A Better Life Elsewhere

A friend who is contemplating a move from the Los Angeles area sent me your Feb. 21 article, “California, Here I Go,” as well as the subsequent responses from some of your readership.

I left the Los Angeles area a few months after the riots of 1992. This event was not the only incentive that helped me make the decision to forever leave the state where I was born 37 years ago, raised and educated and where I founded and ran a business employing over 500 people.

The general deterioration of the entire Los Angeles area during the last 15 years does not make it an acceptable place for human habitation. Life is far too short to have to tolerate the results of such deterioration. Escalating crime, stifling high density living, overcrowded and crime-ridden schools, intolerable traffic conditions, increasingly unbreathable air and a very detrimental business climate contributed to this decision. What good is “enviable” weather when it hurts to breathe? Besides, the weather here is much better and you can actually see mountains.

I now live in an area where no one locks his/her doors, most people do not know what graffiti looks like and if you see five cars in one block, that’s a traffic jam. The business climate in my new state is friendly. I felt badly about having to dismiss my workers in Los Angeles, but life’s a crapshoot; there are no guarantees. Besides, it took no time to fill the 500-plus jobs I brought with me when I relocated my business.

The only thing I miss is the Los Angeles Times.

MEL BURNS, Richland, Wash.