Orange County Newsmakers Stamped Their Mark on 1984

A murderer who stayed in prison rather than be paroled to Orange County; a police officer who was fired on, then just plain fired; a grandmother whose uphill run made her the star of the Olympic torch run through Orange County; a baby who began his life in a trash bin--these faces, and others, made lasting impressions on Orange County’s memory in 1984.

On Jan. 10, the jury was seated and the trial was about to begin on charges that John M. Roseman, 41, the principal of Valencia Park Elementary School in Fullerton, had sexually molested a 5-year-old girl at his school.

The girl allegedly had told her mother that Roseman “took my pants down and cleaned me.” What did not come out until the day of the trial was that the girl had soiled her pants, had become hysterical and had been taken from class by Roseman, who cleaned her up. After the girl confirmed Roseman’s account, the prosecutor agreed to dismiss the case.

The prosecutor complained that the defense attorney should have revealed the truth sooner. The defense attorney said he kept Roseman quiet because police investigators were biased against him.

Trustees quickly restored the pay Roseman had lost during his three-month suspension and gave him a month’s paid leave “to recover from his ordeal,” but the ordeal continued.

On Feb. 14, trustees announced that they would demote Roseman to a teaching position at another school, thus cutting his salary by $12,000 a year. They had lost confidence in Roseman because he had concealed the truth of what had happened, they explained.

Roseman’s supporters tried, and failed, to recall trustees. Roseman sued, claiming his demotion violated his constitutional rights and left him stigmatized. He went on a one-year leave rather than take up the teaching position. By year’s end, he was still awaiting the outcome of his litigation.

Months after the furor, Roseman said in an interview that perhaps he had erred.

“I think the mistake I made was panicking and not being able to trust (the superintendent),” Roseman said.

“I think the mistake the superintendent and the board made was not supporting me.”

Robert Schuller, the often controversial television preacher and father of the mammoth Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove, said he regretted that it had been only a partial victory.

Nonetheless, it was a considerable chunk of money that fell back into the Garden Grove Community Church’s collection plate in September: $180,513.90 from the County of Orange.

Investigators from the state Board of Equalization had revoked the tax exemption for some of Schuller’s church operations on grounds that some of the church activities were more commercial than religious. The church was ordered to pay $473,185 in back taxes, which it did--under protest.

On Feb. 2, Schuller’s appeal to the board resulted in a ruling restoring some exemptions. The board revised its definition of commercial activity, saying it had to be “planned” and “systematic” to be considered commercialized. It was “a substantial vindication,” Schuller said.

The protracted wrangling over taxes hardly sapped Schuller’s energies. Late in November he announced further expansion of his church: a new four-to-six-story family center with classrooms, auditorium and athletic facilities; a stadium-style video screen so the drive-in worshipers can better see services and a glass-enclosed, 24-hour prayer chapel. A koi pond will lie just beneath the chapel’s glass floor, giving the illusion of walking on water.

On Feb. 5, Costa Mesa Police Patrolman Bruce Ross walked into a hospital emergency room and told a nurse, “I think someone threw a rock at my back.” The nurse later recalled that “the officer turned white right in front of me” when he was told that a bullet had lodged in his bulletproof vest. Investigators suspected a drive-by sniper had done the shooting.

Two days later, Ross told a crowded news conference that the vest had saved his life. As hot as the vests are to wear, “I’d rather sweat than bleed,” Ross said.

He was sweating more than usual in April when he confessed to superiors that he had faked the attack by shooting himself with a tear gas gun. In announcing Ross’ dismissal, an embarrassed Police Chief Roger Neth said Ross apparently wanted to gain hero status.

“Obviously, someone who shoots himself has a problem,” Ross said afterwards. “I’ve got psychological things that have to be worked out.”

“He nearly fainted when he got in there,” said a family friend.

It was Feb. 10, and David Rothenberg, then 7, was seeing the Buena Park motel room where nearly a year earlier his father had soaked him and his bed with kerosene and set them ablaze.

David had insisted on seeing the room again, a friend said. “He just said it was something he had to do.”

“We asked him how he felt on the ride home,” said another friend. “ ‘Just sad,’ he said. ‘Just real sad.’ ”

But there were more pleasant days for David in 1984.

He and his mother moved from New York to Orange County, something his mother said David had been praying for. “We moved because of the tremendous amount of love and support we’ve found here,” Marie Rothenberg said after they stepped off the plane in Los Angeles on July 9.

She was making ends meet from an advance on a book she co-authored, from a $50,000 movie contract and from the $104,000 in donations remaining in the Rothenbergs’ trust fund. Later, she was able to transfer her job from a Manhattan architecture firm to its Los Angeles office.

Initial surgeries to reconstruct David’s body went well, doctors said. By late October he was jogging laps at a school fund-raiser. His 31 laps raised $1,500 for a school computer lab.

At age 2, five months after her Mexican-born mother died, Naomi R. was declared a neglected child, taken from her American-born father and placed with a foster family in Orange.

What followed was a series of legal maneuvers as two families tried to adopt the child--her foster parents and her maternal aunt and uncle in Mexico.

An Orange County judge allowed the child to be taken to her relatives in Mexico pending the adoption decision. But on Feb. 12, the state Court of Appeal in Santa Ana issued a blistering rebuke of that ruling and of county officials’ handling of Naomi’s case.

In unusually tough language, the unanimous court blamed the lower court and the county for “an appalling breach of the state’s obligation to care for one of its own dependent children.”

The justices wondered in their published opinion whether social workers were “indulging in some sort of plantation racism” by sending the child to Mexico, despite her American citizenship.

The court again ordered her return to California, but the county has found that easier said than done. Naomi is a citizen of both the United States and Mexico. Not only is she still in Mexico, but her Mexican relatives have asked the courts in their country to approve an adoption, and a ruling by a Mexican court is pending.

In the meantime, the county has been told that Mexican authorities would look unfavorably on diplomatic efforts to get the child back in the United States.

When Immigration and Naturalization Service officers snared a group suspected of being illegal aliens at a Santa Ana street corner on Feb. 15, they got more than they bargained for.

Among the men was Mario Moreno-Lopez, who was man-sized but 14 years old. Under court guidelines, his age was enough to delay deportation, but under immigration law he was a permanent alien resident, and that should have ended the matter.

Mario didn’t have his registration card with him, however, and that night he was deported to Tijuana. His father’s six-day search for him became national news, and once home in Santa Ana, Mario became a symbol for alien-rights activists.

INS investigators later cleared the officers who deported Mario, saying the boy had signed a voluntary deportation form. Mario said he did it because he had seen another suspect roughed up by officers and didn’t want the same treatment.

The incident had at least one lasting effect. “I carry it now,” Mario said, slapping the hip pocket that contained his alien registration card.

State officials announced on March 5 that Theodore Streleski, a 47-year-old mathematician from Stanford University, would be moving to Orange, and the news prompted strong protest from Orange County.

For Streleski was a murderer and unrepentant. Three days later, as he was released from California Medical Facility at Vacaville, Streleski said he was not the least bit sorry about “the statement I made at Stanford.”

In 1978, Streleski had wanted to protest inequities in the math department, where he had been an occasional student for 19 years, and did so by beating a professor to death with a hammer. Streleski had a list of “back-up” victims handy in case that particular professor was not in his office that day, he said.

Streleski was being paroled and assigned far from Stanford, but as a routine condition he had to promise to commit no crimes. That, he said, was an “indignity and a violation of rights,” and he refused to sign the papers. It would indicate remorse, he said, and, “I don’t want to do anything that says I didn’t mean it. Because I meant it.”

Three hours later, he was back in prison. In September, he again refused parole. He gets another chance to refuse in March, and then he will be released on Sept. 8.

“I won’t be on parole. I’ll be discharged unconditionally. I’ll be like anyone else, except that I committed a murder.”

He will be free to move back to the San Francisco Bay Area. “I have nothing against Orange County,” he said. “I understand it’s got the best solid tax base in the state. But it’s not my place.”

A Fountain Valley police detective summed up what everyone seemed to be feeling: “What a way to come into the world.”

On March 24, Baby John Doe, probably less than an hour old and with his umbilical cord still attached, was bundled in two towels and two blankets and placed on top of some trash in an apartment house trash bin.

Discovered an estimated three hours later, he was having trouble breathing and was rushed to a hospital. There he flourished, and nurses promptly named the 7-pound, 15-ounce redhead Jeffrey. Three days later he was ready to leave the hospital.

In the meantime, Jeffrey had become a celebrity, and more than 300 families nationwide offered to adopt him.

On April 6, he weighed 8 pounds, 7 ounces and was renamed by a Juvenile Court judge as Eric Slater (after Slater Avenue, where he was discovered).

County authorities soon placed Eric with a family that had applied to adopt him. He is reportedly in Orange County.

On July 13, Marine Capt. John Moultak, stationed at the El Toro base, was ordered drummed out of the corps and stripped of his veteran’s benefits for, among other things, “conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman” and “conduct prejudicial to the good order and discipline of the armed forces.”

Specifically, Moultak and Marine Lance Cpl. Kandi K. Clark had become romantically involved, then engaged. Marine Corps regulations forbid fraternization between officers and enlisted personnel.

The previous fall, when the couple went to their superiors to seek an early discharge for Clark, they were told instead to cut off their relationship, they said.

This was “absurd, uncalled for,” said Clark. She said she had been raped by another Marine officer in March, 1983, but he had been allowed to resign and even was given $32,000 in severance pay.

“They let him go, but they’re prosecuting (Moultak) for being in love,” Clark complained. She said she loved Moultak and wanted to marry him.

But the story--and the romance--soon fell apart.

Moultak admitted he had lied to superiors about breaking off the relationship and had asked other Marines to help conceal the romance. Clark admitted she had been offered a chance to get out of the service from the start but had turned it down.

In July, Clark was given an honorable discharge and went home to work for an oil company in Oklahoma City. Moultak went home to Brooklyn, where he remains on unpaid leave from the service pending appeal of his dismissal.

In September, Clark conceded during an interview that the romance was over. The trial, during which she testified under immunity from prosecution, and “a personal conflict I no longer wanted to put up with” led to the breakup, she said.

On July 26, jogging along a street in downtown Tustin, was 70-year-old Patt Tambolleo from Huntington Beach.

It was more of a bouncing walk--an unspectacular display of Olympic torch running--but nowhere along the route in Orange County were the crowds as thick or the cheers as loud. Tambolleo’s run had been a long and uphill one, and the crowd knew its history.

A grandmother with a heart condition living on Social Security, Tambolleo had decided to join the torch run because “it’s the last thing I can do on this earth. You know, I’m getting old now.”

She begged the $3,000 entry fee from local businesses, but by then all the spots were sold, Olympic officials said. Told of her situation, however, they assured her they would fit her in. She sent word to her grandchildren to come to California and see her run.

But a month before the race she received the awful news: She was assigned to run in Adin, Calif., a tiny town 50 miles south of the Oregon border at an altitude of 4,200 feet. “What?” she gasped. “I can’t go 700 miles (actually 600 miles) away, no siree. My doctor’s in Huntington Beach. What are they trying to do, kill me off?”

A torch runner from Malibu, reading of Tambolleo’s plight, traded her his spot, and she was ecstatic.

As she bounced through Tustin, waving a tiny American flag and seemingly in a daze, her grandchildren and the crowd went wild. The noise probably kept them from hearing what she shouted to no one in particular:

“What do you think of a 70-year-old woman running?”

Orange County had had its own Catholic diocese for only eight years when, on May 29, it got its second bishop.

The Vatican announced that because of the diocese’s growth, it was assigning an auxiliary bishop to Orange County and had selected a street-wise, Spanish-speaking 46-year-old monsignor from the Los Angeles Skid Row district--John T. Steinbock.

On July 14, Steinbock was installed at St. Columban’s Church in Garden Grove during ceremonies presided over by Cardinal Timothy Manning, archbishop of Los Angeles. Representatives of Orange County’s 51 parishes received Steinbock with rousing applause.

“I am simply your brother who has come to serve and love you,” he told the congregation.

The prosecutor called him an “unqualified, arrogant man” whose method of dental treatment was as reckless as “shooting a gun into a crowd.”

There was no question that two women and a girl had died after Dr. Tony Protopappas had given them anesthetics at his high-volume, million-dollar-a-year clinic in Costa Mesa.

But was it recklessness on his part that caused their deaths? Even so, was there enough recklessness to constitute murder?

On July 31, after four months of argument and testimony and nearly five days of deliberation, a jury convicted Protopappas of second-degree murder in all three cases.

Nearly three months later, a judge sentenced Protopappas to prison for 15 years to life.

Protopappas, 39, will be eligible for parole in about 7 1/2 years.

The scene was familiar to reporters in Orange County: an informal news conference with Daniel G. Aldrich Jr. at UC Irvine.

This one, however, would be his last. It was Aug. 31, Aldrich’s last day as chancellor of the campus he had built literally from the ground up.

When the agriculture specialist was first appointed chancellor 22 years earlier, the campus did not exist. “We began with bare ground . . .,” he said. “Now there are not enough resources in the state of California to use and exploit--and I mean that in the non-pejorative way--the brains that are assembled on this campus.”

The next day, Jack W. Peltason, a former vice chancellor at the campus, took over and Aldrich retired.

Yet he didn’t. The UC Riverside chancellor had died of a heart attack in May, and Aldrich, 65, had agreed to stand in temporarily. By year’s end, he was still on the job while the search continued for a permanent chancellor.

Aldrich had started his University of California career there in 1943 as a junior chemist in citrus research. “Being a romantic at heart, the notion of being able to go back and work where I began . . . is a great source of excitement to me,” he said.

The vice principal’s official opinion was that the girl’s hairdo--a 3-inch-tall, two-tone Mohawk--violated Loara High School’s dress code. His unofficial opinion was that it made her “look like a raccoon.”

So on Sept. 24 he ordered 15-year-old Colleen Buono off the Anaheim campus. She showed up the next day with a scarf over her hair but was sent home again.

So she sued.

Superior Court Judge Judith M. Ryan had little sympathy for the dress code or the vice principal.

The code was vague and did not even mention such hair styles, the judge observed.

And the vice principal’s order--don’t return until your hair is “one length and all one color”--was going a bit too far, the judge said. According to the vice principal, “I couldn’t go to Loara,” said the judge, whose short brown hair had blond highlights.

The judge ordered Colleen readmitted. The next day, the school district’s attorney hinted that the dress code might be more leniently administered in the future.

“The vast majority of students in the district come to our schools clean and neat. If some students choose to deviate with that, well, then, we’ll have to work with the students and their parents,” the lawyer said.

The ghastliness of what had happened to her made her case unusual, even among the tragic victims of the UCI Burn Center.

On Oct. 24, Cheryl Bess, 15, of San Bernardino was walking to school when she was kidnaped off the street, police said. Her abductor drove her to the desert, tried to rape her, then poured some extremely caustic liquid over her head and upper body and left her there to die, police said.

For an estimated eight hours, the girl wandered, trying to rub the liquid from her body. When she was found, so much of her flesh had been consumed that she was little more than “a walking skeleton,” one officer said.

Officers arrested the maintenance man at Cheryl’s apartment complex and charged him with the attack.

Brought to the burn ward, Cheryl began a slow process of recovery. Gifts and good wishes flooded in, and a trust fund for her medical expenses swelled to $105,000. Through improvised hand signals, she told her mother of her appreciation.

Late in November, doctors installed different plastic tubes in her voice box, and Cheryl could talk for the first time since soon after the attack. “Hi, Mommy. I love you, I love you, I love you” were her first words to her mother.

Early in December, surgeons spent 11 1/2 hours attaching a flap of skin to a section of exposed skull. A hospital spokeswoman said afterwards that Cheryl was doing “really well” after the delicate operation, well enough to move on Christmas Eve to an apartment near the hospital where her mother had been staying.

Among those welcoming the end of 1984 will be Nguyen Cao Ky. It was a rough year for the former premier of South Vietnam, who now lives in Huntington Beach.

As the year began, Ky had already declared himself bankrupt, listing $710,000 in debts, and in May, his financial situation had gotten even worse. A court dismissed his bankruptcy petition, allowing creditors a shot at suing him--which they did.

Then on Oct. 25, the President’s Commission on Organized Crime, taking testimony in New York, heard renewed accusations that Ky heads Vietnamese gang operations nationwide.

The accusation had been made 10 months earlier by columnist Jack Anderson, but law enforcement experts at the hearing told the commission it could not be corroborated. The allegation is “absolutely ridiculous,” Ky said in a later interview.

Interviewed in mid-November, Ky both joked and fumed about it. “I wish I had that $8 million that Anderson mentioned in his article,” Ky said. (Anderson said Ky fled South Vietnam in 1975 with “at least $8 million to $10 million worth of gold, diamonds and currency.”)

“I will give him $7 million--I only need $1 million,” Ky said. “If he can find my $8 million, I will give him $7 million!”

It was begun quietly in 1983 by the Orange County district attorney’s office, and in 1984 the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles joined the investigation into the banking and political activities of Anaheim fireworks manufacturer W. Patrick Moriarty.

On Nov. 8, a federal grand jury indicted Moriarty, a business associate and four current and former City of Commerce officials. The charges included mail fraud and racketeering in connection with the licensing of a poker parlor in that city. The four officials have pleaded guilty.

Five weeks after the original indictments, Moriarty’s closest business associate, Richard Raymond Keith, was indicted on charges of income tax evasion, bankruptcy fraud and making false statements to a bank.

Moriarty’s lawyer has insisted that Moriarty is innocent of any crime.

Moriarty is scheduled to go on trial Jan. 22.

He is, according to one federal spokesman, “probably the highest-ranking war criminal at large in the world today.”

Federal authorities have been trying to deport Andrija Artukovic since 1952, when they discovered that the former Nazi minister of the interior and minister of justice for Croatia had entered the United States on a phony passport.

Yugoslavia, which used to include Croatia, has accused him of complicity in the execution of 770,000 Serbs and Jews in Nazi concentration camps and had been trying to have him extradited. Court rulings and appeals had frustrated both efforts.

On Nov. 14, however, federal marshals went to Artukovic’s town house in Seal Beach’s walled-off Surfside colony to arrest him on a renewed extradition request from Yugoslavia.

They found an 84-year-old invalid suffering from a series of strokes, Alzheimer’s disease and a debilitating heart condition. He was taken by ambulance to the County-USC Medical Center jail ward in Los Angeles, where he was arraigned in his crowded hospital room. At the time he appeared confused, but he acknowledged that he understood what was going on.

His attorney, arguing for bail at a later hearing, said federal authorities “want to keep him in custody until he dies to punish him because they know they can’t deport him. They have arrested an old man no longer able to speak on his own behalf.”

Twice, however, bail was denied, and at year’s end Artukovic was still in custody in a naval hospital in Long Beach, awaiting the outcome of this latest round of court maneuvers.