountains.  The first day that I was with them I made sure to show them the key places and people that I have interacted with.  First things first, I took them to one of my favorite cafes called Conejo Coffee.  At Conejo Coffee Shahab (the owner of the cafe) poured us some coffee and cooked us up some great breakfast burritos to give us energy for the day.  After we nourished ourselves I gave them the tour of Rancho Sierra Vista (RSV) which is where I live.  They got to see my house, the plant nursery, the education building, all of my horse friends, Mary, and Ranger Mike Yost.

On a trail outside my house at RSV

After RSV, I took Ranger Fernandez and Mr. Luongo to the main headquarters offices.  While giving them the tour of the building they got to meet the great people of the office who I had the pleasure of working with.  After this, I took them to the law enforcement HQ to give them a quick tour of the building and Western Town which is right across from the building.  At Western Town, they could see the damage that the fire inflicted.

The next day I took them through a day in the life of a law enforcement ranger at the Santa Monica Mountains.  There is no better way to do this than take them to Solstice Canyon (violation city).  We hiked up to the waterfall and I only had to kick one person out and send one woman with a dog (not allowed to have dogs at the waterfall) back down.

At Solstice Canyon.

Smiling for all of the potential violators.

Philadelphia supervisors meet the Santa Monica supervisor.

After the tour, it was back to business as usual.  The day after Ranger Fernandez and Mr. Luongo left Brandon showed me how to disassemble and clean a handgun, shotgun, and assault rifle which was an interesting process.

The last day of the week was the most unique day of all.  I knew it was going to be an interesting one because the day started right when I left my house for work.  I took two steps outside my door and I saw an adult couple trying to take wood from the Chumash sacred grounds.  Of course, I explained to them that taking natural resources from the sacred grounds was something you could not do and thankfully they responded well.

As the day went on Brandon and I started to patrol Solstice.  During the patrol, a woman and her mother were hiking and the mom was having leg pains so we ended up giving them a ride back to their car.  As this was happening we got a call that a brush fire started on Potrero and Wendy which is close to my house.  So after we helped the people we responded to the scene of the fire.  Luckily the fire department was close by and put it out fairly quickly.  So while we were there I assisted in working the scene.  We ended up finding some evidence and got multiple witnesses who could attest to the description of the people who started the fire and their vehicle.

After this, we decided to patrol some of the parking lots and ended up finding eight juveniles underage drinking and eating pot brownies. This whole process of getting them together, searching the car, and calling their parents took quite a long time.  This was a great experience because I got to see Brandon and Eric in action doing great law enforcement work.