Neil Knight Private Dick

Welcome to the Hood

One reason California is called the Golden State is that 15 of the 20 wealthiest large cities in the nation are located there, and that includes five in Orange County alone.

Sixth on the list of 20 is Yorba Linda, which translates to "Beautiful Yorba" in English, with personal median income levels of $117,000, home prices at a median of $780,000 (with 19 percent of those mortgage-free), and individual credit limit averages of $72,000.

Blacks represent 1% of the population in the city of Yorba Linda, and in the Village Center Drive / Fairmont Blvd neighborhood the percentage drops to 0.1%, which means an African American might randomly drive through the neighborhood perhaps once a month. This event, of course, would be promptly reported to every watch committee, security station and local sheriff's department.

Law enforcement for Yorba Linda is contracted out to the Orange County Sheriff's Department, which is a story itself. The police maintain a sub-station at Arroyo Park, where Lieutenant Robert "Rip" Goldstone is the anointed Chief of Police Services.

Until 2012, Yorba Linda's public security efforts were provided by the Brea Police Department, Brea being another large city in Orange County. But in the Fall of 2012 the Yorba Linda City Council met with police chiefs from the Anaheim and Brea police departments, as well as Orange County DA Tony Riganti and Sheriff Helen Wilson-Watson, to vote on a new public safety contract. The meeting lasted 9 hours, which included arm-twisting and backdoor discussions, finally ending at 3:00 in the morning with the 42-year continuously running service contract with the Brea Police Department terminated and a new 10-year contract signed with the Orange County Sheriff's Department, becoming effective in January of 2013.

Rip Goldstone was the kind of guy that had your back, no matter how dire the situation. The kind of cop that Tony Riganti admired, and was a natural fit for the new position. Although most people knew him as Rip, they had no idea that his nickname resulted from the number of times his enforcement activities had led to the accused, pursued or convicted taking their last breath. You see Rip was an acronym for Rest In Peace. Goldstone was the "Gold Standard" when it came to reducing the rate of recidivism.

If a call came into the sub-station from a concerned citizen about a suspicious character of a darker shade then Rip was on the case, especially if the suspect wore his baseball cap backwards or his pants down south of the border. But on the day he responded, car lights flashing and siren blaring, to a call about a bunch of uppity blacks loitering outside of 4070 Cassia Lane, Rip found himself in the crosshairs of a world of hurt.

Dee Dee Shams had been born Russell Lee Watkins of Watts, a neighborhood in southern Los Angeles. Originally founded in the late nineteenth century as a ranching community, Watts transformed into an independent city when the railroad connected it to the rest of the region. In 1926 Watts was absorbed into the greater city of Los Angeles, and further morphed into a working class African-American neighborhood by the 1940's. Twenty years later the area had become synonymous with low-income and high-crime, which was when Russell's father had met both the business end of an LAPD baton and his own maker during the Watts Rebellion that took place in August of '65. Russell was two years old at the time.

Russell's mother was a proud woman. Even though she had lost her husband as a new bride of only 4 months in about as tragic a way as possible, she was educated and took it upon herself as a life mission to ensure that her son had as good an education as possible, considering their financial circumstances.

Russell was of above average intellect and excelled in his studies. When the time came to apply to business schools the Haas School of Business at the University of California Berkeley was first on his list; and he, it seemed, was first on theirs as well, as he was offered a full scholarship to attend. Six years later, in the Spring of '89, Russell Lee Watkins graduated from Berkeley with an MBA, ready to take on the world.

Rap had been begun as a music genre at block parties in New York City in the early 1970s, when DJs began isolating and extending the percussion breaks of funk, soul and disco songs. Initially the talking/rhyming musical synchronization was dismissed as a fad, but in the early 80's Kurtis Blow's "The Breaks" broke out as a Top 5 hit that almost immediately went gold, drawing immediate attention to the style and substance of Rap and predicting its attraction to a culture in need of a message.

Shortly thereafter vinyl "scratching" was accidentally introduced by DJ Grand Wizzard Theodore, born Theodore Livingston, and the technique quickly adopted by the legendary Grandmaster Flash who helped integrate it into both rap and hip hop music.

In the mid-80's, as Russell was beginning his pursuit of an MBA, he noticed the growth of the medium and the opportunity it presented.

Upon graduation Russell Lee Watkins was reborn as Dee Dee Shams, Breakout Records was formed, and his first groups identified and signed. Success was immediate. Sales skyrocketed. Other established groups switched their labels to his based on his profit sharing plan that cut groups in for a slice of the records sales proceeds. The greater their sales, the higher the numbers, the better everyone did. His mantra became "everybody wins".

And it wasn't just his label artists that appreciated his generosity. Dee Dee was committed to giving back to the community he came from as well as his alma mater. Breakout Records donated the funds to both construct a new Music Hall, the Dee Dee Shams HipHop Hall at UC Berkeley, as well as fund after school music programs, including providing free musical instruments to any child showing interest, all over greater Watts. Dee Dee Shams became legend himself.

It was a full four years after graduation in '93 when Double Dee of Breakout Records asked his longtime girlfriend, Leilani Perez to marry him. He had dated her at UCB, had followed her career and had continued to date her in a years long cross-country romance.

Leilani, a black Polynesian, mistaken in reporting by ET for her being of Hispanic descent due to her surname as well as her physical appearance, had graduated with a Master of Engineering concentrating in Energy, Civil Infrastructure and Climate from the Civil and Environmental Engineering department of U.C. Berkeley. After graduation she took a position with the Earth Institute Think Tank in the Earth Engineering Center Unit at Columbia University in New York City in the fall of 1989.

Initially reluctant to leave her position on the faculty at the Institute, as well as give up her position as the Head of the Sustainable Development Initiative, she agreed to marry Dee Dee when he agreed to back a new initiative focused on climate change located on the west coast, initially funded through his corporation.

As soon as they returned from their honeymoon, Leilani set up the new corporate offices of the World Environmental Initiative in the Watts neighborhood of the City of Angels.

With his money bank rolling both the Record Label and the Initiative, the couple settled into a two bedroom flat on 754 East 84th Street in Watts in the summer of 1994 and went to work focusing on each other and their careers.

By 2004 they had done well enough to purchase the Westminster Building at 10221 Compton Avenue in Watts and moved both businesses into the space. It wasn't the Capitol Records building, but it was theirs.

By 2008 the City decided to close Engine Company Number 65 at 1524 East 103rd, right next door to the Westminster, so Dee Dee and Leilani bought that building too, and reconstructed the space into a modern recording studio which dramatically cut costs to the company as well as the rap and hip-hop artists.

As climate change came to the forefront Leilani's business expanded as well, receiving grant money and private donations to fund research and support new eco-focused initiatives.

By the fall of 2015 they found they needed a place where they could emotionally recharge before re-engaging the challenges each faced in their professions, so as a gift to themselves, they purchased 4070 Cassia Lane, Yorba Linda, California for 2.84MM.

As they gathered outside to celebrate their new home with friends and relatives, the band "Pretty Boy Floyd" banging out some "bitching tunes", they had their first experience with the local law enforcement, which two years earlier had been ceded to the Orange County Sheriff's department.

Welcome to the 'hood Lieutenant Robert "Rip" Goldstone.