Ex-County Pair Reported Freed by Nicaraguan Captors

After being held prisoners by the Nicaraguan government for the past three weeks, a former Orange County community college administrator and his wife are reported by Sandinista officials to be en route to freedom aboard the couple’s sailboat, the U.S. State Department said Monday night.

Leo R. LaJeunesse, 53, a former associate dean at Orange Coast College in Costa Mesa, and his wife Dolores were cruising from Florida to Orange County via the Panama Canal when their 65-foot sailboat was seized Aug. 7 by the Nicaraguan Coast Guard.

After days of sharp exchanges between the Sandinista government and Reagan Administration officials, a State Department official said late Monday that Nicaraguan officials had informed them that the LaJeunesses had been freed Saturday and had set sail for nearby Costa Rica.

“So far we haven’t been able to verify that the couple is free,” the official added.

The couple had been interrogated by Nicaraguan officials, forced to pay for their hotel “house arrest” and denied permission to see U.S. consular officials, a State Department official in Washington said. The U.S. government entered a formal protest against the couple’s detention last week, the official added. Norma Harms, Nicaraguan desk officer at the State Department, said the LaJeunesses were told by Nicaraguan officials that they were suspected of “gun running” but that no charges ever were filed.

“As of late this (Monday) afternoon, the last word we have from the (Nicaraguan) Ministry of External Affairs is that they have allowed the LaJeunesses to sail away to Costa Rica,” Harms said. “We’ve alerted Costa Rica to be on the lookout for them.”

William Schreiber, district officer for U.S. Rep. Robert E. Badham (R-Newport Beach), said late Monday afternoon that he had been told by the U.S. Consulate in Managua that the LaJeunesses probably would “be arriving in Costa Rica sometime Tuesday.”

But a State Department official in Washington, who asked not to be identified, said, “The (Nicaraguan) ministry has been lying to us throughout most of this episode.”

Harms also questioned Nicaragua’s assertion that the couple had been doing anything wrong, explaining: “I’m sure they wouldn’t be letting them go, as they say they have, if they had found anything.”

LaJeunesse had served on the Orange Coast College faculty from 1966 until resigning in 1982 to take a world cruise on his sailboat. He was sailing back to Southern California with his wife to relocate in the area and seek another college position when his boat was seized off Nicaragua, college associates told The Times.

“Lee (Leo LaJeunesse) is a very conservative guy, and I can’t imagine him in any way getting involved in anything risky,” said Dave Grant, Orange Coast College’s dean of students and a close friend of LaJeunesse. Other college officials also dismissed any possibility that the couple were involved in gun-running.

“I talked to Lee when he was visiting here in July, and he told me that he was being very careful about sailing off Nicaragua,” said Jim Carnett, Orange Coast College’s director of community relations.

Carnett added that this is not the first time the LaJeunesses have encountered trouble in Nicaraguan waters.

“Lee told me that when he and his wife were sailing down the Pacific side of Nicaragua in 1982, headed to the Panama Canal, they were chased by Nicaraguan gunboats,” he recalled.

He said that LaJeunesse supposed that the 1982 chase occurred because the Nicaraguans thought the sailboat was too close to their territorial waters.

In the most recent incident, the State Department said the LaJeunesses’ boat was off Little Corn Island in the Caribbean Sea, about 40 miles east of the Nicaraguan mainland, when the craft was taken over by the Nicaraguan Coast Guard on Aug. 7.

James Callahan, with the State Department’s bureau of consular affairs, said the Nicaraguans claimed the LaJeunesses were having trouble with the auxiliary motor on their sailboat and were towed into Bluefields, an eastern Nicaraguan port city.

“They were placed under house arrest in a hotel at Bluefields,” Callahan said. “Later they were presented with a bill and told to pay premium rates, in American dollars.” Callahan added that the couple subsequently were placed under guard on their boat.

The LaJeunesses have been allowed to make telephone calls to the U.S. Embassy in Managua, the Nicaraguan capital, but U.S. staff officials there were denied permission to go to Bluefields to see them, said Callahan.

“As far as we know, they are all right physically, although the wife was said to have had a mild case of gastroenteritis,” Callahan said.

Harms, of the State Department’s Nicaragua desk, said that the LaJeunesses had been questioned at length by Nicaraguan officials. “One time there was an 8-hour interrogation,” she said. “The couple talked to our officials by telephone last Saturday, and they sounded panicky. They said they wanted out.”

Callahan said the U.S. government last week officially protested to Nicaragua “because the Vienna convention and a bilateral (U.S.-Nicaraguan) treaty don’t allow such detention without notice to the government involved.” Callahan said the U.S. government was not promptly notified when the LaJeunesses were detained.

Carnett, the director of community relations at Orange Coast College, said that LaJeunesse had initially taken a leave of absence in 1981 to sail his boat with his wife. “Later, he decided to resign to take a world cruise,” said Carnett.

Decided to Live in Florida

Carnett said that after the LaJeunesses sailed down the Pacific coast and went through the Panama Canal into the Caribbean, the couple decided to live in Florida, where one of their daughters resides.

“But Lee later told me that he and his wife had decided that Southern California was the place to be, and they were sailing back here when they were detained,” said Carnett.

Carnett said that LaJeunesse has an application pending to rejoin the staff of Orange Coast College. LaJeunesse was an applicant, but did not become a finalist, for the college’s now-vacant position of dean of instruction, Carnett said.

Before leaving on their cruise, the LaJeunesses lived in Costa Mesa. Leo LaJeunesse, a native of Hartford, Conn., received his master’s degree in agricultural engineering from the University of Connecticut.

He started his career at Orange Coast College in 1966 as an agriculture instructor and ultimately became associate dean of instructional media resources. The couple have three grown children, college officials said.