Per this conversation: https://groups.google.com/forum/?pli=1#!topic/loopbackjs/1F4H8sDw4-A
All helpers are using beforeEach which at least for me is quite counterintuitive since it would call each remote calls for each it. I ended up copying the helpers and making them use before and after which makes it really easy to have some kind of testing scenario.
cc @seriousben