After decades in prison, he transformed himself into the Inland Empire’s homeboy news anchor

In prison and seemingly unable to escape a destructive cycle that began when he was a child, Ahmed Bellozo spent hours watching investigative journalism shows, educational documentaries and Huell Howser’s homespun travelogue, “California’s Gold.” It was a way, he said, to distract from his pain.

Years later, out of prison and wanting a drastic change in his life, Bellozo turned to those shows for inspiration as he reinvented himself on social media as the star of “On the Tira” — a video series that’s part showcase of local landmarks, part investigative journalism and part hyperlocal news about fires and car accidents across the Inland Empire communities he’s lived in for most of his life.

Armed with a cellphone, a blinged-out toy microphone and a large gold chain bearing his logo, Bellozo films himself delivering the news — at times admitting he’s unsure of the facts — with his memorable Chicano accent. Though he sometimes sounds like any reporter you can hear in mainstream media, Bellozo sprinkles his reports with Spanish and prison slang, often affectionately addressing his followers as “homie,” “foo” or “dog.” (“On the Tira” was inspired by some prison lingo we’ll get to later.)

In January, Bellozo recorded from his dashboard while he drove to cover the Clay fire in Riverside and marveled at the orange hue and large smoke plume ahead.

“Geez Louise!” he said, bringing to mind Howser’s tendency to blurt out in amazement. “Just wow, homie, Riverside is on fire!”

A few minutes later, he stood just feet away from the large brush fire wearing a yellow fire helmet branded with an “On the Tira” sticker. “Wow, just wow!” he said. Nearby, firefighters lined up to battle the blaze. He likened their job to urinating into a volcano, an analogy you definitely won’t hear on the evening news. And his fans love it.

“It’s the vato news anchor for me,” one person responded in the comments, followed by a clapping emoji.

In a region where local news has been severely diminished over the years, Bellozo’s videos are resonating with an audience totaling more than 200,000 followers on Instagram and TikTok.

In the comments, viewers often thank him for his work — some call him their favorite reporter.

“They connect with me because I remind them of somebody. I remind them of their dad. I remind them of their uncle. I remind them of their brother who was an addict,” Bellozo said. He’s 48, with a thin face, graying mustache and goatee that give him the weathered look of someone who’s done some time.

Ahmed Bellozo tries to interview a homeless woman on North Frontage Road in Highland, Calif., near an encampment.

(Mark Boster / For De Los)

Elisa Galvan, who lives in Grand Terrace, started following Bellozo after he covered a fire near her work. Last month, she and several other followers joined him when he held a vigil and handed out donated goods at a homeless encampment where he’s been reporting on a woman’s death.

“He just wants the story, he wants the actual roots of the story and he’s good in asking those questions and he’s not scared,” Galvan said. “I haven’t seen anyone else like him. He’s a local and just reporting on everyday news.”

Bellozo’s coverage is far from traditional journalism — he’s handed money to a homeless woman after an interview, films promotional material for companies and mails free merch to first responders who have appeared in his videos.

“The old ways are out,” Bellozo said. “I try to do news, I try to be accurate now, I try to be funny. I try to be everything because something has got to work.”

The project comes at a time when the mainstays of local news across the Inland Empire — publications like the Press-Enterprise and San Bernardino Sun — have slowly been gutted, losing the reporters needed for substantive coverage, said Thomas Corrigan, a communications and media professor at Cal State San Bernardino.

“The four dailies in the San Bernardino, Riverside, Ontario and Redlands communities, those papers just duplicate one another’s content,” Corrigan said. “When it comes to our news resources, it’s rather thin.”

The Inland Empire is not quite a news desert, Corrigan said, but a news mirage — an area that seems to have more substantive journalism than in reality.

“You can get lured into the feeling that your community is well-covered,” Corrigan said.

The region also has seen a rise in newsy social media accounts that have gained thousands of followers by posting user-submitted clips and sometimes sensationalized videos.

“As your audiences grow, there’s also a responsibility within this space to practice ethical news gathering and reporting practices,” Corrigan said. “My hope would be that folks who have built these audiences look to become folks who have those sorts of expertise.”

Bellozo was 12 years old when he was first locked up, having been caught sitting in a car his friends had stolen hours earlier. He spent most of his teens in and out of juvenile detention centers and as an adult was convicted of felony robbery, assaulting a correctional officer and other charges. He served a total of 23 years in jail and has tattoos up and down his arms, neck and chest, including the word “dopefiend” in cursive, as a reminder of his struggle with addiction.

“I thought he was never going to come out,” said Sonia Guilfoos, Bellozo’s longtime friend, whom he met in high school. “He didn’t get his life together, he kept getting more time.”

To keep his sanity, Bellozo began reading hundreds of periodicals and binged hours of educational content on PBS.

Ahmed Bellozo lifts his shirt to show his prison tattoos that depict a life of drugs.

(Mark Boster / For De Los)

He especially loved watching “California’s Gold,” and took note of Howser’s retro attire, his contagious curiosity and folksy persona as he wandered the state highlighting its people and places.

During his last prison stint, Bellozo said, he was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia. For two years, he was chained to his hospital bed without access to any form of entertainment, left to lay in pain and listen to the hum of medical devices. He realized he needed to make a change.

“God literally took my ability to move, so I had no choice but to figure out ‘what are you going to do?’” he said.

He got out of prison on parole in 2015 and worked as a tattoo artist throughout the Inland Empire for several years. Then, in 2023, he created his first news-focused social media account — calling it Foo News Network, a mash-up parody of CNN, Fox News and foo, the Chicano slang term for friend — that was meant to serve as a meme page.

“I know how journalists talk, I know how they present a story,” Bellozo said, recalling his years watching them while imprisoned. “So I just said, ‘I could do that.’”

As he grew his viewership he started receiving news-related tips from residents, direct messages about incidents from first responders and video requests.

Dressed in his favorite fire suit and helmet, Ahmed Bellozo interviews homeless women Laura and Stacy near an encampment in Highland.

(Mark Boster / For De Los)

He began reporting on local incidents such as fires, graffiti and robberies — acquiring more than 145,000 followers over the next year. The pages also caught the attention of social media moderators, who said they infringed on copyrighted materials.

“Instagram and TikTok kept sending me emails warning me, ‘You’re getting these cease and desists,’ I was getting all these messages but I don’t pay attention to none of that,” Bellozo said. “So finally, I woke up one night, about 2 in the morning and I go to my Instagram and gone. Everything was gone instantly.”

He was devastated, especially financially — he had been bringing in thousands of dollars a month through a combination of ads that played before his videos, local sponsorship deals and TikTok’s influencer payment programs, he said. Yet he remained undeterred and overhauled his social media pages, calling the new pages “On the Tira” in honor of a popular prison slang term — “on the tier.”

In prison, he said, “it’s frowned upon to yell out your door. So, if you have to yell out the door for whatever reason, you always excuse yourself,” Bellozo said. “You make your statement, and at the end of whatever you gotta say, you say ‘Thank you, on the tier’ and the noise goes back up.”

He repeats the term throughout many of his videos as if asking his viewers to give him a moment of their time.

The first videos were a homage to the amiable, Tennessee-born Howser, with Bellozo wandering the Inland Empire and highlighting local gems such as the Rubidoux Drive-in Theatre in Riverside or the Pochea Indian village site in Hemet.

In a matter of months, he had rebuilt his following and then some. The social media accounts rapidly grew, according to Bellozo, because he put his face in front of the camera and told the news through his lens.

His most popular videos show him standing next to raging wildfires, interviewing first responders at car accidents or featuring local spots from Fontana to San Jacinto to Lake Elsinore.

In one clip — part of a series he calls “California’s Foos Gold” — he highlighted one of Riverside’s landmarks, the Trujillo Adobe, a 157-year-old structure predating the city’s establishment. Bellozo zoomed in on plaques, informational signs and nearby scenery while excitedly listing off historical tidbits about the Inland Empire’s early settlers.

“If you didn’t know this was here, you would never know, homie. But now you know,” he said, smiling to the camera.

The videos also can be funny. In one he is sock-checking firefighters — a social media trend where people show off how high their socks are to prove their Chicano cred.

In another, Bellozo stands yards away from a small fire and tells the audience he’s reporting from the Santa Ana River. He interviews a resident of a nearby homeless encampment who speculates that an improperly extinguished bonfire caused the blaze. Bellozo fist-bumps a smiling firefighter as he walks toward the charred remains of impromptu shelters and collected materials.

Then, the video cuts to a shot of Bellozo holding a large hose and battling a small flame with a fire captain behind him as if he were saving the day. The captain and Bellozo grin as they spray an ash-filled area.

Recently, Bellozo has turned his attention to covering the 2023 death of a woman nicknamed Sunny who lived in a homeless encampment in the community of Highland. He first learned about her death while reporting on a nearby brush fire. That’s where he noticed dozens of graffitied messages, all ranging in size, paying respects to her.

In the past few weeks, he has repeatedly visited the homeless encampment near State Route 330 to interview other homeless individuals about Sunny and their accounts of the killing. His coverage has gained traction, and his fans have sent him articles, photos and public records about the incident to help his reporting.

Bellozo said he knows that his past most probably would bar him from being hired at many jobs. For now, he is content building his own enterprise. He has been increasingly making money off businesses that advertise on his page and sometimes solicits them in his videos.

“I created something, dog,” he said. “That’s what I’m trying to show people, that I created something on just my phone.”

Hernandez is a freelance writer based in Riverside. This article is part of a De Los initiative to expand coverage of the Inland Empire with funding from the Cultivating Inland Empire Latino Opportunity (CIELO) Fund at the Inland Empire Community Foundation.