Tourism conference: O.C. cities should work together

Sibling rivalries are expected, and to a degree, beneficial, but when it comes to tourism in Orange County cities, the message Wednesday was all about working together.

“Of course, we’ll keep working individually too — I still want to keep my job,” Gary Sherwin, president and chief executive of Visit Newport Beach Inc., joked while speaking at the fourth annual Tourism Conference, organized by the Orange County Tourism Council (OCTC) at the Newport Beach Marriott Hotel and Spa.

Overall, speakers encouraged the audience — and each other — to work together to develop “The OC” as a global brand and destination for international visitors.

“We’re talking about this wonderful shared asset called Orange County,” Sherwin said to the audience. “When you hear ‘The OC’ anywhere in the world, you know what they’re talking about — they’re talking about us. And we take a lot of pride in that.”

Panelist Judith Bijlani, president and chief executive of the Laguna Beach Visitors and Conference Bureau, pointed to the county’s miles of beaches, many art museums and galleries, and shopping as several of the key components making up “part of the OC experience,” a tagline she encouraged local businesses to adopt.

–Sarah Peters, @SPeters01, Daily Pilot

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O.C. couple plead guilty to faking death to get benefits

Santiago and Rosa Carrasco. (Orange County district attorney's office)

A Santa Ana husband and wife pleaded guilty Tuesday to charges of faking the man’s death to steal more than $400,000 in death benefits, authorities said.

Santiago Carrasco, 52, and Rosa Carrasco, 54, were accused of traveling to Mexico in the summer of 2004 to obtain a phony death certificate stating that he died of a heart attack there, the Orange County district attorney’s office said.

In September 2004, Rosa Carrasco began collecting death benefits on behalf of her husband, according to prosecutors. She was charged with receiving the money while the couple were living together in Santa Ana.

Rosa Carrasco worked at a retail store in South Coast Plaza, while Santiago Carrasco was a truck driver based out of Fontana.

Prosecutors said the Carrascos were collecting the benefits up until their arrest Aug. 1, 2011.

Each was sentenced to two years in custody and two years of mandatory supervision after they are released, the district attorney’s office said. The couple was also ordered to pay more than $413,000 in restitution.

— Robert J. Lopez, Los Angeles Times

Photo Gallery: Wings of Freedom Tour at JWA

A crew member rides atop the WWII B-24 Liberator heavy bomber "Witchcraft" as it arrives to the Lyon Air Museum after it touched down at John Wayne Airport Friday as part of the Wings of Freedom Tour. The display was in town through Sunday. (Don Leach)

For more photos, click here.

Taste of OC will return

The Taste of Orange County will return in June after a more than 15-year hiatus, an event producer confirmed this week.

Not only is the countywide, five-star culinary festival emerging from retirement, but artisan cocktails, locally brewed beer, sommeliers, cooking demonstrations, celebrity chefs, arts and musical entertainment are in the festival’s corner this time around.

“With the explosion of restaurants and chefs and food and wine, we do [festivals] all over the country in individual cities,” said Judy Gray, one of the event’s producers. “But we really need to do something all together. The time has come again. I think this is going to shine a light on how the culinary scene has grown and what it has to offer.”

The two-day festival will be held June 16 to 17 at the Verizon Wireless Amphitheater in Irvine.

It previously was held in an industrial complex’s parking lot near the Irvine Spectrum Center, Gray said.

While it’s not clear why past festival organizers hung up their aprons, Gray said the new organizers have a comeback in the works, with plans extending five years out.

–Sarah Peters, @SPeters01, Daily Pilot

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San Onofre nuclear plant backs away from reopening date

San Onofre nuclear plant. (Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

Southern California Edison backed off from comments made last week by one of its executives, who said the company hopes to have the San Onofre nuclear plant — shuttered due to equipment issues — back online and operating at a reduced capacity in June.

In a written statement, the company said, “SCE and the [California Independent System Operator] have maintained throughout the SONGS outage that nuclear safety has no timeline and the units will only be returned to service when SCE and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) are satisfied it is safe to do so.  SCE has not filed a request with the NRC seeking to restart the plant.”

Edison said in its statement it provided the June planning dates to the ISO in March only for administrative purposes.

Stephen Pickett, the company’s executive vice president of external relations, said last week Edison was preparing to submit a plan to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission that could have the plant back online running at 50% to 80% capacity in June.

NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko released a statement Monday, saying the agency has yet to receive a written statement from Edison to say the required steps have been taken to investigate and make a plan to fix the issues at the plant and “any discussion of a date for the restart of Unit 2 or Unit 3 is clearly premature.”

The plant has been shuttered for more than three months because of problems with excessive wear in steam generator tubes.

On Tuesday, Edison reported it has taken about 1,300 tubes out of service because of wear — 510 in Unit 2 and 807 in Unit 3 — representing a little more than 3% of the total number of tubes in the plant, and a higher number than the company had previously reported.

Edison and ISO officials appeared at the Irvine City Council meeting Tuesday night to reassure the public that contingency plans are in place to ensure the plant’s outage will not result in blackouts over the summer. The plans include speeding up transmission upgrades, bringing retired generating units at a natural gas plant in Huntington Beach back into service, and giving incentives for customers to conserve energy.

Threats made to 2 Southwest flights with ties to O.C., Phoenix

Two Southwest Airlines flights with ties to Orange County and Phoenix were stopped Tuesday night after threats were made to the planes, authorities told The Times.

The first incident began about 7:30 p.m. after flight 1184 arrived at Sky Harbor International Airport from John Wayne Airport, the FBI said.

The plane was taken to an isolated area of the airport after authorities received an unspecified threat, said Special Agent Manuel Johnson of the FBI’s Phoenix division.

He said the plane was searched, passengers were screened again and the flight was cleared. It was headed to Tulsa, Okla.

About an hour later, Southwest flight 811 at John Wayne Airport was taken to an isolation area after authorities received a bomb threat, according to the Orange County Sheriff’s Department.

Lt. Joe Balicki told The Times the “phone threat was received by an outside agency.”

“It was preparing to take off,” he said. The flight was bound for Phoenix.

Bomb squad members searched the plane Tuesday night but found no explosive device.

The FBI was probing both incidents. “As to whether the two were related, clearly that’s under investigation,” FBI spokeswoman Laura Eimiller in Los Angeles said.

Southwest spokeswoman Ashley Dillon said that no passengers were injured and that the flight leaving Orange County was cleared for takeoff. However, the flight was cancelled because of a noise curfew at the airport, she said.

–Los Angeles Times

D.A. charges accused ‘Snowboarder Bandit’

The accused “Snowboarder Bandit” was charged Tuesday with 12 felonies related to a string of Orange County bank robbers, authorities.

Michael Brandon Franks, 29, of Riverside County is allegedly responsible for robbing 10 area banks, including a Union Bank in Newport Beach, according to the Orange County district attorney’s office.

He has been charged with 10 felony counts of second degree robbery and two felony counts of attempted robbery.

Prosecutors said in each case Franks wore clothing similar to what a snowboarder would wear, including a beanie, and slipped the bank teller a note saying he had a gun and demanded money.

In total, authorities believe Franks stole $30,000.

Irvine police arrested him May 4 at his Riverside County home, according to the D.A.’s office.

He is being held in lieu of $250,000 bail and faces up to 15 years in state prison.

–Lauren Williams, @LAWilliams30, Daily Pilot

Basking shark caught on video near San Clemente Pier

Courtesy Dana Wharf Sportfishing & Whale Watching

Captain and Naturalist Frank Brennan from Dana Wharf Sportfishing & Whale Watching captured this rare video of a basking shark about three-quarters of a mile off the San Clemente Pier on Sunday. A basking shark is the second biggest fish, after the whale shark.

UCI sweeps to NCAA title

LOS ANGELES — All through its postseason run, the deepest team UC Irvine men’s volleyball Coach John Speraw ever had kept shuffling the deck. But in the NCAA final against top-ranked USC on Saturday night, the Anteaters merely rode their same hot hand.

Senior opposite Carson Clark, a four-time All-American, pounded a match-high 22 kills with a .465 hitting percentage to help the No. 2-ranked ‘Eaters top to Trojans, 25-22, 34-32, 26-24, in front of 9,612 at USC’s Galen Center.

The victory, in front of the third-largest NCAA championship men’s volleyball crowd ever, gave UCI the program’s third NCAA crown in six seasons. Men’s volleyball now matches men’s water polo with three NCAA titles for UCI.

“Carson is the man,” summed up UCI junior setter Chris Austin, who also stepped up with 48 assists and a team-best 15 digs.

Clark, the school’s all-time kill leader with 1,861, had 10 kills in Game 2 to help UCI (26-5) rally from a 14-7 deficit. He had seven more in the third set, by which time Speraw had delivered instructions to Austin about going to the go-to guy. He was named Most Outstanding Player of the Final Four.

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Grand jury transcripts detail horror of Seal Beach mass killing

A Seal Beach police officer checks the door at Salon Meritage the morning after the October shooting rampage. (Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times)

In the pandemonium of people scrambling to escape the bloodiest shooting rampage in Orange County history, Kenneth Caleb saw a lone, limping figure possessed of a strange calm.

Caleb was staring out the window of Patty’s Place, the Seal Beach restaurant where he went for lunch that day in October. Moments earlier, a terrified employee at the Salon Meritage next door had rushed into the restaurant screaming one phrase over and over:

“Call the police, he’s shooting everybody!”

Caleb heard gunshots. Through the glass door, he could see the scene outside. There were “people running everywhere … a bunch of chaos of people running around,” he told an Orange County grand jury in January, according to transcripts of the hearing unsealed Thursday.

Amid the commotion, he saw one man with a limp move casually through the parking lot, his shoulders square, his gaze cast downward with “zero expression on his face.”

It reminded Caleb of a man strolling through the park. “I am trying to put the picture together,” Caleb testified. “I thought he was a derelict and he just didn’t understand what was going on, and he was putting himself in harm.”

–Los Angeles Times, @LATimes

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