Бывший коллега Сары Картер, ныне директора по контролю над наркотиками США, призывает граждан не употреблять запрещенные вещества

We knew her when. Sara Carter is our nation’s drug czar, more formally the director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy. She may be a familiar name to Inland Empire newspaper readers — not as a newsmaker but as a news writer. Sara was a colleague of mine at the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin in Ontario from 2002 to 2007, where she covered Norco, street crime in Pomona and, later, California’s border with Mexico. (Needless to say, it was a more ambitious era for local journalism.) A couple of us oldtimers still fondly refer to her aloud as “Scarter,” as our internal messaging system rendered her first initial and last name. Even with time to get used to the idea, it’s hard to wrap my head around the fact that America’s drug czar sat a few cubicles away from me. I’ve worked with hundreds of journalists. Very few, it’s safe to say, are White House material. Granted, a handful might have drawn the interested gaze of drug policy officials, but not from a human resources perspective. Carter was practically a local celebrity by the time her tenure here was ending. She would enter the newsroom with her cell phone pressed to her ear, engaged in an urgent conversation about perfidy at the border, real or imagined. She left us for conservative media in the nation’s capital: the Washington Times, the Washington Examiner, The Blaze and Fox News, where she was a contributor, focusing on drug cartels and illegal immigration. At a restaurant a few years ago, a TV on the wall opposite me was quietly tuned to Fox News. Looking up, I saw the once-familiar face from our newsroom, now part of a round-robin segment on national TV. When her turn came, she jumped in and made her case emphatically, as TV demands. I had to smile. Then I went back to my falafel plate. In March 2025, the president nominated Carter as drug czar. Isn’t that something? To be honest, I’m doubtful that she is any more of an authentic expert on anything than I am, or any journalist is. These days, though, expertise is frowned upon. So why not name a journalist as the drug czar? I wish this respect for journalists extended to the rest of us, including the women the president has called “piggy” or told to smile more, or the men he’s gotten fired from Stars and Stripes. If the nation has to have a drug czar, though, the Inland Empire is as good a place as any to be from, and probably better than most. The Senate confirmed her in January, 10 months after her nomination. I didn’t learn about it until weeks later. It came up in a group chat with some former newsroom colleagues of that era. They were amused and amazed. “Not sure her reporting makes her a cartel expert,” one said dubiously. I noted: “With one tiny spelling change, Carter = Cartel.” “She better legalize the good herb at the federal level!” another enthused. I’ve meant to comment on this news. After all, Carter is from the IE. She’s a Cal Poly Pomona graduate. She worked in Ontario. She lived in Montclair. But it felt like I’d already missed the boat. (A boat that has probably been blown out of the sea by the U.S. military.) Then, late last month, a fresh angle presented itself. Carter gave an interview on Fox to Lara Trump. They sat across from each other in facing chairs in a nearly empty room, as is the current fashion. With a clipboard on her lap, Trump pretended to conduct an objective interview of a woman hired by her father-in-law. Sure. Carter acquitted herself well. Actually, she came across as she did of old: eager, wide-eyed, energetic, a bit credulous, but sincere. Her life has changed dramatically in the 19 years since I last saw her. But on some level she’s the same person I remember. Perhaps you’ll forgive my one snort of laughter. That came when the drug czar said her goal is to “move the needle.” I should hope so! When we were colleagues, Sara once invited me to her house in Montclair. A recent episode of “Two and a Half Men” had a joke about Fontana. She’d recorded the show on TiVo and, knowing I could get an item from it for my column, offered to play it for me. Solicitously, she set me up in a chair, explained the show’s premise and played the exchange, twice, so I could take notes and get them right. That was nice of her. In memory of those days, I will, on Scarter’s behalf, sternly tell our nation’s young people, and also our nation’s adults: Don’t do drugs. We mean it! Farewell, Shappy Greg Shapton spent his entire career with the Pomona Public Library, where he started in 1967 as a page and retired in 2011 as director. Many in Claremont knew him too. He was active in Kiwanis, flipping pancakes at Memorial Park each July Fourth, and tutored children through the nonprofit CLASP, Claremont After-School Programs. Shapton died July 25 at age 77 of cancer. His memorial service was Saturday morning at St. Ambrose Episcopal Church in Claremont. I knew Shappy, as friends called him, for a couple of decades, which is why I was there. The Pomona library was an occasional subject for me, and the genial, newspaper-reading Shapton a friendly source. In retirement, he invited me several times to speak to Kiwanis, where he delighted in synopsizing my appearance later in the club’s newsletter. He and wife Barbara Rugeley won coffee with me at a Claremont Heritage auction in 2023 for, gasp, $175, a meet-up you may have read about here. A couple of times, I ran into the arts-lovin’ couple at the Laemmle Claremont 5. As I learned Saturday, they were also 40-year subscribers to the Mark Taper Forum. With their three children, they’d been regulars at the Utah Shakespeare Festival and at national parks. They undertook those long summer trips in a green Volkswagen bus with no air conditioning but lots of board and card games. A good cook who made dinner for the family of five, Shapton claimed the privilege of choosing the after-dinner TV viewing. This included every episode of every “Star Trek” spinoff. “He once dressed as a Starfleet commander for Halloween,” daughter Carrie Shapton Lemmon said. Also, true to his calling, Shappy built a personal library of classics and modern picture books for each grandchild. David Allen writes Wednesday, Friday and Sunday, bookishly. Email [email protected], phone 909-483-9339, and follow davidallencolumnist on Facebook or Instagram, @davidallen909 on X or @davidallen909.bsky.social on Bluesky.