Failed to Pay Child Support : Arm of the Law Plucks Seaman Off the Waves

It was an operation that involved stealth, cunning and, of course, the element of surprise.

Under cover of darkness late Wednesday, three investigators from the district attorney’s office pinpointed their quarry on board a ship anchored two miles off Los Angeles Harbor.

With arrest warrant in hand, they boarded two small boats and quietly made their way seaward, catching merchant seaman Paul Hawkins, 45, completely unawares.

Hawkins, 45, an engineer aboard the Artugan Pass, was still “sputtering and cursing” about the unusual sequence of events when he appeared in a Los Angeles Municipal Court on Friday.

“He thought he was pretty much immune out there,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. Vincent Carberry. “He’d never heard of such a thing.”

Hawkins’ crime? Failing to provide child support for his 5-year-old son.

“It was kind of an extreme thing to do in one sense,” said Carberry, a member of the district attorney’s bureau of family support operations. “But on the other hand, the mother kept writing us notes that she was desperate.”

Investigators were alerted by the mother that Hawkins’ ship, which had been out to sea for a year, was about to make the brief refueling stop.

After being plucked off the vessel, Hawkins was transferred to a waiting police boat and taken to the Los Angeles Police Department’s Harbor Division, where he was booked on a misdemeanor charge.

Pleading no contest to the charge Friday, Hawkins was ordered by Commissioner John Ladner to pay $250 a month in child support, given a one-year suspended jail sentence and placed on three years’ probation.

When last seen, his ship was headed toward its next port. And Hawkins was en route to the airport to catch up with the ship at its next stop.