Tiny cougars

Lion cubs debut at Orange County Zoo (OC Reg)

Dicey San Onofre unplugged for now—forever?

NRC tells steps needed to restart San Onofre (OC Reg)

Irvine recommends shutting down San Onofre power plant (OC Reg)

No board meeting report tonight

Brandye D'Lena made
a presentation

     I was all set to go to tonight's meeting of the SOCCCD board of trustees, but then a small medical emergency involving my father arose and, naturally, I had to go.
     Pop seems to be fine--he has a history of heart problems--but, there'll be no report tonight.
     It looked like it was gonna be a real snoozer anyway.
     Tere's Board Meeting Highlights

$30,000 spent on "College Brain Trust" (but not for the civility initiative)

John Spevak of CBT

     (See UPDATES below. The gist: the $30K doesn't seem to be for Spevak's efforts re the civility initiative.)
     Some readers seem to have a great interest in how much the college is spending on the assistance it is receiving from "College Brain Trust," the Sacramento consulting firm that sent John Spevak down to help with our "civility initiative." Spevak organized and directed Friday's workshop and also the workshop held in December.

     I quickly scanned recent board agendas—including the one for tomorrow’s meeting—and here’s what I found:

     I found no items for “College Brain Trust” in the March or February agendas. There’s a $900 item (expenditure) for "College Brain Trust" in the January agenda. That same item appears (I think as an expected expenditure) in the December agenda. There’s an expenditure of $28,676.23 to “College Brain Trust” in the November agenda. Nothing in October or September agendas.

     So we’re looking at about $30K here. Don’t know if that’s all of it. It's more than I thought they were spending, but, on the other hand, I'm not surprised by the amount.

     I suppose that IVC President Roquemore is thinking that, since this initiative was occasioned by serious accreditation concerns, it is best to bring in a neutral party to run things. Is it worth $30K to help make this process look like it's on the up-and-up? Could we have gone with something cheaper? 

     I dunno. No doubt some of you have opinions.

UPDATE: Dennis Gordon (one of the workshop facilitators) has sent the following:

Roy,
   The College Brain Trust has been used as a consultant for a number of tasks including work on the the District Wide Accreditation report. The $30k you mentioned was for other work that has been done, not for the Civility working group.
   In the spirit of transparency, I think the question of how much was spent for John Spevak to coordinate and facilitate the Civility project is a valid one and I will inquire as to the cost and report back.

UPDATE 2 (3/28):
Dennis Gordon has left a new comment on your post "$30,000 spent on "College Brain Trust" (but not fo...":

   I wanted to report back on the cost for John Spevak (The College Brain Trust) to conduct the Civility Working Group meetings for IVC. The amount paid was $6,750.79 which included multiple meetings and workshops and also included John's travel and hotel expenses.
   I feel this is a fair amount given the time spent by John with our campus community and the work that has been accomplished in support of the civility initative.  
   Every governance group had represenation at our meeting last week and I encourage anyone who has questions or comments regarding the initiative to have an open dialog among your constituants.

"....if a tax measure on the November ballot fails..."

Carla Rivera, a tireless reporter covering higher ed issues, is at it again. This time, in this morning's Los Angeles Times, she covers Jack Scott's recent address at Pasadena City College.

Community colleges chief decries budget cuts' toll on students

excerpt:

"We should be working together to rebuild California and making it a better place for our children," Scott told about 300 students, faculty and community members who gathered in the campus auditorium. "Dreams are necessary to live. If we keep dashing college dreams and denying opportunities for Californians, we're going to lose our best and brightest to other states, which will only further exacerbate our state's economic situation."

Earlier last week, California State University announced that it will freeze most admissions for spring 2013, with the exception of a few hundred community college transfer students who will be offered admission to eight of Cal State's 23 campuses.

The move will shut out an estimated 16,000 others, most of them would-be transfer students who are likely to remain at community colleges and clog access for recent high school graduates and unemployed workers who have been streaming into the two-year system for job retraining.

Scott said he understood the reasoning for Cal State's actions: State universities suffered $750 million in funding cuts in 2011-12. Meanwhile, community colleges took a $564-million hit. Both systems could lose millions more if a tax measure on the November ballot fails.

To read the article in its entirety, click here.

*

Mr. Bagman, bring me a dream

     THERE'S A POINT (c. 1968) WHERE the BAUER & and CASPERS SAGAS ACTUALLY, IF BARELY, INTERSECT. As a kid, I was a Cub Scout and then a Boy Scout, and my dad was always among the adult leaders of my Pack or Troop, even becoming the Cub Master (I think that’s what they called that job) and the Scoutmaster—which was really something, given my dad’s German accent. Everybody liked my dad.
     I joined Boy Scout Troop 850 (Villa Park), which had its meetings each week at Cerro Villa Junior High. When my dad became Scoutmaster, 850 quickly became a very accomplished troop, winning competitions at jamborees and Scout-o-Ramas, the latter always occurring at the Orange County Fairgrounds. I’ve got some old pictures of that somewhere.
     My folks, who are not particularly religious, nevertheless felt that it was important for my sister, Annie, and I—we were the oldest—to become “confirmed,” and so we joined Trinity Lutheran, which sits atop that hill immediately above the 91/55 interchange at Olive Hill/Anaheim Hills. At some point, pastor Conradson ("A peace sign," he would roar, "is a cross with its arms broken!") asked my dad to start a Boy Scout Troop, and thus it happened that my dad and I—and one or two other kids from 850—started troop 536, meeting each week in the utilitarian building jutting from the side of the church on the hill.
     I’ll cut to the chase. The launch of that troop went well, and soon it was a very active and impressive organization. Once again, we won awards, even competing with, and vanquishing, our former Troop 850.

Manny Bauer

     BAUER, PENTECOST, AND BOTTOMLEY. There were two “dads” who, along with my own dad (“Manny” for Manfred), formed the adult heart of the troop. Both were engineers active in the local Roman Catholic Church (St. Norbert, in Orange, I believe). A significant number of the troop’s boys were referred to our troop by St. Norbert, which is kind of funny, when you consider the historical relationship between Lutherans and the Roman Catholic Church.
     One of these adults was Gene Pentecost, a sharp guy with a Tennessee accent—he was maybe five or so years older than my dad. My dad recalls that he was the chief engineer (or some such thing) for the Polaris missile project (my own research suggests that it might have been the Minuteman project instead). He worked, my dad seemed to recall, at Autonetics, which was a division of North American that had moved to Anaheim in 1963. My dad remembers that Gene had a doctorate and that he was some sort of mathematician or engineer, working in computers.
     (I did a quick search and found a “Eugene Edgar Pentecost,” born in Tennessee in 1927, who went on to big projects with Rockwell and who may have been in the engineering departments of UCLA and Vanderbilt. I'm sure it's the same guy. In retirement, he's focused on his ham radio hobby.)
     CASPERS' RIGHT-HAND MAN. Pentecost’s good buddy, and the second adult, was Charles Bottomley. Charles, my dad recalls, was “Ron Caspers’ right-hand man.” At the time—this would have been about 1968—Caspers owned Keystone Savings and Loan and (says my dad) a "restaurant next door” [more recently, he located it across the street] on Beach and Garden Grove Blvd in Westminster.* The restaurant was called the “Green Cat,” and it was pretty rough, says pop. One of his electrician buddies used to work there as the bartender [before Caspers tore it down and created a more upscale place]. He’d routinely have the bouncer throw drunks out the front door.

LA Times 1959

     According to my dad, on Mondays, Charles served as Caspers’ “bag man.”
     “What do you mean by that?” I asked.
     “Well, he literally had a bag and it was filled with money. He’d be moving this money around for Caspers. On Monday.” [Possibly not illegal activity. Perhaps hinky re the IRS.]
     I just did a little looking, and I learned that a Charles F. Bottomley was President of Caspers’ Keystone Savings and Loan as of a year after Caspers’ death. I found a 1981 article written by Bottomley for Orange Coast Magazine that describes him, again, as the President of Keystone. I believe that Keystone underwent a name change and moved to Westminster soon after. Don't know what became of Mr. Bottomley.
     So, anyway, I guess it’s a small world after all.
     Near as I can figure, Keystone was located at 555 N. Euclid in Anaheim, and it was established in 1959—probably by Caspers, who seems to have had a bank then in the Pasadena area. I can find no record of a “Green Cat” restaurant. But that doesn't mean much.
     Bottomley was nearly exactly my dad’s age (born in 1932) and lived in Anaheim, but more recent data suggest that he moved to Newport Beach, where Caspers lived when he died.
     (You'll recall that, in the mid-80s, Congressional candidate Nathan Rosenberg referred to Tom Fuentes as "Caspers' bagman." Rosenberg, as it turns out, is a bigwig in the Boy Scouts hierarchy!)

*Despite some odd records to the contrary, it is clear that Keystone Savings was no longer in Anaheim but was in Westminster (on Beach) by 1966. According to one record, it was founded by Caspers on 1/1/57 and located at 555 N. Euclid, Anaheim. Later moved to 14011 Beach, in Westminster. Not in '81 as some records suggest. (The above Times article says that the S&L opened in 1959, not 1957.)

UPDATE, 2/23:

I came across this:

Ca. late 50s

The Green Kat, Westminster  

O.C. History Roundup 

JULY 15, 2015 

      …But in 1952, The Normandy became the Green Kat Café, and Orval – now living in sunny Corona del Mar – was the new owner. Unlike Santa Ana’s Green Cat, which had once held a fine reputation even among Orange County’s civic leaders, Westminster’s Green Kat was a less-reputable tavern. 

     “It was a dive,” said longtime Orange County Historical Commissioner Don Dobmeier. “It was a large nondescript structure, painted green. I never went in, but there always seemed to be a lot of cars in front of it, even at 8:00 in the morning.” 

     It appears Orval wasn’t too hands-on this time. The new Green Kat was managed by "Jeanne" (according to newspaper ads) and by custom motorcycle genius/hellraiser Herk Currie. 

. . . 

     In 1962, the Green Kat was torn down [?!] and replaced with future Orange County Supervisor Ron Caspers' Keystone Savings & Loan -- a building that made dramatic use of the Old English half-timbered look suggested by the city's name.

As I recall, my dad's electrician buddy who bartended for the Green Kat was named "Currie"—"Ken Currie," I think. Son of Herk? (I seem to recall he sported a hearing aid. He seemed to be a nice guy.)

Shooting Star, part 11: mob connections, an unexplained murder

The entire “Fuentes/Shooting Star” saga can be found here.

      For those of you with the patience, I have more background on the “Shooting Star” story. You’ll recall that the yacht, Shooting Star, disappeared off the coast of Baja California in June of 1974, taking ten men with her, including Orange County Supervisor (5th District) Ron Caspers and political consultant Fred Harber. Harber was a key strategist for Dr. Louis Cella and his “shadow government” (to use OC DA Cecil Hicks’ phrase), which included in its stable four Supes, including Caspers. Caspers’ “executive aide” at the time of the Shooting Star incident was Tom Fuentes, who, it is often reported, decided to pass on the trip at the last minute, but not before he packed an extra ice chest for his boss filled with hors d’oeuvres and drinks.

      In my last post, we learned (based on the account of one-time OC GOP chair Tom Rogers) that Caspers, a Republican banker, engaged in foul deceptions to tarnish the reputation of 5th District Supervisor Alton Allen, whose office he evidently coveted.

      Below are excerpts from two articles from the January, 1976, edition of The California Journal. The first, by Dan Walters and his partner, describes Dr. Cella’s relationship to former Buena Park Mayor Fred Harber. Here, Harber emerges as a more interesting, and perhaps important, figure (at the time of the Shooting Star disappearance, he was 55 to Caspers’ 43 years of age).

      We also learn that Cella, (OC land baron) Richard O’Neill, and Harber partnered with a man tied to the mob.

      The next article, written by Nancy Boyarsky, briefly discusses Dr. Cella’s background. These details are pretty interesting.

      The last pair of articles, from the LA Times, have no very clear relationship to the Shooting Star/Cella saga. They concern the mysterious 1994 murder of a much-beloved woman who had worked as an assistant to many of the characters who have cropped up on these pages. Arlene Hoffman was slain, evidently, with an arrow from a cross-bow, in her Laguna Niguel home. The murderer took the arrow with him.
      Her murder has never been solved.

      She was once Fred Harber’s secretary at one of Louis Cella's hospitals. She had also worked for "Big Daddy" Jess Unruh and Norton Simon. At the time of her death in 1995, she had just been hired by new OC Supervisor Jim Silva.

The Tangled Web: Two

Unscrambling Dick and Doc’s financial and political empire

By Al Downer and Dan Walters

. . .

Mysterious figure [Dr. Louis Cella]

      Cella, whose business interests range from ranching to real estate but are concentrated in the medical field, is the mystery man of Orange County politics. Rumors about him and his political and business deals abound, but most of them evaporate under scrutiny.

      Cella operated behind-the-scenes until 1974, when he lost his front man, Fred Harber, who had been Cella’s chief political aide and sometimes business associate until his disappearance in June 1974. He and nine other persons, including Orange County Supervisor Ronald Caspers, vanished when Harber’s boat apparently sank off the coast of Baja California. Caspers was a member of the Cella-ONeill stable and his family savings-and-loan company had provided at least some of the financing for Cella’s chain of hospitals. “Harber was smooth, and as long as he was around things operated quietly with no fuss and muss,” says a knowledgeable Orange County observer. Harber operated out of one wing of the Cella clinic across the street from the county courthouse and once was on the payroll as an assistant to Supervisor Robert Battin, another organization politician who is now under indictment for using his staff in a political campaign.

      [State Controller Ken] Cory has described Harber as “a very good friend of mine, perhaps the best friend I have had.” And with good reason. Harber not only was the tactician for Cory’s early political successes, but he loaned Cory’s small insurance agency, Cornet Insurance Counselors, $95,250 in 1967 when the agency appeared to be having difficulty making payments on a note.

      Harber and Carl D’Agostino, now Cory’s deputy controller, were the co-founders of Demographic Communications Consultants, a campaign-management firm that has handled many campaigns for the Cella-ONeill organization. With Harber’s passing, Cella was forced to move into the open, and investigators began taking an interest in his complex of business affairs. Orange County District Attorney Cecil Hicks, perhaps the only major Orange County official openly hostile to Cella and O’Neill, has called Cella the man behind “a shadow government”. Cella hired a private investigator, through one of the hospitals, to investigate arch-enemy Hicks.

. . .

More ties 

      The influence of Cella and O’Neill in county government is apparent in many ways. A prime example is the El Toro case.

      El Toro Land Company was formed as a partnership in 1970 to develop a 39-acre parcel along the San Diego Freeway in Orange County. One of the original partners, with a $25,000 investment, was Albert Parvin, one-time Las Vegas casino-owner and head of the Parvin-Dohrmann Company and the Parvin Foundation. Meyer Lansky, reputed Mafia financial brain, was one of Parvin’s partners in the Flamingo Hotel and the Parvin Foundation had former Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas on its payroll for $12,000 per year – a revelation that sparked an impeachment effort against Douglas several years ago.

      Cella, O’Neill and Harber bought into El Toro Land in 1971 and remain as major partners, along with Parvin, according to corporate records. Shortly after they bought in, the Orange County Board of Supervisors took emergency action to establish a freeway interchange adjacent to that property and the land increased in value by 600 percent, county records show.

      As Cella and O’Neill were expanding their business and political empires, Cory was experiencing a growth of personal wealth and political influence. Cory, who attended four colleges and graduated from none, became involved in politics while still a teen-ager. He went to Sacramento in the early1960s as an aide to then-Assemblyman Richard Hanna, the first Democrat to achieve major office in Orange County in recent years, and Cory served on the staff of the Assembly Education Committee, which was chaired by Hanna.

. . .

The Tangled Web: Three

Richard O’Neill—last of the big spenders?

By Nancy Boyarsky

. . .

An enigma 

      The 51-year-old physician [Lou Cella] is something of an enigma. Two popular exercises in Orange County political circles are estimating the size of his wealth and speculating on its source. The estimates on size range from $50 million to $500 million, although he generally is regarded as being less wealthy than O’Neill. Even his closest business associates, including O’Neill, don’t know the extent of Cella’s business interests. And Cella’s own explanations elude verification. It is known that he came to Orange County about 20 years ago from Providence, Rhode Island, where his father was also a physician and political figure. But the elder Cella left an estate of less than a quarter-million dollars. Cella came to Orange County after losing a position as senior resident surgeon at Rhode Island Hospital. The hospital’s staff had given him a vote of “no confidence”. Cella had been expelled from one medical school for cheating and eventually graduated from another. Although he has maintained a small private practice in Santa Ana, Cella’s chief occupation in California has been that of businessman and political operative. He is involved in at least seven Orange County hospitals and has wide real-estate and other investments. The Internal Revenue Service says, however, that Cella hasn’t filed an income tax return for the past three years.

Arlene Hoffman

Who Killed Arlene Hoffman?

January 27, 1995 - NANCY WRIDE

. . .

      …From 1972 to 1974, she worked as a secretary for a political consulting firm called Fred Harber and Associates.

. . .

      "She spent everything they had trying to prolong his life," said Lyle Overby [you'll recall that he was on the Shooting Star but disembarked at Cabo], a political consultant and friend of 20 years whose admiration for Arlene Hoffman led him to recommend her to Silva….

One Year Later, Strange Slaying Still Unsolved : Inquiry: Whoever killed Arlene Hoffman with a hunting-type arrow left few clues. The Laguna Niguel widow was a longtime political aide and moved in high-profile circles.

December 30, 1995

NANCY WRIDE - TIMES STAFF WRITER

LAGUNA NIGUEL — Portions of drywall were hacked away from her condo in a futile hunt for clues. Detectives asked childhood friends and family to undergo fingerprinting and lie detector tests to narrow the field of suspects. Her son even offered a $25,000 reward from his inheritance for details leading to the conviction of the killer.

      But, one year later, the mystery remains unsolved as to who fired a hunting-type arrow through the chest of Arlene Hoffman, leaving her to bleed to death on the marble floor of her Laguna Niguel foyer.

      Hoffman, 57, widowed nine months earlier, was long active in the backfield of Southern California political campaigns. Shortly before she was found slain Dec. 30, 1994, she had been hired as personal secretary to Jim Silva, newly elected to the Orange County Board of Supervisors.

. . .

      Simply put, there was little if any physical evidence at the scene to trace back to Hoffman's killer—no shell casings or fingerprints, no permits or licensing required to buy or use an arrow, no weapon left behind….

*

      In her lifetime, Hoffman moved in some high-profile circles. In the 1970s, she was connected to some of the major stories and players of the day.

      She worked for the late millionaire industrialist and world-class art collector Norton Simon, up to and including his failed campaign for U.S. Senate in 1970. She was involved in other political campaigns, including former Assembly Speaker Jesse M. Unruh's unsuccessful 1973 bid to become mayor of Los Angeles. She was secretary to Fred Harber, a political consultant who vanished at sea off the coast of Baja California in June 1974.

      In 1976, she was called to testify as a witness before the Orange County Grand Jury investigating political corruption.

      Hoffman told the grand jury she was an employee of the hospital run by Dr. Louis Cella, a political kingmaker and largest campaign contributor in California at the time. Now dead [sic], Cella was accused of billing Medi-Cal for nonexistent patients, then funneling the money into the campaigns of numerous candidates who went on to hold major office. He ultimately was convicted of income-tax evasion, Medicare and Medi-Cal fraud, embezzlement and conspiracy. He spent 31 months in federal prison.

      Investigators believed Hoffman was on the payroll of a state-funded hospital but was actually working on political projects at Cella's behest—such as mimeographing campaign hit mailers out of the hospital's print shop. District attorney investigators say now that they believe she lied to protect her employers. Cella ran the first campaign of former Orange County Treasurer-Tax Collector Robert L. Citron, who has pleaded guilty for his role in the county's bankruptcy.

      Because Hoffman's slaying occurred in the high-anxiety days after the nation's largest municipal bankruptcy, the case has seemed ripe for speculation about a political connection. But beyond smoky rumor, investigators say, no such link between Hoffman's death and the bankruptcy has crystallized.

*

      By nightfall on Dec. 30, 1994, there was no call from Hoffman's cellular phone, no sign of her Mercedes-Benz in the county government parking lot. Supervisor Silva, whose entire family had become quite fond of Hoffman, grew worried and personally called Sheriff Brad Gates to have deputies check his secretary's condo. They found her dead in her hallway, the victim of an arrow possibly fired from a crossbow. An autopsy placed her death sometime during a 12-hour period between 7:30 p.m. Dec. 29 and 7:30 the following morning.

      Detectives have not recovered the arrow—which might have passed through her body or been removed from it by the killer. Her dog was skittering around the entryway, its bark surgically squelched by a previous owner. The front door was unlocked and there was no sign of a break-in.

      Inside her garage was her Mercedes and her cellular phone. Nothing of any value appeared missing from the house. Partial fingerprints taken from a stairway from which investigators suspect the killer fired the arrow down on Hoffman didn't lead to an arrest.

      Archery shops and sporting good stores in the region were questioned for leads.

      "They've interviewed everyone who ever had contact with her or might have had contact with her," Wilkerson said, "and any place she might have frequented, employees."

      Her relatives declined to discuss the case, requesting privacy in their grief. Her son, Charles Anthony Hoffman, 26, who was talkative July 12, 1994, when he announced the reward for information leading to the conviction of his mother's killer, did not return phone calls….

      No creditors emerged, court records show. There were not even any claims stemming from the personal bankruptcy she and her late husband, Joel, filed and had resolved two weeks before his death in March 1994 after battling cancer.

      Hoffman leased her condo from her sister and brother-in-law, Joanne and John Dougherty, who friends say wanted her close to them in Dana Point.

      The condo was sealed off for several months during evidence gathering. Then came cleanup and repairs totaling $12,000 from damage caused by the slaying and police investigation.

      Wilkerson said Hoffman's son eventually made the condo his home—at least for several months after that.

      At the time he offered the $25,000 reward, Charles Hoffman said he hoped it would lead to an arrest and some "closure" for his family, which had suffered two deaths within a year.

      In the year since her death, though, there has been no closure.

      The Sheriff's Department has not received any calls responding to the reward, Wilkerson said, and they have no fresh clues.

      The family still grieves.

      And everyone still wonders why someone would kill Arlene Hoffman.

SEE That wasn't Caspers' first sinking