The architect who designed Rancho Cucamonga City Hall and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis had it off in the time between President John Kennedy’s assassination and the former First Lady’s 1968 marriage to Aristotle Onassis, according to John Paul Warnecke’s recently published posthumous memoir.
When Rancho Cucamonga’s municipal officials in 1988 fully committed to constructing a City Hall from scratch rather than having its administration and various departments operate out of a business park on Baseline Road as had been the case over the previous 11 years since the city’s 1977 incorporation, it turned to architect John Carl “Jack” Warnecke.
As the designer of the Hawaii State Capital, the Joseph Mark Lauinger Library at Georgetown University, the Hannepin County Government Center in Minneapolis, the Nimitz Library, Chauvenet Hall and Michelson Hall at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, the AT&T Long Lines Building in New York City the South Terminal at Logan International Airport in Boston, the Ventura County Courthouse in Ventura, the Hart Senate Office Building in Washington D.C the Thomas & Mack Center at the University of Nevada Las Vegas, the post office and bookstore as well as Stanford University, the Howard T. Markey National Courts Building at Lafayette Square in Washington, D.C. and the John F. Kennedy Eternal Flame and gravesite at Arlington National Cemetery as well as the as the associate architect for the Soviet Embassy in Washington, D.C., Warnecke was considered well-suited for the assignment.
Known for Bauhaus and Modernist styles as well as advocating a contextual approach in the structures and monuments he designed, in delivering Rancho Cucamonga’s center of governance, he deviated somewhat from what had been expected. Situated little more than a stone’s throw from the intersection of Route 66 and Haven Ave is the Kremlinesque Rancho Cucamonga City Hall, a building that incorporates elements he wanted to include but did not in the Soviet Embassy in the nation’s capitol.
Warnecke had a storied life, which ranged from being the tackle on the undefeated 1940 Stanford Indians football team to someone who had hobnobbed and rubbed shoulders with the nation’s elite.
He had captured much of that in a series of accounts, a memoir as it were, but that compendium had not been edited or delivered to a publisher at the time of his death in 2010, shortly after he had eclipsed his 91st birthday. Rather, he had requested that his daughter Margo Warnecke Merck, who leads the Warnecke archives, put the manuscript in the right hands and see that it be published once it was polished. That book is now ready as Camelot’s Architect: The Untold Story of Jackie Kennedy, Lafayette Square and a Secret Romance. It is to become available through River Grove Books on November 12. The Sentinel was entrusted with an advance copy.
Warnecke’s narrative is filled with a host of interesting, indeed some historically significant facts and a few salacious details.
Jacqueline Kennedy had doubts about marrying Aristotle Onassis before their 1968 union and apparently regrets afterward, according to Warnecke, who was close to the presidential couple as an advising architect before President John Kennedy’s November 22, 1963 assassination and then grew intimate with the president’s widow in the years after his death.
Despite Warnecke’s substantial success in the field of architecture, financial issues that dogged him in the mid-1960s appear to have prevented him from marrying Jackie Kennedy, as the financial demands she was subjected after President Kennedy’s death as a consequence of her situation and lifestyle could not be met by what was being provided to her by the Kennedy Family or the modest inheritance she received from her father, John Vernou Bouvier III, a once-successful Wall Street stockbroker whose wealth had been squandered through gambling and poor financial decisions by the time of his 1957 death.
If you want to read the rest of this article, find a hard copy version of the November 6 edition of the Sentinel.

As was widely anticipated, the San Bernardino County District Attorney’s Office has exonerated Deputy Brandon Clancy in the fatal March 9, 2024 shooting of 15-year-old Ryan Gainer in the front yard of his family’s home.
Deputies had been dispatched to the Gainer residence that day to a single family residence located at 13494 Iroquois Road at approximately 4:48 p.m. after Gainer’s stepmother and Gainer’s cousin in emergency 9-1-1 calls reported to the sheriff’s dispatch center that Gainer was actively assaulting another member of the Gainer family, a sister, was acting aggressively toward other family members, had broken a window and was damaging property at the residence and had a shard of broken glass with which he was seeking to perhaps harm himself. His stepmother had asked that the sheriff’s deputies respond to the Gainer home and take Ryan into custody and conduct a psychiatric evaluation. Gainer’s cousin told a dispatcher that he had taken refuge in a closet because Ryan Gainer had just assaulted three people and broke the front door with a shovel and that Ryan was in the front room with his father, Norman Gainer.
A video taken by the bodyworn camera of the first deputy, Wyatt Eisenbrey, to arrive at the scene at 4:54:28 p.m., shows him parking on the right shoulder of the street near the extreme end of the front of the typically desert-landscaped yard of the Gainer home, with the perspective of the camera showing Eisenbrey removing what appear to be his sunglasses and affixing them atop of his head. As he approaches the front door of the home while moving around what appear to be bushes that stand in the yard some fifteen to twenty feet directly before the front door, Eisenbrey steps toward the front porch of the house, at which point the audio from the video activates. The deputy can be heard saying, as he approached the doorway “Where’s he at?” Almost immediately, Gainer emerges into the hallway visible from the perspective of the doorway, carrying a hoe. He advances rapidly toward the deputy, who, it appears from the perspective of the bodyworn camera, to be retreating backwards from the entrance, while simultaneously, it appears, drawing his service gun and pointing it at Gainer. Eisenbrey can be heard saying, “Get back or you’ll get shot.” Again, from the perspective of Eisenbrey’s bodyworn camera, it appears that Gainer is advancing on him more rapidly than Eisenbrey is succeeding in walking backwards, at which point, it appears, Eisenbrey to his right to be able to flee while running forward rather than stepping backwards in the face of Gainer advancing toward him. From the movement depicted on the video and the shadowing visible on the ground, as well as the rapid movement of Eisenbrey’s left arm and empty hand and right arm and right hand carrying his service gun, it appears Eisenbrey is in full running mode away from the pursuing Gainer, who is no longer visible in the scope of the video’s visual field. When the deputy wheels, apparently to his right to again face Gainer, a second deputy, Brandon Clancy, is visible off to the left of the visual field, while Gainer is on the ground.
A portion of the video taken from the perspective of Clancy’s bodyworn camera shows Clancy to be the second deputy to arrive at the Gainer home, whare he parks his vehicle on the left shoulder of the street opposed to traffic, getting out of his vehicle at 4:55:01 and walking toward the Gainer home, more to the left of the bushes in front of the home than Eisenbrey, who came toward the house from the right of the bushes. Unlike Eisenbrey’s bodyworn camera video, the audio is engaged from before Clancy gets out of his vehicle. The perspective of his bodyworn camera video shows that he approached the Gainer residence from the opposite direction than Eisenbrey, as Clancy’s vehicle is parked on the left side of the street at the far end of the yard to the Gainer home opposite of Eisenbrey’s vehicle, which is at the opposite side of the Gainer home yard, such that the vehicles are facing one another at a distance close to the span of the Gainer property’s yard width. During Clancy’s first few steps onto the property at 13493 Iroquois, little can be discerned in the field of view of his bodyworn camera, as the front of the house is lost in the glare of the sun and hidden by the bushes which obscure much of what stands near the front porch. Suddenly audible is the Eisenbrey’s warning to “Get back or you’ll get shot.” A split second later Eisenbrey can be seen backing away from the house’s front entrance and then turning to run away from the hoe-carrying Gainer as he emerges from the house. As Eisenbrey completes his turn to run forward with his back to Gainer, he is yet training his gun in his right hand toward his pursuer behind him without being able to see what it is aimed at. When Gainer fully emerges from behind the bushes at what looks to be a full gallop, Clancy can be seen pointing his gun at Gainer, Gainer takes no more than two to three strides after the fleeing Eisenbrey once his figure emerges unobscured by the bushes before Clancy deputy fires his gun three times, it seems, at 4:55:13 and 4:55:14 on the video. It appears that Gainer is immediately felled by one or more of the shots. One of Gainer’s sisters and his mother can be heard wailing and screaming, yelling “You didn’t have to shoot him!” and “Why did you shoot him” and “Oh, my God!” and “Why’d you do that” and “You are the devil” and “Why would you shoot my baby?” and “Where was your Taser?” Both deputies tell the women, who are advancing toward Gainer, lying on the ground, to get “Get back” and Go back” and “Get back inside.” Both deputies appear to be reluctant to approach the fallen Gainer while the mother and sister are proximate to them. With the women still keening and yelling, the first deputy, at 4:55:48, says “We’re going to get him help. Get back in the residence.”
At 4:55:59, a man can be heard saying, “Check him out, guys. Check him out!”
At 4:56:01 on Clancy’s camera video, a third deputy, one who appears to be putting gloves onto his hands, comes into the camera’s field of vision. At 4:56:17, the third deputy walks to stand over Gainer and then bends down to examine him. At 4:56:20, the video shows that the second deputy has gone toward the prone Gainer where he bends down to pick up the hoe. It appears that the third deputy begins cardiopulmonary resuscitation at 4:57:13, which is just about two minutes after Gainer was shot.
Over the next several minutes, the video shows three deputies are engaged in providing Gainer with cardiopulmonary resuscitation while pausing briefly to check for a pulse, for wounds, to put a compression patch or tourniquets in place. “Come on, buddy,” one of the deputies can be heard saying on a couple of occasions when another deputy reports that he cannot detect a pulse in Gainer.
At 5:03:15, a firefighter/paramedic team arrives, the video shows.
Gainer was eventually transported to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
According to a public release memorandum put out by the district attorney’s office that does not bear the signature of any specific deputy district attorney but is based upon an investigative report logged under the number DR# 602400019 and which was completed by Detective Shawn Thurman of the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department as the “case agent” assigned to evaluate the shooting, Eisenbrey went up to the front door of the Gainer resident and was invited inside by Norman Gainer. SAs he stepped into the entryway of the house, Eisenbrey heard, he later told investigators, someone say, “Hey! Watch out, watch out, he has a stick.” That stick, according to the public release memorandum, proved to be a so-called “hula hoe,’ which Gainer had earlier used to break the houses window and which had been misdescribed by his cousin in the call to the sheriff’s dispatch center as a shovel
“As Deputy Eisenbrey started to step inside the residence, Ryan appeared from the west end of the residence,” the public release memorandum states. “There was a small hallway between Ryan and the front door where Deputy Eisenbrey still stood. Ryan was armed with a steel stirrup-shaped hula-hoe with a 4-foot, 10-inch wooden handle, and a 10-inch black metal frying pan. Ryan held the hula-hoe with two hands by the wooden handle with the stirrup-shaped, flat, sharpened metal portion over his head in a striking position. Ryan also grasped in his right hand a metal frying pan, held against the wooden handle of the hula-hoe. Ryan’s left hand grasped the hula-hoe towards the bottom of the wooden handle. When Ryan appeared he was approximately 12 feet from Deputy Eisenbrey Ryan charged at Deputy Eisenbrey while the weapon was still held over Ryan’s head in a striking position. Deputy Eisenbrey yelled, ‘get back, get back or you’re going to get shot.’ As Deputy Eisenbrey gave commands, Deputy Eisenbrey retreated from the front doorway, walking backwards, as he drew his duty weapon. Deputy Clancy heard these commands and drew his duty weapon and pointed it in the direction of Deputy Eisenbrey and Ryan. Ryan disobeyed Deputy Eisenbrey’s orders and continued advancing towards Deputy Eisenbrey. Ryan closed the distance between him and Deputy Eisenbrey. Deputy Eisenbrey turned away from Ryan and began to run east into the front yard; Ryan was still in pursuit of Deputy Eisenbrey. Deputy Eisenbrey was in fear for his life and fired one round at Ryan. Simultaneously, Deputy Clancy feared for Deputy Eisenbrey’s life and fired two rounds at Ryan.”
Without stating so directly, the public release memorandum appears to indicate that Ryan Gainer was hit by both shots fired from Deputy Clancy’s gun and the single shot fired by Deputy Eisenbrey as he was running from Gainer and twisting to aim his gun in the opposite direction he was moving.
The public release memorandum states that Dr. Jolie Rodriguez, the forensic pathologist for the Riverside County Coroner’s Office conducted an autopsy on Ryan Gainer on March 11, 2024, two days after his death. “Dr. Rodriguez determined the cause of death was multiple gunshot wounds,” the public release memorandum states.
According to the public release memorandum, Gainer had an entry wound on the right side of his back, roughly 20.87 inches from the top of his head and 5.333 inches to the right of the center of his back, consisting of a .393-inch circular hole. The exit wound for that bullet was on the left side of his chest at the anterior axillary line, approximately 14.57 inches below the top of his head and 7.48 inches from the middle of his torso. That exit wound was slit that was roughly .59 inches in length and roughly one-fifth of an inch wide. The direction of the wound path was back to front, right
to left, and upward.
A second entry wound, .512 of an inch long and .394 inches wide, was noted on the left hip, approximately 30.31 inches below the top of the head and 6.3 inches to the left of the middle of the front of his body. The wound was anterior midline. The bullet that caused the wound was retrieved from under the skin of Gainer’s left buttock, approximately 31.1 inch below the top of Gainer’s head and the head and 3.543 inches to the left of the middle of his body. The direction of the wound path was front to back, left to right, and downward.
A third entry .59 inch long and .512 inch wide wound was found on the top left upper arm, approximately 12.6 inches from his left wrist. It consisted of a 1.5 by 1.3-centimeter oval defect. An exit wound was noted at the medial aspect of the left upper arm, approximately 40 centimeters proximal to the left wrist. The direction of the wound path could not be determined.
In the section of the public release memorandum devoted to “analysis,” is stated, “In this case, Deputy Eisenbrey had an honest and objectively reasonable belief that Ryan posed an imminent risk of serious bodily injury or death. Prior to Deputy Eisenbrey’s arrival, there were multiple calls to 9-1-1 from two separate occupants of the residence, detailing that Ryan assaulted family members, broke the window of the front door, had a ‘shovel,’and had a piece of glass in his hand. Deputy Eisenbrey arrived at the scene wearing a sheriff’s department uniform identifying himself as a peace officer.
Once Deputy Eisenbrey arrived at the residence’s front door, he announced himself, “sheriff’s department,” and was invited inside by one of the occupants. On the heels of being invited in, a warning was yelled to the deputy, “look out, he’s got a… .” Before the warning was complete, Ryan was seen entering the short hallway leading to the front door and running towards Deputy Eisenbrey with a long hula-hoe held over his head in a striking position. Deputy Eisenbrey drew his firearm and gave a verbal command to Ryan to get back. Deputy Eisenbrey also retreated backwards to make space between himself
and Ryan.” Noting “Ryan did not stop running towards Eisenbrey” and that Eisenbrey was both “walking backwards… and began to run to retreat” as well as that he had “then turned his body away from Ryan,” the public release memorandum stated that “Ryan then started to bring the hula-hoe down towards Deputy Eisenbrey. The distance between the two was so close that Ryan would have easily been able to strike Deputy Eisenbrey which would certainly have killed or caused serious injury to the deputy. It was objectively reasonable that Deputy Eisenbrey thought Ryan was going to attack him with the hula-hoe if Deputy Eisenbrey did not shoot him. Given those circumstances, the decision by Deputy Eisenbrey to use
deadly force was justified.”
Furthermore, according to the analysis, “Deputy Clancy also had an honest and objectively reasonable belief that Ryan posed an imminent risk of serious bodily injury or death to Deputy Eisenbrey based on the same information in the 9-1-1 calls and what Deputy Clancy observed immediately upon arrival at the residence. Noting Clancy heard Eisenbray telling Ryan to get back or he would be shot and that “Deputy Clancy observed Ryan running after Deputy Eisenbrey in close proximity with a hula-hoe raised above his head in a striking motion,” the analysis states that “Deputy Clancy withdrew his firearm but did not have time to give any commands to Ryan before he observed Ryan’s hands bringing the hula-hoe down towards Deputy Eisenbrey in a striking motion. From Deputy Clancy’s view, it was objectively reasonable that Ryan was going to strike Deputy Eisenbrey with the hula-hoe and Deputy Clancy needed to intervene. Deputy Clancy’s decision to use deadly force was also justified under these circumstances.”
According to the conclusion presented in the public release memorandum, “Based on the facts presented in the reports and the applicable law, Deputy Eisenbrey’s use of lethal force was a proper exercise of his right of self-defense and therefore his actions were legally justified. Furthermore, based on the same facts and applicable law, Deputy Clancy’s use of lethal force was a proper exercise of his right of defense of others and therefore his actions were also legally justified.”

By Mark Gutglueck
Tuesday’s election resulted in unprecedented political upheaval in no fever than nine municipalities in twelve different city council and/or mayoral races across San Bernardino County, with four of the county’s six longest serving elected city officials being turned out of office. In total, three mayors once thought unassailable and eight council members have been or appear to have been handed their walking papers by voters.
In the City of Adelanto, which has an established reputation for unconventional politics and intensive contention among its elected leadership, Councilwoman Stevevonna Evans appears to have unseated two term Mayor Gilbert Reyes.
Both Evans and Reyes were among the three then-political neophytes swept into office in Adelanto in 2018 in the aftermath of the implosion that featured as star players former Mayor Rich Kerr and one-time Councilman Jermaine Wright, both of whom ended up in federal prison when their manipulation of city codes and regulations in exchange for bribes put up by a cross section of the entrepreneurs seeking to establish commercial cannabis and marijuana-related business operations in the 52.9-square mile city grew brazenly obvious. While Reyes, Evans and Gerardo Hernandez were elected mayor and to the city council, respectively, largely on the perception that they were reform candidates, the council they were a part of did not rescind the previous actions by Kerr, Wright and another council member, John Woodard, intended to transform Adelanto, which for approaching a decade had been teetering on the edge of bankruptcy and disincorporation, into the first city in California with an openly cannabis-based economy. Rather, Reyes, Evans, Hernandez and council members Joy Jeannette, Daniel Ramos, Amanda Uptergrove and Angelo Meza ultimately embraced the sale of medical marijuana, marijuana and marijuana-containing products intended to be used for their intoxicative effect and cannabis-based products along with the cultivation of marijuana as acceptable businesses and industries in the city, although with the recognition that they were not intended to be the city’s central economic activity. Indeed, Evans was for a time linked to a cannabis-business principal with whom she was engaged in a personal relationship and Reyes grew into a leading proponent of expanding the scope of cannabis/marijuana-related operations within the city limit as a basis of further economic development. Early on, there was cooperation and an emerging alliance between Reyes and Evans, as Reyes designated her the city’s mayor pro tem and conferred on her prestigious governmental adjunct appointments to regional and joint powers authority boards. That political honeymoon drew to a close however, a mere eight months after both were installed in office when Reyes, asserting that he had lost faith in Evans because he considered her to be untrustworthy and perceived that she was militating against him politically, deposed her as mayor pro tem and elevated Hernandez to the vice-mayor’s spot.
Three years later, in 2022, Evans forewent seeking reelection to the city council and instead challenged Reyes in the mayoral contest. He handily defeated her, garnering 48.32 percent of the vote in a five-person race. While Evans was the second place finisher, she gathered 17.21 percent, as Reyes claimed 2.8 votes for every vote she received, while the three other candidates in the race accounted for 34.48 percent of the vote.
Two years later, in 2024, Evans ran once more for city council, doing so successfully.
This year, she took on Reyes again. Also competing in the race was perennial Adelanto mayoral candidate Ronald Beard, who finished fourth in 2022 with 11.37 percent, in fourth in with 15.47 percent in 2018 and in fourth place in 2014 with 20.45 percent. This year, Evans made up the ground that separated her from Reyes in 2022 and then some. As of today at 6 p.m., she polled 2,186 votes or 46.99 percent to Reyes’ or 40.18 percent. Beard made up the difference between them with 597 votes or 12.83 percent.
Jayshawn Johnson, who ran fourth among ten candidates for the Adelanto City Council in 2020 and is currently an appointed planning commissioner in the city, ran for city council again this year. As of 6 p.m. today, in which he is the sole interloper in a three-way race also featuring incumbent council members Angelo Meza and Amanda Uptergrove, he is in second place, with 2,027 votes or 33.84 percent, behind Meza, who has 2,084 votes or 34.79 percent and ahead of Uptergrove, with 1,878 votes or 31.35 percent.
In Colton, Mayor Frank Navarro is nearing the end of his second term as mayor. He was first elected to that post in 2018, six years after he was first elected to the city council. Prior to that, Navarro had been a founder and among the most active participants in Citizens for Colton First, a grassroots political reform and fiscal watchdog group.
John Echevarria was first elected to the Colton City Council in 2020, representing what was then District 5. With the conversion of the city from six districts to five, he is now representing District 4. He is employed as a lieutenant with the San Bernardino Police Department. He opted to run for mayor this year rather than seek reelection to the city council. As of 6 p.m. today, he is leading Navarro in the head-to-head contest, with 5,007 of the 9,402 votes cast or 53.25 percent to 4,395 votes or 46.75 percent
John Roberts, who was first elected to the Fontana City Council for a two-year term in 1992 and re-elected to four-year terms in 1994, 1998, 2002, 2006, 2010, 2014, 2018 and 2022, is the longest continuously serving council member in San Bernardino County. He is the second-longest serving council member/mayor in the county in terms of years, surpassed only by Chino Mayor Eunice Ulloa, who served as a councilwoman and mayor from 1984 to 2004 and reinitiated her tenure as a council member and mayor in 2006, serving continuously since then.
In 2010, Roberts, a retired firefighter and fire marshal, was reelected to the city council for the fifth time, the same year his council colleague, Acquanetta Warren was elected mayor. Very shortly thereafter, Roberts, a Republican, signed on as a member of Warren’s ruling council coalition. Warren, a Republican, has defied the odds in Fontana, where the party affiliation of its voters consists of 45.7 percent of its registered voters are Democrats, 23.6 percent f its registered voters have no party affiliation whatsoever, 23.1 percent of its voters are Republicans and the remaining 7.6 percent are members of the American Independent, Green, Libertarian, Peace & Freedom or other more obscure political parties. Warren held her coalition together by relying heavily on donations from Republican Party supporters as well as principals in businesses seeking approval of projects they were proposing within Fontana City Limits or attempting to land city contracts for goods and services. This approach, which entailed a heavily pro-development approach to governance and what many have consistently characterized as a “pay-to-play” environment, has long had its detractors. Those critical of Warren and opposed to her, however, have consistently been unable to marshal the requisite political forces or make a show of sufficient political muscle to drive her or those with whom she is aligned from office. As a consequence, Fontana, which sits next to a major rail line, two interstate freeways and a third state route that is also a freeway, has proven a magnet for warehouse development. There are substantial numbers of Fontana’s 220,000 some residents – running to over 10,000, who are either passively or more actively opposed to the concept of further warehouse development in Fontana based upon the relatively poor pay and benefits provided to those who work in logistics facilities, the degree to which warehouse operators not only exploit those who work there but victimize nearby residents with their use of large diesel-powered semi-trucks with their unhealthy exhaust emissions and the bane of traffic gridlock they create. Fontanans, both those who are Warren supporters and in favor of further warehouse construction and those who are opposed to it, have taken to referring to the mayor as “Warehouse Warren.”
Roberts, like the two other current members of Warren’s ruling coalition – Peter Garcia and Phil Cothran Jr. – has gone right down the line in supporting Warren’s warehouse building agenda.
When Fontana transitioned from a city that elected its council members at-large to one that is divided into council districts, Roberts fell into the city’s District 4, lying primarily to the south of the city. District 4 contains the 10 Freeway and the rail corridor, which makes undeveloped property there particularly attractive to would-be warehouse developers. Year after year, and now decade after decade, as Roberts has supported the living environment of his constituents being loaded with more and more warehouses, resentment against him had grown. In 2014, 2018 and 2022, however, that resentment had not grown to a level that could overcome the factor of the money being provided by the development industry to Roberts through Warren that allowed him to send upbeat messaging to voters just prior to those elections to convince a sufficient number of them to keep him in office.
Over the last four years, however, Roberts’ disregard for the largely impoverished residents, many of whom do not live in traditional residential subdivisions but rather in what were historically agricultural areas upon which industrial uses and warehouses have encroached as a result of Warren’s efforts to please the donors to her political war chest, has caught up with him. Whereas previously, the residents of Fontana District 4 have not been organized, activists within the community and nearby lying Bloomington, which has been subject to similar treatment by the San Bernardino County Land Use Services Division, the San Bernardino County Planning Commission and the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors, have been aided by Center for Community Action and Environmental Justice in coordinating resistance to what is taking place within their living environment. A realization that the control City Hall exercises over the land use policy in the city has the most immediate and direct impact on their quality of life pushed them toward making inroads on Warren’s hold on the council. Warren’s opponents understood that the most vulnerable element of her grip on the council consisted of Roberts. Two opponents against Roberts emerged Ben Vasquez and Luz Perez. Vasquez assailed Roberts, saying that if he were elected he would push for Fontana to adopt a warehouse moratorium. Luz Perez was slightly more moderate in her approach, suggesting that an outright ban on any type of development might prove politically unfeasible while Warren yet had control over the city as mayor and would be legally challengeable as well. “Where air pollution is a major concern,” she said, “I will push for stronger warehouse and diesel truck pollution mitigation.”
As of 6 p.m. today, Perez was well ahead of Roberts.
Of all of San Bernardino County’s 72.4-square mile Hesperia has the greatest infrastructure deficit of all 22 cities and two incorporated towns. That is a product of a lack of diligence by the county and its planning/land use services division in the years before Hesperia’s 1988 incorporation and the pro-development leanings of the members of the Hesperia City Council, which in some cases was exacerbated by out-and-out graft in the form of bribes provided to city officials. Consequently, subdivision after subdivision was constructed in the city without accompanying offsetting utilities and infrastructure, compounding a situation in which existing roads that were unpaved or inadequately paved were neglected and went decades without repair or maintenance. Now, several political generations past the city’s founding, the city council is made up of individuals who neither collectively nor individually understand what they and the city are up against. The city’s voters, particularly those in the city’s District 2, are saddled with the well-meaning but ineffectual and unsophisticated Allison Lee.
Lee’s presence on the city council is nearly as much accidental as intentional.
In 2022, Hesperia faced a unique situation in which its redistricting and election schedule meant that the District 2 council seat held by Bill Holland was to expire in December 2022, and no one had filed to run in the November municipal election The city council, in a special meeting on August 24, 2022, canceled the November 8 election and instead sought applicants for a four-year appointment to fill the District 2 seat Seven residents applied, including Lee, at that time a 22-year Hesperia resident and business owner with her husband running an automotive service business in the city
The council evaluated the applications and selected Lee to serve the full term from December 2022 through December 2026. Lee sought election this year and was opposed by Jessica Navarro and David Bashar Ellis.
As of 6 p.m. today, Navarro held a comfortable lead over Lee,
Montclair over the last three decades has been among the county’s most stable cities politically, with relatively minimal turnover among its mayoral and city council positions, with the death of sitting mayors/council members accounting almost as much for change on the council as officeholders being voted out. Bill Ruh was first elected to the city council in Montclair in 1998. The only elected municipal officeholders in San Bernardino County who have been in office longer than he has are Chino Mayor Eunice Ulloa, Fontana Councilman John Roberts, Ontario Councilman Alan Wapner, Rialto City Clerk Barbara McGee, Montclair Mayor/former Councilman John Dutrey and Ontario Mayor/former Councilman Paul Leon. Montclair, like only three other cities in San Bernardino County, has not transitioned to district voting. In this Montclair municipal election, no one opposed Mayor Dutrey and both Ruh and Corysa Martinez vied for re-election in the at-larges contest for the two positions on the city council up for election this year. Victor Mendez and Alice Garcia jumped into the race.
As of 6 p.m. today Martinez was in first place and Garcia had captured second. Ruh was trailing, placing him in third and therefore of the council if he does not close the ground between him and Garcia and pass her by November 16. Mendez is solidly in fourth place with , and >.
In Ontario, between them, Mayor Paul Leon and Councilman Alan Wapner have nearly 60 years in municipal office, with Wapner having served continuously as a councilman since his election to the post in 1994 and Leon having served as a councilman from 1998 until 2005 and as mayor from 2005 to the present. During that same period, Wapner established himself as the most prolific political fundraiser among local politicians in San Bernardino County history, taking in more the $3.8 million. Leon during his 28 years was the recipient of nearly $2.4 million. In many cases, that money was being given by owners, administrators or principals of businesses with development proposals or contract/franchise applications with the city who expected, or were led to expect, something in return, i.e., the support of the mayor and city council with regard to the approval of those proposals or applications. Indeed, over the years, Wapner in particular had an established reputation for engaging in pay-to-play politics in which the money being provided to his campaign war chest were recognized as quid pro quos or bribes which ensured that the donors were to be taken care of. There was a significant degree of commonality among those donors to Wapner and to Leon, though Wapner claimed the lion’s share of that money. Those endowing Wapner’s and Leon’s electioneering funds were making hefty donations as well as to another member of the council, Jim Bowman, who had served on the city council from 1986 to 1988 and again from 1990 to 1998 before he ran successfully once again in 2006 and has served on the city council ever since. In this way Leon, Wapner and Bowman became entrenched members of the Ontario Establishment, throughout which there was an understanding that governance in Ontario had been corrupted, infusing virtually every element of City Hall, from the administration downward and involving all departments of the city, most notefully, the police and fire departments, the employee unions for which were Leon’s Wapner’s and Bowman’s leading donors. In 2018, Jason Anderson, who had been a member of the city council from 2004 until 2008 and while in private practice in 2014 had been retained by the city to help Wapner out of a political jam when he was caught beating his daughter in public and had been intimidating his political opponents, was elected district attorney. For approaching two decades the corruption had become so entrenched in Ontario that Wapner and to a lesser extent Leon and Bowman had come to believe they could act with impunity, as the governmental that existed to most logically hold them in check – the police department and the district attorney’s office – had been coopted.
Meanwhile, Leon, a preacher with the Hope Chapel in Ontario, from shortly after the time he was first elected mayor of Ontario in 2005, was grooming Daisy Macias, the then-14 year-old daughter of a parishioner at his church, for a possible career in politics. He employed her doing clerical work at Hope Chapel and when she reached the age of majority appointed her to the city’s park and Recreation Commission and then to the Ontario Library Board, of which she became chairwoman. Leon assisted her in landing first a decent paying position as an account executive with Old Republic Home Protection and then as the community relations manager with National Community Renaissance and the Hope For Housing Foundation, two entities associated with developer Jeff Burum, who has over the years been a generous donor to the Leon and Wapner campaigns. Leon had genuinely hoped that Macias might eventually be elected to the city council, where she might become a reliable vote in the ruling coalition he was hoping to build.
Below the surface was a rivalry between Leon and Wapner that it was generally in neither’s own political interest to have revealed to the world. In actuality, throughout most of the time that Leon was mayor, it was Wapner who was the most dynamic political force in Ontario, as he had early on forged a working relationship with Bowman and Councilwoman Debra Dorst Porada, who was first elect to the city council to form what was essentially a ruling coalition. In this way, it was Wapner who was calling the shots and dictating that those entities who were providing him along with the others campaign donations should not be crossed up when votes relating to their projects or contracts came before the city council. In this way, because the enmity between him and Wapner was kept buried, Leon could maintain the fiction publicly that what was going on in Ontario was a product of his administration. Still, with regard to most certainly the donors with the deepest pockets, there was a recognition that Wapner was he big man on campus at City Hall.
Following the 2022 election, Wapner resolved that he was going to no longer abide keeping secret that he was Ontario’s actual leader and that it was time that Leon’s status as Ontario’s official leader come to an end. He would cease the charade of being a mere member of Mayor Leon’s city council and that he would become mayor himself.
One of the first things Wapner did was to poach Leon’s presumed future council ally. As the 2024 election approached, he approached Macias, who was a resident of District 2, telling her she should make a claim of living in District 4 and run for the city council in the 2024 election. Macias complied, taking out candidacy papers, augmenting them with the requisite number of signatures of District 4 residents and then turning them in to the city clerk. Very shortly
after Macias’s candidacy was qualified, Wapner transferred $40,000 out of his campaign fund to Macias’s campaign and then, a few weeks later, another $10,150.27, from his campaign account to Macias’s political fund. Wapner then put the arm on a whole host of those who had donated money to him in the past to provide Macias with an additional $93,000.
In the November 5, 2024 General Election, Macias, receiving 36.41 percent of the vote in the five-candidate race, captured the District 4 council post.
Wapner kept his mayoral ambition under wraps. He started 2025 with $288,330.42 in his city council campaign fund. He continued to pressure donors for money. Throughout 2025, he collected money for another city council run, but also created a second account to finance his run for mayor. Throughout 2025, he deposited $172,250 in donations into his council campaign fund and another $125,800 into his mayoral campaign fund. Between January 1 and June 30 of 2026, he deposited $2,950 into his council campaign coffers and $323,199.08 in donations were made to his mayoral fund. Under California election law, Wapner was at liberty to move money in his council campaign fund into his mayoral campaign fund.
In contrast, Leon, who started 2025 with $15,781 in his campaign account, collected $48,600 in campaign donations in all of 2025 and followed that up with $47,849 in donations received in the first six months of 2026, giving him $112,230 with which to hold off Wapner’s challenge, fueled by the $912,529.08 he had on hand in his combined campaign accounts.
By mid-2025, the cat was out of the bag, and it was known that Wapner was looking to rip the mayoral gavel from Leon’s grasp.
Wapner nailed down the endorsements of the Ontario Police Association, representing the police department’s officers up to the rank of sergeant; the City of Ontario Police Management Group, representing the police department’s lieutenants and captains; the Ontario Firefighters Association, representing the city’s firemen; the Teamsters Union, which represents roughly 380 Ontario municipal employees; and the American Federation of State, County & Municipal Employees Local 3061, which represents roughly 1,260 of the city’s employees. Macias, who had been demonstrating during council meetings throughout much of 2025 that she was inclined toward accepting Wapner in the role of Ontario’s primary citizen, then delivered the coup de grace, announcing that she was endorsing her council colleague rather than the mayor.
Wapner had qualified his candidacy for mayor with the city clerk and the San Bernardino County Registrar of Voters. It certainly appeared that Leon’s goose was cooked.
On July 28, a mere ten days before the candidacy filing deadline for the November 3 election, the FBI raided Wapner’s house and home office, while serving further search warrants at the offices of some of his political supporters and the homes and offices of some of his other political associates. The FBI served subpoenas for a wealth of documents at Ontario City Hall as well as the administrative offices of the Ontario International Airport Authority, the governmental entity overseeing Ontario Airport, the board for which Wapner was the president/chairman.
Wapner rescinded his mayoral candidacy application and refiled to run for election in the city’s 3rd Council District. As a parting shot, he called upon Macias to take up a challenge of Leon as he was ducking out of the race. Again, Macias followed his instructions.
As the electoral season began with the close of the filing period on August 7, Leon and Macias found themselves vying against one another and two other mayoral hopefuls, Kevin Kizzee and Nicolo LaLama.
In District 3, Wapner found himself up against Michael Rios, Larry Trinidad and D’Andre Lampkin.
As it would turn out, a huge player in the 2026 Ontario Municipal Election was James Previti, the billionaire owner of Forecast Homes, Frontier Homes, Guardian Capital and the Previti Group. Previti put $250,000 into the Ontario Committee on Ethics.
Previti approached Macias, informing her he would bankroll an effort to get her elected if she would disassociate herself from Wapner, for whom he had a deep and abiding personal enmity. Macias agreed to do so.
Once the race was under way in earnest, the Ontario Committee on Ethics spent a total of $1,100 on September 22 designing two mailers attacking Leon, another $1,994.15 on September 23 for data for those mailers and $17,900.01 on September 29 for one of those mailers and $17,966.34 on a second mailer.
On September 22, the Ontario Committee on Ethics spend 550 designing a mailer supporting Macias and on September 25 spent $17,951.72 to print the mailer. The Ontario Committee on Ethics on September 22 spend $550 to design a mailer in favor of Macias and on September 25 spent $17,951.71 on that mailer itself.
On October 12, the Ontario Committee on Ethics spent $7,500 on a television ad attacking Leon and the same day spent another $1,100 on a television ad attacking Leon.
On October 12, the Ontario Committee on Ethics spent $1,100 on a television ad supporting Macias.
On October 17, the Ontario Committee on Ethics spent $17,960.62 on a mailer supporting of Macias and another $17,903.26 on a mailer supporting her.
On October 17, the Ontario Committee on Ethics spent $1,100 on a Television ad attacking Leon and another $7,500 on a television ad attacking Leon.
On October 17, the Ontario Committee on Ethics spent $61,865.59 on a mailer supporting Macias.
On October 17, the Ontario Committee on Ethics spent $7,765.58 supporting Larry Trinidad in his run for 3rd District councilman.
On October 24, the Ontario Committee on Ethics spent $550 designing a mailer attacking Wapner with regard to his run for 3rd District councilman and on the same day spent $7,254.38 printing the Wapner attack mailer.
On October 24, the Ontario Committee on Ethics spent $550 designing a mailer attacking Leon and another $17,802.73 printing that mailer. Also on October 24, the Ontario Committee on Ethics spent $1,500 on the production of a television ad attacking Leon and $1,100 on a radio spot attacking Leon.
On October 24, the Ontario Committee on Ethics spent $550 on research for a mailer in support of Macias and $17,885.61 to produce the mailer supporting Macias.
On October 27 the Ontario Committee on Ethics spent $16,019.19 on a mailer supporting Macias and the same day spent another $15,179.83 on a mailer in support of Macias.
On October 29 the Ontario Committee on Ethics spent $1,500 on a television ad attaching Leon.
On October 30, the Ontario Committee on Ethics spent $550 and then another $550 on designing mailers attacking Leon and the same day spent $17,360.11 and $7,890 and another $29,213.88 on producing mailers attacking Leon.
As of 6 p.m. today, Macias was leading in the mayoral race, ahead of Leon. Kizzee and LaLama account for third and fourth place.
As of 6 p.m. today, Rios is in the lead in the District 3 council race, ahead of Wapner. Trinidad is in third place and Lampkin in fourth.
Ana Gonzalez has displaced incumbent Edward Montoya Jr. on the Rialto City Council.

Find a hard copy edition of the November 6 Sentinel to finish reading this article about the incumbents voted out of office in the cities of San Bernardino and Twentynine Palms.

As of 6 p.m. this evening, with the tallying of the votes from Tuesday’s election ongoing, Mike Rios has pulled ahead of embattled Alan Wapner in the Ontario City Council District Three contest.
Wapner, who has served continuously on the Ontario City Council for 27 years and eleven months after first getting elected in 1994, was victorious in his 1998, 2002, 2006, 2010, 2014, 2018 and 2022 re-electoral efforts.
Last year, he had declared his intention to run for Ontario mayor, and collected $912,529.08 in donations between January 1, 2025 and June 30, 2026 to finance that campaign, in which he was to run against incumbent Mayor Paul Leon. Along the way, he had picked up the endorsements of Teamsters Local 1932 representing 380 Ontario city employees, American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 3061, representing 1,260 Ontario city employees, the Ontario Police Officers Association, representing the city’s police officer up to the rank of sergeant, the Ontario Police Management Group, representing Ontario’s police department’s lieutenant and captains, and the International Association of Fire Fighters Local 1430, representing the city’s firefighters. Upon completing his nomination papers for mayor and turning them into the Ontario City clerk’s office to qualify his mayoral candidacy in July, Wapner was widely considered by political prognosticators to be the odd-on favorite to prevail in the Ontario mayoral contest in the November 3 election.
In tandem with Wapner’s campaign for mayor, Jonathan Hagman, the son of one of Wapner’s political allies, San Bernardino County Fourth District Supervisor Curt Hagman, had thrown his hat in the ring and was vying to move into the position spot on the city council representing the city’s recently-created Third District, such that, if successful in the November election, young Hagman would effectively replace Wapner on the council and become, assuming Wapner was elected, a part of Wapner’s ruling council coalition.
On July 26, however, the FBI served search warrants at his home as well as at the home and office of Curt Hagman, as well as at the homes and offices of attorney Frank Lizerraga, the legal representative of Wapner as well as his wife, Ontario City Councilwoman Daisy Macias, Wapner’s wife, Judi, and Curt Hagman’s wife, Rosanna. The same day, the FBI served search warrants at the office of Andy Sehremelis, a major political donor to Wapner’s and Curt Hagman’s campaigns, as well as at the home an office of media empire mogul James Su, who together with his family and employees, made substantial donations to Curt Hagman’s political war chest. The FBI on July 26 had served subpoenas at Ontario City Hall and the offices of the Ontario International Airport Authority, the governing board of commissioners of which Wapner served as the chairman/president and Hagman was a commissioner.
The revelation of how far the federal investigation had advanced that accompanied word of the search warrants being served drew attention to previously existing accounts in the community relating to how Wapner, during his more than 30 years in elective office had become the most prolific fundraiser among local politicians in San Bernardino County history by shaking down individuals who had business before the Ontario City Council and the Ontario International Airport Authority, such as development proposals or applications as well as bids on contracts or franchises that were subject to approval by the city council or airport authority board. What was suddenly apparent to dozens, scores, hundreds and thousands and eventually tens of thousands of Ontario’s residents was the pay-to-play ethos that had gripped Ontario City Hall over the previous three decades and how Wapner had risen to the top in a system of governance dominated by graft and bribery.
Acting quickly before the filing period for candidacy in the November 3 election lapsed on August 7, Wapner prevailed upon Jonathan Hagman to rescind his candidacy in the city’s Third District and then withdrew himself as a candidate for mayor before refiling a a candidate in the Third District. He persuaded his political ally, Fourth District City Councilwoman Daisy Macias, to pull and file papers to take his place as a mayoral candidate opposing Leon. Both Jonathan Hagman and Macias obliged Wapner. By the August 7 deadline, both Wapner, as a District Three city council candidate, and Macias, as a mayoral hopeful, were qualified to be on the November 3 ballot.
Also running in District Three were D’Andre Lampkin, Larry Trinidad and Michael Rios.
Leon and Macias were facing each other in the mayor’s race, in which Kevin Kizzee and Nicolo Lalama were also vying.
Wapner faced the challenge of much negative publicity that attended the revelations regarding the criminal investigation the FBI was carrying out into him and a multiplicity of his actions, votes and political associates. While that was a relative disadvantage, he had eight successful election/reelections for city council under his belt and the additional experiential advantage of a previous successful election to the Ontario-Montclair School Board, superior name recognition and was able to transfer all of the money he had accumulated to finance his mayoral campaign into his council campaign coffers.
Whereas in bygone years, prior to mail-in voting, in all but the closest of electoral contests the outcome was determined by the tallying of votes on cast ballots that took place in the four hours before midnight of the election day after the 8 p.m. closing of polls or in the early a.m. hours of the following day, with the advent of mail-in ballots, the determination of election outcomes has now been delayed in many cases for up to 13 days after the closing of the polls on election day.
At 10 p.m., when the early arriving mail-in ballots received by election day were counted along with the results from the polling precincts around the city were counted Wapner was in the lead, with 2,006 or 31.15 percent of the 6,439 votes in the race processed up to that point. He was followed by Rios, who claimed 1,876 voter endorsements or 29.13 percent; Trinidad with 1,480 votes or 22.98 percent and Lampkin, with 1,077 votes or 16.73 percent.
It appeared that Wapner’s fundraising advantage, which had allowed him to run a campaign that featured radio and television spots, mailers touting his experience and accomplishments in office, newspaper ads, signs and phone banks, had carried the day at the polls on November 3, as well as in the days leading up to it when the voters in Ontario’s Third District had filled in their mail ballots.
In the mayor’s race, the results established a ratio between the four competitors that has essentially remained intact over the next three days: Macias captured 7,332 or 38.63 percent of the 18,979 votes counted by that point, outdistancing the incumbent, Leon, who polled 6,137 votes or 32.34 percent, with Kizzee in a distant third place with 3,175 votes or 16.73 percent and Lalama in fourth with 2,335 votes or 12.30 percent.
Two hours later, at midnight, the totals in the District 3 had changed, but in a way that was barely perceptible, given that only 43 more votes had come in to be counted. Wapner had picked up three votes, so that his total now stood at 2,009 or 30.99 percent of the 6,482 votes received overall, down slightly from where he had stood previously, but not to a degree that was alarming for his camp. Still, things were trending positively for Rios, who picked up 17 votes to reach 1,893 or 29.20 percent. Trinidad, likewise, had moved up on Wapner, capturing 15 more votes, giving him a subtotal of 1,495 or 23.06 percent. Lampkin, too, had gained slightly on the leader, as he brought in another eight votes, such that he now had 1,085 or 16.74 percent.
Two hours later, at 2 a.m., a significant number of further votes, 871, had arrived and were counted, which upped the number of votes tallied to 7,353. Wapner was still out in front and the trending appeared to be generally in his favor. Of the 871 ballots that had arrived, 234 were marked for him, boosting his vote total to 2,243 while dropping his percentage to 30.49 percent. Rios, meanwhile picked up fewer votes than had Wapner, that being 197, pushing him to a subtotal of 2,090, whereby he lost ground to the incumbent councilman. Trinidad made a more impressive show during that two hours, bringing in 267 votes, which pumped his total to 1,762 and 23.95 percent, which, given his persisting third place position, was still not perceived as a threat to Wapner. Lampkin garnered 173 new votes, putting him at 1,258, leaving him well off the pace with 17.10 percent.
At 4 a.m. on November 4, there was another dump of 781 ballots cast within Ontario’s Third District. At that point, 8,134 ballots in the district were in and counted. Wapner yet appeared to be holding his own, as 198 of those contained votes for him, putting him at 2,441 votes. His performance relative to the others did, however, drop him to 29.99 percent, putting him below the 30 percent threshold. Rios, was making strides, even if they did not appear to be on a strong enough pace to push him into the lead. He collared 210 votes, keeping him in a strong second place with 2,305 votes and 28.32 percent. Trinidad made an even more vertical jump, hauling in 226 votes. Still, with 1,988, votes, his 24.42 percent left him way back. Similarly, Lampkin’s gain of 142 votes, raising his total to 1,400 or 17.2 percent did nothing to put Wapner’s lead in danger.
The next tally was released 14 hours later, at 6 p.m. on Wednesday. At that point, however, no further ballots originating from Ontario’s Third District beyond what had been counted as of 4 a.m. that moring were tallied.
24 hours later, on Thursday November 5, 730 ballots from District 3 in Ontario were processed by the registrar of voters office. Wapner saw his total rise by 195 votes, to 2,636 votes, which entailed a modest drop in his percentage of the vote in the four-way race to 29.74 percent. Rios added 246 votes, such that his tally was 22,551, less than 100 votes behind Wapner, another significant threshold, representing 28.78 percent of the overall 8,864 votes case by the district’s residents that had been counted. Trinidad, who pulled in 169 votes, lost ground to Wapner, and his total of 2,157 was more than 400 behind the leader, and his percentage of 24.33 percent put him over 5 percent down. Lampkin scored 169 more votes, but he too was failing to close the gap separating him from the lead, as he had 1,520 votes or 17.15 percent.
Another day passed and at 6 p.m. today, Friday November 6, the processing of another 1,113 ballots was reported. Of those, 297 designated votes for Wapner. That number was surpassed, significantly, by the ballots marked in favor of Rios: 398. Trinidad, losing ground to Wapner, gathered 226 votes. Lampkin brought in a respectable 192 votes. When the numbers were counted, counted again and then tallied a third time just to make sure, Wapner was no longer at the head of the back. Rios had overcome his 85 vote deficit to Wapner the previous day to zoom into first place with 2,949 votes of the 9,977 that had been cast and counted thus far, or 29.56 percent, to Wapner’s 2,933 votes or 29.40 percent. Rios had assumed first place. The margin of difference was a mere 16 votes, yet one that put Wapner, who had never, in eight municipal races never tasted the bitter ashes of defeat, in the role of a prospective loser.
The San Bernardino County Registrar of Voters’ next scheduled posting of election results is to be made on Saturday at 6 p.m.

Ontario City Manager Scott Ochoa last month submitted to a more than two-hour interrogation by the FBI, during which he confirmed or provided greater detail and/or hard specifics with regard to items already churned up in the more than eight-year ongoing federal probe of violations of trust in San Bernardino County’s third-most populous city. In at least two instances, Ochoa provided investigators with information about actions they heretofore were previously unaware, the Sentinel is informed. Information which Ochoa has been sitting on in many cases for more than a half-decade cuts right to the heart of the wrongdoing that has now become the primary focus in the case being assembled for prosecution by the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
Some of the issues at the heart of the investigation have been known of, in limited circles within Ontario, consisting primarily of those who had approached the FBI originally with the information that triggered the initial inquiries, since 2017. By 2022, a wider but still relatively narrow collection of residents and city employees were aware that votes made by both the Ontario City Council and the Ontario International Airport Authority Board of commissioners as well as secretive actions taken by the city and authority without any official public discussion, votes or disclosure were being examined for their legality and possible criminal nature by federal authorities.
On July 28 of this year, that both Ontario City Councilman Alan Wapner and San Bernardino County Fourth District Supervisor Curt Hagman were the targets of a political corruption investigation broke into wider public view when their homes and offices as well as the offices and or homes of some of their associates and political supporters, including attorney Frank Lizerraga, businessman Andy Sehremelis and media mogul James Su, were raided by federal agents, subject to search warrants that had been issued. Wapner had been the chairman/president of the Ontario International Airport Board of Commissioners since that entity’s creation in 2012 and Hagman had been an airport authority commissioner since 2014. On July 28, as well, both Ontario City Hall and the headquarters of the airport authority were served with subpoenas for specific sets of documents.
Specifically, the FBI had interested itself in:
a) money that had been provided to Wapner and Hagman by a whole host of their political donors;
b) contracts and franchises that had been granted by the airport authority board of commissioners or the Ontario City Council to companies or entities owned by or associated with those donors;
c) approvals of projects proposed by companies or entities owned by or associated with those donors by the Ontario City Council;
d) those donors who had been hired as consultants by the airport authority;
e) determining if any of those donors were foreign nationals or were not American citizens;
f) the nature of the business Wapner and Hagman had engaged in while they were doing extensive traveling in the Far East;
g) influence-peddling by Wapner and Hagman;
h) efforts by those intent on delivering money to Wapner and Hagman engaging in political money laundering by donating money to political action committees or so-called independent expenditure committees which then donated the money to the duo;
i) reports of out-and-out bribe-taking on the part of Wapner and Hagman;
j) determining whether reports that Wapner and Hagman had set up bank accounts in the People’s Republic of China were accurate;

k) the degree to which Wapner and most particularly Hagman were involved in propaganda efforts by China Radio International, the state-owned international radio broadcasting network of the People’s Republic of China, which operates through Guoguang Century Media and its West Coast Arm, West Covina-based EDI Media, Inc., which runs G&E Studio Inc. and CiTi News, owned by James Su, who was himself a donor to Hagman’s campaign and employed others who were donating to Hagman’s campaign.
It is a violation of federal law for an American elected official at any level to accept political donations from a foreign citizen.
At the time the raids took place, more than a month and a half had elapsed since Hagman had scored a reelection victory in the June primary election by obtaining 54.84 percent of the vote, sidestepping the need to compete in a run-off election in the November 3 general election, and Wapner earlier that month had taken out and filed nomination papers to run for mayor and the city clerk and San Bernardino County Registrar of Voters Office had determined his candidacy was officially qualified. Wapner abruptly pulled out of the mayoral contest, persuaded one of his political allies, Curt Hagman’s son Jonathan, to drop out of the race for 3rd District Councilman, and himself took out nomination papers to run for the 3rd District council position just prior to the August 7 filing deadline. He then prevailed on another of his political allies, 4th District Councilwoman Daisy Macias, to enter the mayoral contest, challenging longtime Mayor Paul Leon.
FBI agents nosing around Ontario and at the Airport as well as at the homes and offices of some of their major political supporters, which included Frank Lizarraga, who had served as a lawyer for Wapner and his wife, Hagman and his wife, as well as Macias, and who had been a member of the Ontario Planning Commission for 13 years, created a degree of general chaos that was unprecedented during any previous election season in Ontario going back to its 1893 incorporation. The serving of the search warrants 98 days before the November 3 2026 Ontario municipal election rendered the situation more complicated still and left a series of issues unresolved in the community as a consequence of the unofficial policy of the U.S. Attorney’s Office and FBI to take not overt action within, variably, 90 days to 60 days of an election that might influence the election’s outcome. Wapner has been a member of the city council for over three decades and had been the dominant political power through much of that time, controlling two of the votes of his council colleagues during 18 of the last 21 years that Leon has been mayor. This made Wapner the head of a ruling coalition that politically outmuscled Leon for all but three of the years he has wielded the mayoral gavel.
Despite the assurance that Wapner and his associates were being provided with a grace period at least through November 3 during which they would not be arrested nor subjected to a so-called “perp walk” nor criminally charged, the specter of what will come after the current election season concludes has continued to hang over Ontario.
Over the last 20 years, during each of the five four-year election cycles in 2006, 2010, 2014, 2018 and 2022, Leon and Wapner, together with Councilman Jim Bowman, found themselves on the ballot together. Each time, Leon and Wapner had stayed in their respective mayoral and council position lanes, with Wapner never stepping up to challenge Leon. In those years, they had shared, to some degree, political donors, though Wapner had always proven himself to be the more aggressive fundraiser and managed to outraise Leon, touching those donors for more money, in most cases than the mayor. Over the last two to three years, as Leon at first surreptitiously and then openly began preparing for his mayoral run against Leon, the basic commonality of their electoral backers came to an end. Beginning about a year-and-a-half ago, Wapner, began telling those donors that they needed to make up their minds as to whether they were either with him or with Leon, and that he did not intend to lose. Intimidatingly, he intimated that if they put their money on Leon, when he was mayor and Leon was out of the picture, they would not be able to count on City Hall smiling upon them as it had done in the past, and that their applications for project approval or city contracts or franchises would no longer be automatically forthcoming as they had been in the past. Indeed, it was this unabashedly quid pro quo, pay-for-play ethos that Wapner was embodying that had put him on the FBI’s radar in the first place. The intensification of the unmistakable overtures he was making to his political supporters and would-be political supporters promising to sell his office, his votes and his influence for donations was in no small measure a causative factor in the FBI’s move to obtain the search warrants it served on July 28.
As there appeared to be no will on the part of the San Bernardino County District Attorney’s Office or the California Fair Political Practices Commission to hold Wapner in check, by the end of June, at which point Wapner over the previous 18 months had accumulated $912,529.08 in his political war chest while Leon had in the same timeframe collected $112,230. In political donations, what appeared to be the entirety of Ontario’s social, political, business and governmental establishment appeared to be abandoning Leon and lining up behind Wapner. Teamsters Local 1932 representing 380 Ontario city employees, American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 3061, representing 1,260 Ontario city employees, the Ontario Police Officers Association, representing the city’s police officer up to the rank of sergeant, the Ontario Police Management Group, representing Ontario’s police department’s lieutenant and captains, and the International Association of Fire Fighters Local 1430, representing the city’s firefighters all endorsed Wapner in the mayor’s race prior to the filing period for the election opening.
Wapner’s withdrawal from the mayor’s race in the aftermath of the negative publicity that attended the serving of the search warrants transformed the formerly cordial relationship the city’s employees and their union representative had with Leon into a rather awkward circumstance, one in which the city’s workers found themselves at odds with their current and presumably future top-ranking political master.
What naturally evolved from the circumstance was a move by Leon and his newly-formed alliance with two of the council’s members – Jim Bowman and Debra Dorst-Porada, who previously had aligned themselves with Wapner but now found that alliance to represent a threat to their legacy and continuing reputations – to relieve Wapner of his adjunct assignments as an elected official, those being his membership on and presidency of the airport authority board, his representation of the city on the San Bernardino County Transportation Authority, his position on/presidency of the Omnitrans Board of Directors and his representation of the city on the board of directors for the Southern California Association of Governments.
While the 60-day/90-day guideline the U.S. Attorney’s Office and the FBI self-impose with regard to overt investigative or prosecutorial actions they might take that would come to the attention of the public and thereby impact an election, they do not curtail their work relating to figures involved in ongoing matters – be they investigative/prosecutorial targets, suspects, subjects, persons of interest, witnesses, victims or possible victims – if they can do so in a discreet manner or without drawing attention to their action. Such has been the case with those being investigated in relation to Ontario International Airport, the Ontario International Airport Authority, the City of Ontario and San Bernardino County. That investigation has continued, but investigators have attempted to maintain as low of a profile as possible in seeking to uncover more information.
Last month, three FBI agents – one woman and two men – approached City Manager Scott Ochoa in the parking lot at City Hall. Asking him if he would be willing to speak with them, they suggested that they go to a restaurant where they could have some privacy and not be subject to being seen or overheard by anyone at the city. Ochoa countered with an offer to take them back into City Hall, which by that point was empty, so they could converse in his office. The agents agreed, and Ochoa summoned City Attorney Ruben Duran to participate in the exchange, or at least be present as a witness.

While there is no publicly available record of precisely what questions were asked and what answers were given, the upshot of the exchange and its import can be extrapolated within certain parameters.
Given the limitations of Ochoa’s city administrative function and his general range of authority, the back-and-forth he engaged in with the agents dwelt primarily upon his observations of activity at City Hall and the dynamics of the interpersonal relationships of the city officials, extending to the operations at the airport only insofar as they involved city personnel and articulated with municipal activities.
What came across as being unmistakable is that the FBI’s presence in Ontario has not concluded and will involve multiple rounds of scrupulous examination. It appears that Wapner will go down by the time the first round concludes and that the outstanding question is how many others in the city or at the airport or those affiliated with the city or airport directly through him he will take with him in the succeeding phases of the investigation and prosecution. The exchanges between Ochoa and the three investigators established, the Sentinel is told, that Ochoa observed anomalies in how Wapner operated consistent with illegal or improper activity already charted in the investigation, but that, as city manager, he was too abstracted in running a municipal operation to make an exacting examination of the questionable or outright improper activity that was ongoing and he chose, essentially as it was termed to the Sentinel, to “see no evil, hear no evil and speak no evil.”
Among the points of commonality between the city and the airport authority were Wapner, as a city councilman and the chairman/president of the airport authority board; Bowman, as a city councilman and an airport authority board member; Claudia Isbell, the assistant city clerk who served as the airport authority board clerk and executive secretary; and Greg Devereaux, who had been the Ontario city manager fro, 1997 until 2010 and has been, since 2017 until the present, a consultant to both the city and to the airport authority.
Bowman, in his elected capacity as a city councilman, received, just as Wapner and Hagman had, political contributions from individuals and entities who were engaged in business with city and at the airport, a technical violation of California Government Code § 84308, also known as the Levine Act, which prohibits a government official from participating in decisions impacting a donor – i.e., voting to approve a contract with – a donor of $500 or more to his or her campaign. Wapner had received donations from owners and principals in businesses which had contracts with airport authority, in virtually every instance involving contributions of far greater monetary amounts than what had been provided to Bowman or Hagman.
Isbell, as the lead clerical staff member with the city and airport authority responsible for recording proceedings and keeping records relating to city council and airport board actions and administrative activity, served as the primary contact with the public for the provision of documents, records and information relating to city and airport authority operations. Over an extended period of time, as city residents and other members of the public were pressing for the release of information relating to aspects of airport authority operations and decisions by its board members and administrators, Isbell in compliance with Wapner’s instructions and the assistance of Kevin P. Sullivan, a lawyer with the law firm of Gatzke Dillon & Ballance, which serves as general counsel to airport authority, consistently blocked or limited provision of that information.
Devereaux, who has been receiving a $20,000 per month retainer or $240,000 per year for his work as a city consultant and a $20,000 per month retainer or $240,000 per year for his work as a city consultant since 2017, was provided with those $480,000 per year sinecures based upon Wapner’s insistence. Early on, some elements within the city referred to the consulting contract for managerial assistance with Devereaux and his company, Worthington Partners, for managerial assistance as “training wheels” for Ochoa, who began with the City of Ontario as city manager in November 2017. Ochoa, upon being hired, accepted the consulting arrangement as a temporary condition, though he considered the city’s consulting contract with Devereaux and his company an assignation that was purposelessly redundant.
In two relatively minor respects, Devereaux’s presence was of use to the city and therefore, to a certain extent, was tolerated or even welcomed by Ochoa.
Devereaux functioned as what was called “the great massager,” for his utility in calming the alcoholic Bowman when he grew temperamental. While Bowman for the most part was under the thumb of the manipulative Wapner, he occasionally chaffed at being taken for granted and would tie one on, in which case Devereaux would swoop in and put him back on the wagon.
On occasion, Devereaux, who was also dubbed, the “land guru,” would broker deals with developers where real estate transactions involving the city were at play. There were inconsistent accounts as to whether this was beneficial to the city in certain circumstances, with claims that the city had realized savings of money in some cases because of Devereaux’s intercession.
Ochoa came to resent the unnecessary parallel to his function that Devereaux represented, but lived with it to avoid a run in with, and to appease, Wapner, who on one occasion.
Devereaux, who like Wapner had a juris doctor degree but had never passed the California bar exam to actually become a lawyer in the Golden State, was valued for his ability to assist government officials, in particular elected ones, around the pitfalls of the law. Among some government officials in San Bernardino County and especially in Ontario, he is referred to as “the Wizard.” The FBI agents working the case pertaining to Ontario and Ontario International Airport, and reportedly some of those in the U.S. Attorney’s Office to whom the case had been assigned, took to referring to Devereaux as the ‘Consigliere,” an indication that he, rather than Wapner or Hagman, is considered the brains of the operations that were turning a profit on the exploitations of the public trust that were occurring at the airport, in Ontario and the within a good portion of San Bernardino County’s Fourth Supervisorial District.
FBI agents in examining the California Form 460s – the campaign reporting documents – filed by the politicians under scrutiny in this case discovered, as had local residents monitoring their elected leaders, that remarkably, Devereaux, whose bread and butter as the owner of Worthington Partners in large measure consisted of being able to influence top governmental decision-makers, did not, with only a few exceptions, show up as a major donor to political campaigns. This was, it appears, because Wapner understood the letter and the import of the Levine Act – California Government Code § 84308 – by which a politician is breaking the law if he or she takes $500 or more from someone and then takes action as a governmental official to benefit that donor. In this way, Devereaux was protecting not so much himself but the politicians he was working with or working for or working in conjunction with as a consultant or assistant or agent or lobbyist, whatever role he and Worthington Partners in that instance had taken on.
Recently, however, as FBI agents have continued to peel the onion layer by layer, they have come across elements of the scandal that had been buried or obscured so deeply that previously there was little prospect they would be discovered. One of these pertains to the use of, variously, political action committees or independent expenditure committees in an effort to get around California Government Code § 84308. Through the use of a committee, which is able to pool political donations from one, two, three or thousands of donors or any number in between, money can be delivered to a candidate or officeholder without the source of the money being readily recognized. In most cases the California Fair Political Practices Commission, the California Fair Political Practices Commission and county district attorney’s offices, which have the authority to look into, investigate, evaluate and potentially prosecute violations of California Government Code § 84308 are stymied by the political money laundering that takes place when a political donation is provided to a third party before it is passed along to the intended recipient. The vast majority of state prosecutors would not pursue a California Government Code § 84308 theory in such a case. Those prosecutors that perhaps would do so, could be thwarted by a criminal defense that would assert that the money taken from the pool and provided to the politician in question did not necessarily originate from the donor who was benefited by the politician-in-question’s vote. A jury in a state court might find that reasoning persuasive and vote to acquit the politician.
Under federal law, however, which has prohibitions very much like California Government Code § 84308 against a politician taking money from a donor and then voting to benefit that donor, there is a precedent case which establishes that taking money from a donor and then acting in an official capacity to benefit the donor meets is tantamount to bribe-taking.
Moreover, federal law with regard to efforts to conceal the source of funds delivered in the commission of bribery is far stronger than state law, such that such action, under a federal statue constitutes conspiracy, enhancing the seriousness of the offense and the punishment.
Earlier this year, on May 4, 2026, Devereaux provided $10,000 to the Grand Terrace-based California Parents Association Political Action Committee. That donation came in 11 days after the California Parents Association Political Action Committee donated $1,000 to Hagman’s campaign and the California Parents Association Political Action Committee in the same time frame made a $1,000 in-kind contribution to Hagman’s campaign in the form of campaign literature in support of his election. The California Parents Association Political Action Committee made an $8,500 contribution to Wapner’s mayoral campaign on July 30, 2026.
On December 23, 2025, the California Parents Association Political Action Committee made a $30,000 to Wapner for Mayor on December 23, 2025
On November 13, 2025, the California Parents Association Political Action Committee made a $1,000 donation to the Hagman for Supervisor campaign. On June 30, 2025, the California Parents Association Political Action Committee made a $9,000 donation to the Wapner for Council campaign.
Previously, Wapner had prepared his California Form 460 campaign finance documents himself, but had his wife, Judi, as his campaign treasurer, sign them. Wapner at that time was functioning under the impression that having his wife serve as his campaign treasurer would give him a layer of protection, since as his wife, she could not be forced to testify against him. More recently, however, he was informed that their husband/wife status would afford him no shield, since she had signed the California Form 460 documents under the penalty of perjury.
Those documents are problematic for Wapner.
An examination of his Form 460s shows that between January 2021 and December 2025, Wapner utilized $89,287.54 to pay for airfare for his wife to travel with him on 61 trips, 51 within the United States and ten international, entailing 302 days of travel on her part. Another $11,579.65 of his electioneering money was spent on hotel rooms for his wife. Another $1,309.20 from his campaign fund was spent on meals and incidentals for his wife. In this way, Wapner’s political war chest was used to defray $102,120.95 on his wife’s travel expenses. The California Political Reform Act, adopted by Proposition 9 in 1974, established clear limits regarding the use of campaign funds by candidates and politicians for travel expenditures. Under the California Political Reform Act, there is no general allowance for a politician’s spouse to use a candidate’s campaign funds for personal travel, including “defraying travel costs,” unless that travel is directly for a lawful, political purpose and complies with the act’s travel rules. In this way, Wapner’s use of money to cover his wife’s travel costs was illegal.
On some of the trips, the Wapners were accompanied by the Devereauxs, that being Greg Devereaux and his wife, Bertha Chavoya. Based upon information provided to the FBI by others who were also present during those excursions, Bertha on occasion made purchases, at costs exceeding thousands of dollars, of designer clothes, handbags and other accessories for Judi Wapner.
Federal investigators have undertaken efforts, sources close to Ontario City Hall have told the Sentinel, to examine records relating to Greg Devereaux’s banking records to see if they provide indications of cash withdrawals matching reports of kickbacks made by Devereaux to Wapner.

By Carlos Avalos
Acquanetta Warren has been mayor of Fontana since 2010 and is asking voters for a fifth term this year. Her campaign filings, from a 2009 run for the state Assembly through September 2026, record $1.87 million raised from 672 contributors. These are public records, open to the people of Fontana and San Bernardino County, and the San Bernardino County Sentinel has reported on parts of them over the years. Read line by line, they show who pays for her campaigns, where her campaign sends the money, and where the money might raise legal questions.
The largest identifiable group of donors builds and sells property. Real estate developers, homebuilders, their executives and their trade groups gave at least $396,498, about 21.2% of the total, led by developer David Wiener of DW Development, her largest donor at $109,100. Auto dealers, trucking and pallet companies, utilities, tribal governments and public-safety unions also give to her. Two developers who give heavily in San Bernardino County politics, Jeff Burum and James L. Previti, and companies or organizations they lead gave her $36,699. In 2021, the same year Previti’s homebuilding company and family foundation gave to Warren, a company tied to his businesses became the registered owner of a private jet that had belonged to Jeffrey Epstein. Continue reading →

Erik Eduardo Navarro, who used a baseball bat to nearly beat a Crestline woman to death after she had had shown remarkable kindness to him this summer, has been taken into custody by San Bernardino County sheriff’s detectives.
Navarro, who originated in Orange County, was in the San Bernardino Mountains in August. 71-year-old Therese Garcia spotted him one day as he was walking down her street. She stopped to ask him if he needed help. He told her he had suffered a setback when someone stole all of his camping equipment and some of his other belongings while he was staying at a local campsite, but that he had to remain in the area to be able to attend for a job interview he had scheduled a few days later at the Lake Drive Hardware store. Garcia offered the 26-year-old Navarro a home-cooked meal on August 18 or August 19, and he remained at her house in the 23900 block of Straight Way there for several days thereafter, having offered to do some chores and repair work.
Garcia later told her family members that Navarro at some point became demanding and, in the words of one of those family members, “began… taking over her home.” Garcia informed Navarro that she wanted to leave. That night, while Garcia was asleep on her couch, Navarro kicked her and struck her with a baseball bat, knocking her out. Upon regaining consciousness, Navarro attacked her again, beating her into unconsciousness two or three times again when she came to. He beat her about the head, causing orbital injuries that were so pronounced that the swelling around her eye sockets made it impossible for her to see. Continue reading →

The San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department earlier this month made a significant breakthrough in connecting an element of the Sinaloa Cartel to the massive cargo theft network that has been plaguing Southern California desert rail corridor for much of the last decade, identifying and rolling up now fewer than nine of the criminal enterprise’s participants.
All nine taken into custody on October 16 were Mexican nationals.
In the days following those arrests, investigators were able to glean information relating to operations, participants, the location of its bases of activity, specialized equipment and means of communication which will further cripple the organization.
That organization is a remarkably sophisticated one that utilizes inside operators who have over the last several years insinuated themselves into positions with the Burlington Northern Santa Fe/Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway or Union Pacific railroads or at the Barstow, Colton/Rialto, Needles, Del Rosa San Bernardino, San Bernardino Third Street, Kelso, Kramer, Goffs and Highland railroad yards, and as insiders can provide information as to the contents of railroad cars as well as the location and timing of their transit. Continue reading →

NOTICE OF PETITION TO ADMINISTER ESTATE OF: DIANE LYNN SHARITS
CASE NO. PROVA2600234
To all heirs, beneficiaries, creditors, contingent creditors, and persons who may otherwise be interested in the will or estate, or both of DIANE LYNN SHARITS: a petition for probate has been filed by KEVIN ALAN SHARITS in the Superior Court of California, County of SAN BERNARDINO.
THE PETITION for Probate requests that KEVIN ALAN SHARITS be appointed as personal representative to administer the estate of the decedent.
THE PETITION requests the decedent’s wills and codicils, if any, be admitted to probate. The will and any codicils are available for examination in the file kept by the court.
A hearing on the petition will be held December 2, 2026 at 9:00 a.m. at
San Bernardino County Superior Court Fontana District
Department F2 – Fontana
17780 Arrow Boulevard
Fontana, CA 92335
IF YOU OBJECT to the granting of the petition, you should appear at the hearing and state your objections or file written objections with the court before the hearing. Your appearance may be in person or by your attorney.
IF YOU ARE A CREDITOR or a contingent creditor of the decedent, you must file your claim with the court and mail a copy to the personal representative appointed by the court within the later of either (1) four months from the date of first issuance of letters to a general personal representative, as defined in section 58(b) of the California Probate Code, or (2) 60 days from the date of mailing or personal de-livery to you of a notice under Section 9052 of the California Probate Code.
Other California statutes and legal authority may affect your rights as a creditor. You may want to consult with an attorney knowledgeable in California law.
YOU MAY EXAMINE the file kept by the court. If you are a person interested in the estate, you may file with the court a Request for Special Notice (form DE-154) of the filing of an inventory and appraisal of estate assets or of any petition or account as provided in Probate Code section 1250. A Request for Special Notice form is available from the court clerk.
Kevin Alan Sharits, In Pro Per
7682 Condalia Ave.
Yucca Valley, CA 92284
(760) 541-6390
sharits8@gmail.com
Published in the San Bernardino County Sentinel on October 16, 23 & 30, 2026.

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