At a hastily assembled press conference Friday, Mayor Daniel Lurie said he takes full responsibility for his unconventional and short-lived pick for District 4 supervisor, Isabella “Beya” Alcaraz, who resigned Thursday night amid allegations about her prior ownership of an Outer Sunset pet store.
“This is not the first time I’ve done something wrong; it won’t be the last,” the mayor said. “But what I commit to the people of San Francisco is: I’m going to learn from this.”
Alcaraz’s dramatic downfall marks Lurie’s first major blunder since taking office in January, raising questions about how he and his team failed to find so many red flags in the 29-year-old’s past.
“We are going to thoroughly review our vetting process, and we will get better,” Lurie said. “But let me be clear that this rests on my shoulders.”
Lurie said his search for a new District 4 supervisor is underway.
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Alcaraz lasted only a week in the role after Lurie appointed her Nov. 6 to replace Supervisor Joel Engardio, who was recalled in September over his support for a voter-approved measure that banned cars from the Great Highway to make way for a park.
Her appointment was unusual for a number of reasons. She was a political novice who had never attended any government hearings and who previously worked as an art and music teacher, in addition to her six years as owner of The Animal Connection. She landed the supervisor job after approaching Lurie at a night market, not because of civic recommendations.
Lurie touted Alcaraz’s experience as a business owner as guiding his choice. But her pet store had both financial and cleanliness issues.
In the days following Alcaraz’s appointment, Julia Baran, the new owner of The Animal Connection, told The Standard she inherited a store filled with dead mice, feces, and trash. Financial documents showed that the business lost money between 2020 and 2023. Baran said no one from the mayor’s office had contacted her about Alcaraz or the store.
Baran later shared texts with Mission Local (opens in new tab) that showed Alcaraz stating she had paid employees “under the table” and reported personal outings as business expenditures.
Lurie said that while he knew about Animal Connection’s financial struggles and discussed them with Alcaraz — “Covid was very difficult on just about every small business in San Francisco,” he said — the information about her tax practices was news to him.
When asked about any prior communication with Baran, Lurie said he was “not going to get into what happened in the past, but it’s clear I could have done more.”
In a statement announcing her resignation, Alcaraz said the Sunset “deserves someone who will work 24/7” as an advocate, and the concerns about her time at The Animal Connection “would distract” from her work as supervisor.