TimesOC: Orange County is back open for indoor business

Good afternoon and welcome to the TimesOC newsletter. It’s Wednesday, Sept. 9.

My name is David Carrillo Peñaloza, the author of the TimesOC newsletter and an editor for Los Angeles Times Community News.

In Orange County, purple is out and red is in — and that’s a good trend when it comes to businesses reopening indoors.

The color change allows restaurants, movie theaters, places of worship, museums and fitness centers to resume indoor operations in the county, albeit at a limited capacity.

Orange County is one of only two counties in Southern California making the move from the purple tier to the red tier, the second stage of the state’s four-tiered, color-coded COVID-19 pandemic monitoring system. The county started on the worst tier, with the designation of widespread transmission, when Gov. Gavin Newsom announced the new state guidelines on Aug. 28.

Reporters Matt Szabo and Colleen Shalby wrote on Tuesday about Orange County joining San Diego County on the less restrictive tier of substantial transmission and what that means for businesses. Restaurants, movie theaters, places of worship and museums can resume indoor operations at either 25% capacity or 100 people, whichever number is fewer, while fitness centers must be limited to 10% capacity.

Schools in Orange County are also on track to return to in-person learning as soon as Sept. 22, if the county continues its trend of combating the coronavirus.

Pablo Picasso prints up for auction to help feed people

Harald Herrmann used to make a living selling food.

Now he’s selling his Pablo Picasso print collection to help feed people in Orange County.

Herrmann, the CEO of Second Harvest Food Bank of Orange County, is auctioning the 30-print collection through Christie’s until Sept. 18. The art could go for more than half a million dollars.

Reporter Vera Castaneda interviewed Herrmann, who plans to donate 10% of the gross proceeds to Second Harvest, while Christie’s will donate half of its commission to Feeding America.

“It is a marathon, and we have lots of work ahead of us,” said Herrmann, whose organization is moving about 6 million pounds of food a month to more than 500,000 residents. “There’s a newly vulnerable population of families that were several paychecks away from needing to get in a food line, which has really revealed a risk in our community, especially with lower-middle-class families without paychecks for several weeks.

“Children being home-schooled, daycare issues — just all the things that are being thrown at families right now, there’s a lot that we still have to figure out as a community.”

Kids learn stock market from high schooler

Dylan Jin-Ngo, a high school student, is teaching younger kids in Orange County about the stock market.

One kid with the first name “Cash” is already earning some.

Szabo wrote about Jin-Ngo and his nonprofit company Youth Investors Corp. He partnered with the Haynes Family branch of the Boys & Girls Clubs of Huntington Valley and taught middle school students during a five-week online course on stock trading.

Jin-Ngo’s top student from the summer turned out to be Cash Harman.

The sixth-grader earned a $500 grant for winning a stock market simulation game that was part of Jin-Ngo’s curriculum. With the money, the 11-year-old plans to buy a computer.

Huntington Beach couple fights for 44-year-old phone number

A Huntington Beach couple has had the same phone number since 1976.

Keeping it proved problematic for Robin Gross, 69, and her husband, James Brown, 68, when they recently transferred their phone service from Frontier Communications to Spectrum.

Columnist David Lazarus featured the two and their struggle to keep the phone number that is older than their kids.

“I told them they were holding our number hostage,” Brown said. “But they wouldn’t budge. I finally had to hang up because I was frustrated.”

In other Orange County news:

— The Orange County Children’s Book Festival is going online this year due to the coronavirus pandemic. The event, in its 17th year, will also last more than a day as it starts Monday and ends Sept. 26.

— The Muckenthaler Cultural Center in Fullerton is showing the work of eight Korean artists who immigrated to the U.S. The exhibit is called “Nestle into Nature: Movements Seeking Balance,” and it runs through October.

— Orange Coast College nears the completion of several major building projects, including a student union and college center that have a combined cost of $113 million.

— A 72-year-old Newport Beach woman and her dog died in a hit-and-run collision on Sunday. A suspect has been arrested.

— A 48-year-old Orange man became the second diver to die off Laguna Beach’s coast since June.

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