The Last Word

When Alex Uchitel described himself as a “godfather” who helped fellow immigrants by giving them jobs in his appliance-repair service, he surely could not have anticipated the headline identifying his business as “L.A.’s Russian (Appliance-Repair) Mafia” (Palm Latitudes, Oct. 16). Off to a gulag for your editors for carelessly misrepresenting Uchitel and his highly educated colleagues in focusing only on the last word of the item and for failing to recognize that such “cleverness” could cause the “melting pot” to do a slow burn.

Sharon Scull

Pasadena

Uchitel, according to his attorney, was none too happy with the headline either. We did not mean to imply that Uchitel’s company is involved with the Russian mob.