Community members have left candles and flowers outside of Croft House in remembrance of Brianna Kupfer. (photo by Edwin Folven)

By Michael Krikorian

It was not the drive from Highland and Melrose to Washington and Arlington that had me dreading being back in Los Angeles after 17 days in Italy. Sure, the traffic was bad, and I was bobbing and weaving around several oncoming driver’s side car mirrors on the narrow streets of my impromptu four-mile route. But that wasn’t what had me hating being home. I’m used to traffic. I was born here a long, long time ago.

And it wasn’t even the horrible story I heard that Jan. 14 morning about Brianna Kupfer, the young woman who was stabbed to death the day before while at work alone in the Croft House furniture store on La Brea Avenue near Oakwood Street that made me long for the tranquil hilltop village in Umbria where I had just vacationed. As aching as Brianna’s death was – and is – that didn’t do it either. Sadly, I’m used to tragic endings as a longtime gang reporter in this town. I have been to more than 100 funerals and seen several hundred murder scenes, adorned so often with what I call “murder candles” and “murder flowers.”

No, it wasn’t the traffic or the crime. It was a shopping cart at that Ralphs on Third and La Brea which put me over the edge, was my “Falling Down” moment, made me seriously think “Why am I living here? I cannot live the rest of my life in this jacked-up place.” Yeah, a shopping cart.

You might know this shopping cart. It was the worst handling one I’ve ever had. I rarely get a cart at a supermarket, as I usually grab a basket or bring my own bag because I don’t get much food. But, today, I was “on the job” for my beloved Mozza – the restaurant of my girlfriend, Nancy. I was sent to the market to pick up nine large containers of creamy peanut butter for Mozza’s pastry chef, Dahlia Narvaez, and as many boxes of onion soup mix as they had for Hilario Cruz, a Mozza2Go cook who makes the crème fraiche onion dip that accompanies potato chips.

So, I get this shopping cart and two steps in, I know it was bad, but I was too lazy to walk back 6 feet to try another one. So, I took off into the store.

What really annoyed me about the cart – and really about the whole city – was another shopping cart I had in Italy, two weeks ago.  Nancy and I were at a large grocery store in Umbria near the hilltop town of Trevi, a “Conad Superstore.” I pulled out a shopping cart there from the orderly rack and, damn, this thing handled so smoothly, so effortlessly that twice I insisted that Nancy take it for a spin around the impressive Pecorino de Pienza formaggio display. This cart was an actual pleasure. Formula One legend Lewis Hamilton would have raved about this cart’s handling.

So, when I got this cart at Ralphs it was like, “You gotta be kidding me.” I went down the alley like I was drunk, weaving along the cereal lane, ricocheting from corn flakes and Special K to the oatmeal on the other side of aisle 14 like I had just gulped a bottle of Guigal Cote du Rhone over from aisle eight.

Then, foolishly, I asked a Ralphs worker where the packaged onion dip mix was. She had no idea what I was talking about. Onion what? I could have asked her where Caravaggio’s “The Calling of Saint Matthew” was hanging and she wouldn’t have been more confused.

“Is that a Mexican spice mix?” she asked me, perplexed. What could I say to that? I longed for the pre-pandemic days whenever I asked a grocery store worker where something was, they would quickly reply with the correct aisle. I miss those days.

I somehow found it. Aisle 12, I think, paid and left. And, don’t you know it, getting out of this parking lot was not a pleasure. Slow walkers, beggars, overly careful parkers. I drove up La Brea heading for Oakwood Street to hang a right and get to Mozza. As I passed 326 N. La Brea, I looked at the front of the Croft House furniture store and there were about 20 or so “murder flowers” set up in honor of Brianna Kupfer, like the impromptu memorials I’ve been seeing in Watts and South Central for 30-plus years.

I worked on this story on Saturday, but I didn’t have an ending. I tried looking for one, but nothing stood out. Then Sunday, as it so often does when you are a journalist, the ending came looking for me.

My girlfriend had planned that Sunday to be in the pastry department at Mozza, working on three dishes for her upcoming cookbook. I was to be home alone, writing, working on this story, roughing out a couple others and glancing at NFL wildcard playoff games.

Then, Nancy called me. “We have an emergency – an emergency,” she said in a tense voice.

Me, I’m thinking an emergency. A shooting. An attack by a vagrant who hangs out nearby.

But she calmed me in two seconds.

“We need buttermilk. Dahlia and I need buttermilk. Can you go to the store and get some? Highest fat buttermilk they have.”

If only all “emergencies” were like this.

So I went to that Ralphs. I didn’t get a cart. I grabbed a basket. On the way in, the car parked closest to the front door, in a handicapped spot, was a shining, grey Mercury Cougar XR7, a ‘68 I believe. It made me feel good as I thought of the ‘67 XR7 my sister Jeanine had passed along to me in the mid-70s after she moved on to something practical. Damn, I wish I had that Cougar now.

Anyway, I go inside, and head for the buttermilk and they don’t have “high fat” so I get whatever they do, “reduced fat,” and get out.

That Sunday was one of those glorious Los Angeles days that make you realize why people move here, 70-something, soft breeze, bluest sky.

That Cougar was gone as I walked to my car, but the weather made me feel good. And under this magnificent sky, I thought of sadness, of Brianna. And then it hit me. Flowers. I should get some murder flowers for Brianna. I dropped off the buttermilk in the car and said to myself, “Don’t let this thought pass, don’t be lazy.”

I marched back in. The flowers are close to the south entrance. I saw some carnations, my mom Rose loved carnations, so I grabbed a dozen magenta ones. This was the first bunch of murder flowers I ever bought.

Further on up La Brea, just past Beverly, I parked. Yeah, there was a spot, like it was waiting just for me. And there were about four or five people in front of the doorway of the furniture store. Maybe friends of hers, maybe strangers, united in this horror. I got out quick and laid the carnations on the La Brea Avenue sidewalk, in front of a picture window that had a poster-sized photo of Brianna.

I walked away, got in the car and headed to Mozza with the buttermilk. And as I floored it, I thought of Brianna, of Nancy and of my life in this city and how your city is so much like you’re your family. They drive you crazy, but you know damn well you love them.

Michael Krikorian, born in Chinatown, raised in Gardena, is a long-time Los Angeles journalist whose work has published in the Los Angeles Times, New York Times and Fresno Bee.