Community Corner

How Bozena Barton Came to Live in Eagle Rock

"Oh, Eagle Rock—that sounds like somewhere in the mountains of central California," the Polish immigrant thought when she first met her future husband from ER online.

After nearly a decade of living like a free spirit in Flagstaff, AZ, Bozena Barton was ready for a change. Dating men locally hadn’t quite worked for the Polish immigrant, so she singed up with the Village Voice’s online personal ads and told herself: “I'll have an adventure. I'll meet somebody from another city and see if it goes anywhere and maybe I'll move and maybe I won't. I'm open to being anywhere in the country.”

Los Angeles was the farthest place from Bozena’s mind—and the story of how she ended up living in Eagle Rock with her husband for eight years is a testament to L.A.’s enduring ability to surprise as well as to human fortitude.

If it weren’t for the words “Eagle Rock,” however, Bozena might never have come to Los Angeles, she tells Jeremy Rosenberg, a freelance journalist who writes a weekly column titled “Arrival Stories” for KCET.org. (The column focuses on the dramatic developments surrounding people’s immigrant journeys to the City of Angels.)

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As it happened, the man Bozena met online was Los Angeles Times editor Chris Barton. In his online dating profile, Barton did not say he lived in L.A. Instead, he wrote Eagle Rock.

“I hadn't heard of Eagle Rock,” Bozena tells Rosenberg. “I thought, ‘Oh, Eagle Rock. That sounds like somewhere in the mountains of central California.’ I had no idea that was in L.A. until I started writing to Chris. And of course Chris is a great writer. The minute I realized where he was living, I thought, 'Oh no. What have I done!'

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But at that point, Chris had worked his charms on me and I stopped caring really that he was in Los Angeles.’

A Cal State L.A. graduate student in speech language pathology, Bozena eventually moved to South Pasadena, where she lives with her husband. Click here to read about her immigration journey that took all sorts of twists and turns before she settled in Eagle Rock.


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