SUMMONS – (CITACION JUDICIAL)
CASE NUMBER (NUMERO DEL CASO) CIVSB2402334
NOTICE TO DEFENDANTS: JUAN PACHECO, an individual; EDUARDO PACHECO ROJAS, an individual; STEVE NELSON, an individual; MARIE NELSON, an individual; CHARLES YOUMANS, an individual; All persons unknown, claiming any legal or equitable right, title, estate, lien or interest in the property described in the complaint adverse to Plaintiff’s title, or any cloud on Plaintiff’s title thereto; and DOES 1 through 48, Inclusive
(AVISO DEMANDADO):
YOU ARE BEING SUED BY PLAINTIFF:
(LO ESTA DEMANDANDO EL DEMANDANTE):
Planet Home Lending, LLC
NOTICE! You have been sued. The court may decide against you without your being heard unless you respond within 30 days. Read the information below.
You have 30 CALENDAR DAYS after this summons is served on you to file a written response at this court and have a copy served on the plaintiff. A letter or phone call will not protect you. Your written response must be in proper legal form if you want the court to hear your case. There may be a court form that you can use for your response. You can find these court forms and more information at the California Courts Online Self-Help Center (www.courtinfo.ca.gov/selfhelp), your county law library, or the courthouse nearest you. If you cannot pay the filing fee, ask the court clerk for a fee waiver form. If you do not file your response on time, you may lose the case by default, and your wages, money, and property may be taken without further warning from the court.
There are other legal requirements. You may want to call an attorney right away. If you do not know an attorney, you may want to call an attorney referral service. If you cannot afford an attorney, you may be eligible for free legal services from a nonprofit legal services program. You can locate these nonprofit groups at the California Legal Services Web site (www.lawhelpcalifornia.org), the California Courts Online Self-Help Center (www.courtinfo.ca.gov/selfhelp), or by contacting your local court or county bar association. NOTE: The court has a statutory lien for waived fees and costs on any settlement or arbitration award of $10,000 or more in a civil case. The court’s lien must be paid before the court will dismiss the case.
¡AVISO! Lo han demandado. Si no responde dentro de 30 dias, la corte puede decidir en su contra sin escuchar su version. Lea la informacion a continuacion
Tiene 30 DIAS DE CALENDARIO después de que le entreguen esta citación y papeles legales para presentar una repuesta por escrito en esta corte y hacer que se entreque una copia al demandante. Una carta o una llamada telefonica no le protegen. Su respuesta por escrito tiene que estar on formato legal correcto si desea que procesen su caso en la corte. Es posible que haya un formulano que usted puede usar para su respuesta. Puede encontrar estos formularios de la corte y mas información en el Centro de Ayuda de las Cortes de California (www.sucorte.ca.gov), en la biblioteca de leyes de su condado o en la corte que le quede mas cerca. Si no puede pagar la cuota de presentación, pida si secretario de la corta que le de un formulario de exencion de pago de cuotas. Si no presenta su respuesta a tiempo, puede perder el caso por incumplimiento y la corta le podrá quitar su sueldo, dinero y bienes sin mas advertencia.
Hay otros requisitos legales. Es recomendable que llame a un abogado inmediatamente. Si no conace a un abogado, puede llamar a un servicio de referencia a abogados. Si no peude pagar a un a un abogado, es posible que cumpia con los requisitos para obtener servicios legales gratu de un programa de servicios legales sin fines de lucro. Puede encontrar estos grupos sin fines de lucro en el sitio web de California Legal Services, (www.lawhelpcalifornia.org), en el Centro de Ayuda de las Cortes de California, (www.sucorte.ca.gov), o poniendoso en contacto con la corte o el colegio de abogados locales. AVISO: Por ley, la corte tiene derecho a reclamar las cuotas y los costos exentos gravamen sobre cualquier recuperación da $10,000 o mas de vaior recibida mediante un aceurdo o una concesión de arbitraje en un caso de derecho civil. Tiene que pagar el gravamen de la corta antes de que la corta pueda desechar el caso.
The name and address of the court is: (El nombre y la direccion de la corte es):
Superior Court of California, County of San Bernardino
247 West 3rd Street, San Bernardino California 92415 San Bernardino District
The name, address and telephone number of plaintiff’s attorney, or plaintiff without an attorney, is: (El nombre, la direccion y el numero de telefono del abogado del demandante, o del demendante que no tiene abogado, es):
Shannon A. Doyle, Esq.,
Ghidotti Berger, LLP,
1920 Old Tustin Ave., Santa Ana, CA 92705
DATE (Fecha): 3/9/2024
Clerk (Secretario), by /s/ Crystal D’Amico, Deputy
Published in the San Bernardino County Sentinel on: 06/06/2025, 06/13/2025, 06/20/2025, 06/27/2025

Continue reading →

Former San Bernardino County Registrar of Voters Robert Page has been sued by the United States Department of Justice in his present capacity as Orange County registrar of voters for unlawfully concealing from federal officials records relating to the removal of non-citizens from voter registration lists.
Page finds himself caught in a situation which not only involves conflicting provisions of state and federal law but a circumstance which was revealed as a consequence of a complaint which brought into focus the long-talked-about accusation that non-citizens have been voting in California elections with the assonance of public officials.
Because the matter involving Page and Orange County was complaint-driven and the specific complaint germane to a situation in Orange County, the action taken by the Justice Department so far does not pertain to San Bernardino County. The Sentinel is informed, nonetheless, that there are “at least hundreds” of similar instances of voter registration applications having been provided to non-citizens throughout Southern California, such that the demands made of Page by the federal government are likely to be visited upon San Bernardino County election officials. How the San Bernardino County Registrar of Voters Office responds to the requests for information and/or action by the Donald Trump Administration, which in recent weeks has taken very aggressive action with regard to immigration enforcement in California, will be a controlling factor in whether Page’s successor as San Bernardino County Registrar of Voters, Stephenie Shea, will be subject to a civil court challenge similar to that faced by Page.
On Wednesday, June 25, the Department of Justice filed a complaint for injunctive and declaratory relief against Page, citing violations of Section 303(a)(2)(B)(ii) of the Help America Vote Act, 52 U.S. CODE § 21083 and Section 8(a)(4) and 8(i) of the National Voter Registration Act, 52 U.S. CODE § 20507(a)(4).
According to the complaint, “The Attorney General recently received a complaint from the family member of a non-citizen in Orange County indicating that the non-citizen received an unsolicited mail-in ballot from the Defendant, despite lack of citizenship. On June 2, 2025, the Attorney General requested the following documents from the Defendant: 1. Records from January 1, 2020, to the present showing the number of voter registration records in Orange County canceled because the registrant did not satisfy the citizenship requirements for voter registration. 2. Records from January 1, 2020, to the present related to each cancellation described in Request No. 1, including copies of each registrant’s voter registration application, voter registration record, voting history, and related correspondence sent or received by the County of Orange Registrar of Voters in regard to the registration.”
The complaint continues, “On June 16, 2025, the defendant responded to our request. In his response, the defendant provided data but redacted the following information regarding the non-citizens identified on the Orange County voter registration list: the California driver’s license and identification card numbers, social security numbers, California Secretary of State-assigned voter identification numbers, language preference, and images of registrants’ signatures. The defendant relied upon several California statutes as the basis for the redactions. On June 17, 2025, plaintiff responded to the defendant indicating that the redacted data that was [not] provided prohibits the Attorney General from making an accurate assessment of the defendant’s compliance with HAVA and the NVRA. Moreover, plaintiff communicated that the defendant’s reliance on state law to prevent the Attorney General from receiving information it is entitled to receive is preempted by federal law. Defendant is required to ‘maintain for at least 2 years and shall make available for public inspection and, where available, photocopying at a reasonable cost, all records concerning the implementation of programs and activities conducted for the purpose of ensuring the accuracy and currency of official lists of eligible voters[.]”
Those joining in on the civil enforcement action include U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California Bilal Essayli; United States Attorney Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, who oversees the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division; Assistant U.S. Attorney David Harris, who is the chief of the California Central District office’s civil division; Assistant U.S. Attorney Katherine Hikida; Assistant Attorney General Michael E. Gates, of the office’s Civil Rights Division; and Maureen Riordan and Kevin Muench, the acting chief and an attorney, respectively, in the Justice Department’s voting session.
According to Essayli, Dhillon, Harris, Hikida, Gates, Riordan and Muench, Page has run afoul of Section 52 U.S.C. § 20507(i)(1), referred to as the “Public Disclosure Provision” the National Voter Registration Act by refusing to make a straightforward revelation of the non-citizens removed from Orange County’s voter rolls.
“Voting by non-citizens is a federal crime, and states and counties that refuse to disclose all requested voter information are in violation of well-established federal elections laws,” Dhillon stated. “Removal of non-citizens from the state’s voter rolls is critical to ensuring that the state’s voter rolls are accurate and that elections in California are conducted without fraudulent voting.”
Riordan, in a letter dated June 2, asked Page for records going back five-and-a-half years documenting voter registration cancellations of those determined to not be U.S. citizens, those canceled voter’s voting records, their registration applications, voting histories and any correspondence related to the cancellations. It was Page’s response, deemed inadequate by federal officials, that triggered the lawsuit.
An effort was made by Orange County Officials to steer a middle path with regard to the requests by the federal officials for the voting registration data. An impasse developed as lawyers for Orange County felt that voter registration information is confidential, based on some ambiguous state law. Federal officials believe that an effort by a non-citizen, particularly a unregistered alien, to register to vote is a violation of the law and any information relating to such an attempt evidence to which prosecutors have an unfettered right.
The Sentinel has learned that as federal prosecutors were intensifying their pressure on Page to produce the sought-after information, Orange County Counsel Leon Page, whose blood relation to Bob Page is unclear, assigned Assistant County Counsel James David Paul Steinmann to intercede with Riordan to see if some compromise between the requirements of state law and federal law could be arrived at with regard to this case.
In an email from Steinmann to Riordan obtained by the Sentinel, Steinmann asked, “To avoid a lawsuit, would the USDOJ consider another mechanism to enable the county to provide the USDOJ with this sensitive information?” Steinmann was angling toward preventing the information, including the names, relating to the foreign-born residents who had applied for voting status without being legally eligible to vote in the United States from being publicly disclosed. Federal officials, who have not ruled out prosecuting those who broke laws pertaining to fraudulent voting, were flat out unwilling to provide such an assurance, as the names and other aspects of the personal lives of criminal defendants would be subject to disclosure during the prosecutorial process.
When Steinman asked, “Would the USDOJ be amenable to entering into a confidentiality agreement that would enable us to provide records with assurances that such sensitive personal identifiers will remain confidential and be used for governmental purposes only?” federal officials demanded that Page and the other Orange County officials quit stalling and produce the requested documentation.
The following day, the suit was filed against Page. The suit calls upon the court to order that Page produce the requested information in unredacted form.

Former San Bernardino County Registrar of Voters Robert Page has been sued by the United States Department of Justice in his present capacity as Orange County registrar of voters for unlawfully concealing from federal officials records relating to the removal of non-citizens from voter registration lists.
Page finds himself caught in a situation which not only involves conflicting provisions of state and federal law but a circumstance which was revealed as a consequence of a complaint which brought into focus the long-talked-about accusation that non-citizens have been voting in California elections with the assonance of public officials.
Because the matter involving Page and Orange County was complaint-driven and the specific complaint germane to a situation in Orange County, the action taken by the Justice Department so far does not pertain to San Bernardino County. The Sentinel is informed, nonetheless, that there are “at least hundreds” of similar instances of voter registration applications having been provided to non-citizens throughout Southern California, such that the demands made of Page by the federal government are likely to be visited upon San Bernardino County election officials. How the San Bernardino County Registrar of Voters Office responds to the requests for information and/or action by the Donald Trump Administration, which in recent weeks has taken very aggressive action with regard to immigration enforcement in California, will be a controlling factor in whether Page’s successor as San Bernardino County Registrar of Voters, Stephenie Shea, will be subject to a civil court challenge similar to that faced by Page.
On Wednesday, June 25, the Department of Justice filed a complaint for injunctive and declaratory relief against Page, citing violations of Section 303(a)(2)(B)(ii) of the Help America Vote Act, 52 U.S. CODE § 21083 and Section 8(a)(4) and 8(i) of the National Voter Registration Act, 52 U.S. CODE § 20507(a)(4).
According to the complaint, “The Attorney General recently received a complaint from the family member of a non-citizen in Orange County indicating that the non-citizen received an unsolicited mail-in ballot from the Defendant, despite lack of citizenship. On June 2, 2025, the Attorney General requested the following documents from the Defendant: 1. Records from January 1, 2020, to the present showing the number of voter registration records in Orange County canceled because the registrant did not satisfy the citizenship requirements for voter registration. 2. Records from January 1, 2020, to the present related to each cancellation described in Request No. 1, including copies of each registrant’s voter registration application, voter registration record, voting history, and related correspondence sent or received by the County of Orange Registrar of Voters in regard to the registration.”
The complaint continues, “On June 16, 2025, the defendant responded to our request. In his response, the defendant provided data but redacted the following information regarding the non-citizens identified on the Orange County voter registration list: the California driver’s license and identification card numbers, social security numbers, California Secretary of State-assigned voter identification numbers, language preference, and images of registrants’ signatures. The defendant relied upon several California statutes as the basis for the redactions. On June 17, 2025, plaintiff responded to the defendant indicating that the redacted data that was [not] provided prohibits the Attorney General from making an accurate assessment of the defendant’s compliance with HAVA and the NVRA. Moreover, plaintiff communicated that the defendant’s reliance on state law to prevent the Attorney General from receiving information it is entitled to receive is preempted by federal law. Defendant is required to ‘maintain for at least 2 years and shall make available for public inspection and, where available, photocopying at a reasonable cost, all records concerning the implementation of programs and activities conducted for the purpose of ensuring the accuracy and currency of official lists of eligible voters[.]”
Those joining in on the civil enforcement action include U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California Bilal Essayli; United States Attorney Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, who oversees the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division; Assistant U.S. Attorney David Harris, who is the chief of the California Central District office’s civil division; Assistant U.S. Attorney Katherine Hikida; Assistant Attorney General Michael E. Gates, of the office’s Civil Rights Division; and Maureen Riordan and Kevin Muench, the acting chief and an attorney, respectively, in the Justice Department’s voting session.
According to Essayli, Dhillon, Harris, Hikida, Gates, Riordan and Muench, Page has run afoul of Section 52 U.S.C. § 20507(i)(1), referred to as the “Public Disclosure Provision” the National Voter Registration Act by refusing to make a straightforward revelation of the non-citizens removed from Orange County’s voter rolls.
“Voting by non-citizens is a federal crime, and states and counties that refuse to disclose all requested voter information are in violation of well-established federal elections laws,” Dhillon stated. “Removal of non-citizens from the state’s voter rolls is critical to ensuring that the state’s voter rolls are accurate and that elections in California are conducted without fraudulent voting.”
Riordan, in a letter dated June 2, asked Page for records going back five-and-a-half years documenting voter registration cancellations of those determined to not be U.S. citizens, those canceled voter’s voting records, their registration applications, voting histories and any correspondence related to the cancellations. It was Page’s response, deemed inadequate by federal officials, that triggered the lawsuit.
An effort was made by Orange County Officials to steer a middle path with regard to the requests by the federal officials for the voting registration data. An impasse developed as lawyers for Orange County felt that voter registration information is confidential, based on some ambiguous state law. Federal officials believe that an effort by a non-citizen, particularly a unregistered alien, to register to vote is a violation of the law and any information relating to such an attempt evidence to which prosecutors have an unfettered right.
The Sentinel has learned that as federal prosecutors were intensifying their pressure on Page to produce the sought-after information, Orange County Counsel Leon Page, whose blood relation to Bob Page is unclear, assigned Assistant County Counsel James David Paul Steinmann to intercede with Riordan to see if some compromise between the requirements of state law and federal law could be arrived at with regard to this case.
In an email from Steinmann to Riordan obtained by the Sentinel, Steinmann asked, “To avoid a lawsuit, would the USDOJ consider another mechanism to enable the county to provide the USDOJ with this sensitive information?” Steinmann was angling toward preventing the information, including the names, relating to the foreign-born residents who had applied for voting status without being legally eligible to vote in the United States from being publicly disclosed. Federal officials, who have not ruled out prosecuting those who broke laws pertaining to fraudulent voting, were flat out unwilling to provide such an assurance, as the names and other aspects of the personal lives of criminal defendants would be subject to disclosure during the prosecutorial process.
When Steinman asked, “Would the USDOJ be amenable to entering into a confidentiality agreement that would enable us to provide records with assurances that such sensitive personal identifiers will remain confidential and be used for governmental purposes only?” federal officials demanded that Page and the other Orange County officials quit stalling and produce the requested documentation.
The following day, the suit was filed against Page. The suit calls upon the court to order that Page produce the requested information in unredacted form.

This article deals with the controversy over water use and the efforts involving multiple entities, including the Indian Wells Valley Groundwater Authority and the Indian Wells Valley Water District to arrive at an affordable water replenishment plan in the northwest tip of the Mojave Desert.

An engrossing and equally rare dispute between two bureaucracies in which one is a primary constituent of the other is playing out in that region of California comprising the northwestern corner of San Bernardino County.
The issue of contention is water. It is a given that the cost of delivering the elixir of life to the furthest extension of the Mojave Desert is rising and will continue to do so. The larger question is whether agricultural production and industrial activity will need to end in the region. The controversy over the theft of water from Eastern Sierras has begun anew, as the long history of water disputes has opened a new chapter. Started in the early 1900’s when the fledgling Los Angeles Department of Water and Power “bought borrowed and stole” the majority of water rights in Inyo and Mono Counties triggering a series of water wars over the construction of the Los Angeles Aqueduct which exports water to Los Angeles to this day.
More recently, the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (AGMA) of 2014 brought with it the cataloging of the Indian Wells Valley as one of 21 groundwater basins in the state to be classified as being in critical overdraft, another 127 basins have been classified as high priority. These designations triggered the creation of the Indian Wells Valley Groundwater Authority (Groundwater Authority) and approximately 266 similar Groundwater Sustainability Agencies in its efforts to overcome the depletion of California’s groundwater basins. Continue reading →

The jousting between the Donald Trump Administration and California’s political leadership over immigration law enforcement has resulted in troops from the Twentynine Palms Marine Corps Base being dispatched across the Southland as “peacekeepers” to prevent protesters from interfering with federal agents’ roundup of illegal migrants.
The use of the U.S. military in this way was not a second or even third option, but rather the administration’s fourth choice in how to ensure that “Operation Alta California” can proceed according to the current federal government’s stated intention of remove an estimated 2.2 million people who are in the Golden State illegally.
As of Tuesday, according to the United States Marine Corps, 719 Marines from the 2nd Battalion, 7th Marines stationed at the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center Twentynine Palms were deployed to specific locations in Los Angeles San Bernardino and Orange counties, with the lion’s share – well over 600 – in Los Angeles County. Their mission, according to the U.S. Northern Command, calls for them to engage in “protecting federal personnel and federal property in the greater Los Angeles area.”
The Donald Trump Administration previously intended to initiate on April 10 Operation Alta California in what was to be for a period of three to four weeks the limited arenas of Riverside and San Bernardino counties.
That plan fell through, though, when Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco and San Bernardino County Sheriff Shannon Dicus gave indication that they would not permit the deputies from their departments to serve in a facilitating capacity in assisting the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in rounding up an estimated 250,000 illegal immigrants in both counties. The administration’s hope had been that once its success in dealing with the illegal immigration issue was established in Riverside and San Bernardino counties, the fourth and fifth largest counties in the state, respectively, populationwise, that it would be able to induce law enforcement agencies elsewhere to lend it a hand in aggressive operations. Because Bianco and Dicus had gotten cold feet, Operation Alta California was postponed for more than seven weeks, until June 2, and its focus was moved to Los Angeles County, with its epicenter being the City of Los Angeles. Continue reading →

Whether the City of San Bernardino’s residents and taxpayers will be spared the expense of having to pay for its immediate past mayor’s failed effort to use the power of his office to construct a political machine will depend on the how rapidly the lawyer representing the city in a lawsuit brought against it by Valdivia’s one-time chief of staff can come up to speed with regard to the depredations virtually all of those in Valdivia’s political orbit were engaged in.
Valdivia’s political career kicked off with his failed 2009 run for Fourth Ward Councilman followed by his successful challenge of Third Ward Councilman Tobin Brinker in 2011. That was followed by his aborted run for Congress in California’s 31st Congressional District in 2014, his uncontested reelection as 3rd Ward Councilman in 2015, his successful run for mayor in 2018, his never-fully gestated run for Fifth District San Bernardino County supervisor in 2020 and his defeat in his run for reelection as mayor in 2022. Throughout the successful phase of his time as a politician, he tapped into the support of public employee unions, which bankrolled his campaigns in 2011 and 2018, and padded his political war chest in 2015 to the point that no one was willing to run against him.
Key to his rise as an elected official was political consultant Chris Jones, who was associated with both the firefighters’ union and police officers’ union, which made hefty contributions to those politicians in San Bernardino who prioritized paying police officers and firefighters top dollar salaries and providing them with generous benefits. Those unions simultaneously threw money into attack campaigns against any politicians who dwelled upon how the city’s deteriorating financial position was a consequence of its generosity to the city’s employees. Continue reading →

The murder of Dan Menard and his wife Sephanie turns out to have been one for the books.
From the time it stormed its way into the public’s collective consciousness last summer, the case was filled with curiosities, questions and anomalies. Some, but not all of the questions have been answered. In numerous ways, the curiosities and anomalies persist with greater intensity than before.
Initially, in late August, the Menards, an older couple who led by that point had been leading a relatively staid and predictable existence, albeit in unconventional surroundings, garnered attention because they simply were not where they were supposed to be – at home with their Shih Tzu, Cuddles,.
Stephanie, 73, was suffering from muscular dystrophy and had limited mobility, needing to walk with a cane or a walker. Dan was in the middle stage of dementia. It is unclear how it was that they had taken up residence at Olive Dell Ranch in Colton’s rustic Reche Canyon in 2009, when Dan was 64 and Stephanie was 58 and already somewhat set in their way. Olive Dell Ranch lies along vast San Bernardino County’s frontier with Riverside County. While there’s no definitive evidence to prove that wife swapping occurs at Olive Dell Ranch, three is no question that it is a nudist resort. It is billed as a venue for RV camping and tent camping. Cabins can be rented there on a short-term basis rentals on a short-m basis. Children are not permitted on the premises. That the Menards were living in the midst of what many presumed was a “liberated” lifestyle jarred, at least in the conventional sense, with their more traditional orientation, which included Sunday participation in church service, which they attended, it seemed, every week.
So, when the Menards weren’t present when a friend arrived on Sunday morning August 25 to drive them to church, this seemed odd. Continue reading →