Orem's Good News Paper, Real Local Journalism
10/20/23 Watch or Listen time is 0:20, Story by Tom (Treyeshua) Tomeny
The unlikely story of how Orem's Good Newspaper came to be!
Our previous business venture was a food concept known as Beweto. We operated for a short time in Orem, at the corner of State Street and University Parkway in the south parking lot of the Big 5 sporting goods store. We thought we had a winning concept, but apparently, God had other plans for us.
On July 11, 2023 we arrived to set up for our breakfast burrito business but had a problem, as another food trailer, Los Catrachos, was parked right where we set up our Car Hop parking spaces as seen in the photo above. This was very disturbing, as it was about 5:30 in the morning, and Orem's mobile food vendor law says that a vendor may only occupy a spot for five hours. Given Los Catrachos does not open for breakfast, their sole purpose in being there was to disrupt our operation and occupy what they considered to be the best section of that very long parking lot.
We had recently changed our trailer operator from our founding operator, Alberto (Berto) Aviles, who had first opened on May 26, to my amazing stepdaughter, Heather Taylor. Doing so had cost us about two weeks time of not operating, as we got new permits and a new commissary location for Mama's Beweto. Apparently, during that time, Los Catrachos had operated, for lunch and dinner, in our previous spot. Operating in that exact spot was essential to us, as we had created a clothesline style system to hang and demarcate our Car Hop spots, and it only worked between the two specific concrete tree wells it was built for.
So when we arrived, Los Catrachos was there, with that trailer still hooked up, and the driver sitting inside, idling and listening to his music. His presence made me a bit upset, as his intentions to disrupt our operation were clear. We had encountereed Los Catrachos the day before, Heather's first day of operation, when they arrived at about 10:00 am and painstakingly maneuvered their trailer into a position then to disrupt our operation.
So I yelled at his vehicle, since he was inside with music on, to get him to open his window so we could talk. When he opened his window, we had a civil conversation, so civil that he introduced himself to me as Leo, and he agreed to move his trailer, as I explained that two trailers in the same are that are cooperating typically draw more customes for both, but it made no sense for him to be blocking us from our established operating spot.
But it turns out that Leo is not a man of his word, for he apparently made two phone calls instead of moving. One call was to his friend Gabriel, who showed up a few minutes later, and the second call was to the Orem police, who showed up shortly after Gabriel. When the police arrived, we never saw them talk to Leo, who, in retrospect, had made a clearly false police report, reporting a "fight", "a man threatening him", and and that "suspect threatened to bring a gun yesterday", all lies. Instead the police talked exclusively to Gabriel, who speaks better English than Leo, and got his version of the events that he was not even present to witness.
According to the official police report of that incident, the police determined, correctly, that there had been no threats, but simply a dispute over who was going to park where. They advise us and Gabriel to be civil in our interactions, and talk to the property owner, Big 5, about who should set up where and when.
My stepdaughter, Heather, was furious about the whole interaction. She had been parked in our tow vehicle at least a hundred feet away, and thought that I had been yelling at Leo through his open window, when in fact I was yelling at the vehicle in order to get him to open the window so we could talk civilly.
After the police left, Heather started yelling at me, due to her being upset at how she believed I had been rude to Leo, and later, how I had demanded that her daughter not get involved in this at all. She also called my wife, who rushed to the scene to see exacly what was going on.
Then things got really crazy as Gabriel called the police again. Gabriel speaks good English, and should have known better, but he too reported a "fight", causing five Orem police to show up at this purported "crime scene". This time around, the police barely talked to me at all, as I was inside the trailer setting up for the day, but instead listened to, and took written statements from, Heather and Gabriel. When they finally talked to me at lenght, it was to issue me a citation for a Class C Misdemeanor of Disorderly Conduct After Being Told to Stop. This was a totally false charge as the first call had resulted in me being advised to "be civil" with Gabriel, which I was, and the second call, by Gabriel was that I was fighting with two women, not something I had been advised not to do, and once again, it was not fighting, it was a discussion among family members about how I had handled the situation.
According to the police report, the second call caused the police to call Big 5 corporate management, and, due to that call, Big 5 decided, without hearing all the facts, to no longer allow any mobile food vendors on their property. This was devastating for us, Los Catrachos, and most importantly, a really well run operation known as Taco Nation, which was not involved at all and had been operating there successfullly for years.
And this is part of the story of how Orem's Good News Paper came to be. For this was my second time being falsely charged by the Orem police with a non-crime, and the first time had disastrous consequences. Since the Daily Herald showed no interest in either story, I realized that Orem desperately needs a true local newspaper, and that producing one is a better vocation for me than building another chain of food outlets, which was my most successful previous venture.
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