1984 in Review: Year of Olympic Games, Politics

If 1984 was nothing else, it was the year of the Olympics. They were called the Los Angeles Games, but the magnitude of the event alone ensured that Orange County would also play a major part in the quadrennial celebration of excellence by thousands of the world’s most gifted athletes.

Extensive planning and preparation went into the four events staged in the county--bicycle races, modern pentathlon, team handball and wrestling--and there were the inevitable problems, including a major foul-up that plagued the first day of over-the-counter ticket sales.

But that was all forgotten on July 25 when, at 4:01 p.m., the Olympic torch relay crossed into the county at San Clemente and the symbolic flame that had journeyed across the United States was passed first to Shauna Price, a 19-year-old Cal State Fullerton student.

From then on, kilometer by kilometer, scores of runners relayed the flame on a circuitous course through Orange County, urged and cheered on every step of the way by thousands upon thousands of spectators lining the route.

Instant Celebrities

Among the torch bearers were community leaders and housewives, government officials and children, soldiers and athletes. They were instant celebrities. One, Patt Tambolleo of Huntington Beach, achieved a measure of fame even before she had taken a step. The 70-year-old grandmother was assigned to run her kilometer 600 miles away in the tiny Northern California community of Adin, far from friends and relatives who had helped her raise the $3,000 fee. A Malibu man traded routes with her and Tambolleo proudly carried her torch in Tustin to the cheers of “Run, Grandma, run.”

The enthusiasm from the torch relay carried over to the events. More than 200,000 spectators flocked to the streets of Mission Viejo to cheer American gold medal performances in both men’s and women’s bicycle racing. There were also sellout crowds for the modern pentathlon at Coto de Caza, team handball at Cal State Fullerton and wrestling at the Anaheim Convention Center.

Even those not directly connected with the Games did their part. Voluntary cutbacks by industry in the county led to remarkably low air-pollution levels, while motorists, apparently dreading the traffic jams that had been forecast by some, found other ways to get to and from work. Hence, no freeway tie-ups.

Jammed freeways, however, were a very real problem for most of 1984. Recognizing that traffic conditions can get only worse in the next 15 years, when the county’s population is expected to grow by nearly 50%, government officials began searching for a way to finance 16 major highway projects and a rail transportation system that they said are needed to avoid plunging the area into gridlock.

In the post-Proposition 13 era of government austerity, the officials said, little or no money is available for such improvement and construction projects. Thus was born Proposition A, an initiative on the June primary ballot to increase the sales tax locally by one cent per dollar to raise $5 billion in transportation funding over a 15-year period.

With many civic and business leaders supporting the measure and a record $1.8 million raised to finance a campaign, chances for passage seemed good, particularly since opponents collected only $100,000 to defeat the initiative.

Dollars and endorsements were not enough, however, and Proposition A was soundly rejected. Political strategists blamed the defeat on a low voter turnout and a traditional anti-tax sentiment among those who bothered to go to the polls.

With the defeat of Proposition A behind them, county transportation officials decided late in the year to seek legislative authority to tap a new source of transportation funds. Under the plan, the interest on an $85-million fund currently reserved for mass transit would be tapped for road improvements and new freeways, netting an estimated $8.5 million a year.

The Board of Supervisors also took a different tack, at least concerning new freeways, establishing a program under which future development in the south county will be subject to fees. The program is intended to pay the $606-million estimated cost of traffic arteries needed to serve the area’s burgeoning population.

Proposition A was not the only proposed cure for transportation ills that died in 1984. American High Speed Rail Corp. scrapped its three-year effort to make a proposed San Diego-Los Angeles “bullet train” a reality. Company officials blamed the failure on their inability to raise $50 million in private capital for engineering studies--not on intense opposition by cities along the route of the 160-m.p.h. train.

Also in the realm of transportation, the problems faced by John Wayne Airport continued for yet another year. A proposed agreement whereby Newport Beach would drop all its legal challenges to the airport if the county acceded to only limited expansion of the facility fell through. That left the Board of Supervisors to pursue its own master plan for airport expansion, a $193-million project that would see the number of daily commercial jet flights increase to 73 from the present 41.

Moving the airport was another solution offered in a variety of forms, all of which have surfaced at some time or another during the past 15 years. Rep. William Dannemeyer (R-Fullerton) suggested relocating it to an island offshore, while others pointed to the county’s foothills and canyons or recommended joint civilian-military use of El Toro Marine Corps Air Station.

Politicians spent the year being particularly sensitive to the issues because, after all, 1984 was an election year.

Proposition A, the transportation sales tax initiative, was the dominant issue in the June primary, nearly overshadowing the emergence of Gil Ferguson of Newport Beach from a cavalry-charge field of candidates as the Republican nominee for the 70th Assembly District, which covers the well-to-do bedroom communities of the south county. Ferguson, 61, a home builder and owner of a public-relations and advertising firm, easily defeated his Democratic opponent in November.

Ferguson took over the Assembly seat held for three terms by Newport Beach Republican Marian Bergeson, who moved up to the state Senate. Like Ferguson, Bergeson scored an easy victory. She took over the seat in the 37th District, which stretches from Seal Beach into San Diego, Riverside and Imperial counties. Bergeson’s chief opponent for the seat, vacant since Sen. John Schmitz (R-Corona del Mar) resigned in mid-term in 1982, was Sen. Ollie Speraw (R-Long Beach), who had been left without a district following reapportionment. Speraw, however, withdrew from the race, saying he was disillusioned with elective politics.

In fact, Republican candidates had a relatively easy time of it, what with 51.6% of the county’s 1,104,230 registered voters in the GOP column, compared to 37.4% for the Democrats.

In a race that drew national attention, Robert K. Dornan, a former Santa Monica-area congressman and ardent conservative, ousted five-term Democrat Jerry M. Patterson from the 38th Congressional District seat in a strident campaign that saw the two candidates spend a total of $1.5 million.

Meanwhile, Republican incumbents Robert Badham of Newport Beach and Daniel Lungren of Long Beach had little trouble winning reelection to their respective congressional districts, which cover the coast from Laguna Beach to Palos Verdes. Badham, seeking his fifth two-year term, faced his strongest challenge in six years from Newport Beach businesswoman Carol Ann Bradford, who campaigned on her disagreements with the Reagan Administration over the environment, senior citizens and nuclear weapons, as well as Badham’s reputation as one of the House’s most traveled members.

Orange County drew the attention of national candidates, with President Reagan and Democratic vice presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro both making appearances here. Reagan and running mate George Bush duly swept the county.

There was but one bright moment for the Democrats. Their lone spot in the county’s eight-member state Assembly delegation was retained by Richard Robinson of Garden Grove. The 256-vote victory over Republican challenger Richard Longshore was the toughest battle of Robinson’s political career.

Meanwhile, political contributions, on which candidates for even the lowliest of elective offices seemingly depend, came under close scrutiny on several fronts.

Grand Jury Investigation

The Orange County Grand Jury launched an investigation into the business and political activities of Anaheim fireworks magnate W. Patrick Moriarty. Focusing in part on an estimated $450,000 that the 53-year-old Moriarty and his business associates gave to ballot proposition drives and politicians on the city, county, state and national levels, the probe eventually grew in scope and was joined by the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles.

Moriarty has been indicted and is scheduled to go on trial Jan. 22 on racketeering and mail fraud charges for allegedly giving City of Commerce officials hidden ownership interests in a poker club in exchange for help in getting a license for the gambling establishment. Four city officials also charged in the case have pleaded guilty and are scheduled to be sentenced in February. Additionally, Moriarty associate Richard Raymond Keith was indicted for income tax evasion and bankruptcy fraud.

In an effort to limit the influence of major campaign contributors, the county six years ago adopted a law limiting the size of donations to elected officials. No law, however, is perfect and the grand jury in 1984 asked the Board of Supervisors to amend the ordinance to remove ambiguities that came to light in allegations that a company owned by Irvine Co. Chairman Donald L. Bren may have violated the law.

The year was one of firsts in Orange County:

- Harriett M. Wieder became the first woman to serve as chairman cqof the Board of Supervisors.

- For the first time, there were more women than men enrolled at the Sheriff’s Department training academy.

- Laguna Beach became the first city in the county to ban discrimination against homosexuals in employment and housing.

- More than 1,500 persons attended the county’s first major gay political gathering.

There was a little less happiness in the Happiest Place on Earth in 1984. Disneyland recorded the eighth fatality in its 29-year history when Dolly R. Young, 48, of Fremont was killed while riding the Matterhorn roller coaster. Then debris from a fireworks show sparked a spectacular blaze that damaged a storage area at the Anaheim amusement park.

1,500 Walk Off Jobs

In September, negotiations broke down between the park and five unions representing such workers as ride operators, sales clerks and food service employees, and 1,500 members of the park staff walked off their jobs in a dispute over pay and benefits. Ultimatums were issued, candlelight vigils were staged and court battles over just where the strikers could picket were fought. Further negotiations eventually resolved the 22-day walkout--the longest strike in the park’s history.

In the Magic Kingdom, of course, a story--like that of Juan and Margarita Granados of Compton--always has a happy ending. On their first visit to Disneyland, Juan went for a ride on Space Mountain and Margarita went to the first aid station, where she gave birth to a daughter.

It was a year in which the Orange County Jail again found itself in a vortex of controversy as six persons died while in custody at the Santa Ana facility. A full-time jail medical director had been appointed and other improvements in handling prisoners were implemented. They were not enough, however, to satisfy the grand jury, which in June laid much of the blame at the feet of Health Care Agency Director Charles Kerns. Two months later, Kerns announced he was resigning effective in January. The Board of Supervisors decided not to wait and removed Kerns, temporarily replacing him with Robert Love, the chief executive assistant to Wieder.

Controversy did not end there. A new dispute arose when Sheriff-Coroner Brad Gates asked Love for the psychiatric records of an inmate who had died after slashing his wrists, a request Love rejected on grounds of confidentiality. Gates went to court and won, claiming he needed the records to determine if the prisoner had committed suicide or was receiving improper levels of medication prescribed by jail psychiatrists that might have affected his mood at the time he slashed himself.

Separate Offices Proposed

Questions were raised, however, about a possible conflict of interest because Gates investigated the death both as coroner and as sheriff. And those led to discussions, but no decision, about whether the two offices should be separated as they were before supervisors consolidated them in 1970.

Seven people died at the hands of law enforcement officers during 1984, three of them in Santa Ana.

Isidro Martinez Jiminez, 22, of Santa Ana, had been pulled over for speeding and possible drunken driving in Santa Ana and was fatally shot when a gun drawn by an officer accidentally went off. The policeman, who had 17 months’ experience, had been called to the scene to assist other officers who had spotted a rifle in the back seat of Jiminez’s car.

Ezequiel Flores Larios, 25, of Santa Ana died three days after being struck with night sticks by Santa Ana officers. Police said they were attempting to question Larios about possible drug activities when he fled and they had to chase him down.

The coroner’s office ruled that Linthong Panyanak, 52, of Santa Ana, died of an aneurysm even though he had been shot four times by Santa Ana officers who were trying to subdue him after he had threatened them with a knife. Witnesses said Panyanak had slashed the doors of several apartments where he lived and had threatened to kill his neighbors.

Gun Pointed at Officer

Police said John Raymond Crowley, 40, of Yorba Linda, was shot and killed when he refused to drop a gun he was holding and, instead, pointed it at an officer who had responded to reports of shots being fired in Crowley’s apartment complex.

An Anaheim officer shot and killed Michael John White, 15, of Tucson, in order to save the life of an off-duty policeman who was trying to disarm the knife-wielding White, a suspected car thief.

Deanna Slender, 23, of Tustin, was shot and killed during a confrontation between two sheriff’s deputies and her husband, Charles, and his two brothers over a speeding ticket. Charles had grabbed one deputy’s gun and fired it during a scuffle in front of the Slenders’ home. The second deputy then opened fire, striking the woman.

In San Clemente, 31-year-old Raul Felipe Ortiz of San Clemente died after he was involved in a struggle with at least six officers answering a disturbance call at an apartment building.

While some stories about children in 1984 had happy endings, too often they dealt with sadness and tragedy being visited on the young.

He was introduced to the world as Baby John Doe, this newborn infant who was found abandoned in a trash bin in Fountain Valley. But Jeffrey, as he was named by nurses at the Albert Sitton Home where he was taken, did not want for family very long as hundreds of people offered to adopt him. He was eventually released to foster parents who will expect to adopt him this month.

And there was the return of 8-year-old David Rothenberg, who was critically burned in 1983 when his father set fire to their Buena Park motel room while they were visiting from New York. David and his mother, Marie, left the East Coast to start their lives over in Orange County, which had responded so warmly to the youngster’s plight.

Mario Moreno-Lopez, 14, of Santa Ana, found himself alone in Tijuana after he was swept up in a street-corner raid by immigration agents. The youth, who was in the United States legally, wasn’t carrying his identification card and was deported. His father found him in the border city and they returned home.

Acid Poured on Girl

Cheryl Bess, a 15-year-old San Bernardino girl, became a patient in the same UCI Medical Center burn unit where David Rothenberg had been treated after she was abducted by a would-be rapist who poured acid over her face and left her to die in a remote desert area.

She was treated for the severe burns for nearly two months and finally went home on Christmas Eve. She faces the prospect of years of reconstructive surgery.

Little Laura Bradbury of Huntington Beach disappeared in October from Joshua Tree National Monument where the 3-year-old girl, her parents and older brother were on a camping trip. Despite a full-scale search of the area, no trace of the child has been found. Police are still seeking a man who was seen driving a blue van in the area at the time Laura vanished.

Another kidnaping, this one involving the reported abduction of 3-year-old Paul Bao Thach from a Buena Park department store, turned out to be a hoax growing out of a family dispute over the boy’s visiting his grandparents in Georgia.

Battle for Life Lost

Family strife overshadowed Melissa Acosta’s fight for life, a fight the 15-year-old Los Alamitos girl eventually lost. Melissa needed transfusions as treatment for a blood disease, but her mother would not allow it because of religious beliefs. County officials went to court to get the girl placed in the care of doctors. Her father had to get a judge’s order allowing him to see his ailing daughter after he had been refused visiting rights by his ex-wife.

Five-year-old Naomi R., meanwhile, was the subject of an international adoption battle pitting her aunt and uncle in Mexico against her foster parents in Orange County. The girl, an American citizen by birth, had been placed in a foster home following her Mexican-born mother’s death in 1980 but was later turned over to her aunt and uncle, who then took Naomi R. back to their home in Mexico. Both the girl’s relatives and her foster parents had filed for adoption, but the matter remains unresolved because the aunt and uncle have refused to return to the United States for court hearings.

The news about housing in Orange County in 1984 was not about its high cost, but rather the substandard conditions in houses and apartments being rented primarily to Latinos in parts of Santa Ana, Garden Grove and Anaheim.

Santa Ana launched a crackdown against slumlords, issuing hundreds of citations as well as filing criminal complaints and lawsuits for housing code violations involving unsanitary and unsafe conditions, such as broken plumbing and exposed wiring. In some instances, the city said, as many as 30 people each paying $40 a week rent --were living in a single-family residence. Many houses and apartments were in such bad condition that they were ordered vacated. More than 500 people found themselves without places to live. The city then found itself caught up in a controversy over what it should do to help those who had been evicted because of the crackdown. After months of demonstrations by residents and wrangling with neighborhood support groups, the City Council finally voted in December to establish a fund of at least $100,000 to help displaced families find new housing.

100 Facing Eviction

In Anaheim, where officials have announced they intend to clean out a six-block area of substandard housing in the central part of the city, more than 100 people face eviction . There the renters pay as much as $50 per person per week to live in one- and two-room plywood hovels or scrap-board garages with no foundations, no hot water and often no bathroom plumbing.

Meanwhile, in Garden Grove’s Buena Clinton neighborhood, considered the county’s worst slum, things were looking up a bit. The federal government approved a $2.5-million allocation to rehabilitate 100 apartments in the 39-acre neighborhood where 4,500 people live in housing designed to accommodate 1,500. The city provided $800 in moving costs to each of nine families who were forced to vacate a condemned apartment building, and a county-operated mobile medical care van began making regular visits to the area.

Beyond housing, there was other news about the quality of life in Orange County in 1984, particularly about the environment.

It has been a year of setbacks and progress for the cleanup of Fullerton’s McColl hazardous waste site.

Just as the first trucks were to roll onto the dump, the owner of the Los Coyotes Country Club whose golf course lies partially atop the dump--obtained a court order blocking construction of roads and buildings necessary for the excavation. A Superior Court judge ruled that because the state Health Department did not have money to complete the job, the country club could be irreparably harmed.

Several months later the state, after signing a precedent-setting agreement with the federal Environmental Protection Agency to finance the $21.5-million cleanup and after awarding a contract, persuaded the judge to lift the stop-work order.

But Charles McAuley, the country club owner, was not finished fighting and went so far as to get the state Supreme Court to halt the work, an order the justices later lifted.

The dump site--a repository for refinery acid waste generated during World War II by the production of aviation fuel--is now being prepared for the massive excavation project set to begin late this month or early next.

Also settled during 1984 was the county’s first major lawsuit over toxic substance injuries. The Fiberite West Coast Corp. agreed to pay an estimated $5 million to 28 persons who claimed they were injured five years ago when they inhaled fumes from a cloud of steam and chemicals that spewed from the firm’s plant in Orange.

Anaheim officials, meanwhile, moved to prevent such an occurrence in their city when they shut down a chemical distribution firm after finding illegally stored hazardous materials that health experts termed “a great potential threat to the area.”

That potential became a reality in Westminster. When hundreds of birds fell dead in a neighborhood, health officials cordoned off the area, advised residents to close their windows and ordered schoolchildren indoors. The cause was eventually established as a pesticide that was sprayed on a cauliflower field leased by the grower from the Seal Beach Naval Weapons Station.

In other environmental matters:

- The U.S. House of Representatives authorized a $1.3-billion Santa Ana River flood-control plan aimed at alleviating what experts have termed the worst threat for devastating flood damage west of the Mississippi River.

- There finally seemed to be some progress toward resolving the fate of the Bolsa Chica wetlands, a controversy that had defied settlement for 20 years. The size of the wetlands to be restored grew to 915 acres and the California Coastal Commission, which once seemed certain to block any development on the sprawling salt marsh, approved a plan calling for recreational and residential development on the property owned by Signal Landmark Inc.

- In the south county, the mammoth Aliso Greenbelt was chosen by the President’s Council on Physical Fitness and Sports among finalists for the site of a national fitness academy.

There was little in the way of good news in the field of health and medicine in 1984.

Orange County was experiencing an “epidemic” of AIDS, a disease that attacks immune systems, leaving the body defenseless against disease, and for which there is no known cure. But, said Tom Prendergast, the county’s epidemiologist, the county was no worse off than Los Angeles or San Francisco. The county’s number of reported AIDS cases and deaths was small compared to those other areas, but during a six-month period had grown at a rate faster than in the rest of the United States.

And the county’s major public health care facility, UCI Medical Center in Orange, was suffering financially to the point that UC Irvine Chancellor Jack W. Peltason ordered a major review of the facility. While UC-operated hospitals in Los Angeles, San Francisco and San Diego showed profits ranging from $6 million to $15 million, UCI Medical Center lost $3 million during the fiscal year that ended June 30 and was expected tolose even more in the current year.

Business and industry in Orange County for the most part enjoyed a good year in 1984. There were, however, some notable exceptions.

The failure of three banks--Heritage Bank of Anaheim, Bank of Irvine and Garden Grove Community Bank--made headlines. Not everybody read about them, though. A would-be robber walked into a Heritage office several weeks after it had been closed and was informed by federal officials who had taken it over that there wasn’t any money in the place.

Another failure with a wide-ranging impact was the collapse of Westminster-based Community Association Management Specialists (CAMS), considered the largest operation of its kind in Southern California. With thousands of dollars missing from the accounts of community associations that CAMS provided with maintenance services, Jack Miller, head of the firm, blamed it on the West Pac Corp. of Orange, which had taken over the company. West Pac President Kent Rogers said his company had considered buying CAMS, but changed its mind.

Suits and Countersuits

Besides the suits and countersuits filed in the CAMS collapse, Rogers was having other problems of his own. Scheduled to begin serving a prison term in January for bankruptcy fraud, the Huntington Harbour resident also saw his own assets as well as those of his company and several associates seized by Delaware authorities, who claimed an insurance firm Rogers controlled had been looted.

Industrialist J. Robert Fluor died following a long illness. (See Business Section.)

Crime, of course, was in the news in 1984.

One of the most widely publicized cases involved the murder of Cal State Fullerton physics professor Edward Lee Cooperman, 48, who was found shot to death in his campus office. Minh Van Lam, 21, a Vietnamese refugee and former student of Cooperman, was charged with the murder by police, who say they still have not established a motive for the killing. Others, however, have offered a variety of reasons. Some of Cooperman’s friends and academic colleagues say the professor was the target of a right-wing Vietnamese assassination plot because of his efforts to develop humanitarian and scientific exchanges with the Communist Vietnamese government.

Lam’s lawyer raised and then dismissed the possibility that Cooperman committed suicide and may have had a sexual interest in young Asian men--suggestions the professor’s family and friends denounced as character assassination. Lam, a computer sciences student, said the shooting was an accident.

On the drug enforcement front, what was termed the largest cocaine-smuggling network ever uncovered in California was smashed in coordinated raids by 300 federal agents and local police. Stiff prison sentences were handed down to 13 of the 26 persons convicted in the case. These included a 45-year term for Alan Charles Mobley, 24, a former prize-winning orator at Fullerton High School who was considered the ringleader.

Dr. Tony Protopappas was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to 15 years to life in prison in the deaths of three patients who were treated at his Costa Mesa dental clinic.

And a new trial was ordered for Gabriel DeLuca, 19, who was convicted of first-degree murder in the stabbing death of a 30-year-old Huntington Beach letter carrier whose body was found in the back seat of her mail car in a church parking lot. A judge said the prosecution had failed to share certain information with the youth’s defense attorneys.

Traffic accidents wreaked tragedy almost daily in Orange County during 1984.

Robert Trueblood was only two blocks from his home in Fullerton when he happened upon a bad accident. In it, he discovered, a car driven by his wife had collided with another, and she and their three children had been fatally hurt. The other driver, Michael W. Reding, 26, of Fullerton, has been charged with vehicular manslaughter and drunk driving.

Five people, including four Orange County residents, died when their speedboat struck a mooring buoy near Seal Beach during a late-night cruise. It was called the worst boating accident in Southern California in years.

And a skiing trip to Utah for some high school students from south Orange County ended tragically when their bus went off the highway and crashed, killing two of the youngsters.