04/26/2026
"Why is the only store in town closed?"
Ok. Here we go. Part 3. Final chapter.
If you're just joining us — check out Parts 1 and 2. The short version: Bonnie Smith, ex-President of a Ranchita Community Org (MVVCSO,a 501c3 nonprofit), sent a booklet complaint to County Code Compliance targeting every single piece of land we own in Ranchita. Every community event we held. Our apiary. Our projects, everything that was a benefit to the community or helped keep our business running.
But Bonnie did not operate alone. She had a group chat ,mentioned in previous post, a mean girls (and boys) circle that strategized, planned, executed, and celebrated the harassment. Collectively. Consistently. Some of those people are still out here thinking they can slide back into the dark.
What Part 3 is about is the why. Because all of this, the years of stalking, harassment, the complaints, the nails in the driveway, the county departments, the anonymous tips about our private loan it was never about community concern.
It was about this property.
What brings it all together
On September 27, 2023 almost a full year after sending that booklet complaint to the county to include various other government agencies — Bonnie Smith filed a Fictitious Business Name Statement with the San Diego County Recorder's Office.
FBN # 2023-9019939.
The name she filed?
Montezuma Valley Market. MVM.
The store name we took over and built a brand under.
She filed it under the MVVCSO — the same nonprofit she used to send the complaints and consistently harassed us with.
Who Bonnie Smith actually is.
She is Bonnie L. Smith, licensed real estate broker. CA DRE # 01259045. Owner of Smith Estates.
You can look her up. CA DRE # 01259045.
Her listed specialty? Montezuma Valley. Ranchita. Warner Springs.
She used her nonprofit presidency as institutional cover to file multi-agency complaints against us. She then filed to own our store's name.
And we were receiving anonymous tips warning us not to default on our commercial loan....which shows her gang of losers had loose lips or maybe it was her bragging to people about her plan to take over the property without paying for its value
I truly appreciate a local that went through the work of researching and requesting public records. Then they laid it all out for us to see where this was truly going.
The store property is zoned C40 — Rural Commercial. The only C40 parcel in Ranchita.
Now here's the part your local real estate broker probably knows very well.
San Diego County has a formal process called a Property Specific Request (PSR) — a petition any landowner can file with the Board of Supervisors to change the General Plan land use designation of a parcel. When a PSR is filed, the county automatically pulls neighboring parcels into what they call "study areas for mapping consistency purposes" — meaning adjacent lots get swept into the rezoning analysis automatically.
What that means in plain English: control the only C40 commercial parcel in a rural area, and you have documented standing to file a PSR that could reclassify the land around it. Control the seed. Influence the harvest.
This is documented San Diego County process, available at:
📎 PSR Process: sandiegocounty.gov/content/sdc/pds/advance/PSR.html
📎 C40 Definition (PDS-444): sandiegocounty.gov/content/dam/sdc/pds/zoning/formfields/PDS-444.pdf
📎 Rezone Application (PDS-383): sandiegocounty.gov/pds/zoning/formfields/PDS-383.pdf
Some Ranchitans believe this was always the longer play. Not the store. Not the community. This parcel and what it could unlock around it. A licensed real estate broker who lists Montezuma Valley and Ranchita as her specialty market would know exactly how that works.
So basically, Bonnie Smith did everything possible to make it extremely difficult for us to earn revenue thus forcing us to close and possibly default on the property loan. Then have some backdoor deal with our lender (the person we purchased the property from, so shady) to assume our loan. Meaning she doesn't have to pay the deposit we paid (50k) nor pay for all the improvements and also not pay for the business to include the brand. Pure legal theft.
This is not a new, very much part of American history.
What was done to us from the store burning down to everything afterward has been done to Black families and Black-owned businesses for over a hundred years in this country.
The tools change. The playbook doesn't.
Use harassment. Use government agencies. File your paperwork. Create conditions for default. Be positioned to acquire.
If you want to understand the full history of how this has been done to Black people in America through fraudulent tax schemes, USDA loan manipulation, eminent domain abuse, and coordinated legal pressure the American Bar Association published a detailed breakdown here: https://www.americanbar.org/groups/crsj/resources/human-rights/archive/contemporary-relevance-historic-black-land-loss/
We are not anomalies. We are a continuation.
To the people who participated, enabled, or silently approved of what was done to us. And the people who watched and said nothing are part of the reason a community lost its only store, its water project, its advocate, and years of investment from supporters across the globe.
You don't get to just walk away from that.
What Ranchita lost — and what they'll never build:
❌ The only store in town
❌ EBT access for residents who needed it
❌ A water project that would have lowered fire insurance rates, created public water access, closer water source for any fire emergency
❌ Outdoors recreation community
❌ Investors. Donors. Global supporters who believed in this community
❌ An advocate that showed up to political and county meetings to make sure this town and area was not forgotten.
Bonnie Smith ran the free food bank. That's something. We're not taking that away. But she had no skin in the game, no hard-earned investment. She did not burn down and attempt to rebuild. She did not invest.
She attempted to steal something she had absolutely no ability to run. She couldn't compare and damn sure couldn't compete.
Bonnie Smith and gang started as losers. They finished as bigger losers. And the community paid the price for all of it.
And we are still in some debt for all this nonsense. But it would have been much worse if the store was actually an income for us. The store was a charity, and the goal was to get it as sustainable as possible so it's using less of our savings. The store never paid any of my bills, but it helped provide employment and extra income for some locals which was one of the goals. The town really shot itself on the foot here. Racism is expensive and it makes you dumb.
To our supporters you kept us going for as long as possible. Thank you will never be enough. And we're still here....
To anyone reading this who sees themselves in our story: document everything. Name names. Speak loudly. They count on your silence.
**We are considering hosting a Facebook live to discuss with anyone that has further questions. Everything will be archived onto our website for further review and extended documentation**
FBN # 2023-9019939 — San Diego County Recorder/County Clerk. Public record.
CA DRE # 01259045 — Bonnie L. Smith, California Department of Real Estate. Public record.
