Episode Transcript
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Where I live in Southern
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California, psychic shops are practically
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as plentiful as coffee shops. They're
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a part of the landscape. I know people
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who have regular appointments with their psychic. It's
0:13
the kind of thing you can drop in casual
0:15
conversation, and no one bats an eye.
0:19
And I can understand why. People
0:21
want security. They want to know
0:24
what the future will hold. And
0:26
whether through tarot cards or a crystal
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ball, the fortune teller will
0:31
hint at how your story
0:32
will play out. Let
0:35
me say up front that I don't know how this tale
0:37
will play out or how it will end, because
0:41
in this story, the fortune teller
0:43
came to me.
0:45
At the very beginning of this podcast,
0:48
I never thought in a million
0:50
years it would turn
0:52
into what it is now.
0:54
My name is Faith Pinew, and I'm a reporter
0:57
at the Los Angeles Times. But
0:59
back in October 2019, I was
1:01
working at a small community newspaper in Orange
1:03
County called The Daily Pilot. And
1:06
that's where I first got a call from Paulina
1:08
Stevens. Paulina told me that
1:10
from the time she was a child, she was told
1:13
she would be a fortune teller, that
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she came from a whole family of fortune
1:17
tellers. And then she mentioned
1:20
something that made my ears perk up. It
1:22
was a warning about a psychic shop in Orange
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County. She told me that this
1:27
was the psychic shop that she had escaped.
1:30
I suggested we meet up in person at a
1:32
local cafe. I'm a little nervous. I'm sorry for
1:35
like, it's okay. I don't know. I'm
1:37
like kind of nervous, but I'm okay. Okay.
1:40
Take your time, whatever. Whatever
1:43
makes you feel...
1:43
Listen, people call reporters all the
1:45
time with salacious tips. But
1:47
when Paulina started talking, I felt like
1:49
I was drinking from a fire hose. What
1:53
do you do? You know what I'm saying?
1:56
What do you do? Colina said she had
1:58
an arranged marriage with a distinct couple of friends.
2:00
that twelve it's like you're supposed
2:02
to know you're getting married to you know that's like
2:04
you're going through puberty like i was getting to all
2:06
that her parents shielded her from outside
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or any kind of outsiders was a big like no
2:11
no and then she was pulled out of school entirely
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at twelve years old i was actually
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lucky like i got to go to school
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up to sixth grade at
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the time i was used to writing stories
2:23
on city council meetings and town art shows
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so polina story it was totally
2:28
out of my wheelhouse it seem to
2:30
big because
2:31
ultimately paulina kept
2:33
blaming her culture or culture her
2:35
culture and disobey us
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then you disobeyed your culture paulina
2:40
culture is romany i
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don't think i'd ever even heard the word romany
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before and that's because raw
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many people are often known by another
2:49
name you know
2:50
a gypsy you're not going to hear
2:52
me throwing around the g word on this podcast
2:55
because for many and the community it's a slur
2:58
not for outsiders like me to use but
3:00
at the time i had no idea because
3:03
even a pop star like shakira
3:05
casually throws around the g word
3:09
it set against this catchy poppy backdrop
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like something you'd instinctively hum along to
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if you weren't paying attention you never noticed
3:17
the lyrics are actually overtly
3:19
offensive to damaged
3:20
see you
3:23
coming with me and
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my
3:30
once i started noticing it i couldn't stop
3:32
seeing the g word everywhere clothing
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brands and restaurant menus surfboards
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and teabags it's become a shorthand
3:39
for something nomadic wilde
3:42
deceitful romantic something
3:45
exotic a style anyone could
3:47
put on and were like a costume
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and
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there are two stereotypes that always
3:51
come up that romney people
3:54
are fortune tellers and thieves
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but
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the thing was paulina and her family
3:59
were at
4:00
actually fortune tellers and while
4:02
paulina told me about her family in
4:04
their history she also seem
4:06
to be painting herself as those very
4:08
stereotypes she seem to wanna
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shock me to get me to pay attention like
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the rule is no stealing only scamming
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because people give you stuff let's not
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considered stealing paulina
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seem to be telling me yes fortunetelling
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is a scale i and i
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have a scam artist you know born and bred
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soon i'm telling you i just looked
4:32
at her like why it you
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know you're sitting here with the reporter are
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you turning yourself in i don't
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know what to think and honestly
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it didn't seem like paulina did either gypsies
4:43
have a bad rep and
4:45
it they should i think er
4:48
no not all and
4:50
then paulina said she had decided
4:52
to leave because when i left
4:55
and no education at
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to kids know driver's
4:59
license okay no car you
5:01
know what i'm saying i had nothing nothing nothing
5:03
nothing the
5:05
frantic news and pauline his voice suddenly
5:07
made sense the unfiltered
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panic and blurting out extreme claims
5:13
it was the sound of someone stepping
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out of one world and into another
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questioning
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everything she's ever learned
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and this was certainly part of why paulina
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said she had come to me but
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it wasn't just to tell her life story the
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real reason paulina reached out to
5:28
me was she needed help
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paulina has two
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little girls and when she left
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her community she was at risk of losing
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them to fight to keep
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her daughter's paulina did the number one thing
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people in our culture were taught not to
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do she
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turned to the outside world she
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took her case to the american legal system
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and her custody hearing was coming soon
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by leaving her community
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going to the courts and talking to the press
5:57
paulina was opening up her lived will work
6:00
of scrutiny and doubt.
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Lots of things
6:04
are sad in the heat of a fight
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to protect and to not lose
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your children.
6:11
It's hard to me to support you if I don't know what the
6:13
f*** you're doing. Paulina was a diamond. Now
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she's just a stone.
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But Paulina and I kept talking. For
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years. As Paulina and I got
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to know each other, we peeled back layer
6:25
after layer together. Both of us
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trying to get to the actual truth beneath
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the surface, to
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the place beyond the resentment and the
6:33
stereotypes. You
6:36
have to be exclusionist
6:38
in order to preserve identity.
6:43
You have to close ranks to
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prevent infiltration
6:48
from outside. One
6:51
time during a session she did
6:53
a healing bowl and it put
6:55
me in a complete trance. I
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opened my eyes and the whole room
7:00
was like a white cloud and I could barely
7:03
see her. What we offer
7:05
is a spiritual
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practice and
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a spiritual, dare
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I say it, business, right? Because
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it's true of any community, of any
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identity, that there are stereotypes
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and there are truths. And
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while sometimes they can overlap in superficial
7:29
ways, the whole and deep
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story is so much richer and
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more complicated than we could have ever predicted.
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It's weird actually how I went
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from loving it to absolutely
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hating it and now missing it.
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I'm Faith Pinyou
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from the Los Angeles Times. This is
7:47
FOUR-TOLED. Coming April 11th. Listen
7:50
and follow FOUR-TOLED at LATimes.com
7:53
slash FOUR-TOLED or wherever you get
7:55
your podcasts. That's LATimes.com
7:58
slash foretold.
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