Steve Lopez: Hard times in an expensive region
LOS ANGELES_She's a Los Angeles native, the daughter of Japanese immigrants, and at one time she was the definition of middle class.
College education. Good job. Nice apartment in the Cheviot Hills area.
Losing those things did not happen overnight. There's a story here, an unraveling, a long process of decline. Often, for the tens of thousands of people who live on the margins in one of the most expensive regions of the world, a bad break is the beginning of a steep drop.
Meg Shimatsu, 54, was diagnosed with diabetes almost 20 years ago, but the bigger blow came nearly a decade ago. That's when doctors told her that her kidneys were giving out.
Her disease advanced in the
