Mirkarimi, wife happy to move beyond ordeal
Nobody seemed to take any notice of the happy couple sitting outside Farley’s Coffee on Potrero Hill on a recent afternoon as they cooed over their 3-month-old baby boy and took turns holding him.
What a difference five years make.
Monday marks a half decade since the culmination of the nine-month-long melodrama that consumed San Francisco, City Hall and these very news pages — and which saw this couple, Ross Mirkarimi and Eliana Lopez, at the center of a very public firestorm.
On Oct. 9, 2012, the Board of Supervisors jolted the city by reinstating Mirkarimi as sheriff after Mayor Ed Lee suspended him for pleading guilty to a misdemeanor related to grabbing and bruising his wife’s arm during a heated argument.
Mirkarimi reclaimed his job but not his
reputation, which was further damaged after his department released an undocumented felon without notifying federal immigration authorities. That man is now on trial for the shooting death of Kate Steinle on Pier 14 in July 2015.
Mirkarimi lost his re-election bid in November 2015 to the current sheriff, Vicki Hennessy, and fell off the public’s radar almost entirely. I texted Mirkarimi a couple of weeks ago, asking if he’d agree to talk about life five years since the scandal and doubted I’d hear back from him.
After all, The Chronicle documented the saga’s many twists and turns in a way Mirkarimi made clear he found unfair. Mirkarimi, always a loner at City Hall, alienated much of the city, particularly women, by initially dismissing the domestic violence incident as “a private matter, a family matter.” After that, he never found his footing and seemed to blame everybody else for his troubles.
But Mirkarimi, also a former city supervisor, persuaded his wife to join him for an interview, and the couple were very candid in our hourlong chat. They’re still angry about the 2012 “witch hunt” and “shock-and-awe campaign,” as they call it, but they’ve mostly put it behind them to live a far quieter and seemingly far happier life.
“We are great — great! Super happy!” said a beaming Lopez, a former telenovela star from Venezuela.
She cradled their baby, Kian, who was born at their Potrero Hill home with the help of a midwife. The couple lit up as they recalled the fast labor.
“Ross caught him!” Lopez said.
“And cut the umbilical cord,” Mirkarimi added.
Their older son, Theo, is in third grade in a Spanish immersion program at a public elementary school.
The family declined to be photographed, so let me paint you a picture. Lopez looks just as gorgeous as ever and was dressed in all black except for her red shoes. Mirkarimi’s hair is longer and grayer than it was at City Hall, and he looked more tan, heftier and relaxed than he did back then.
Mirkarimi is now a consultant for the cannabis and criminal justice industries. He said he’s making about as much money as he did as sheriff, which was $199,000 when he was suspended. (“I will release my tax returns!” he said with a laugh.)
He recently returned from San Luis Obispo, where he is advising the Sheriff ’s Department on reforms after a mentally ill inmate there died of a blood clot in his lung after being restrained in a chair for 46 hours.
“I’ve been able to cobble together a work life and life with the family,” Mirkarimi said. “It was 24/7 in City Hall, which I loved, but probably loved too much.”
He said he wishes he were still the city’s sheriff. “It’s a passion that doesn’t go away,” he said.
Lopez is taking a break from acting to care for Kian after a nationwide tour of her one-woman retelling of the City Hall soap opera called “What Is the Scandal?” Before becoming pregnant with Kian, she and her brother and sister-in-law started a production company called Tres Lopez, making social media videos to tell the stories of companies.
Lopez, who became an American citizen in 2013, hasn’t been back to her native country, which is in political and economic crisis, since last year. She said she refuses to take her baby there to meet her extended family until the country is safer.
Ironically, Lopez’s desire to take the couple’s older son to Venezuela is what set off the entire episode. On New Year’s Eve 2011, the couple fought over the planned trip, which Mirkarimi adamantly opposed.
He admits he grabbed and bruised his wife’s arm in front of their toddler, but both said the violence was a one-time occurrence. Lopez told a neighbor about the incident, which is how it became public. The couple said they both have fiery tempers but are working to control them.
“We are a very passionate couple. I’m Persian, she’s Venezuelan. If we adopted a North Korean kid, it would be the complete axis of evil,” Mirkarimi joked.
In March 2012, Mirkarimi pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor count of false imprisonment and was sentenced to three years’ probation. Three days later, Lee suspended him for official misconduct. The mayor needed nine of the 11 supervisors’ votes to oust Mirkarimi permanently, but on Oct. 9, four supervisors — David Campos, John Avalos, Jane Kim and Christina Olague — sided with Mirkarimi.
The four disagreed the sheriff had committed official misconduct, because the domestic violence incident happened before he was sworn in as sheriff and not while on the job. Campos, Avalos and Kim told me they still think they made the right call, while Olague didn’t return a call for comment.
Of the four, just Kim remains in political office, still serving as a supervisor. She and Campos both lost races for the state Legislature to supervisors who voted to remove Mirkarimi. (They were Scott Wiener and David Chiu, respectively.) Whether the votes made a difference in the races is anybody’s guess.
Mirkarimi said he doesn’t keep in touch with anybody from City Hall. Asked whether he has any friends from those days, the former sheriff seemed confused.
“Friends? I was a comrade,” he said. “It wasn’t about building relationships. That was a deficiency on my part.”
In fact, he hasn’t spoken to the mayor since the day Lee suspended him. There wasn’t to be any exchange between the two for this column either — Lee declined to comment.
Kathy Black is the director of La Casa de las Madres, a shelter for abused women, and spoke in favor of Mirkarimi’s ouster many times. She said it was never personal, and she wishes the family well.
“I still strongly believe that San Franciscans deserve a sheriff who hasn’t pleaded guilty to a domestic violence crime,” she said, noting she wasn’t surprised to hear the couple is still together because many remain married after domestic violence incidents.
Surprisingly, Lopez and Mirkarimi are friendly with District Attorney George Gascón and his wife, Fabiola Kramsky. The district attorney charged Mirkarimi with the crime, but the men made amends after their wives starred in “The Vagina Monologues” together. Gascón and Kramsky attended a baby shower for Lopez and Mirkarimi a few months ago.
Lopez cried as she recounted the hardships of 2012 and is adamant Lee just wanted a political opponent out of office.
“It was not because of concern for me or Theo,” she said. “The concern was not my family or my safety, never.”
Mirkarimi said it doesn’t seem like it’s been a full five years since the scandal.
“Nothing as tumultuous as that seems that long ago,” he said. “It weighs on you. The experience lasts, and there are always lessons to be learned.
“But we’re a move-forward kind of people,” he continued. “Am I upset? No. But it’s something that you think about. Not every day. But a lot.”