The making and unmaking of Beya Alcaraz: A strange and terrible saga

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When the story broke that Beya Alcaraz, the pet shop owner turned District 4 supervisor, had allegedly left a stash of dead pets decomposing in the store’s freezer, the metaphor seemed a little too on the nose, even for this town. 

How could this happen? How could Mayor Daniel Lurie’s office fail to properly vet a candidate who literally had skeletons in her closet? 

Alcaraz was sworn in on Nov. 6 on her 29th birthday. That’s young, but it’s hardly unprecedented: Katy Tang and Carmen Chu were both 29 when they were appointed supervisor. Sean Elsbernd was 28. Chris Daly was only 28 when he was elected. 

But here’s the thing: Tang, Chu and Elsbernd had advanced degrees and/or years of experience in government. Daly won a hard-fought vote of the people. Alcaraz had none of these attributes. Her resume was largely six years atop a pet shop. Then a succession of articles about troubling conditions there — and Alcaraz’s own slipshod alleged business practices — quickly evaporated that. 

Alcaraz, whom Mission Local has learned did not know the distinction between a motion, resolution or ordinance, showed remarkable hubris putting herself forward for a job she was in no way qualified to perform. 

But Mayor Daniel Lurie’s office should never, ever have allowed this situation to devolve in public. This should have been politely handled behind closed doors and Alcaraz should never have been advanced. This failure to do even the most basic of background checks was a great disservice to Alcaraz. 

Make no mistake: This was an embarrassing, preventable, self-induced and damaging bungle by Lurie, himself a political newcomer. It shows questionable knowledge of and concern for the actual work done by the Board of Supervisors. It absolutely does not show respect for the 80,000-odd residents of District 4, who deserve a legislator who knows how to legislate. 

It was a hell of a move for a mayor who will next year be asking the city’s voters for more power, including the ability to unilaterally hire and fire people. 

As the slow-moving trainwreck of Alcaraz’s appointment began to pick up speed, the mayor pushed back on the accusation that she was unvetted. Alcaraz was “absolutely” vetted, he told a gaggle of reporters on Nov. 12. A day later, she resigned because of details reported in Mission Local of which he was unaware.  

District 4 voters on Oct. 20 received a poll describing Alcaraz’s life story but using the pseudonym “Sarah Reyes.” She was appointed on Nov. 6. There was plenty of time to make the calls that were not made. 

So, as for vetting, to borrow the “Princess Bride” line from Inigo Montoya: “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”

Your humble narrator has spoken to the staffers of former mayors, who were, in their day, tasked with vetting would-be city commissioners. That’s a lot less scrutiny than an appointment to an elected position (though I’ve talked to staffers who did that, too). But even prior aspirational planning commissioners, MTA commissioners et al. were subjected to far more scrutiny than Alcaraz appears to have been. 

The first step in vetting a would-be appointee is going through their voting records. In Alcaraz’s case, this would reveal that she has failed to weigh in on three elections since 2019 alone, including last year’s Democratic primary. 

The next step is to go through residency records — Alcaraz does indeed live in her District 4 home — and then, in the case of a business owner, the next step would be to go through complaints. In fact, the San Francisco Examiner did this regarding Alcaraz’s former pet shop and found that inspectors from two city agencies visited the store on at least four occasions in response to complaints about gnarly conditions there. 

All of the above could be done without leaving the house. One needn’t call up the head of the health or building inspection departments — though a mayoral staffer could do that. But all of the above records are available online. You could find this information. Journalists did find it — and quickly. 

Complaints of the sort the Ex discovered might then compel someone to do a little more legwork —  to drop in on Alcaraz’s former place of business or otherwise contact the new owner and any employees. The San Francisco Standard, San Francisco Chronicle and Mission Local did this. A mayoral staffer who might not want to tip off the world that a virtual unknown is up for a supervisor position could just say that they were looking into giving Alcaraz a job. Just to see what people say. 

At the pet shop, they had a hell of a lot to say. And they had the documents to back it up —  in writing, and with photos and video.

But the most crucial — and intuitive — part of vetting a candidate is to simply ask them to self-disclose anything that could be used against them. Is there anything the appointing authority should know? Is there anything that could come out about them that would discredit the appointing authority? Even if a candidate was falsely accused of something, it’s important to admit this so that the appointing authority can have a ready response if it comes up. Appointing authorities do not like to be surprised. 

It is unclear if this question was asked of Alcaraz. But even if it was, it should never have been left to Alcaraz to vet herself. 

The play-by-play of the making and unmaking of Supervisor Beya Alcaraz is waiting to be discovered. We may never know the whole story. That would require all parties to reveal confidential — and embarrassing — details. 

But we can wonder. To start with: Why was this job open for nearly three weeks following the departure of Supervisor Joel Engardio — when most everyone anticipated, for months, that Engardio would not beat the recall? 

Mission Local has heard credible reports of multiple would-be candidates who, in the past several weeks, either declined the job or took themselves out of the running. The political calculus for these would-be appointees appears to have been untenable: It is difficult to conceive of a District 4 appointee voting for the mayor’s pending upzoning plan and remaining a viable candidate for election. A politically ambitious candidate would do better to simply run in 2026 after the sand settles. 

Being a supervisor is also a hard job. The hours are long. The speeches are many. The critics are fierce. The paycheck is not necessarily enough for the kind of mid-career professionals who would have the experience necessary to pull it off. In 2018, when Jessica Ho lost to Gordon Mar for the District 4 seat, Ho was Supervisor Katy Tang’s sixth choice to succeed her in the job. This was many years before upzoning and the closure of the Great Highway were factors in Westside politics. 

Alcaraz may have distinguished herself by simply wanting the job. 

Because even if the floors of Acaraz’s pet shop were so clean you could eat off them and even if her business practices were commensurately sparkling, her appointment would’ve been a disappointing choice from Lurie. And a revealing one. 

For one of the most challenging and critically important roles in city government, Lurie selected a person who has no understanding of government and had previously evinced no interest in local politics. She was, in fact, the only supervisor appointee in at least the last 30 years to come with zero experience in either government or politics. Alcaraz’s first hire as an aide was not a deeply experienced wrangler of government to hoist her up a legislative mountain — someone like Mike Farrah, Bill Barnes, Sunny Angulo or Jen Low — but a city staffer who formerly produced videos for the mayor’s office. 

This is unfortunate. This indicates a belief on the part of the mayor and his appointee that the purpose of government is not to do things but just to sell them. 

At a press conference on Friday, Mayor Daniel Lurie was contrite. He took responsibility for this strange and terrible saga.

“This is not the first time I’ve done something wrong; it won’t be the last,” he said. “But what I commit to the people of San Francisco is: I’m going to learn from this. We are going to thoroughly review our vetting process and we will get better. But let me be clear that this rests on my shoulders.”

These are the right things to say, but, unfortunately, they came after the wrong things to do: A catastrophic lapse in oversight and the wholly avoidable public humiliation of a 29-year-old woman. 

Sad but true: You never get a second chance to make a first impression.