(NEW YORK) — Lakisha L. Simmons, Ph.D., was a 36-year-old working mom of two young sons when she got divorced in 2017.
“I stayed in the family home with the boys and all of the bills were suddenly mine, all alone,” Simmons told Good Morning America. “That brought back rushing all of the feelings [of financial insecurity] from when I was a girl, that I was alone and in this world trying to figure it out by myself again.”
Simmons said she decided to “get serious” about her finances, a decision that changed the course of her life.
Now 41, Simmons, of Nashville, Tennessee, retired this year from her job as a college analytics professor. A self-taught investor, Simmons has amassed a nearly $1 million fortune and opened her own business, BRAVE Consulting, where she focuses on helping women of color obtain financial freedom.
“With the divorce, I thought I have to buckle down and get serious or I’m paycheck to paycheck and I can’t do that with two little people depending on me,” said Simmons. “I thought I can’t ever let this happen again.”
Here are the steps Simmons says she took to reach her own financial freedom.
1. I buckled down on budgeting: “I did the budgeting when we were married but the budget was loose and I knew I had to buckle down,” said Simmons. “I created a Google sheet and I started entering from the top down, which was my paycheck, my gross salary.”
“Then I went to the next section and added in every single expense that I had to pay every month,” she said. “Then I was able to look at that list and realistically say what is nonessential and I cut it, like cable and spending for clothes and shoes.”
2. I sold my family home and moved to a townhome: “The biggest expense on my list was my mortgage, so that had to go,” said Simmons. “I sold the house and moved into an apartment and that saved me $1,200 per month. I ended up buying a townhouse and the mortgage is less money than what my rent was and it’s way less than what the mortgage on the house was.”
Simmons said selling her house taught her a lesson about budgeting by determining what you value.
“If you value a house on a hill that’s on an acre of land, then cut other ways and keep your family home,” she said. “For me, I didn’t value the home. It was a burden and so it had to go.”
3. I discovered the FIRE method: Simmons says that when she took a close look at what she valued, that included independence and more time for her children and herself, which ultimately led her to realize she wanted to retire early.
She says following the FIRE method, or Financial Independence, Retire Early, helped her reach that point.
There are different variations of the FIRE method, including the “lean FIRE,” which Simmons followed and which requires extreme frugality and lifestyle changes to retire early, and the “fat FIRE,” which involves people maintaining their original standard of living but investing and saving up to retire early.
Simmons’ detailed budgeting allowed her to be able to know her yearly expenses, which she then used to plan how much money she would need to save to retire early.
4. I educated myself on investing: Simmons already had some money invested when she started budgeting, but she doubled down on teaching herself how to maximize her extra cash instead of leaving it in bank accounts.
She maxed out her 401(k) retirement account, contributed to a Roth IRA and also began contributing to a 457(b) account, another tax-advantaged retirement account she learned she was eligible for as a teacher.
She also invested any extra money in the S&P 500 index fund, where it could continue to grow.
“If you educate yourself about how the stock market works and you only invest money that you don’t need right now, after you’ve fully funded your emergency savings account, you’ll get a return over the long term,” said Simmons. “This is my strategy as a single woman.”
5. I continually cut down my monthly expenses: Simmons says the Google sheet she created at the start of her budgeting journey is something she constantly fine-tunes.
“I look at it once or twice a week and look line-by-line and say, ‘How can I reduce this amount?,'” she said. “For example, the first thing I cut was the cable and then I went to my grocery bill and looked for lower-cost grocery stores. Then I cut my mobile phone bill and now my pre-paid bill is only $180 for the entire year.”
Simmons values time with her children, so she said she takes them on experiences like bike rides, picnics and local getaways instead of focusing on material items.
“What I want people to understand is that I never feel deprived,” she said. “It’s not depriving yourself. It’s just looking at what you value.”
6. I started side hustles: As Simmons went along in her financial journey, she found ways to make extra money by teaching others what she had learned.
In addition to launching BRAVE Consulting, where she offers group workshops and online tools, Simmons also wrote a book, The Unlikely AchieveHer: 11 Steps to a Happy and Prosperous Life.
She also works with Personal Capitol, an online financial company, as a Financial Hero, helping with the company’s financial education efforts.
“The mindset I’m instilling in my sons now is, ‘What can you do to create your own money?,'” said Simmons. “It is all worth it.”
(NEW YORK) — Some 150 miles from Tokyo’s Olympic venues, calendars that line the walls of empty classrooms remain frozen on a date more than a decade in the past: March 11, 2011.
Images from an abandoned elementary school in Futaba, Japan, are an eerie reminder of the uneven recovery efforts 10 years after a 9.0-magnitude earthquake triggered a catastrophic tsunami and caused the world’s worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl.
About 164,000 people were forced to evacuate in the aftermath of the meltdown at the now-infamous Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant. Many never returned home.
As the Japanese government doggedly forges ahead with the delayed and beleaguered Olympic Games this year, some advocates say initial promises that the situation in Fukushima is “under control” are false. Some also say the “Recovery Olympics” branding exploits residents who feel forgotten, and cleanup of the Dai-ichi power plant will take decades longer than government estimates.
Japanese officials insist radiation levels in reopened parts of Fukushima prefecture — which is set to host baseball and softball for the Summer Games — are safe for visitors, and many independent monitors agree. But what many say is a lack of transparency has eroded public trust, and a new debate rages over the what to do with the more than 1 million tons of “treated” radioactive wastewater piling up in storage tanks at the damaged nuclear power plant.
Here is how the legacy of the Fukushima nuclear catastrophe looms large over the Tokyo Olympics.
A ‘Made in Japan’ disaster
Kiyoshi Kurokawa, the chairman of the Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission (a group mandated by Japanese legislators to examine what went wrong and make recommendations), told ABC News that recovery efforts are far from complete and a permanent plan for how to dispose of contaminated waste is not in place.
“It has a long way to go,” Kurokawa told ABC News of Fukushima’s recovery. “It’s a very tragic thing — and there are just certain people that cannot go back.”
“The issue is, what is the long-term prospectus of how to contain Fukushima Dai-ichi, and I’m not so sure TEPCO [Tokyo Electric Power Company] has a clear long-term plan of what to do,” Kurokawa added. “They’re doing at least their best effort, but I think cleaning up radioactivity is a mess, and particularly with Fukushima Dai-ichi’s issues.”
While the quasi-state-owned power firm that runs the embattled nuclear power plant has suggested a 30- to 40-year timeline for decommissioning, Kurokawa said conflicting research estimates it could take at least “100 years.”
In his team’s scathing report on what went wrong, delivered to Japanese lawmakers in the aftermath of the event, Kurokawa calls the nuclear catastrophe a “profoundly manmade disaster — that could and should have been foreseen and prevented.”
Kurokawa blasted cultural factors in the nation with the world’s third-largest gross domestic product that he says ultimately resulted in more suffering.
“What must be admitted — very painfully — is that this was a disaster ‘Made in Japan,'” Kurokawa wrote in the English version of the executive summary. “Its fundamental causes are to be found in the ingrained conventions of Japanese culture: our reflexive obedience; our reluctance to question authority; our devotion to ‘sticking with the program’; our groupism; and our insularity.”
While they are separate issues, similar criticisms have been leveled at Japanese officials still insistent upon hosting the Olympics despite a global pandemic.
“The biggest issue from our point of view has been this historical lack of adequate transparency on the part of TEPCO and also the Japanese government,” Azby Brown, a researcher for the nuclear monitoring nonprofit organization Safecast, told ABC News, “and this is from the beginning and may actually predate the accident.”
“We see some similar things happening regarding the coronavirus response and even among the negotiations or the discussions regarding the Olympics and what measures will be taken to protect the safety of people who come here for that,” Brown added. “So, it’s all part of a similar phenomenon within Japanese institutions and bureaucracies and government.”
‘Recovery is far from reality’ ahead of so-called ‘Recovery Olympics’
Before the COVID-19 pandemic engulfed the world, the Japanese government originally painted the 2020 Olympic Games as the “Recovery Olympics,” meant to showcase how the nation rebuilt in the decade following the cataclysmic triple disaster of 2011.
The global health crisis and mounting costs associated with hosting the international event during a once-in-a-century pandemic has led to dwindling public support for holding the games, but these concerns appear to have largely fallen on deaf ears. Many locals have expressed fears that it could lead to a surge in coronavirus cases as vaccination rates in Japan lag far behind its peers in the developed world.
For some residents or evacuees of Fukushima, however, hosting the Olympics at a cost of some $12.6 billion is a painful reminder of government-spending priorities.
“Some people feel abandoned not only by the government but also by the nation,” Kazuya Hirano, a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, told ABC News. “They also feel used for the promotion of the government slogan, the ‘Recovery Olympics.'”
Hirano — whose research has focused on the continued social, political and health effects of the disaster — said that the government terminated financial support for evacuees in 2017, but most have not returned home.
“Reconstruction does not make much sense as most former Fukushima residents who were affected by the disaster have not returned or have no intention to return because they are worried about the radiation for their families as well as themselves,” Hirano said. “Most people have already settled in new places.”
Safecast’s Brown said that he feels some people in the region take pride in hosting Olympic events, as it provides something to be optimistic about.
“But for them to try to use this as a way to showcase recovery, it was a sketchy idea from the beginning and I think now it’s probably certainly backfired,” he said. “Instead, it will only highlight the problems and the lack of recovery.”
“We spend a lot of time with people in communities we help,” Brown said. “They’re all totally skeptical of these big-picture things, like to spend millions and millions on Olympics. They are saying we need more support for concrete things — actual support for small businesses, actual support for single parents.”
With “real, concrete things” still not adequately taken care of in Fukushima, Brown said many residents view the billions of dollars pumped into the Olympics as “just misspent funds.”
In his 2013 speech pitching Tokyo as a host city, then-Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told members of the International Olympic Committee that the situation in Fukushima is “under control” and “has never done and will never do any damage to Tokyo.”
His words have drawn ire from Fukushima residents for years.
In July 2020, Katsunobu Sakurai — who was mayor of Minamiosama, Fukushima, at the time of the catastrophe — blasted the “Recovery Olympics” branding in an interview with the one of the country’s biggest newspapers.
“No matter how much you tout the games as a sign of recovery, the overall picture of only Tokyo prospering while the recovery of the disaster-hit areas in the Tohoku region remains undone will not change,” he told the Mainichi newspaper, referring to the region that is home to Fukushima. “I’ve been to Tokyo many times, and saw that there were more crane trucks at the construction site of the athletes’ village than in the disaster-hit areas.”
“It was obvious at a glance where the national government was placing its resources,” he added.
How safe is the area now?
The Japanese government has been slowly lifting evacuation orders and “restricted areas” over the years, removing top soil and declaring new swaths of land safe for residents to return to in the lead up to the Summer Games. Currently, a vast majority of Fukushima is considered safe to visit — only about 230 square miles remain in designated evacuation zones, or 2.7% of the total area of Fukushima prefecture.
Fukushima’s Azuma Baseball stadium, about 42 miles from the Dai-ichi power plant, is set to host baseball and softball competitions for the Tokyo Olympics.
In a symbolic move, the Olympic torch relay kicked off at the J-Village National Training Center, a sports complex just 12 miles south of the Dai-ichi plant. The complex served as a front-line base for first responders in the aftermath of the meltdown.
“That place, the base of operations dealing with the nuclear accident, has now been reborn into Japan’s largest holy site of soccer, filled with children’s smiling faces,” Abe said of J-Village in a January 2020 speech. The former prime minister and fierce champion of hosting the games also reminisced how a man born in Hiroshima on the day the atomic bomb was dropped carried the Olympic flame in Tokyo’s 1964 Olympics, sending a message to the world that “Japan had achieved reconstruction” following World War II.
While the government has assured visitors the designated areas in Fukushima are safe, some independent monitoring organizations, including Greenpeace Japan, have reported finding radioactive hotspots with readings that don’t align with figures released by the officials.
Kurokawa and Brown agreed that the risk of dangerous levels of radiation exposure in reopened areas of Fukushima is low, but residents’ trust in official statements also remains low.
“More or less, I think it’s very clean and if there’s any sort of radioactivity, there are some warnings around there, so I think local people know where it is safe and where may not be as safe,” Kurokawa told ABC News. He added that he believes people can “reasonably trust” municipal radiation data even if they have doubts about TEPCO-released figures.
Brown added that barring intentionally scaling a fence and entering a prohibited zone, radiation in most areas welcoming Olympic guests is relatively low.
“Before coronavirus there was a question if it was safe to have Olympic events in Fukushima. We were involved in that and had people involved who measured at the stadium, talked to people,” Brown said. “Our opinion was that … the risk of an overseas visitor going to Fukushima was similar to the radiation risk they got on their flight over.”
“That is not an exaggeration and is not trying to minimize risk in general,” he added. “You get a very hefty dose on an overseas flight.”
‘Transparency is the foundation of trust’
Earlier this year, Japan’s government announced plans to start releasing “treated” radioactive wastewater from the Dai-ichi plant into the Pacific Ocean in approximately two years. The move had already been delayed due to protests, drawing ire from local fisherman as well as Japan’s neighbors in the Asia-Pacific region.
Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga said this decision is “unavoidable” in order to “make progress in the decommissioning of Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Power Plant and achieve the reconstruction of Fukushima.”
The wastewater has been stored in tanks at the wrecked power plant for years, and space is reaching full capacity, the prime minister added. As of January 2021, there were approximately 1,061 tanks on the site of the power plant, carrying 1.24 million tons of treated water. Suga said he doesn’t think the plan reflects a “contradiction” to Abe’s former pledge to Olympic officials that the Fukushima situation was “under control.”
The water has been treated, but still contains minute amounts of the harder-to-remove radioactive isotope tritium. In a failed bid to gain public support for the plan, the Japanese government created a rosy-cheeked so-called “Little Mr. Tritium” mascot. The cute character that looked like something out of a children’s book was scrapped from government websites in a single day after community backlash.
“The gap between the gravity of the problems we face and the levity of the character is huge,” a local fisherman told Japan’s Kyodo News Agency.
Suga promised they would reduce the tritium concentration to “one-fortieth or less of the domestic regulatory standard value,” or levels small enough to be largely considered safe by the nuclear energy community.
While nuclear operators around the world release small amounts of tritium into the ocean as part of standard operating procedures, Brown told ABC News that it’s a “false comparison to say that Fukushima Dai-ichi is the same.”
“What we’re dealing with is a stopgap emergency response to a horrific nuclear disaster,” he said, noting that the release is not being done as part of the designed operation of the plant.
“Another criticism of ours is that there should be a process, a full environmental impact assessment before the decision is made,” Brown said. While a limited assessment was carried out, he added, “It has not been done transparently.”
“We think that if it is done the way they said they are going to do it, then the impact on health and the environment can be very low,” he added. “But the point is there has been such bad faith all along that none of us should take it on their word. We believe it needs to be independently verified.”
Kurokawa added that while the tritium debate has dominated discussion, there’s evidence that there could be trace amounts of other radioactive elements in the wastewater destined for the Pacific.
“I just testified in the parliament, there are other sort of radioactivities in addition to tritium,” he said. “But nobody talks much about this.”
While he said he genuinely believes the levels are within accepted norms, it sill must be disclosed.
“It’s safe, but you have to say it,” he said.
Kurokawa is advocating for TEPCO and the Japanese government to invest in a highly transparent, bilingual website that is constantly being updated with the latest data and plans for Fukushima.
“I think all the data has to be available because in this connected world, transparency is a foundation of trust,” he said. “You just cannot hide it.”
The city of Minamiosama, where Sakurai was mayor, was among the hardest-hit by the disaster. Kurokawa and his team’s report found that 44% of evacuees from Fukushima were residents of this city. Data indicates that even after it was declared safe, it still suffered a mass exodus of its young people.
“The Japanese government has prepared for the Olympics while upholding the ‘disaster recovery’ label, even though a recovery is far from reality,” Sakurai said to the Mainichi newspaper in July 2020. “It is superficial to declare a recovery with no actual progress.”
“The government is now talking of an Olympics that could be a sign of humanity’s triumph over the pandemic, but vaccines have not yet been put into practical use, and the world has not yet been freed from the risk of infection,” he added. “There is no chance of success by trying to box in reality to meet the labels the government upholds. The idea of a ‘coronavirus Olympics’ may also likely end as a mere fantasy.”
(TOKYO) — Each day, ABC News will give you a roundup of key Olympic moments from the day’s events in Tokyo, happening 13 hours ahead of U.S. Eastern Standard Time. After a 12-month delay, the unprecedented 2020 Summer Olympics is taking place without fans or spectators and under a state of emergency due to the coronavirus pandemic.
U.S. men’s swimming takes gold, Ledecky settles for silver
American swimmer Caleb Dressel led the men’s team to a gold model in the 4×100-meter freestyle relay on Monday, marking Team USA’s second gold medal at the Tokyo Olympics. Dressel is on a quest to win six gold medals at the Games and is often referred to as the successor to Michael Phelps, the most successful and most decorated Olympian of all time with 28 medals.
Katie Ledecky on the U.S. women’s swimming team, another decorated champion, was bested in the 400-meter freestyle by Australia’s Ariarne Titmus, nicknamed “The Terminator.” Ledecky’s silver increased U.S. swimming’s current medal total at the Tokyo Olympics to 8.
13-year-old Nishiya Momiji of Japan wins gold medal in women’s street skateboarding
Team Japan has now claimed both gold medals in the first two events of skateboarding at the Tokyo Olympics, as Nishiya Momiji won the women’s street final after compatriot Yuto Horigome had won the men’s. Momiji, 13, was joined on the podium by another 13-year-old, Rayssa Leal of Brazil, who won silver, and 16-year-old Nakayama Funa of Japan, who took home the bronze.
COVID-19 cases increase to 153 among Olympic athletes and personnel
There were 16 newly confirmed cases of COVID-19 among people at the Tokyo Olympics on Monday, including three athletes and one personnel member staying at the Olympic Village. The total now stands at 153, according to data released by the Tokyo 2020 organizing committee.
Meanwhile, the city of Tokyo reported 1,429 new cases on Monday, an increase in the rolling seven-day average of 141.2%, according to data released by the Tokyo metropolitan government.
There were no confirmed cases among the 1,144 U.S. Olympic delegates in Japan as of Sunday.
U.S. softball defeats Japan in warmup for gold medal game
The U.S. softball team defeated Japan 3-1 to keep their perfect 5-0 record, finishing the group stage. The two teams will face off again in the final on Tuesday, a gold-medal rematch of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing where Japan defeated Team USA 3-1.
(NEW YORK) — Here are the scores from Sunday’s sports events:
MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL
INTERLEAGUE
Baltimore 5, Washington 4
NY Mets 5, Toronto 4
Chi White Sox 3, Milwaukee 1
AMERICAN LEAGUE
Cleveland 3, Tampa Bay 2
Boston 5, NY Yankees 4
Kansas City 6, Detroit 1
LA Angels 6, Minnesota 2
Houston 3, Texas 1
Seattle 4, Oakland 3
NATIONAL LEAGUE
Philadelphia 2, Atlanta 1
Miami 9, San Diego 3
St. Louis 10, Cincinnati 6
Chi Cubs 5, Arizona 1
San Francisco 6, Pittsburgh 1
LA Dodgers 3, Colorado 2
MAJOR LEAGUE SOCCER
New England 2, CF Montreal 1
New York City FC 5, Orlando City 0
Philadelphia 1, Miami 1 (Tie)
D.C. United 1, New York 0
Sporting Kansas City, 3 Seattle 1
R&B singer Tank and his wife, Zena Foster, celebrated their third wedding anniversary last Thursday. After meeting over 20 years ago and sharing two children, Tank says the secret to their longtime love is frequent communication.
“I think we communicate about everything. That’s the first piece of it like you got to be able to communicate, whether it’s good or bad,” he tells ABC Audio. “Because a lot of separation is kind of fueled through people not communicating properly and needs or desires not being met just because the conversation isn’t happening properly.”
The “Can’t Let It Show” singer says he and Zena enjoy moments where they can reconnect when he comes off the road from touring or when she’s not busy promoting her brand, Zena Foster Beauty.
“When when we come back together, we have these moments where it’s like, ‘man, I missed you today or ‘I missed you over the weekend’ or ‘oh you look different. What you do to your hair?'” Tank laughs. “It’s like you get to have those moments where you get to kind of reconnect, which is…cool because it’s kind of like a discovery.”
He believes gaining new information about your spouse from “stimulating conversations” can lead “to even more connection or staying connected.”
“There is no formula for getting it all 100% right, but I do know that communication…it starts there, and then I think healthy space is needed,” Tank adds. “Healthy space, [okay]? Healthy space.”
Kyle Richards appears to be in good spirits after being hospitalized over the weekend for bee stings.
On Sunday, the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills star took to Instagram Stories to update fans on her current health status, as well as issue an important reminder about epi pens.
“So this happened yesterday… I walked into a hive of bees and was stung multiple times,” Kyle wrote ona picture of herself lying in a hospital bed and wearing an oxygen mask. She also shared security camera footage of the incident, which shows her flailing around before jumping into her pool.
“I can laugh at this now, but what you can’t see is that they were in my hair and were literally chasing me,” she wrote. “My family wasn’t home and for whatever reason the people that work for me couldn’t hear me screaming for help.”
“My landline wouldn’t dial 911 and my epi pen was defective and wouldn’t open,” Kyle added.
Sharing another selfie of herself in the hospital, Richards — who’s allergic to insect stings — encouraged people to make sure they know how to use their epi pen, writing, “I share this story with you because I sometimes don’t bother to take my epi pen with me. I also don’t know why I couldn’t get mine to work.”
“There are different types of epi pens and they each work differently. But also always call 911 even if you are able to use your epi pen as they have to use other medications to help breathing etc,” she explained.
The RHOBH star then thanked the Los Angeles Fire Department and the Encino Hospital Medical Center for responding quickly, aiding her through a panic attack and “repeatedly having to convince me there were no more bees in my hair.”
Taylor Swift’s Grammy-winning album folklore celebrated its one-year anniversary on Saturday, and to mark the occasion, she gave fans a gift: the original version of the album’s bonus track, “The Lakes,” which producer Jack Antonoff had revealed the existence of in a recent interview with Billboard.
Jack, who co-wrote and co-produced “The Lakes” with Taylor, told Billboard, “There was this big orchestral version [of ‘The Lakes’], and Taylor was like, ‘Eh, make it small.’ I had gotten lost in the string arrangements and all this stuff, and I took everything out. I was just like, ‘Oh, my God!…this is so perfect.’”
After the interview, fans took to social media to ask for the original version, and Taylor delivered. On her socials, she wrote, “It’s been one year since we escaped the real world together and imagined ourselves someplace simpler. With tall tall trees and salt air. Where you’re allowed to wear lace nightgowns that make you look like a Victorian ghost every day & no one will side-eye you cause no one is around. It’s just you and your imaginary cabin and the stories you make up to pass the time.”
“To say thank you for all you have done to make this album what it was, I wanted to give you the original version of ‘The Lakes,'” Taylor added. Then, referring to the characters who appear in the album’s songs, she wrote, “Happy 1 year anniversary to Rebekah, Betty, Inez, James, Augustine, and the lives we all created around them. Happy Anniversary, folklore.”
“The Lakes” was inspired by the Lake District of England, where Romantic poets like William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge found inspiration in the 1800s.
Journey‘s Neal Schon is selling 112 of his valuable and historic guitars via an online auction hosted by Heritage Auctions, with bidding open until this Saturday, July 31.
Among the guitars being auctioned is a 1977 Gibson Les Paul Deluxe Black Solid Body model that Neal used to record “Don’t Stop Believin'” and other songs on Journey’s chart-topping 1981 album Escape, the opening bid for which is $200,000.
“It’s on many famous songs,” Schon tells ABC Audio. “I used it on…’Who’s Crying Now’ [and] ‘Stone in Love’…I used it a bunch on Escape…And many, many albums after that.”
Other pricey guitars Schon is selling include two 1959 Gibson Les Paul Sunburst models with respective opening bids of $175,000 and $150,000, and two late-1950s Gibson Les Paul Goldtop models with $75,000 opening bids.
Schon, who estimates that he owns about 800 guitars in total, says he has no apprehensions about selling the ones he’s put up for bid, because he actually doesn’t play them that much.
“I’m looking to whittle [my collection] down,” he notes, “[and] put ’em in the hands of somebody that will really appreciate them, so they don’t sit in a case.”
Explaining why he decided to sell off part of his guitar collection, Schon admits, “I simply don’t have any more space…I’ve been collecting my whole life, you know, guitars and equipment, amps, all kinds of gear. We have a huge warehouse that Journey’s had for years, and that is packed.”
The auction ends on the same day that Journey plays Lollapalooza in Chicago, and Schon reveals that if there’s “a high-bidding buyer that wants to know about a guitar [that day], I’m gonna [Skype or FaceTime] with them and…tell them all about it.”
(SEATTLE) — Two people were arrested after a Washington state sheriff’s deputy was fatally shot in the line of duty Friday night.
After an “exhaustive search,” a 28-year-old man, Abran Raya-Leon, and a 35-year-old woman, Misty M. Raya, were arrested on unrelated felony warrants, Vancouver, Washington, police said in a press release on Saturday night.
Another man, Guillermo O. Raya, 26, is still being sought, police said.
The deputy involved in the shooting that unfolded around 7 p.m. has been identified as Clark County Sheriff’s Office Detective Sergeant Jeremy Brown.
Brown was in his vehicle conducting surveillance at 3508 NE 109th Avenue, according to police. Other units in the area on the same detail were unable to reach Brown on radio, and around the same time, a citizen reported hearing gunshots, saw a man bleeding inside a vehicle and called 911, police said.
Two men and a woman fled the area by vehicle and were pursued by police, officials said. Their vehicle crashed near Padden Parkway and Interstate 205. Police said the three then fled on foot.
Police said Guillermo O. Raya is considered armed and dangerous, and a warrant has been issued for his arrest in connection with the shooting.
“This is a difficult time for the Clark County Sheriff’s Office, law enforcement agencies in Clark County and the surrounding Clark County, Portland metro area. Clark County law enforcement appreciates the support and understanding of the community in these tough times,” the department said in a news release.
The investigation is continuing and nothing further is releasable at this time, police said.
(PHOENIX) — Arizona Cardinals defensive end Chandler Jones requested a trade from the team this offseason, according to ESPN’s Jeremy Fowler.
Fowler says Jones has not been happy with his contract and future with the team. Jones is coming into his final year of his deal and will make $15.5 million this season.
In his first four season’s with the Cardinals, Jones had 60 sacks. Last season, the 31-year old only played in five games because of a season-ending torn bicep and had 1 sack.
Fowler reports the team does not want to trade Jones and except him to report to training camp.
