The Weekly Newspaper of El Segundo
Herald Publications - El Segundo, Hawthorne, Lawndale & Inglewood Community Newspapers Since 1911 - (310) 322-1830 - Vol. 110, No. 9 - March 4, 2021
Inside
This Issue
Certified & Licensed
Professionals.....................11
Classifieds............................4
Crossword/Sudoku.............4
Entertainment......................8
Legals.............................. 9,10
Obituaries.............................2
Pets......................................12
Police Reports.....................4
Real Estate.......................5-7
School Spotlight..................3
Weekend
Forecast
ES Students are Back to School
A view of the safety measures in the classroom. For story see School Spotlight on page 3.
Car Thieves Adding Misery to
Already Tough Situation
By Rob McCarthy
Owners of trucks and sport-utility vehicles
parked outdoors and in carports, consider
yourselves warned. Catalytic converters are
being stolen off vehicles by thieves who are
hard to prosecute even when they get caught.
El Segundo Police Chief Bill Whalen revealed
on Tuesday how quickly a thief using a car jack
and an electric saw could remove the devices.
Catalytic converters - emission equipment
that can cost $2,500 to replace - take as little
as a minute to steal. They contain platinum and
palladium, two precious metals that make the
car parts especially lucrative to steal and sell
at a scrap yard, Chief Whalen said during his
year-in-review crime report to the City Council.
“Currently, the value of palladium is worth
more than gold,” the chief said. Scrap yards are
paying between $150 and $200 for catalytic
converters. According to Whalen, thieves have
targeted trucks and SUVs because they offer more
ground clearance and room to cut out the metallic
auto part using a battery-operated hand saw.
Eighty thefts of auto parts were reported last
year, and another 119 owners reported vehicle
break-ins and property stolen. The chief on
Tuesday reminded residents to lock parked
vehicles and pull them in the garage, especially
overnight, to deter vandals who take advantage
of open garages and unlocked car doors.
According to published reports, the price
of palladium quintupled to hit a record of
$2,875 an ounce last year and has hovered
between $2,000 and $2,500 an ounce - more
than gold. Another metal in the emissions
canisters is rhodium, which skyrocketed to a
record $21,900 an ounce this year, roughly 12
times the gold price.
Compounding the problem is that catalytic
converters don’t carry serial numbers that police
El Segundo Local J.J. Eboli Teaches
Kids to Write Music for the Big Screen
By Kiersten Vannest
Nestled in north El Segundo, little
musicians in the making practice piano
and guitar and learn to compose at a
place called Little Composers Academy.
Their instructor? J.J. Eboli, professional
entertainment composer, and musician.
Eboli was born in Brazil, growing up
in a very musical family. His mother and
father played instruments, along with all
his siblings and cousins. Family dinners
were a musical affair, as he describes,
with each member picking up a different
instrument and playing their own
in-house concert just for themselves.
At the heart of all this was his grandaunt
(his grandfather’s sister), who was
the former dean of the Music and Arts
School at the Federal University in his
home city of Porto Alegre, and who gave
them all lessons.
“Who doesn’t like to go to your grandparents’
house, right?” laughs Eboli,
explaining that his relationship with music
has always been relaxed and never forced,
“I would eat food and play in the yard
and talk… all sorts of stuff. And then,
in the middle of that great day, I had a
piano lesson.”
Amid eating candy, playing, socializing,
and spending time with family, music lessons
were seamlessly worked in, which
allowed his relationship with music to be
associated with a sense of joy and calm.
This is something he hopes to bring to
See J.J. Eboli, page 8
and investigators can trace back to a vehicle that’s
been vandalized. El Segundo police stopped
and searched a suspect’s car and found one
emission system that matched the saw marks on a
vehicle targeted in El Segundo, Whalen recounted.
However, the Los Angeles County district
attorney declined to file charges in the case.
Catalytic-converter thefts boosted larcenies
by 15 percent in El Segundo during 2020.
Larceny is the theft of property from private
property, including carports or unlocked vehicles.
There were 446 reported cases of larceny last
year and 154 car thefts from the city. The chief
believes that auto thefts rose because cars were
parked for long periods on city streets and in
carports while stay-at-home orders were in effect.
Home-security cameras have confirmed
that thieves are driving through El Segundo
neighborhoods with bad intentions. In one
recent instance, a car with two men inside
drove past a home and returned a while later.
One occupant of the car walked up the driveway
while his partner waited in the car. They
eventually pulled in the driveway, and one of
the culprits used a car jack and a hand-held
saw to cut loose a catalytic converter from a
car parked in the owner’s driveway. The brazen
theft happened during the daytime.
“We do know from apprehending criminals
in stolen cars they often are engaged in other
activities such as stealing catalytic converters,
Friday See City Council, page 10
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