La Cañada History: Restaurant server shot and killed by estranged husband

Ten Years Ago

Ralph Nader, a former presidential candidate and Green Party member, paid a visit to La Cañada Flintridge to address students at Flintridge Prep on the topic, “What Students Should Know, What Students Can Do.”

Twenty Years Ago

More than 40 community leaders, including then Mayor Jack Hastings, raised nearly $12,000 collectively after being “jailed” at the Keeler Dilbeck Realtors office in town to help raise funds for the Muscular Dystrophy Assn. Arriving by stretch limousines, the “culprits” were placed in “lock-up” until friends and family raised $750 to pay their bail.

Thirty Years Ago

The commercial district was on edge after three La Cañada businesses — Ralphs, Kentucky Fried Chicken and Kids Mart — were successfully targeted by armed robbers, some of them masked, during a series of crimes over a period of less than a week in February 1987.

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Forty Years Ago

In an operation that took nearly four hours to complete, nine members of the Montrose Search and Rescue Team rescued a 15-year-old La Cañada resident from a ledge after he hiked into Hall-Beckley Canyon and became stranded.

Fifty Years Ago

La Cañada Country Club held its first Las Doncellas Debutante Ball in the winter of 1967, especially for daughters of its members. After the girls were presented and had waltzed with their fathers and escorts, Alfred Murphy, then president of the private club, proposed a toast to its first class of debs.

Sixty Years Ago

A server employed by the Yellow Jacket restaurant in La Cañada (sited near where Hill Street Cafe is today) died at a Glendale hospital hours after she was shot four times by her estranged husband while standing behind the counter at the popular eatery on Feb. 13, 1957. Kenneth M. Skaggs, 32, told responding sheriff’s deputies he had entered the business in hopes of reaching a reconciliation. When she refused, he pulled out a 7.65 -millimeter Mauser pistol and fired five shots at her point blank, with most of them hitting his victim. “Oh my God, he shot me,” his wife reportedly said while lying on the floor awaiting an ambulance. Skaggs remained seated at the restaurant’s counter until he was taken into custody.

Compiled from the Valley Sun archives by Carol Cormaci.