"[1] Contreras was born in Dinuba, a city in California's Central Valley, to farmworker parents who had immigrated from Mexico during the 1920s under the Bracero Program.

A contest over the leadership of the union's Local 11 led another labor leader, Maria Elena Durazo, to protest his involvement in the dispute.

During his tenure as secretary-treasurer, Contreras reached out to immigrant workers and worked to firmly integrate his union into the Los Angeles political landscape.

He organized one of the largest immigrant-rights rallies in United States history, which drew some 20,000 people to the Los Angeles Sports Arena.

It was described as being "[not] even a storefront, but rather a series of nondescript back rooms, stuck behind a liquor store/video-rental shop and sealed off from the outside by a metal security door".

It said that Martin Ludlow, a Los Angeles city councilman, wanted to avoid an autopsy and engaged in a loud argument with hospital staff.

Other officials present at the hospital in the immediate hours after Contreras' death, including Antonio Villaraigosa and James Hahn, refused to comment.

One of its columnists, Harold Meyerson, wrote an e-mail to the paper's staff that questioned the connection between Contreras' private life and his public career.

Alan Mittelstaedt, the editor of the LA Weekly, replied that "the mystery of [Contreras'] final hours and the questions it raises about the performance of a crucial public institution—the coroner's office—[were] too important to ignore".