When California legalized cannabis for recreational use in 2016, state lawmakers announced their intention to build racial and social equity into the marketplace, to help communities upended by the ravages of the war on drugs.
For a Times article published last week, Mr. Corkery interviewed more than 30 business owners, investors and regulators in California’s cannabis industry.
His Oakland store was ransacked in May 2020 during the unrest that followed the murder of George Floyd by a police officer in Minneapolis.
So, Mr. Corkery traveled to Oakland from New York, where he lives, in December to meet the sources he had come to know over the phone.
Separately, Jim Wilson, a Times photographer who lives in Oakland, also reached out to people Mr. Corkery was interviewing.
Ersie Joyner, a former Oakland police captain who now works as a security consultant to cannabis businesses, is shown standing at the gas station where he was wounded in a shootout with robbers last October.