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A woman waits to board a bus along Long Beach Boulevard . Photo: Michael Lozano Story by Stephanie Perez. Speaking with the riders of the Long Beach Transit system , you will find common stories . John Muller, 23-year-old bus rider, saw a rider across from him masturbating on the bus. Tyler Joscelyn, 22, confronted two men who were harassing a girl “because she was pretty” to only end up in a physical fight. And then there’s the downright weird. Rebecca Macareno, for instance, felt unsafe during a recent afternoon bus ride from her apartment to Cerritos Mall when a man chose to sit directly next to her. “He stared at me the entire bus ride even when I looked away,” she said. “He never spoke to me or touched me, but his eyes were red, and it felt like he never blinked. He could have sat anywhere on the bus, but he sat by me.” City locals, including high school and college students, rely heavily on public transportation to get around each year but many also feel uneasy and unsafe, es...

EL CENTRO, Calif. — Seated at a kitchen table in a cramped apartment, Rosendo Gil asked the young parents sitting across from him what they should do if their daughter caught a cold. Blas Lopez, 29, and his fiancée, Lluvia Padilla, 28, quickly answered: Check her temperature and call the doctor if she has a fever they can’t control. “I’m very proud of both of you knowing what to do,” Gil said, as 3-year-old Leilanie Lopez played with a pretend kitchen nearby . Padilla recalled that when Leilanie was born, they would not have known the answer. “We were asking question after question after question,” she said. Gil, a family support worker with the Imperial County Home Visiting Program , has visited the family dozens of times since Leilanie’s birth. Each time, Gil teaches them a little more about child development and helps them cope with the stresses of work, school, relationships and parenting. This story also ran on NPR. It can be republished for free (details). Home visitors aroun...

PHOENIX (March 14, 2011) — Join Vaseo Apartment Homes on March 26 from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. for a March Madness- inspired basketball tournament and barbecue. Three local schools — North Canyon High, Mountain Sky Junior High and Lookout Mountain Elementary — will compete in the tournament, vying for a first-place prize of $1,000, a second–place prize of $750 and a third-place prize of $500. In addition, a second basketball tournament will be open to the community, with prizes up to $1,000. "Schools are the foundation of our community," says Robert Klein, President of Klein Financial Corporation and representative for Vaseo Apartment Homes ' ownership. "Vaseo is proud to demonstrate our long-term commitment to our children, our schools and the greater Phoenix community though this family event. We proudly invite our neighbors to join us for a fun-filled day of food, music and games, as Vaseo officially launches the 'Vaseo Cares' program." During the ev...

And is the city’s high ranking fair ? People working in addiction recovery explain the various factors at play in Wilmington. By Taylor Knopf By some measures, Wilmington, N.C. ranks number one in the nation for opioid abuse . But for all its problems, the city’s residents and those in the addiction recovery community say that reputation is a bit unfair. “There are a lot of different theories about why it’s so problematic in Wilmington specifically,” said Michael Page, a North Carolina Harm Reduction Coalition worker who helps operate a mobile needle exchange in Wilmington. NC Harm Reduction Coalition ’s Michael Page. Photo courtesy Michael Page . “I feel that it has a lot to do with the polar opposite, which is recovery. Wilmington is a mecca for recovery,” he argued. Page and others in the area say that there are close to 300 twelve-step meetings a week in the city. It’s filled with halfway houses and substance abuse outpatient programs . It’s also important to note that accordin...