Vandals deface multiple headstones at historic Long Beach cemetery

Julie Bartolotto was greeted with toppled headstones, smashed memorials and defaced photos when she walked around Long Beach's historic Sunnyside Cemetery on Saturday. 

"This is a place of respect and these headstones can't easily be recreated," said Bartolotto, the Executive Director at the city's Historical Society.

She added that she was devasted and panicked as the nonprofit is just weeks away from putting on its highly anticipated 26-annual historical cemetery tour. Every year, the event draws thousands of people hoping to learn about Long Beach's pride and joy such as 1924 Southern California PGA Golf champion Dick Linares or Japanese internment survivors and historians Mas and Aiko Takeshita. 

"Here you can find the stories of all sorts of people," said Bartolotto. 

According to the groundskeeper, the vandalism happened Thursday night and Friday morning and told Long Beach police about it. Bartolotto said the cemetery has become a target for vandals with the number of vandalism incidents happening more often. The damages could cost the city several thousand dollars of taxpayer money to repair. 

"The city has to make hard decisions all the time with its' money and this probably several thousand dollars, I would imagine, in repairs," Bartolotto said.

Long Beach Parks is in the process of fixing the damage ahead of the cemetery tour on October 29. Officials said that the headstones aren't just rocks placed in the ground but legacies of the people who shaped Long Beach.

"These are grave markers of real people that somebody cared about," said Bartolotto.