Cleaner’s Jailing Spurred Effort

Never did Joe Kaska, 76, envision he’d be thrown in jail. Never. And the experience, which happened one day last year as he readied for lunch, has left him a little bitter but still with a humorous tinge.

“To me, it sounded funny when they said they had come to arrest me. I couldn’t see what the hell they could do to me. I’m an old man,” said Kaska, who has operated Ritz Cleaners at 307 E. Old Lincoln Ave. in Anaheim for the past 40 years.

But to his dismay, Kaska learned that a relatively obscure state agency could play havoc with his life.

Began in 1938

And it was that six-hour experience in the Orange County Jail that led Kaska to file a complaint with Assemblyman Ross Johnson (R-La Habra), who is now attempting to abolish the state Board of Fabric Care, the agency that regulates dry cleaners.

The assemblyman has called the Board of Fabric Care a “useless piece of bureaucracy.” Johnson also has engaged in a running battle with the Department of Consumer Affairs (DCA), which oversees the Board of Fabric Care, over Kaska’s case.

The woes for Kaska, who entered the dry cleaning business in Orange County in 1938 with his now-deceased brother Roy, began almost two years ago when the City of Anaheim told him it planned to demolish his business to construct a housing project for the elderly.

Kaska decided to let his dues lapse in the California Fabricare Institute (CFI), the dry cleaning trade association. But unknown to him, that move automatically canceled the surety bond the association had traditionally obtained for him. The bond is required of dry cleaners in case consumers lodge complaints against the business.

“I didn’t figure to be here much longer. At my age, I wasn’t going to open up another business. I was going to retire,” he said.

And thus began the unlikely tale that ended in Kaska’s arrest last May 4.

Five months after he decided not to renew his CFI dues, he was informed by the Board of Fabric Care that he was in violation of state statutes for not having a surety bond. Kaska immediately obtained a $1,000 check through his bank and forwarded it to the DCA. But he was told he still needed a retroactive bond for the five months he was unbonded.

Kaska said he tried unsuccessfully to get a retroactive bond and accused DCA of not helping him find an insurance company that could remedy the problem for him. The DCA claimed it couldn’t make such a referral, saying it was akin to advising consumers as to what dry cleaning establishments they should patronize.

Months later, on Jan. 18, 1984, DCA agents informed Kaska that he was not operating in compliance with the law and gave him until Feb. 3 to comply or face a criminal complaint. He refused and said he heard nothing more until the complaint was filed on May 3.

The next day, as Kaska prepared to take his customary 11:30 a.m. lunch break, two DCA agents arrived at his business to arrest him. He claimed that the agents were rude and did not allow his attorney time to try to settle the dispute before he was taken to jail.

Calls Arrest ‘Unnecessary’

“All that was necessary for the agents was to serve me with a subpoena to appear in court. It was totally unnecessary to arrest me,” Kaska said.

In a subsequent letter to Gov. George Deukmejian, Kaska, who has an arthritic knee that prevents him from standing for too long, complained that he had been forced to sit “on a cold, hard floor, because there were no seats available in the jail tank. At my age and with an arthritic condition, believe me I was very uncomfortable.”

It was that letter to Deukmejian and a call to the assemblyman that got Johnson involved in Kaska’s case and led him to file the bill to abolish the Board of Fabric Care. The governor did not reply but eventually referred the letter to the DCA, which has been unable to satisfy Kaska on the reasons he was ordered arrested.

The DCA has written several letters to Kaska and Johnson in the past several months detailing why the department considered the dry cleaner to be operating in violation of state law before his arrest. The situation was finally remedied when Kaska obtained all the bonding requirement imposed by the Board of Fabric Care.

The criminal complaint against Kaska also was eventually dropped, although prosecutors initially asked him to take the easy route out: plead guilty and receive a suspended sentence.

“I refused to plead guilty because I wanted a jury trial. Everything was stacked against me. I think (this) law is against the public interest and I wanted to prove that,” he said.

Robust despite the arthritis, Kaska stands 6-3 and weighs 240 pounds. He said that despite his bulk, the agents placed small and tight handcuffs on him and “shoved me in the back seat of a compact car. They were totally unreasonable.

“Here’s the thing, I’d like to sue the hell out of them.”

Can’t Find an Attorney

But it would take permission from the state for him to sue the state agency, and then it could take years for him to get a case to court. Kaska has also considered filing a federal lawsuit claiming his civil rights were violated. That, too, seems unlikely since he can’t find an attorney willing to file a civil rights lawsuit on his behalf.

Although Kaska wants the Board of Fabric Care abolished, he does not plan to travel to Sacramento to testify before the Assembly’s Consumer Protection Committee on Thursday when the panel will hear public testimony on Johnson’s bill.

“I’m over the hill. I’m out of it. I really don’t care what happens to me. It’s up to the young dry cleaning folks to do something about it,” he said.

For now, Kaska said he would just like to dim the lights on his long career, surrounded by the four employees with whom he enjoys a warm and special relationship in the old, almost dilapidated building. The City of Anaheim will close him down soon enough. And he doesn’t relish sitting at the sewing machine doing alterations since the arthritic knee got so painful he couldn’t work any of his five steam presses.

“I’m just sitting here on my butt, doing nothing but alterations. I guess when I finally close, I’ll take this chair home and sit around,” he said.

Still, last year’s six-hour jail stay, which he said was a personal embarrassment to him, did give Kaska something to ponder. He thinks the episode was actually pretty funny.

“I made up my mind a long time ago that if anybody threw me in jail for nothing, I’d kill ‘em,” Kaska said. “But I got so much experience out of this deal. And there’s another thing: I didn’t appreciate them making me miss my lunch.”