Behind the Scenes in San Francisco | BONUS

Stephani Young (0:05)

Hey, it's Stephani, back with a bonus episode.

I want to 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.

Megan Fox (0:38)

Start recording if you're ready. Yep.

Stephani Young (0:41)

All right. It was around 8:30 PM.

Megan and I sound exhausted because we were.

SPEAKER_3 (0:48)

The first question I have for you is, what was your reaction to what happened today?

Megan Fox (0:58)

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.

Stephani Young (2:08)

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 showjumping 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.

Megan Fox (2:29)

It was insane.

SPEAKER_4 (2:30)

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. 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. Because I'd already called Dave and like, we got to do this.

I didn't think we would raise any money today. I mean, I was going to direct them to the fundraiser and I tell them, if you have it, give it, he's going to 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 going to 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 2 hours of streaming, they were at $10,000.

$10,000 more dollars.

SPEAKER_5 (3:49)

Why do you think that that, that what happened today sparked that with everyone?

SPEAKER_4 (3:55)

Nobody's giving up here. This is not what she thinks it is. She didn't stop anybody.

Stephani Young (4:06)

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 Serato had a family vacation planned that had to be rescheduled due to the continuance. Here's Omar.

Omar Serato (4:36)

So I had a vacation planned. And so I come home, and I tell my wife that, yeah, it got continued, and hey, so 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 had 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 fee or whatever. It's like, well, just gone to the wind, huh? I guess. And I just prompt, look, look, we will go on a better vacation. I promise.