'I'm Programmed to Survive': A Homeless Veteran's Journey
Across California, cities are struggling with rising homelessness. So you might be surprised to learn there's actually been some progress in finding homes for one part of the homeless population: military veterans. Some places in California have even seen the number of vets living on the streets or in shelters drop by 50 percent. Of course behind these numbers are people with important stories, and all too often they're stories we don't hear. We turn away. Reporter Michael Montgomery spent a lot of time getting to know one homeless vet with a dramatic story of survival, a guy named George Arthur.
Undocumented Ph.D. Makes History at UC Merced
Yuriana Aguilar is 26 years old, bright and ambitious, a medical researcher whose work may help people with heart disease. She's also the first undocumented student to get her doctorate at UC Merced. She came to California with her farmworker parents when she was five. None of them have immigration papers. Aguilar has worked her way through school picking watermelons, cleaning hotels and selling produce at flea markets. We find out what motivates her, and her parents.
New Pop Music: A Marathon Tribute to The Grateful Dead, East L.A.'s 'Stars at Night'
Members of The Grateful Dead will play a free show next week at one of their old haunts, The Fillmore in San Francisco. It's sold out already, but those who managed to get tickets just had to agree to "pay it forward" and do a good deed for someone else. And that's what fellow Dead fans, a band called The National, have done on a new Grateful Dead tribute album, gathering a diverse group of artists to raise money and awareness for AIDS-related charities. It's just one of the new releases our pop music critic Steve Hochman talks about this week.