The Weekly Newspaper of El Segundo
Herald Publications - El Segundo, Hawthorne, Lawndale & Inglewood Community Newspapers Since 1911 - (310) 322-1830 - Vol. 110, No. 28 - July 15, 2021
Inside
This Issue
Certified & Licensed
Professionals.....................11
Classifieds..........................10
Crossword/Sudoku...........10
Entertainment......................4
Legals......................... 9,10,11
Pets......................................12
Police Reports.....................3
Real Estate.......................5-7
Sports.................................3,8
Weekend
Forecast
Musician’s Love of Music Brings
Wonder and Happiness to Tots
Gilda Dyckman Cracks Down
on Catalytic Converter Theft
By Kiersten Vannest
During the pandemic, Los Angeles County
reported a 400% increase in the theft of
catalytic converters. All across Facebook,
Next-door, the Citizen app, and local reports,
stories of catalytic converter theft remain one
of the top stories. So what is a catalytic converter
Musician Tucker Booth Strives to
Create Daily Lifetime Memories
By Duane Plank
So, if you look up musician Tucker
Booth’s profile on LinkedIn, it notes
that he is an “experienced entertainment
specialist with a demonstrated history of
working in the music industry. Skilled in
singing, guitar, teaching, journalism, interviewing,
social media, rap, Voice acting
& professional entertainment,” as well
as “strong art and publicity professional
with a focus on music, media, sports &
podcasting.” He’s a versatile entertainer
and a proverbial Renaissance man.
Look up Plank on LinkedIn, and I
believe all it says is that I write some
stuff. Guess I better polish up my social
media profile.
When I checked in with Booth, who has
a regular gig instructing and entertaining
the youngsters of El Segundo at not only
the “happy baby” store on Main Street,
but also at El Segundo Childcare, he was
at a point in his career, at age 42, where
he said that he has “more work than I
can even take right now.”
This was not always the case for Booth,
who spent his formative years in Portland,
before moving to St. Louis when has was
ten. After spending 18 years in the city
known as the “Gateway to the West,”
Booth decided to take that gateway and
relocate to the Los Angeles area to chase
fame and fortune. Or something similar.
exactly, why is it stolen, and how do
they steal it? Gilda Dyckman explains what
is happening and how you can prevent it.
To protect your vehicle from catalytic
converter theft, Dyckman and her shop,
Cars Automotive & Muffler, work with the
El Segundo Police Department and other
police departments in the South Bay to etch
identifiers onto converters, as well as place
protective cages and shields to deter thieves.
Every gas-powered car since 1975 has a
catalytic converter. Located in the exhaust
system, the catalytic converter serves to filter
out the worst pollutants from the car before
they enter into the air out the tailpipe. It
looks like a little metal box on the bottom of
the car, with two pipes coming out of it. In
one pipe, harmful gases like nitrogen oxide
and carbon monoxide from the engine get
oxygen added or removed so that safer gases
like nitrogen, oxygen, and carbon dioxide
come out into the air.
“It’s the metal that’s in the catalytic
converter,” she explains, “the rhodium and
the palladium. Rhodium is like $22,000 an
ounce.” As cars become more environmentally
friendly and sustainable, the search for
nonreactive metals to filter out pollutants
has reached an all-time high. Rhodium and
palladium do the job very well.
As we recover from the pandemic, the
market for cars has started to pick up again,
which means the demand for these metals
has skyrocketed, driving up their price
and value. One catalytic converter can cost
around $2000 to replace and can be sold for
scrap on the black market for a few hundred
dollars, depending on the converter and the
metal inside.
Hybrid cars like Priuses are targeted most
frequently, because they contain higher levels
of metal and because these cars also run on
electricity, meaning the converter is used less.
Because there are so many drivers in
California, and especially in LA County, the
state requires correct catalytic converters on
See Gilda Dyckman, page 8
Gilda Dyckman educates the community about catalytic converter
theft and how to prevent it.
Musician Tucker Booth entertains a young admirer. For Tucker’s story, see yellow box below. Photo provided by Tucker Booth.
See Tucker Booth, page 11
Friday
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Saturday
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Sunday
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