Behind the Scenes in San Francisco | BONUS

This is an "I Heart" podcast. Guaranteed Human. If you're bookshelf and you're for you page are equally important to your personality, welcome home. Pro Society is a weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for anyone who thinks pride and prejudice and love island deserve the same level of discourse. Each week, we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and pop culture. With your favorite writers, book talk creators, and plenty of overthought opinions. Yeah, I'm obsessed, I'm obsessed. Listen to Pro Society on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, this is Hayes Davenport, and Sean Clements. We host the podcast, Hollywood Handbook. Each week, we talk to someone in show business and try to help them with their careers and see what they have to offer us. Everyone has a good time and no one gets mad at their publicists for letting them do our show. We've had a lot of great guests like Sarah Sherman, Adam Scott, Danny McBride, Ben Stillert, and a lot of other big shots that wouldn't be where they are without us. Listen to Hollywood Handbook on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. - On the new podcast, Solita, we share the messy reality of traveling alone as a woman. I can wait four hours for the next bus, or this random dude is offering the ride on his motorcycle. I choose Option B. I'm Julie Pinero, and I travel by myself because it's a rare space where I can say yes without asking anyone else first. I'm on a mission to reclaim the word Solita, trading the pity for possibility. Listen to Solita on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. - I survived nine months in captivity, and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them. I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are the survivor files. Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable, abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced. These are stories about what it takes to make it out alive. Listen to the survivor files with the Elizabeth Smart on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. (dramatic music) - Hey, it's Stephanie, back with the bonus episode. I wanna play you some behind the scenes tape from my two reporting trips to San Francisco. The first one is from the night of the Continuance, after Laura filed an Americans with Disabilities Act accommodation with the court, and Mike was told his hearing would be continued in two weeks. Spirits were low, people who had been following the case felt defeated, and so did Mike. The evening of the Continuance, I met up with journalist Megan Fox to hear how the rest of her day unfolded. - Start recording if you're ready. - Yep. - All right. - It was around 8.30 p.m., Megan and I sound exhausted because we were. - The first question I have for you is, what was your reaction to what happened today? It was awful. I couldn't process it until after I did some exit interviews with Omar and Clayton. I couldn't process it for a while. I'm not even sure I still have. I'm not even sure that I have, but there was a moment when Omar and Mike walked out of the courtroom and I could see that they were both crying. That was hard, really hard. And my heart just fell to the floor. And after I heard what happened, I went to Danielle who was sobbing and I hugged her and she fell on my shoulders and sobbed. And that was awful, but there was something inside of me that was keeping me from having any emotion whatsoever. All I said to her was we're not going anywhere, we're not leaving you and we'll be here. And she was just sobbing and it was awful. We now know that after the alleged life-threatening circumstances that caused Laura to miss the hearing, she showed up at a horse competition that very same week where she was show jumping and winning ribbons. The online community banded together on live streams. They launched a fundraiser to help Mike with the expenses of having to come back to court again in two weeks. It was insane, like I said, I didn't intend for it to be a fundraising stream. I just wanted to tell them what happened. I wanted to have a better stream than yesterday because the Wi-Fi went down, the power went out, it was a nightmare, my computer died. It was just a shit show. And I wanted to have a smooth stream and just tell them what happened and prepare them for a fact that there would be a fundraising stream. 'Cause I had already called Dave and we got to do this. I didn't think we would raise any money today. I mean, I was gonna direct them to the fundraiser and I tell them if you have it, give it, he's gonna need it. They started donating to the GoFundMe so fast and furious that in the first hour of the stream, it was like $4,000 was raised in an hour. And that's when it started to hit me that, oh my God. We thought we weren't gonna be able to raise $3,500 for the court reporter. We just passed 4,000 in one hour. The community is just going nuts and it kept going. By the time I was done with two hours of streaming, they were at $10,000. $10,000 more. Why do you think that what happened today sparked that with everyone? Nobody's giving up here. This is not what she thinks it is. She didn't stop anybody. (soft music) Two weeks later, I went back to San Francisco for the continued hearing. Like I said in episode 11, it felt like deja vu. The continuance threw a wrench into things for everyone, most of all for Mike and his wife Danielle, but also for the court system. Space is limited and that time could have gone to someone who would have actually shown up. Even Mike's attorney Omar Cerrado had a family vacation planned that had to be rescheduled due to the continuance. Here's Omar. - So I had a vacation planned. And so I come home and my tell my wife that yeah, it got continued and hastle bad news. Bad news. And then she's like, what? What? And you could imagine how that conversation went. She was very supportive. She was angry. She was really sad. She has some choice words for Laura, but she understood the mission. And she's like, if I'm going to miss my vacation, you better just fucking finish this. It costs us $3,300 for the cancellation or whatever. It's like, well, I'm just gone to the wind, huh? I guess. And I just look, look, we will go on a better vacation. I promise, somehow we're going to make this right. We're going to make it up to you. - This example might sound small, but it just proves the ripple effect of Laura's actions. - On my second reporting trip to San Francisco, the energy was markedly different. I was in the courtroom with everyone when the domestic violence restraining order against Mike was dismissed. I left the courthouse that day with Mike's attorneys, Omar Cerrado and Rachel Juarez. We called a Waymo, one of those self-driving cars. - It's my first Waymo. It's like a celebration Waymo. (laughing) - You can hear the energy and relief in Rachel's voice. We all piled in and debriefed the DVRO dismissal. - Tell me how it was. - Woo! It went as well as it possibly could have gone. - It was literally best case scenario. - Yes. - In every respect. - Oh, we should start the light. Yeah, the fact that we didn't have to say anything was exactly what we were hoping for. - Yeah. - And what my fear was and I was starting to get nervous like, hey, it's like almost 9.30. We're still not in the courtroom. And I was telling Rachel, hey, they might be having like another in-camera thing. I'm having flashbacks. I'm telling Mike, don't get your hopes up. Be prepared for everything because when they call us in and let everybody in, and they basically started just conducting it as if they're gonna start a trial, I started to feel better about it. And then they make no to the time. It is 9.30, we were scheduled for 9 o'clock. I don't see lower ones here in the lobby or even here on Zoom. But therefore, I'm going to dismiss the case. But before that, you can crack the joke with the court or, oh, I guess this is gonna be a quick matter. - She did, yes. That was when I felt much better. - It's like how we got there. - I took a sigh of relief. Yeah, and this really was as gratifying as it would have been to, you know, present her with all the evidence that Laura was at a horse show and she's done all these other things to other courts before like this. Any additional evidence that got presented just creates more possibility for chaos, which is I think what Laura thrives on. So the fact that the judge kept it so simple, she was ordered to be here, she did not appear. I told her the consequences, it's dismissed, is really the best result, I think, in terms of trying to minimize the work in chaos going forward. - What are her options after this? - Appeal. She can appeal. I don't think she has a good appeal, but she can appeal. She can also. she can seek another restraining order. She has lots of options to make sure this doesn't end. Do you think she will continue on with that knowing that there's the criminal case going on in Arizona? Yes. Because I. If that was a deterrent. Sorry. There was no hesitation. Yeah, we could not, yes. She would have. She would have never brought this if that was going to be a deterrent. Yeah. Laura seems to have any fear of is testifying in person and being subject to cross-examination, which is not smart because in many ways, submitting a written declaration is more potentially dangerous than having in-person testimony. But she does not seem to be fully aware of, I guess, the consequences of submitting a written declaration that's a lie. Grounds would she even have to file a new one. Well, that. I have no. She would. Yeah. Yeah. She would say that Mike is behind the JFC account. She would say that Mike walked by her house, but she can't prove it. Or she could just say she wants one for all the stuff that's already happened. I mean, she won't win that way, but she can say whatever she wanted to say. Right. Yeah, and so, I really think she'll go the appellate route, frankly. And then only if that. I think she wants to maximize how long this goes, how involved she can be. So I think she'll pursue the appellate route, and then after that doesn't work, I think we'll see another restraining order saying, like, Mike stalking me. I mean, that's what's going to happen. If that happens, good luck. Yeah. I can't seem to even grant some of the temporary. Not if she falls in this. County. Yeah, I mean, it would have to be in Arizona, but they know about her up there, too. That's true. Anything else that you guys want to say about today? How you're feeling? Did anybody else think it was crazy that it was raining all morning, and then the moment we walked out of the courtroom, there was a. There was sun? Yeah. You saw this sun. That's exactly how it felt. Yeah. No, I think it's really seeing Mike and his family there. It really reminds you that this has been his life. It's been so debilitating in so many ways over the last however many years for him. Seeing him so relieved and seeing his family so relieved, I think, was worth everything that's been put into it, because he didn't deserve this. Another thing is, like, we've experienced it, like, two weeks ago when we were back here, and we thought that we had a mutual dismissal, that whole thing, and they were celebrating in Mike's and Tiers, and everybody was in Tiers, and then I'm sitting there and my phone is buzzing in my pocket. I'm like, what is this? Alora is asking for a remote link or whatever, but she said she was going to be there to whatever. And then I got another one saying she asked for a link for David Jingerist. That's right. And I'm like, what is going. What's going on? And then I email Laura, "Hey, I thought we had an agreement on the death still to case." Yeah. And then she says, "No, we don't have an agreement." Just like that. Mike. He just. The devastation in that moment. Mike wasn't devastated in that moment. He wasn't. He was pissed. Yeah. I was genuinely pissed. We were up until like 2 a.m. that night. I went back to working on my cross. People were putting together the trial notebooks, you know, people were documenting stuff. That whole night was just a weird blur. You can only imagine how it feels for Mike. This is not nothing to him, you know. This has been his life. And the emotional roller coaster for us, just because we're invested legally and also because Mike has become a friend, you know, who we care about. The emotional roller coaster for us and you and the people that have been following this is so much that even two weeks, last minute, back and forth, it's not like a regular trial, where you're still kind of like, "Oh my gosh, I was ready. Now I'm not." That's a lot of adrenaline. This is like devastation and then elation and then, you know, it's circling through those emotions so quickly. It takes a toll on it. That's 100% the truth. Like, you have trials and then you continue and, you know, is that whatever, I guess we'll do it in a month. Yeah. And for like an audience or like this ground swell support for somebody, that just adds in a variable that I did not account for because just seeing the devastation, I could handle it. I was pissed. Right. But then seeing everybody else being pissed, it just further sinks you into this place. It's like, when you ask me, what do you feel? I feel nothing. Yeah. I was not gonna acknowledge any negative, I can't get too low, it's, look, we'll be back in two weeks. That was the only thing to say. So, time to celebrate now? Yes. Now I feel all of the things. Right. Yep. Let's go celebrate and we're gonna toast to Judge Gold, I think. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. So, Judge Gold. Thank you so much for listening. Stay tuned for new episodes in bonus content on the Love Trap feed. I'm the new podcast, Solita, we share the messy reality of traveling alone as a woman. I can wait four hours for the next bus or this random dude is offering the ride on his motorcycle. I choose option B. I'm Julie Pinero and I travel by myself because it's a rare space where I can say yes without asking anyone else first. Fast into Solita on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. I survived nine months in captivity and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them. I'm Elizabeth Smart and these are the survivor files. Every week I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable, abducted, stalked, controlled and nearly silenced. Listen to the survivor files with the Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. If you're a bookshelf and you're for you page are equally important to your personality, welcome home. Each week we're connecting the dots between books, the internet and pop culture with your favorite writers, book talk creators and plenty of overthought opinions. Listen to pro society on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, this is Hayes Davenport and Sean Clements. We host the podcast Hollywood Handbook. Each week we talk to someone in show business and try to help them with their careers and see what they have to offer us. There's a lot of great guests like Sarah Sherman, Adam Scott, Danny McBride, Ben Stillert, and a lot of other big shots that wouldn't be where they are without us. Listen to Hollywood Handbook on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed human.