1994 in Review: Orange County Gets a Reputation
DATE 01/01/95
NEWSPAPER THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
SECTION METRO
EDITION MORNING
PAGE b01
STORY LENGTH 120 INCHES
HEADLINE YEAR OF GOODBYES // Fondly to Richard Nixon; most likely
to the Rams; definitely to about $2 billion of county
taxpayers' money
BYLINE/CREDIT DAN FROOMKIN: The Orange County Register
SUBJECT TERMS OC:HISTORY
In 1994, Orange County got a reputation.
In the course of a few days in December, the county's image as
sunny, moneyed suburbia on conservative bedrock sunk to the tune of
$2 billion, re-emerging as a half-broke symbol of scandal, greed and failed
governance.
But haplessly tumbling into the nation's biggest municipal
bankruptcy filing wasn't the only way the county got worldwide
attention in 1994.
It seemed like wherever there was controversy or misfortune,
there we were.
In 1994, world leaders converged on Yorba Linda to bury Richard
Nixon and to praise him, laying to rest in Orange County soil the
only president ever to resign.
In 1994, a county group fueled by antipathy toward illegal
immigrants forged the most divisive ballot measure in California
history -- Proposition 187 -- and saw its landslide victory send
shock waves around the country.
In 1994, everything stopped as football hero O.J. Simpson,
suddenly a hunted murder suspect, led police on a surreal televised
chase that started in Tustin.
And in 1994, Orange County experienced more than its share of
gruesome criminal exploits and bizarre plot twists, including a
frozen corpse, alleged child torture and a false confession to
arson.
Maybe it was a sign when, just 17 days into the new year, the
Northridge earthquake knocked the big Sony Jumbotron off the top of
Anaheim Stadium.
In 1994, you just didn't want to keep score.
Other than the big quake, which shook the county up but did
almost all its damage to the north, 1994 actually started slow.
But on Feb. 19, the body of a 20-year-old Cal State Fullerton
honor student missing for a week was found in the trunk of her car in
a parking lot three miles from her Placentia home. Cathy Torrez's
family is still searching for her killer.
In the most unusual rescue of the year, Fountain Valley
firefighters on March 25 plucked Mike Simpson's gold and diamond
ring from atop a light pole in a mall parking lot.
"I was throwing out stale pretzels to a bunch of little, hungry
sea gulls," Simpson said. "On one swing, my ring came off. Snap,
one of them had it."
A few days later, two men with shaved heads were shot dead on a
Main Street sidewalk in Huntington Beach. One victim bore a tattoo
reading "Die Now, Live Later." The killer hasn't been caught.
On April 22, four days after suffering a massive stroke, former
President Richard Milhous Nixon died in New York at age 81.
The plane that had served him as Air Force One flew his body
home to Orange County to be buried alongside his wife, Pat.
The funeral was held April 27 in the garden of the Richard Nixon
Library & Birthplace in Yorba Linda.
Nixon divided the nation when he lived.
But upon his death, Democratic and Republican leaders declared it
was time to remember his successes in foreign policy -- and lay to
rest the bitterness about his failures, including the Watergate
scandal.
"May the day of judging him on anything less than his entire
life and career come to a close," President Clinton said.
About 42,000 people paid their respects to the former president
as he lay in state at the library. Some spent the whole night
before the funeral in a chilly line that snaked through miles of
nearby cul-de-sacs.
"I wouldn't have missed this," said Leslie VanBorssun, 46,
crying at the end of her eight-hour wait, just before 7 a.m. "His
family needs to know how much he's loved."
On May 3, in the dramatic conclusion of Orange County's "honor
roll murder" story, straight-A student Robert Chan was convicted of
first-degree murder in the brutal killing of fellow honor student
Stuart Tay on New Year's Eve 1992.
Speculation over when and if the Rams would leave Anaheim was a
yearlong phenomenon, but May 3 was the day Rams management actually
handed the city a $2 million check to start the process of backing
out of their lease at the Big A.
On May 20, the body of a Huntington Beach woman who left an
Orange nightclub with a man she had just met was found in a nearby
parking lot, so badly beaten that her blood splattered a
6-foot-high wall.
Police said the killer of Leanora Wong, 23, was Edward P.
Morgan, a 28-year-old bodybuilder just released from Folsom State
Prison. They tracked him to a Northern California hide-out and
arrested him.
And May 25, 18-year-old Debi French of Westminster lost her
upper right lung -- but won back her life.
One of at least 16 La Quinta High School students to develop
active cases of tuberculosis, French's strain did not respond to
traditional treatment. Surgery was her only option.
At La Quinta, tests showed that 304 students -- or about 23
percent of the student body -- had been infected with the
tuberculosis bacterium. About 10 percent of those infected with the
bacteria develop active cases during their lifetimes.
Health officials said the La Quinta outbreak was the nation's
worst incidence of drug-resistant TB at a school.
On June 1, the 1988 Teacher of the Year at Sunny Hills High
School, Janet Greene, allegedly tried to kill her former lover and
another woman after breaking into the former lover's Glendora
residence and firing at both women while they chatted in the
kitchen.
But June 1 also was the day a woman whose 1976 one-night stand
produced a daughter was reunited with the father. Suzie White
placed an ad in the Register: "Looking for a white violin named
Casper."
A reporter worked the phones to track down the violin's owner,
Paul McIntire, a bluegrass musician on a fiddle-playing gig in
Taiwan. McIntire and White were reunited on the phone -- and
17-year-old Stefani Tewes found a daddy.
June 7 was primary day in California. Most folks focused on the
statewide races, but Orange County voters also re-elected their
longtime treasurer-tax collector, Robert L. Citron.
Citron's opponent, accountant John Moorlach, argued during the
campaign that Citron's complicated investment strategy put the
money at risk.
"The attacks on my reputation as an investor of public funds
were irresponsible and they have backfired," Citron said
triumphantly.
On June 14, bulldozers rumbled into Laguna Canyon hours after a
federal judge approved construction of the controversial San
Joaquin Hills toll road, which had been stalled for nine months.
Protesters wept.
The next day, tollway work was halted again, by a federal
appeals court judge. This same sequence repeated itself at
Christmastime. The bulldozers got in only four days of work all
year.
Orange County's biggest commuters got some good news June 15.
The California gray whale became the first marine mammal to be
taken off the federal Endangered Species List.
The gray-whale population has swollen to 23,000, about the
number that existed before the species was almost wiped out by
commercial whalers in the late 19th century.
Also in June, Masoud Karkehabadi, 13, became the youngest person
to graduate from the University of California, Irvine. He is now
researching a cure for Parkinson's disease.
Even hosting the World Cup for a month couldn't make the United
States into a country of soccer fans. Orange County and the nation
did, however, have a one-day love affair with the game.
The fledgling U.S. team, which trained in Mission Viejo, stunned
everybody by scoring a victory in the second week of the tournament
-- before getting edged out by soccer juggernaut Brazil.
But June was really about O.J. Simpson. And O.J. was in O.C. at
some pivotal moments.
On June 16, Simpson was at a Lake Forest cemetery to help bury
his ex-wife, former Dana Hills High School homecoming princess
Nicole Brown Simpson, who had been brutally murdered four days
earlier.
The next day, Simpson was in Orange County again, but this time
as a wanted man.
Los Angeles police officers had gone to a San Fernando Valley
home around noon to allow Simpson to surrender to charges that he
hacked his ex-wife and waiter Ronald Goldman to death. But he had
vanished.
Around 6:25 p.m., Mission Viejo resident Kathy Ferrigno checked
her side-view mirror while riding north on the Santa Ana (I-5)
Freeway -- and became the first person to spot the now-famous white
Ford Bronco.
Her boyfriend's call to 911 helped police pinpoint Simpson, and
set off the slow-speed chase that riveted the nation for 90 minutes.
Orange County maintained a close link to the Simpson story all
year. Nicole Brown Simpson's parents and sister live in Dana Point,
along with Simpson's two children,
And sister Denise Brown took the gloves off in November and told
the Register that the family is sure Simpson is guilty.
In Huntington Beach on the Fourth of July, dozens of revelers
were beaten as police officers with batons dispersed a rowdy
nighttime crowd.
Police conduct during the city's second annual Independence Day
melee is being investigated by the FBI.
On July 13, three years after Denise Huber vanished from the
side of the Corona del Mar (73) Freeway, the mystery of the
23-year-old waitress's disappearance came to a sickening conclusion.
Police in Dewey, Ariz., found Huber's corpse inside a freezer in
a stolen Ryder rental truck.
Police arrested a former Orange County house painter, John
Joseph Famalaro, 37, and said he bludgeoned and sodomized Huber in
a Laguna Hills storage warehouse before wrapping her nude,
handcuffed body in plastic and putting it in the freezer.
Famalaro is awaiting trial; the Hubers, who have since moved to
South Dakota, were finally able to bury their daughter, on Aug. 2.
The slow but steady vacating of the El Toro Marine Corps Air
Station officially began Aug. 24 as 21 F/A-18 Hornets screamed off
the runways -- and flew to San Diego.
"I guess it just hits home: We're really moving," said Marine Corps
Capt. Margaret Kuhn. The base closes for good in 1999.
Hughes Aircraft Co. announced in September that it would close
virtually all of its huge plant in Fullerton. The move meant pink
slips or transfers for more than 6,000 people.
It was the single biggest blow the county suffered as a result
of the shrinking defense industry.
Also in September, in one of the most sadistic episodes of child
abuse ever brought to light in the county, a former playground
supervisor was charged with torturing her 10-year-old nephew.
Police said Cynthia Medina seared the child's tongue with
red-hot knives, whipped him with electric cords and sexually
assaulted him with a souvenir baseball bat.
The story caught even a jaded county by the throat, and
generated a deluge of messages of love to the boy.
"I hope that you do get well and I hope you can have some fun,"
read a letter from a boy named Ron. "I'm 13 and I get hit, too."
Four county residents, including real estate heiress Joan Irvine
Smith, worth $350 million, made Forbes magazine's 1994 list of the
country's 400 richest people.
But money can't buy a son's obedience. On Sept. 16, Smith's
third son, Morton, 29, married a woman his mother can't stand. Or,
as the National Enquirer headline put it: "He Gives Up $100 Million
to Marry the Girl He Loves."
As September came to a close, a man describing himself as a
homeless illegal immigrant confessed to setting the catastrophic
Laguna Beach firestorm of 1993. He said he did it to summon a demon
called Gotam.
The next day, Orange County District Attorney Michael Capizzi
stood before a bank of television cameras and announced that
charges had been filed against Jose Soto Martinez.
But Register reporters quickly determined that Martinez was
really Jaime Saille Higuera, who lived with his family in Fullerton
-- and was in a Mexican prison cell on the day of the Laguna inferno.
Capizzi dropped the Laguna charges less than a week after he
filed them. Martinez later pleaded guilty to setting three smaller
fires in Fullerton, and was sentenced to state prison.
During nine days in October, a Vietnamese-American delegation
from Orange County traveled to Vietnam to discuss business ventures
-- the first such group to return since hundreds of thousands of
Vietnamese fled the communist government.
The trip was seen as a major step toward normalizing relations
with Vietnam -- and as a result, convulsed Orange County's
Vietnamese community. Some leaders applauded the trip; others
denounced its organizer, Co Pham, as a traitor.
On Oct. 11, a man lost his life over a 12-pack of Meister Brau.
Cipriano Martinez Vasquez, 27, stole the beer from a Fullerton
convenience store -- then died when a customer chased him down and
pinned him in a choke hold.
An autopsy suggested that Vasquez had a heart condition that
flared up because of the choke hold, and charges were never filed
against the customer, ex-Marine Mitchell Gohman, 42.
Six weeks later, Gohman's 14-year-old son, Jason, went to a
Fullerton park to shoot baskets and stumbled across the body of an
apparent suicide victim.
"The world's always been a violent place. People just don't like
to deal with that," Mitchell Gohman said.
On Oct. 12, Treasurer Citron announced that interest earnings on
funds invested in the county pool might be down a bit, due to
higher interest rates. But, he said, "Nobody's going to lose a
penny of principal."
Victoria Ingram's wedding gift to husband Randall Curlee was
from the heart. Well, actually slightly lower in the body.
Ingram gave Curlee one of her kidneys, since both of his had
failed. The transplant operation, set for their wedding day, Oct.
11, was postponed after a slight medical hitch but eventually went
smoothly for the Mission Viejo couple.
In late October, 14 months after Newport Beach scholar and
human-rights activist Amy Biehl was killed by a mob in a South
African township, three men were convicted of her murder and
sentenced to 18-year prison terms.
"Amy was a good spirit, a caring spirit," her father, Peter
Biehl, said after the verdicts. "In a way, this is a triumph of
good over evil in South Africa."
Halloween night, Michael Anthony Osornio became the first La
Habra police officer to be killed on duty when his patrol car was
broadsided by a drunken driver. Osornio, 26, had proposed to his
childhood sweetheart just two weeks earlier.
On Nov. 8, voters around the country acted like they all lived
in Orange County. They elected Republicans.
But as Election Day approached in California, passions ran
highest about a ballot measure that its authors, most from Orange
County, dubbed "Save Our State."
Proposition 187 called for government services, including free
public education, to be denied to illegal immigrants. Many local
residents saw genius in the measure, saying it would save the state
money while ending the rewards for people who don't play by the
rules.
But to liberals and many minority groups, 187 carried the stink
of racism and cruelty -- and represented the worst of the politics
of blame.
Hundreds of county students walked out of classes and into the
streets to protest what they called anti-immigrant hysteria. But
most people stayed out of the streets. And when they went to the
polls, they voted yes.
Prop. 187 swept the state -- winning by a 2-to-1 margin in Orange
County. Opponents mourned the message; supporters quickly grew
furious as their will got mired in legal challenges.
After 38 years and about 150 million passengers, Disneyland's
Skyway ride shut down in November, going the way of the Mission to
Mars. Old, slow, boring, it fell victim to Disneyland's quest to be
hip.
"I am really going to miss it," said Jimmy Wallace, 11, of Yorba
Linda.
On Nov. 9, police arrested Edward Charles III, 22, the lone
surviving member of a Fullerton family of four, and said he beat
and choked his parents, stabbed his younger brother, then threw all
three bodies inside a car and set it on fire.
On Nov. 15, 5-year-old Buena Park kindergartner Tyler Palmer
picked up a razor blade he had found on the ground. When he got on
his school bus, he had bought himself a quick ride to expulsion.
Tyler became the youngest victim of the Centralia School
District's "zero tolerance policy" for weapons. His parents
plea-bargained and got the sentence reduced to a midyear transfer.
And on Dec. 1, the bottom fell out of the county.
After months of defending his strategies, Treasurer Citron was
forced by a cash-flow crunch to admit that the portfolio he
controlled -- about $7.5 billion in public money -- had lost $1.5
billion in value.
In the roulette game of finance, Citron had bet on black -- that
interest rates would stay low. Then the wheel went red.
How could he lose so much, so fast? Citron had doubled or
tripled his bets by borrowing extensively to increase the portfolio
and buy risky securities.
While his streak lasted, the strategy paid off handsomely. Then
it multiplied the losses.
Within four days, Citron was forced to resign. And the next day,
Dec. 6, Orange County filed for bankruptcy protection so that it
could stave off hungry creditors while it figured out what to do.
The county and other agencies that invested in the pool face the
likely loss of 27 percent of their principal.
The Securities and Exchange Commission and the Orange County
District Attorney's Office have launched investigations and seized
mountains of paperwork.
County government faces massive layoffs and service cuts, just
to staunch a tiny bit of the bleeding. Some cities are nearly
broke. School districts -- particularly those that borrowed
extensively -- may face bankruptcy and state takeover.
The big story of 1995 will surely be the legacy of 1994.
On Christmas Day, what was probably the last Rams game in
Anaheim drew a paltry crowd of 25,705, the smallest flock for the
franchise in more than 40 years.
And the new and improved, $3.4 million, bigger, better Sony
Jumbotron couldn't hide one simple fact: The home team lost again.
It was that kind of year.
CHART/LIST: NOTABLE O.C. DEATHS OF 1994
Gregory Osborne, 39, former soloist with the American Ballet
Theatre, in Newport Beach on Jan. 8.
Harold T. "Hal" Segerstrom Jr., 70, farmer, developer, patron of
the arts, on Jan. 20.
Paul Vang, 46, son of a Hmong farmer, leader of Orange County's
Hmong community, on Jan. 29.
Frank Newman, 49, founding member of many of Orange County's gay
and lesbian and HIV/AIDS groups, on March 1.
Evelyn Marie Lobo Villegas, 69, San Juan Capistrano matriarch, on
April 15.
Jimmie Reese, 92, legendary Angels coach, former roommate of Babe
Ruth, on July 12.
Harriet Nelson, 85, America's favorite television mom, star of "The
Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet," in Laguna Beach, on Oct. 1.
Paul Arbiso, 99, the San Juan Capistrano patriarch who rang the
mission bells for decades and was the oldest city native, on Nov.
14.
Former U.S. Sen. Thomas H. Kuchel, 84, a progressive Republican and
Orange County native, on Nov. 21.