John Moores and his San Diego Padres haven't yet said the "V" word out loud, but plenty of other locals, including sports writers and editorialists for the Union-Tribune, have been mouthing it. The word is …
April 9, 1998
North America
Padres boosters threaten the Virginia alternative
The Tijuana-San Diego life of man executed in Virginia
'Mexican Hit Man Laughs, Forgives Before Execution," headlines read the morning after the State of Virginia killed 26-year-old Mario Benjamin Murphy. "It's a good day to die," he was reported as saying when strapped to …
October 9, 1997
Does Coronado train killers?
The headline that brought me to a Navy seal reunion in Coronado is simple and startling. "seal training caused murder, lawsuit says." The story was published in the Virginian-Pilot, a daily paper out of Norfolk, …
September 25, 1997
Arkansas Dems hire San Diego's Bill Lerach
Just another Arkansas Bill In Arkansas, it's always smart to do what the natives do. That seems to be the policy adopted by San Diego's Milberg, Weiss, Bershad, Hynes and Lerach, the lawyers famous for …
July 17, 1997
Monica Pollard has every right to return to Oceanside
San Diego may soon be home to a notorious New England killer. On a hot summer day in July 1985, in the northwest Vermont farming town of St. Albans, a man named Monica Pollard plunged …
February 6, 1997
Dear Jane, Please Send LSD
I took a job substitute teaching for the Grossmont high school district and tried writing a novel. My desk was in the dining room, but most of my roommates had day jobs, so the afternoons were quiet enough.
San Diego woman follows illegal immigrant to his home town of Espinosillas
We keep a stereo viewer on the mantel, an antique pair of lenses set in wood so long ago that the velvet around the tin visor has worn away where it touches my temples. The …
July 11, 1996
Arizona Republic writer ignores nastiness of MTV Spring Break
Last year, MTV rolled into town for a spring break taping session at Mission Beach, and the Union-Tribune opened the floodgates of hype, churning out column after column about how hip and harmless the event …
March 23, 1995
San Diego, Texas
Our namesake lies due west of Corpus Christi, past flat miles of sorghum, wheat and cotton fields, and towns with shops smelling of blood that, for pennies per pounds, will butcher the deer you shot …
January 27, 1994
Tijuanan columnist Hector Felix Miranda's murder stirs PEN West dust-up
Five years have passed since two fatal shotgun rounds were fired through the windshield of Hector Felix Miranda’s blue Ford LTD on a subdued residential street in Tijuana. As a caustic and popular columnist for …
May 20, 1993
Underprivileged Tijuanan brothers learn about grief the hard way
Nobody knew what happened to the boys’ parents. Not even the boys — Chacho, Elijio, Carlos, and Jorge — could explain what had happened to them. As is so often the case in Tijuana, one …
November 25, 1992
Taken together as one, Tijuana and San Diego form the most fascinating city in the New World
Palm Sunday. In the parking lot there is only silence and the scent of suntan lotion. There is a turnstile. Through which American tourists enter Mexico as at a state fair. Mexicans pass with the …
November 19, 1992
Tijuana slang is a language of its own
While nobody with a television or radio is unaware of current American criminal and gang slang, there is an unexplored argot in Tijuana, where the streets of the Coahuila, Colonia Libertad, and Grupo Mexico can …
July 9, 1992
San Diego attorney describes his immigrant clients
Buenaventura Rosas Perez was 20 years old when he realized his family’s poverty in the Mexican state of Puebla gave him little choice but to leave in search of a way to help his sick …
May 14, 1992
Glue-sniffing urchins in old Tijuana
His name is Andres. He awakens with the sun. He lies in bed as long as he feels like it, picking the crust of glue off his upper lip. It’s white and vague as milk …
October 3, 1991