AUTHOR’S NOTE: This is a true story. Some facts suffer from poor memory, but everything is as close to reality as I can recall 39 years later.
~~~
In 1987 I was a freelance photographer in Los Angeles. I was strong and foolish and more of a daredevil than I had a right to be. I wasn’t a tough guy, but I faked it well. And I was intrigued by a good mystery.
Sara was the type of woman most guys would love to spend quality time with in private. Though maybe not in her room at Hotel Cecil, the tall and trashy hotel in the glorious, art-deco slums of Downtown LA known locally as Skid Row. Though some tourists did it without fear.
She walked into a liquor store where I was taking a picture of the cashier. She came in for a cold coke.
She looked tired, though you might have difficulty looking away from her figure. I noticed her open a refrigerator door and reach in for a cold can. We made eye-contact as she walked past me to pay for her drink.
The picture I was taking was for an article about the young man behind the counter who had fought off a thief. It was for a small piece in the Cityside section of the LA Reader, but it was replaced at the last minute by another story.
At the time, Los Angeles was a pragmatic realist’s dream city, with two daily newspapers (LA Times and Herald Examiner) and two weekly newspapers (LA Reader and LA Weekly) competing for viewer’s eyes. There were a few others with lower circulation, such as the LA Business Journal.
I was a freelancer not afraid of chasing my story. Editors fantasized that I was tough and could be sent to the toughest parts of the city, which was convenient. Some older photographers would not go East of Figueroa unless there was a good reason.
Earlier that year I’d been in this area on assignment for the LA Weekly, covering the Police sweep that was part of Chief Gates’ crackdown on homelessness at Skid Row. The project failed when the DA would not prosecute anyone for not having a home.
Stepping out of the liquor store I was surprised she was waiting for me. She said she was in trouble and needed my help.
I was stunned. My first thought was that she was about to hustle me. But I noticed an edge of desperation that made me believe her. She repeated that she needed my help. We walked East on 7th Street towards South Main Street.
She said that gang members were after her, hoping to hurt her and steal her money. I didn’t think that she was on drugs, or that she was confused, or psychotic, though how could I really tell? But she was agitated, nervously looking in all directions.
At her insistence, we ducked into a doorway on 7th Street to hide from a passing car. She said she needed me to go to her room at Hotel Cecil (a block away) and wait a few minutes for her to gather some things. I would then escort her out of the hotel and drive her to a friend’s place or leave her near a bus stop. Aside from any other favors I would ask of her (sex!?), she’d pay me $150 dollars. The whole thing could take less than one hour.
I was intrigued by her offer. I asked her how she knew she could trust me. And how could I know that she wasn’t committing a robbery?
She knew I was a newspaper photographer, and she could tell I was not intimidated by the gangs, having watched a photoshoot of gang members I did a few weeks prior on Spring Street. I did not recognize her.
And she was desperate.
Her instincts about me turned out to be correct... I never took payment for my help.
And after a while I even felt protective over her. I never tried to score free sex from her. And for 39 years her secret was safe.
She talked about the street gangsters that ran the pimps and drug dealers, catering to the tourists that used the hotels in LA’s Skid Row district. They wouldn’t approach her if she had a male companion, which might be taken for a john, or a tourist. But she’d rather they didn’t see her at all.
We started walking towards South Main, and I told her I wouldn’t charge her anything. For a few seconds I thought there might be a story in it for a local paper.
Instead of turning left towards Hotel Cecil’s front entrance, where gang members could see us, we continued down 7th Street to an alley which led to a parking lot and a back door for which she had a key.
We walked down a dark hallway and up the stairs to the mezzanine, and took the elevator up to the 7th floor. We then walked down to the 6th floor, where her room was.
The faded opulence of brighter times was obvious on the marble floor and the dark hallway walls. And some of the doors looked newer than others. This was a different and creepy change from the lobby and lower floors. One door was labeled “showers” in freshly cleaned letters.
The apartment was clean and bright, with a couch, two chairs, a small table, and an opening into a smaller area with two stacked mattresses on the floor pushed against the corner. There was a closet, also without a door, and a small room with a toilet and a sink at the other end. Next to the bed was a small desk with a chair and a window with a pink curtain somehow at odds with the decor.
She grabbed some clothes from the closet and put them in a Pan Am Air shoulder bag, throwing other things on the bed. I watched her take some small pictures from the desk before grabbing an Olvera Street tote bag from the closet.
And that’s when I heard it.
Voices.
Yes, voices. In the living room area behind me. And possibly the tapping of high heels. Had someone come in? Didn’t we lock the door?
I was startled and turned my head towards the noise. I grabbed my monopod like a bat and stepped back into the living room. Nobody was there.
The door was closed, and the floor was carpeted. I could hear muffled music from the next room, but not the voices I’d heard. I was suddenly at DefCon 1 and wanted to get the hell out of there.
If there’s nobody here, what was it I heard? I walked around the living room as if I’d be able to find... something.
A few minutes later Sara came out, stuffing a large manila envelope in her shoulder bag. I looked back into the bedroom, noticing various clothing items on the bed and desk and the floor. She also carried the tote bag and a plastic trash bag.
“Let’s go,” she said and opened the front door. We strolled towards the elevator, but she pointed to the stairway, and we walked down to the 5th floor, where we took the elevator down to the mezzanine. She didn’t want to walk out through the front door, afraid that they’d see her, so we went back to the same door we used to enter.
The plan was that she was to wait about 10 minutes in a dark corner near the door, while I went for the car. I’d exit through the front door and go to my car, two blocks away, and drive around to where she’d be waiting.
It was surprising how much crime was going on in the lobby and at the entrance, which still projected a sense of Art Deco cheekiness. My work had given me cop’s eyes, or so I thought... Tourists coming in with recently purchased joints or dime bags sweettalking the girls, most of which had rooms in the hotel... various subtle exchanges of cash for rolled joints or who knows what.
Neither the hookers nor the drug dealers seemed to notice me as I moved past them and down to the street. I walked down South Main to 6th Street and turned left, crossing Main and proceeding a few blocks to where I’d parked.
A few minutes later, when I got to the alley, Sara was not there. I worried for a second, but then I saw the back entrance door open and Sara came out, walking rapidly towards my car. She wore a Mexican scarf from Olvera Street around her head and dark sunglasses. We were off.
I drove South on Los Angeles Street, away from the hotel and the crowds, and turned West on Olympic. All along she kept looking back to see if we were followed. As we got further away, she became more relaxed and removed the scarf from her head.
She was a beautiful woman, and I had many questions.
“Why did you leave so much of your stuff?” I asked, lighting a joint and offering to pass it. “Are you going back?”
She refused the joint as we crossed Western. “I’m never going back,” she said looking out the window. “Those were my whore clothes. That place’s haunted.” And after a few minutes, “People die there. You hear strange voices. That’s where the Night Stalker lived.”
(At this time, Richard “Night Stalker” Ramirez had not yet been found guilty of his murder spree, but it was known (though I didn’t know it then) that he’d lived at Hotel Cecil during his LA murder spree.)
“People die alone there... ghosts dance on the hallways at night.”
“I don’t believe in ghosts,” I said. (A funny thing to say, especially after hearing voices.)
“You’ve never spent a night at Hotel Cecil.”
We drove past Karl’s Jr., and she offered to buy me lunch. She didn’t want to go inside, so we used the drive-thru and parked in a shaded spot. I thanked her for my burger and soda and told her I was glad to help her escape. But I’d love to know what’s going on.
We ate and we talked.
“Five days ago,” she said “two gang members approached me in the lobby and insisted on coming up to my room to look for something that had been lost. I told them there’s nothing in my room but my clothes. They said I might not know it was there.”
She tried to get more information, but they would not say what might be there, and she realized they didn’t know what room she was in. The police walked by and she managed to slip away. She went up to her room and double-locked the door. They knew she was on the 6th floor, but not her room number.
“I found a loose board in the closet and opened it...”
She found two bags from Jack in the Box full of money. Lots of money. She spent the night thinking about what to do, but she knew that with the contents of just one of those bags, she could fix her life and stop selling her body. Yet gangs were now looking for her, and she was scared. But worst of all were the spooks in the dark.
I learned that each bag had $20,000 in hundreds, fifties and twenties.
She sat on the bed all night, thinking about what to do. And frightened that good luck didn’t happen at this hotel. She didn’t go outside for several days, afraid that she would be spotted.
She left $7,000 in one of the bags for the gang to eventually find. They’d think that was all the money left and would stop looking for her. That gave her $33,000 to get away and start over. I didn’t know what to make of her logic.
After eating we threw the food bags in her trash bag, and she tossed in her room key and back-door key. I asked how she got the key. “Don’t ask,” she said with a cute expression. We threw the bag into the metal trash bins on the lot.
I drove her to a house on Olympic Place near South La Jolla Avenue. It was a big street with trees and front yards. I promised not to tell anyone about her, wished her luck and said goodbye.
Driving away, I wondered about her future. Would she be able to straighten out her life as she hoped? Don’t we all deserve as much? I decided there was no story for the paper. That writers digging around for gang money would only hurt her.
That night I mulled over everything I knew about Sara and her escape from Hotel Cecil. I wondered how she got the hotel’s back door key, which would never be issued to tenants. I wondered if a hotel employee had helped her avoid danger. I wondered how wrong it would have been for me to take a few hundred, or a few thousand, which would not have made a big difference in my life, but it might in hers. And mostly, I wondered how she picked me to help her. Why me? I never got an answer.
I considered checking into the hotel, requesting her room and taking the $7,500.
Three days later she called to ask one more favor. I was surprised, but happy to hear from her.
Early the following morning I drove her to LAX. We were early, so we had sodas and curly fries at one of the eateries near her boarding gate. She told me that her real name was Rose.
Again, she offered me money. Again, I refused and wished her luck. She looked different than when I’d last seen her, with shorter hair and a face like actress Lori Singer. I offered wise brotherly advice; don’t tell anyone about the money. Put it in a safety deposit box at the bank, tell them you’re storing old letters and family pictures because you lost some in a fire. Don’t pick up the check, just pay your share. Don’t buy a lot of clothes. Try not to touch the money if you don’t have to, it’s not as much as it seems. And so on. With every few of my words, she flashed a knowing smile.
She was going to live with her older sister, a recently divorced high school teacher. She felt optimistic that she was ready to avoid the horrors of the world. I felt optimistic about her chances.
Deep down I wished for Rose to find the peace and serenity she craved. That she’d never have to find herself back at a place like Hotel Cecil, and that she could make a happy life for herself.
I didn’t have a way to articulate these feelings at the time, so I gave her a hug, and she thanked me for being a good man. And her savior.
And she got on the plane.
And I never saw her again.
I couldn’t remember ever being called a good man before. Or a savior. It felt good. It never happened again, but the feeling lasted.
Several times over the next few years I thought of calling her. But I never did. I thought that she would not want to hear from her past life. And I did not want to remind her.
Thirty-nine years later, I still hope she made herself a good life.
Los Angeles still has the largest concentration of homeless and billionaires. Hotel Cecil is now run by the city for Homeless Housing and closed to the public. The Skid Row area surrounding it is more shocking and heartbreaking than ever.
A few miles West, at Spago’s, you can get a Black Caviar Salmon Pizza for $142, or their USDA Prime Cote de Boeuf for $185.
At SOMNI, in West Hollywood, meals start at $840 per person.
Image credit: Zheng Zhou CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikipedia.
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