Speaker 1: Um, dude, you guys have social media. Were you guys
Speaker 1: like on my Space? Yeah? We had my Space. We
Speaker 1: were on it all the time. And um, that's why
Speaker 1: that's why we're getting showing computer class because we would
Speaker 1: try to like log in while we were in class.
Speaker 1: This is Alejandra, Emory's high school friend. Again. During our conversation,
Speaker 1: we talked about who Emory was at home and at school.
Speaker 1: But one part that stuck with me was when I
Speaker 1: realized that Emory also lived a life online. Were you
Speaker 1: guys on a site called techno for us? Yes, we
Speaker 1: were on that too. What was your I don't remember anymore.
Speaker 1: I wish I could tell you. Did Emory have one? Did? Yeah?
Speaker 1: She did. I was hearing from people about Emory, but
Speaker 1: I really wanted to find something from her directly. Some
Speaker 1: digital trace from I Heearts, Michaels go to a a podcast network,
Speaker 1: Vice and Elias Studios. This is Party Cruise, the untold story.
Speaker 1: I'm Jenisamoca. I've already taken you through what a party
Speaker 1: was like, talked about how we were policed, and now
Speaker 1: I'm going to show you our digital reality. Because this
Speaker 1: era in the New Millennium would change the game for
Speaker 1: all future partying. This was when how you showed up
Speaker 1: online started to become as important as how you showed
Speaker 1: up in person. And though we weren't doing it on purpose,
Speaker 1: we were showing our lives uncensored and on our own terms.
Speaker 1: The website that I talked about with Alejandra Techno four
Speaker 1: dot us or T four for short, because an early
Speaker 1: two thousands social media site that was basically a giant party.
Speaker 1: It was just a way to connect with everybody. It
Speaker 1: was basically like a message board for party people. You
Speaker 1: know your flyers or messaging. There was no swifting in
Speaker 1: social media back then. There was Techno four data. It
Speaker 1: was mostly Latin X teens living in LA messaging each
Speaker 1: other on T four and the profiles were chaotic, filled
Speaker 1: up with colorful funds than wacky spellings. The pages were
Speaker 1: plastered with tons of pictures the crews holding up their
Speaker 1: badges and girls doing que poses. It's how we chose
Speaker 1: to stand out and get creative. I know this because
Speaker 1: I was a member too profile name West Coast's Finest Mommy.
Speaker 1: I think I was like fourteen when I jumped into
Speaker 1: my first chat room. I was amazed at how far
Speaker 1: I was able to reach people in different states. Other
Speaker 1: than visiting my family in Peru and New Jersey, I
Speaker 1: didn't really get to know other places, and by chatting
Speaker 1: with different people, I was able to learn a lot.
Speaker 1: I had a penpal, some white girl in Montana. I
Speaker 1: also had a different penpal, a kid my age that
Speaker 1: lived on a reservation in Arizona. I met them in
Speaker 1: Yahoo chats. That's just to say how much I was
Speaker 1: starting to live on the Internet, and I wonder if
Speaker 1: for Emory it was like that too. I was curious
Speaker 1: and I felt like there were no limits. Amazingly, T
Speaker 1: four is still around, so last year I decided to
Speaker 1: check it out to see what I could find. I
Speaker 1: haven't been on there in oof sixteen years. Okay, i'm recording.
Speaker 1: I made it to the Techno for Us homepage, which
Speaker 1: was still active. It's still black and blue like I remember,
Speaker 1: and I wanted to see if I could find Emory's
Speaker 1: old profile. Okay, I'm to see you, Emory. Let's try Tears.
Speaker 1: Let's try it. Let's try for you. On T four,
Speaker 1: people use their party crew nicknames, so I started with
Speaker 1: Emory's nickname Tears, and then we can try Tears with
Speaker 1: a z or tears tears of a clown. All right,
Speaker 1: this is not hers. I've never worked on a story
Speaker 1: like this that brings so many personal memories. I'll tripe
Speaker 1: in Vicious. Oh, here's a vicious Cherry. This is Cherry.
Speaker 1: I typed in Vicious because of Emory's crew, the Vicious Ladies,
Speaker 1: and I found the main head, Cherry. Cherry's profile picture
Speaker 1: has the Vicious Lady's logo on it. It's a sparkly
Speaker 1: pink and white Louis Vitan LV logo that sits on
Speaker 1: top of the words vicious Ladies. I read what she
Speaker 1: wrote about the Vicious Ladies on her profile at nothing
Speaker 1: but a vicious thing repping them. Also fine, vicious ladies.
Speaker 1: If you were part of a crew, you wrapped it hard.
Speaker 1: This would be the one and only fame malicious rapping
Speaker 1: for nothing but the best vicious and then vicious ladies.
Speaker 1: Here we go. You got in contact with none other
Speaker 1: than did see screaming Vicious ladies to the fullest, like
Speaker 1: to party and have fun and just chill. Finally, I
Speaker 1: found a picture of Emory Ry Go Destiny and Emery
Speaker 1: Rocks all the boys all day, every day. There's a
Speaker 1: picture of m Emery and her friend Destiny. Destiny's page
Speaker 1: shows that she last logged on in the summer of
Speaker 1: two thousand and six, a few months after Emory's death.
Speaker 1: All Right, Amory Mounos forever in her hearts. It's a
Speaker 1: tight shot of Emory and Destiny's faces, so it looks
Speaker 1: like a selfie, maybe with a phone or a digital camera.
Speaker 1: The lights above the girls are giant luorescent rectangles, the
Speaker 1: kind you see in an office or in school. They
Speaker 1: probably took the picture in class. Okay, so I'm gonna
Speaker 1: save this picture one sec Destiny t four save. We
Speaker 1: were unable to talk to any Vicious Ladies party crew members.
Speaker 1: We did reach out to them, they either didn't respond
Speaker 1: or declined to be interviewed. One told us through a
Speaker 1: friend that it wouldn't be of any use to talk
Speaker 1: to us. They did press right after Emory's death, and
Speaker 1: her case is still unsolved. So going through these profiles
Speaker 1: feels like the closest I got to understanding the Vicious
Speaker 1: Lady's dynamics, just like my crew. The Lustful Ladies. They
Speaker 1: gave each other shout outs, posted pictures of their friends,
Speaker 1: and wrapped their crew to the fullest. In the end,
Speaker 1: I couldn't find anything from Emory directly, but it did
Speaker 1: take me back to that time. That world tfor feels
Speaker 1: like this digital ghost town, like this online version of POMPEII.
Speaker 1: All these profiles were frozen in time, capturing this new
Speaker 1: era of the Internet where we could express ourselves online
Speaker 1: without supervision. And it was like that for me too,
Speaker 1: until it wasn't. My first long term relationship was with
Speaker 1: a high school boy I connected with online, but the
Speaker 1: relationship wasn't exactly what I expected. Once upon a time,
Speaker 1: I worked it in and out in the city of Industry,
Speaker 1: and I remember one day my boyfriend and I had
Speaker 1: gone into a fight. I don't really remember about what,
Speaker 1: and he just showed up at my job. He wanted
Speaker 1: to make up or something like that. But when he
Speaker 1: walked up, I was chatting with my male coworker, and
Speaker 1: my coworker made a joke and I laughed. It was
Speaker 1: very normal, and my boyfriend saw me laugh, he made
Speaker 1: a face and he just turned around and stormed out,
Speaker 1: and I got really stressed out. From the very beginning,
Speaker 1: my boyfriend was really possessive. He didn't really want me
Speaker 1: to have guy friends. Or even girlfriends who he felt
Speaker 1: got in the way. He would call me at all
Speaker 1: times to make sure he knew what I was doing,
Speaker 1: and if I wasn't paying attention to my phone, I'd
Speaker 1: come back to it and have thirty missed calls. He
Speaker 1: was controlling about everything, including money, like he asked me
Speaker 1: to co sign his car lease. I started to get
Speaker 1: afraid of what he would do with all the information
Speaker 1: about me sharing the story. I find myself getting protective
Speaker 1: over my younger self and over all the other women
Speaker 1: that I found themselves in my position. It was really
Speaker 1: embarrassing in the cycle I couldn't break at the time,
Speaker 1: I was scared that he would see a compliment someone
Speaker 1: left on my MySpace page or a photo of me
Speaker 1: with a guy on my T four profile, and we'd
Speaker 1: have more fights, which could lead to a full day
Speaker 1: of crying. So one day in two thousand and six,
Speaker 1: I sat down, holed up all my profiles, my Space,
Speaker 1: Facebook techno for us, and one by one I deleted everything,
Speaker 1: all my photos, my posts, my friends, my party crew
Speaker 1: years we're gone looking back now, those are the memories
Speaker 1: I wish I had. As I was looking for traces
Speaker 1: of Emery on Techno for Us I realized that maybe
Speaker 1: I could also find traces of that time in my
Speaker 1: life online. That's after the break. I do have a
Speaker 1: few images that I printed out and stored in an album,
Speaker 1: but otherwise the only pictures I have from that time
Speaker 1: are with family, pictures with friends at school, and that
Speaker 1: giant portrait my parents have of me in their living
Speaker 1: room from my Kensaneta. It's like the good immigrant daughter
Speaker 1: version of me has survived, enshrined at my parents place.
Speaker 1: But this other, curious and more complex person I was
Speaker 1: growing up is mostly gone. But maybe somewhere in the
Speaker 1: Techno for Us Digital POMPEII, there is something from my
Speaker 1: past I can find. And if there's one person who
Speaker 1: could help me, it would be this man. How do
Speaker 1: you explain you know, a Facebook before there was a Facebook,
Speaker 1: MySpace before there was a MySpace. You know, this was
Speaker 1: very la This is just very la, very teen centering.
Speaker 1: This is Regal Rojas. He's the actual founder of Techno
Speaker 1: for Us. For me, this is as big as meeting
Speaker 1: Tom from my space. I actually can't log on to
Speaker 1: my old T four profile. I don't remember the password
Speaker 1: and don't have access to the old email address, so
Speaker 1: I was hoping Rigo could help me access it again,
Speaker 1: but first I had so many questions for him. I
Speaker 1: was honestly shocked when I found out that he was
Speaker 1: Latino and from la because nowadays I feel like it's
Speaker 1: rare that a social network be tailored to a specific
Speaker 1: community and founded by a member of that community. The
Speaker 1: site wasn't anything fancy. The idea was that you could
Speaker 1: connect virtually with people you met at parties in real life.
Speaker 1: It was just a profile with messaging. That's really it.
Speaker 1: And the theme evolved on its own to where, you know,
Speaker 1: she went to a party and you wanted to connect
Speaker 1: with some of the people that were at that party
Speaker 1: or there, or that are going to be at the
Speaker 1: next one. Just use technical But it was never Rego's
Speaker 1: plan to make a social media site. He kind of
Speaker 1: stumbled on it. Oh your home is very lovely, Thank you,
Speaker 1: a lot of effort, disorganized, there's water, anything else you
Speaker 1: may want, it's available. Rego in a family, came from
Speaker 1: El Salvador when he was eight years old. In the eighties,
Speaker 1: he settled in the North Hollywood area. In the mid nineties,
Speaker 1: Rego became a student at Kelsey University Northridge, not far
Speaker 1: from where he lived. He was a kind of studies major.
Speaker 1: I was working in music right as a hobby. And
Speaker 1: you know, there's new software coming out, new new devices, samplers, synthesizers,
Speaker 1: and you become very good at it, connecting to think
Speaker 1: the machines, and you become the technical guy in new
Speaker 1: Google Friends. This is in the late nineties, right, the
Speaker 1: Internet bubble is it's you know, it's building up and
Speaker 1: people are excited about things. Regal was on the Internet
Speaker 1: in the time of dial up connection, when images took
Speaker 1: forever to load, no tweets, none of that ease and
Speaker 1: lightning speed were used to now. But he still found
Speaker 1: a way to communicate message. Sports were popular, right, So
Speaker 1: I followed one the power Tools music board. Right here
Speaker 1: you go, Ladies and gentlemen, bad Boy Bill, Hot Mix
Speaker 1: number fourteen, It's power Tools riding on Power six, Humpty
Speaker 1: Vision the Rock. Like many young Angelinos at that time,
Speaker 1: he tuned into this radio show called the power Tools
Speaker 1: Mix Show on Power one oh six, lots of house
Speaker 1: techno and EDMA. I'll be in the mix up next,
Speaker 1: Humpty Vision, bad Boy Bill in the mix all night long,
Speaker 1: riding on power Tools boys. They also had a message
Speaker 1: board where people would discuss and learn about new music.
Speaker 1: Was that your first time kind of seeing that interaction
Speaker 1: with different people and not the same physical space, you know?
Speaker 1: It showed me that people can be very passionate about something.
Speaker 1: The audience can communicate with each other and have a
Speaker 1: voice in how to interpret the music. So he had
Speaker 1: an idea. He and his DJ friends realized we needed
Speaker 1: a website to promote our music. Rigo had an interest
Speaker 1: in music and tech, and he wanted to know if
Speaker 1: he can make a website himself. In March of two
Speaker 1: thousand and three, five months before my space launched, he
Speaker 1: purchased the domain name techno four dot us. He paid
Speaker 1: seventy five dollars for two years. Then he spent the
Speaker 1: next three months building the site. What was your visual
Speaker 1: design idea for the website? UM? I wanted a dark
Speaker 1: site with a bright contrasting color. Right, so it's black
Speaker 1: and the brighter blue, sort of like that Dodger Blue.
Speaker 1: Members didn't have to put any information except asl age, sex,
Speaker 1: location my favorite thing though, So that's where a lot
Speaker 1: of them could customize their their profiles. Again, a very
Speaker 1: amateur mistake was I didn't take away their ability to
Speaker 1: inject code. So it was a mistake that worked out
Speaker 1: in my favor because now people wanted to change their code.
Speaker 1: We could customize our profiles any way we wanted. Imagine
Speaker 1: if you can change the colors of your profile page
Speaker 1: on Instagram or have your favorite songue play when someone
Speaker 1: visits your profile. That's what T four was like. So
Speaker 1: I'm creating this site by myself writing code, but there's
Speaker 1: no point to it. There's no audience to it. By
Speaker 1: the summer of two thousand and three, the site is live,
Speaker 1: but it still didn't have an audience. Rego was trying
Speaker 1: to figure out how to promote it and seeing you
Speaker 1: know the power Tools message board, is like, well can
Speaker 1: I be that? Can I create that? Oh? Can I
Speaker 1: make it better? One promotion idea he had, and this
Speaker 1: is how you know it was early Internet, was to
Speaker 1: tell people about the website at a party in person.
Speaker 1: He had a friend that printed flyers like party flyers,
Speaker 1: and he put t four on one of them as
Speaker 1: a favorite Arigo. So in July of two thousand and three,
Speaker 1: Rigo attended the party and it wasn't like the parties
Speaker 1: that played house music that he was used to. This
Speaker 1: is in south central LA. It's a backyard party on
Speaker 1: a Friday night, summer night, and then gets hot. You know,
Speaker 1: and people who are listening to loud New right, they're teenagers,
Speaker 1: they're high school kids. Rego was new to this generation
Speaker 1: of flyer parties. We know they're wearing these these tags,
Speaker 1: these these laminated tags with their crew name and their name.
Speaker 1: You know, kids stands into right and hip hop. But
Speaker 1: I'm here trying to promote a techno site, right, So
Speaker 1: I'm like, like, is this gonna work? Maybe at the
Speaker 1: end of the party, the DJ would play a little
Speaker 1: house music, a little electronic music, but it wasn't about that.
Speaker 1: It was definitely just hip hop were dominant. The fact
Speaker 1: that Rigo bought I'm promoted your al called techno for us,
Speaker 1: just for it to become the social media site for
Speaker 1: kids like me who liked hip hop, and it's just
Speaker 1: so funny to me and also such a marker and
Speaker 1: time for me as an Angelino and the millennial, a
Speaker 1: time when the popular music among the youth shifted and
Speaker 1: a time when our world became more digital and interconnected. Slowly,
Speaker 1: T four started to spread in the party crew scene.
Speaker 1: You see the logos on flyers, and people were curious.
Speaker 1: So it drove some traffic to the site, but the
Speaker 1: site would really get attention when Rigo began attending the
Speaker 1: parties with his camera. People are happy to post for
Speaker 1: their pictures and they started asking you, hey, take my picture.
Speaker 1: He'd select around fifty pictures from the party and post
Speaker 1: them on the site a few days later. Girls wearing
Speaker 1: matching outfits, guys showing off their badges. People start asking, hey,
Speaker 1: where are the pictures. I'm like, okay, hold on, let
Speaker 1: me let me work on them. So, you know, you
Speaker 1: pick out the best ones, you edit them, and you
Speaker 1: put them up and the pictures start being shared everywhere, right,
Speaker 1: and the membership starts going up. People were always looking
Speaker 1: for a good picture, whether it was to upgrade their
Speaker 1: profile pictures or just save them at an album. And
Speaker 1: Rio could see who wanted to see those pictures. So
Speaker 1: you start seeing, you know, different plots on the map
Speaker 1: and it's red hot in La, right, and it's like, wow,
Speaker 1: this isn't La thing. But wait, there's a group in Texas.
Speaker 1: How did that happen? Right? So well, people from California
Speaker 1: have friends in Texas, right, and they share it, they
Speaker 1: see group of people, they join, and now they start
Speaker 1: building community. I was logging on all the time, even
Speaker 1: at the school library during lunch or last period, just
Speaker 1: to get onto four and message with my friends online.
Speaker 1: You get to the point where lau is d blocks
Speaker 1: the site because the students they're going into the library,
Speaker 1: they're going into the computer lab, and they're just on
Speaker 1: the site talking to each other, and we get blocked. Okay,
Speaker 1: do you know what high school still thought? Every every
Speaker 1: school high school, we were blocked at the district level.
Speaker 1: We can't confirm this, but I remember my Space was
Speaker 1: blocked at my school by the end of my senior year.
Speaker 1: What was the moment where you were like, oh shit,
Speaker 1: this is getting bigger than I thought. Um, when the
Speaker 1: servers begin to crash because there's just so many people
Speaker 1: trying to log in. In two thousand and three, the
Speaker 1: membership went up from fifty to over six hundred. In
Speaker 1: two thousand and four, the year I joined, an average
Speaker 1: there were sixteen hundred members online at the same time.
Speaker 1: In December two thousand and five, around the time that
Speaker 1: Emery would have been a member, there was on average
Speaker 1: over three thousand members online at the same time before
Speaker 1: peaked at about two thousand and six, two thousand and seven.
Speaker 1: You know, we're talking about maybe twenty five thousand people
Speaker 1: a day, you know, four to five thousand people at
Speaker 1: any moment, and Rigo was making a pretty good living
Speaker 1: off T four. I never went into my college career
Speaker 1: because of T four. Right, so the work I did
Speaker 1: on T four derailed anything to do with Chicano studies.
Speaker 1: I was going to be an activist. I thought, let
Speaker 1: me change the system from within, you know, let me
Speaker 1: let me go work in immigration services, let me go
Speaker 1: work in social services. I took one interview in that
Speaker 1: and I didn't even respond to anything any follow up
Speaker 1: on that because I was already working on T four.
Speaker 1: I mean, in a way, you still like maintain the
Speaker 1: community aspect of like activists. I mean, I understood what
Speaker 1: was going on, and I understood, you know, the way
Speaker 1: that these kids wanted to express themselves and have fun.
Speaker 1: Rego still keeps Tea for running. He says it costs
Speaker 1: one hundred dollars a month to keep it going. He
Speaker 1: keeps it running for himself and for the handful of
Speaker 1: people that continue to log on. I have a very
Speaker 1: tiny platform that has an incredible loyal following. Right, I mean,
Speaker 1: you go in there now and there's forty five people
Speaker 1: on I went in there last night there was forty four.
Speaker 1: There you go, I'm exaggerating. I'm exaggerating, right, I was
Speaker 1: just I was a little shocked, to be right, you
Speaker 1: have people that we're at that first party. I can
Speaker 1: think of one person that was that that first party
Speaker 1: that's on there actively. It provides a very basic service,
Speaker 1: which is people connecting. Right. People will always need to
Speaker 1: connect to people, and that's why all these social media
Speaker 1: sites are successful. Our digital footprint will last as long
Speaker 1: as we wanted to. Our digital footprint will last as
Speaker 1: long as we want it to. I chose to delete
Speaker 1: mine in two thousand and six when I did that
Speaker 1: whole purge I mentioned because of that controlling ex boyfriend.
Speaker 1: And as I continue getting older, it's hard to reconcile
Speaker 1: that a lot of us may never get it back.
Speaker 1: It feels like such a loss that I can't access
Speaker 1: my old profile to see if it's even still around.
Speaker 1: But after talking to Rigo, he does me a favor.
Speaker 1: He resent my password so I can lug in. So
Speaker 1: let me lug in let sech. That's after the break. Okay,
Speaker 1: I found my profile. I recorded myself going through my
Speaker 1: profile for the first time, and it instantly brought me
Speaker 1: back to two thousand and four. It's a picture of me.
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure I was not eighteen, but I made
Speaker 1: myself eighteen at the time. My profile picture was not
Speaker 1: one of me at a party. It's a picture I
Speaker 1: have printed out somewhere, but it was still wild to
Speaker 1: see it online. I'm in high school. This was taken
Speaker 1: I was probably like seventeen. I think I'm wearing like
Speaker 1: a sparkly pink rhinestone heart necklace and then wearing Hiphuger
Speaker 1: pants with a hip Hoger belt that's like a silver
Speaker 1: chain with another pink rhinestone to heart. I know I
Speaker 1: should have kept that belt because apparently I could probably
Speaker 1: sell it to urban outfitters for like one hundred dollars.
Speaker 1: So it turns out I still have my profile picture,
Speaker 1: but I must have deleted my layout when I deleted
Speaker 1: all my other social media coming my profile was pretty bare.
Speaker 1: It was just the basic black background with that Dodger
Speaker 1: blue lettering. But my profile did offer some information. It
Speaker 1: says asked for your gender. I have female city. I
Speaker 1: put role in Heights a member since and it says
Speaker 1: June twenty seventh, two thousand and four profile hits. I've
Speaker 1: had twelve thousand, forty eight profile hits and my last
Speaker 1: log in was July tenth, two thousand and six, at
Speaker 1: one twenty seven am. The last time I logged in
Speaker 1: was when I deleted all my other social media profiles.
Speaker 1: I clicked around the page to see if there was
Speaker 1: anything else, and I found my journal section. Did I
Speaker 1: ever use a journal? Oh my god? How embarrassing. Um,
Speaker 1: Oh my god, this is so embarrassing. There were three
Speaker 1: whole entries. Okay, so it's here. The first journal mentry
Speaker 1: I wrote was July seventeenth, two thousand and four, at
Speaker 1: five seventeen am. Gosh, and I wrote, m well, it's
Speaker 1: about five o eight am and I'm up exclamation points tool.
Speaker 1: I've been thinking about stuff lately. But yeah, damn, it's
Speaker 1: five to eleven now. Lol. I better get in bed
Speaker 1: so my mama doesn't get all mad and shish. For now,
Speaker 1: I'm out show was. I ended up writing more in
Speaker 1: that same entry. Damn the drama, Fuck the haters. We
Speaker 1: gotta just live life, but sometimes you know, I wish
Speaker 1: there was someone I could come home because the game
Speaker 1: gets old after a long while. Lol, trust me, then
Speaker 1: there done that all right? For real? I'm outros. I
Speaker 1: have no idea what I was, who I was writing about.
Speaker 1: The game gets hold after a long while, embarrassing. There
Speaker 1: was another journal from July twenty eighth, two thousand and four. Okay,
Speaker 1: I wrote, ah, I finished making the tags and I'm
Speaker 1: freaking board la la la la, will let's see um nothing.
Speaker 1: I'm out, lessful ladies leaving this mofo. I think a
Speaker 1: lot about how easy it is to delete our memories
Speaker 1: my mask. Clicking or highlighting an entire page of code
Speaker 1: and pressing one key delete it felt less ceremonial than
Speaker 1: burning physical images or tossing an entire album with pictures away.
Speaker 1: I guess that's why it felt painless at the time.
Speaker 1: But what I didn't realize was how permanent one click
Speaker 1: can be. It's more than old photos. Looking through it.
Speaker 1: T four is really an archive. It's not organized or
Speaker 1: easily searchable, but you can see firsthand accounts of how
Speaker 1: we lived. It seems like Emory's profile is gone. She
Speaker 1: didn't leave a digital footprint behind, at least one that
Speaker 1: I could find, but I can't help. But wonder did
Speaker 1: she delete it herself? What was her reason? Was it
Speaker 1: a way of protecting herself like I had to, and
Speaker 1: losing her profile? It isn't just a loss of her
Speaker 1: photos or her words. It's another missing layer of who
Speaker 1: she was, what her world looked like, what she felt.
Speaker 1: Now it's up to other people to fill in the blanks,
Speaker 1: and I feel an obligation to try because when it
Speaker 1: comes to subcultures or to communities of color, especially young
Speaker 1: women of color, historically, it's often up to us to
Speaker 1: remind the world that we exist. While I couldn't find
Speaker 1: anything online that hinted at what happened to Emory, a
Speaker 1: few months into looking at her case, we met someone
Speaker 1: who thought he could help Emory's family after hearing them
Speaker 1: speak and giving me some insights as to what happened.
Speaker 1: I do believe there's additional investigation that needs to be conducted,
Speaker 1: and for the first time we hear from Emory's parents,
Speaker 1: like I said, I was, I wasn't there, you know,
Speaker 1: like to where I rich I would I was, And
Speaker 1: you know she was? She was. She was a happy child,
Speaker 1: and I know she would cry and saying Where's my dad,
Speaker 1: Where's my dad? But because I wasn't there, that's next time.
Speaker 1: This episode was written, reported, and hosted by me Janasamoka.
Speaker 1: Our show is produced and reported by Sofia Pelissa car
Speaker 1: Victoria Lejandro, and Kyle Chang and edited by Antonio Seihilo.
Speaker 1: Additional editing by Carlina Dalbo and Annie Ablis, fact checking
Speaker 1: by Nadia Bautista, Sound design and original music composition by
Speaker 1: Kyle Murdoch. Our supervising producer is Janet Lee. Art by
Speaker 1: Julie Ruiz and Victuakllon. Our executive producer from Vice Audio
Speaker 1: is Kate Osborne. Our executive producers from Elias Studios are
Speaker 1: Antonio Seihido and Leo gi. Our Vice president of Podcasts
Speaker 1: from Elias Studios is Shana and Naomi Kracso. Special thanks
Speaker 1: to the UCLA Department of Communication Archives for access to
Speaker 1: their news collection Party Cruise. The Innsold Story is a
Speaker 1: production of Elias Studios in Vice Audio in partnership with
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Speaker 1: your favorite shows and hey, were you and a party crew? Senator,
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