Well folks, let’s just say the word ““irony”” doesn’t quite do this one justice. The twin daughters of Rick Cole—yes, “that” Rick Cole, the former mayor of Pasadena and current chief deputy controller of Los Angeles—have landed smack in the middle of a firestorm of controversy and concrete. And not the metaphorical kind either.
We’re talking boulders, Molotov cocktails, and alleged assaults on police officers, all wrapped up in one chaotic weekend of anti-ICE riots that have turned downtown Los Angeles into a war zone.
Lucia and Antonia, 26-year-old daughters of the city official, were arrested Sunday night after the demonstrations took a violent turn on the 101 Freeway.
Reports say they were allegedly part of a group hurling deadly objects—rocks, fireworks, who knows what else—from an overpass onto law enforcement vehicles. What could possibly go wrong?
The kicker? Their own father was addressing a crowd of protesters the very moment news of his daughters’ arrests broke. “I’ve just seen pictures of my two daughters on a curb in downtown Los Angeles in handcuffs,” Cole said, adding that he was going to figure out where they were and bail them out.
Now, imagine trying to calm a protest crowd while realizing your own kids are possibly among the rioters. That’s not just a PR nightmare—it’s a parenting paradox wrapped in a political circus.
And just when you thought it couldn’t get more intense, enter the U.S. Marines. Yes, the military has now joined the California National Guard—4,000 strong—at the order of President Trump, to control what state and local officials couldn’t.
The governor of California, Gavin Newsom, has since accused the President of “causing” the violence, filing a motion to yank the Guard out of the state entirely. But from the footage and the field reports, it’s clear the situation was already spinning out of control long before boots hit the pavement.
Meanwhile, the chaos didn’t stay boxed in downtown. It spilled into nearby Santa Ana and even across state lines into Texas. Stores were looted, federal buildings were under siege, and police officers became literal targets on city streets.
So now we’re left with this surreal image: a high-ranking Los Angeles official watching as the daughters he raised—and possibly influenced with some very civic-minded dinner conversations—are cuffed amid fire and fury. It’s Shakespearean. It’s scandalous. And it’s the story of a city where the personal and political have violently collided in a way no one saw coming.
