CHAPTER 1: EARLY AUGUST

On a bright Santa Barbara afternoon in early August, the palm trees swayed in the breeze and the waves pounded to shore. At open-air restaurants on State Street, beautiful people sipped lattes and Margaritas. Across town on Milpas Street, dark-skinned young men slinked along the old sidewalks, beautiful Mexican girls paraded proudly, and low-riders cruised back and forth in low-slung Chevys. The suburbs on the Mesa buzzed, business on Upper State was hopping, Hope Ranch and Montecito were respectably subdued, and on Cabrillo Boulevard, the street hugging the coast, the annual Historical Parade was about to begin.
        Fourteen-year-old Maya Pareto stood patiently amid the chaos of the parade’s formation point waiting to realize a lifelong dream. Clad in a colorful flamenco dress, black shoes, and a rose pinned in her hair, she and four other girls were about to step aboard the Sanchez Family Float and dance in front of thousands of people along the parade route. All around her were floats adorned in colorful flowers, riders on horseback, motorcycle police, dignitaries in convertibles, girls in majorette uniforms, band members with instruments poised, and people moving like bees in a hive.
        Bill Jimenez, tall and slender with a thin mustache, wearing earphones and holding a clipboard, moved about briskly directing people, pointing this way and that, shouting directions and speaking into his walky-talky. He approached the majorette at the front of the marching band and shouted, “Alright! Start her up!” The majorette tooted her whistle. The band stiffened. Then she blew several sharp blasts and the drum section thundered. Bill Jimenez leaned into her ear and raised two fingers, then moved briskly ahead to the Spirit of Fiesta at the front of the procession and spoke into her ear and again raised two fingers.
        Several blocks up Cabrillo Boulevard, a PA system reverberated over the crowd along the sidewalk. “And now begins Santa Barbara’s Old Spanish Days Historical Parade!” There was a sprinkling of applause. “The drums you hear are those of the Santa Barbara High School Dons Marching Band!”
        The drums pounded mercilessly, then broke off, baring the rustlings of the crowd. Then several sharp whistle-blasts and the trumpets, clarinets, saxophones, tubas, flutes, and oboes came to attention, perched in readiness, then abruptly began playing, drowning out all other sounds as they marched in place.
        Bill Jimenez stepped behind the flamenco band and waved to the horsemen. An enormous white steed carrying a heavy-set, florid-faced man in elaborate vaquero attire lumbered forward, two groomers still running brushes through the horse’s silky mane and tail. The rider smiled at Bill and raised a friendly hand. “Leave at least fifty feet between you and