Los Angeles Times - 25.08.2019

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O

mar Salgado moved in slow motion

as he turned toward the music. The

radio on the nightstand was on a

Spanish-language station. A Latin

polka was playing. Salgado’s head

shifted a mere three inches, with each quarter

inch looking painfully difficult, as though his

head were attached to his neck with corroded

screws that might crack.

He hadn’t moved in the month since he’d

been admitted to the Villa Coronado Skilled

Nursing Facility in San Diego. I had assumed

Salgado wasn’t conscious and paid little atten-

tion to him. I was there to document the life of

his roommate — a man who’d been on life sup-

port for nearly 16 years.

Salgado’s gaze had always been fixed on the

ceiling — his emaciated body statue-like, his two

legs wrapped together in a soft splint, and his

arms folded across his chest as though a morti-

cian had posed him.

He’d been in a car accident. His liver was

slashed. His spine, ribs and a hip were broken.

He had something called “a diffuse axonal

shear” injury to his brain — the kind of injury

that usually puts people into a vegetative state.

I leaned over Salgado and stared into his

face. His eyes were large and brown, his cheeks

hollow, his chin narrow. He looked something

like a doe: innocent and beseeching, his wakeful-

ness on the verge of vanishing if I moved too fast.

“Omar, blink once if you can hear me,” I said.

He blinked.

“Blink if your name is Omar.”

He blinked again.

Salgado woke on

COLUMN ONE

OMAR SALGADOwas struck by a car while riding his bike in San Diego County in 2015.

The type of brain injury he suffered usually puts people into a vegetative state. “Based on

what he went through, I would not have expected him to live,” a police investigator said.

Marcus YamLos Angeles Times

Escape from nothingness

A brain-injured man’s remarkable awakening underscores

medicine’s inability to accurately diagnose consciousness

By Joanne Faryon

reporting from san diego

[SeeAwakening,A12]

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WASHINGTON — Earli-

er this summer, as President

Trump assembled online ac-

tivists at the White House to

thank them for their role in

getting him to the Oval Of-

fice and — Trump predicted

— keeping him there, one

guest didn’t rush to claim

credit.

Los Angeles-based

Prager University, a regis-

tered charity, is legally pro-

hibited from politicking. It

isn’t truly a university and

doesn’t have a campus. But

the digital empire created by

Dennis Prager, a 71-year-old

conservative radio host and

erstwhile Never Trumper, is

having more success rallying

young people to Trump’s

side than many campaign

committees aligned with the

president.

The concise videos

PragerU launches onto the

internet every week to indoc-

trinate and motivate conser-

vatives have been watched

more than 2 billion times, ac-

cording to the group’s count.

Independent analysis done

for The Times by Tubular

Labs, a video measurement

company, largely backs up

that claim. PragerU consis-

tently spends more on Face-

book advertising than major

political campaigns and na-

tional advocacy groups. It

ranks among the 10 biggest

political spenders on the

platform.

Its videos are becoming a

staple on college campuses,

where Prager is dead set on

overturning liberal ortho-

doxy. PragerU boasts that

thousands of college and

high school teachers screen

its videos in their class-

rooms.

All that has caused con-

siderable consternation on

the left.

Conservative

radio host is an

internet smash

His online ‘university’

makes hugely popular

videos that aim to

indoctrinate the right.

By Evan Halper

L.A. radio host Dennis Prager in 2013. His PragerU

videos have been viewed an estimated 2 billion times.

Michael Robinson ChavezLos Angeles Times

[SeePragerU,A11]

The Department of

Homeland Security stored

sensitive data from the na-

tion’s bioterrorism defense

program on an insecure

website where it was vulner-

able to attacks by hackers

for more than a decade, ac-

cording to government

documents reviewed by The

Times.

The data included the lo-

cations of at least some

BioWatch air samplers,

which are installed at sub-

way stations and other pub-

lic locations in more than 30

U.S. cities and are designed

to detect anthrax or other

airborne biological weap-

ons, Homeland Security offi-

cials confirmed. It also in-

cluded the results of tests for

possible pathogens, a list of

biological agents that could

be detected and response

plans that would be put in

place in the event of an at-

tack.

The information —

housed on a dot-org website

run by a private contractor

— has been moved behind a

secure federal government

firewall, and the website was

shut down in May. But

Homeland Security officials

acknowledge they do not

know whether hackers ever

gained access to the data.

Internal Homeland Se-

curity emails and other

Bioterror data

faced hacking risk

Pathogen findings

long stored on private

website, records show.

By Emily Baumgaertner

[SeeBioWatch,A10]

Hong Kong police

and protesters

back to clashing

A march against pos-

sible surveillance by

“smart lampposts”

sparks a new round of

violence, ending nearly 2

calm weeks. WORLD, A

NFL’s Andrew

Luck retires

The Indianapolis Colts’

star quarterback, citing

a “cycle of injury, pain,

rehab,” calls it a career

at age 29. SPORTS, D

Weather: Partly sunny.

L.A. Basin: 87/66. B

Printed with soy inks on

partially recycled paper.

G-7 is braced for

turmoil, Trump

Leaders in France,

where protesters rallied,

face strife and economic

unease, but focus on U.S.

president. WORLD, A

Thomas SamsonAFP/Getty

A flattened town rose

again Friday night, finding

its breath on the backs of a

high school football team

that furiously carried it

toward hope.

The Paradise High

Bobcats’ first touchdown

of their rebirth season was

scored by a player who

moments earlier had vomited on the

field.

“The puking felt real,” said Lukas

Hartley. “Everything else felt like a

dream.”

Their second touchdown was scored

by a player who turned pale after plop-

ping down on the bench to catch his

breath.

“I get the ball, my heart was racing, I

get into the end zone, my heart is still

racing,” said Mason Cowan. “It was the

perfect night.”

It was a night of hitting and healing, of

howls and tears, filled with mourning

and magic. Afterward, perfect indeed, it

ended as a

THE SELLOUT CROWDat Om Wraith Field cheers as graduated seniors

from last year’s Paradise football team lead this year’s squad to the field.

Wally SkalijLos Angeles Times

A town’s return to normality

More than nine months after fire leveled their

community, Paradise’s players get back on field

[SeePlaschke, A16]

BILL PLASCHKE

Reporting from Paradise, Calif.

As soon as Samuel Bon-
ner entered the Long Beach
courtroom with his wrists
chained to his waist, the
judge made a simple — yet
for Bonner, unprecedented
— request: Could the bailiff
please remove his shackles?
This is the moment, Bon-
ner thought. This is it.
It was the closest thing to
freedom he had felt in 37
years. The hour or so that
followed was just as remark-
able for the man who had al-
ways insisted he was inno-
cent of murder.
The hearing that day in
July was spurred by the ap-
proval of California’s new fel-
ony murder law, which retro-
actively limits who can be
charged with murder to
those accused of actually
killing or intending to kill. In
L.A. County, Bonner and

A liar put

him away,

and now

he’s free

Imprisoned 37 years,

Samuel Bonner always

said he was innocent.

By Alene
Tchekmedyian

[SeeBonner,A14]