Mirthful Mystery Aboard the Monterey Express : Caper Helps Draw Attention to Cancer Support Group

It was a murder mystery called “The Encounter,” and it started in Los Angeles on a train heading north toward this quiet bay city.

It ended, two days later, at the elegant Monterey Plaza Hotel, after guests had run up and down Cannery Row looking for clues from shopkeepers in order to solve the whodunit. There even was a fake murder at the hotel after which real paramedics carted away the body. It was clever make-believe.

Pulled the Caper

But, in reality, everyone knew Selma Schimmel did it. She pulled this caper using a mystery train trip to Monterey to draw attention to and raise funds for Vital Options, a Los Angeles support group that she founded for young adults with cancer.

“More than anything, this allows people to know we exist,” said Schimmel, who set up Vital Options in 1984, the year after she was diagnosed as having breast cancer and could find no support group for people her age. It is the first cancer support group of its kind for young adults from 17 to 40 in the United States. At 28, Schimmel, who was a respiratory therapist and student at UCLA, underwent a lumpectomy, followed by nine months of radiation and chemotherapy and a second operation to remove several lymph nodes. “I felt so battered by the whole thing,” she recalled. “I decided to take it and create an organization that would be able to help others feeling that way.”

During the weekend trip, Schimmel was so busy answering questions about Vital Options from television and print media reporters that she had no time to play “The Encounter” game.

But she didn’t care. Her main purpose, she explained, was to tell why she started Vital Options, which has offered free support groups, counseling and related services to more than 400 young people with cancer, their families and friends. And with the money raised from charity events, Schimmel plans to expand services even more this year.

“All the other people (in cancer support groups) were considerably older than I and I couldn’t relate to their issues,” Schimmel said. “Having cancer, it’s not enough just to lick it physically, but to learn to deal with the emotional components. It’s my belief that attitude is a major component. What we’re trying to do is demystify it. Being diagnosed with cancer does not mean death. It means you have to work a little bit harder at living.”

For Schimmel, who has been “cancer free” for three years now, life is centered around Vital Options, headquartered in Studio City. Her first fund-raiser, “Dance for Life” at the Beverly Theater last October, brought in $60,000 for the nonprofit charity, and she expects another “Dance for Life,” scheduled Nov. 16, to raise more than that. The fund-raising tally from the train trip has not yet been completed, but she expects to clear more than $30,000.

Drove Up in a Rolls-Royce

For the mystery train trip, Schimmel geared invitations toward representatives of corporations, rather than individuals. “But there were individual donors,” she said. “One man drove up to my office in his Rolls-Royce, came in and gave me a check.”

The weekend package cost $1,946 per couple, that particular figure chosen because the mystery that guests would have to solve began in 1946.

Once aboard the train--five vintage cars attached to the rear of an Amtrak train bound for Seattle--the 130 guests found the plot was intricate. “Encounter” character Cammy Sue Cadwilder already had been kidnaped from Union Station to start the mystery rolling.

Through an unending number of clues for the next two days, mystery puzzle participants had to determine what happened to a photojournalist named Gregory Braithwaite Murray and his young wife, Simone, who disappeared on their honeymoon July 18, 1946, in Monterey. They also would have to solve several attempted murders and a successful one as the story unfolded on the train and at the Cannery Row hotel.

“For a young charity, an event like this is gutsy,” Schimmel said of the train trip. “When I first proposed it to the board, they thought I was out of my mind. But I just knew we could do it. As a new charity, for us to be able to make inroads with three major international corporations is incredible and wonderful.”

As major sponsors of “The Encounter,” Schimmel lined up Parfums Givenchy Inc., Lincoln-Mercury and 3M corporation, and a long list of smaller businesses to contribute services and items to the event.

Moving Out Across Country

“I wanted to do the train trip because the train is representative of moving out across the country, which is what we want to do now with Vital Options,” she said. “We want to expand to Northern California and then across the country, setting up emotional support groups for young adults.”

To mystery participants and volunteers from Vital Options, the train mystery was representative, too, of Agatha Christie’s “Murder on the Orient Express.”

Although it did not feature a well-known cast, as did the 1974 movie with Ingrid Bergman, Albert Finney, Lauren Bacall and Sir John Gielgud, each of “The Encounter’s” 10-member traveling cast was quite convincing and remained in character throughout the murder puzzle.

“The whole thing reminds you of an Agatha Christie,” said Mary Wilson, former member of the Supremes who was among the celebrity guests. Wilson questioned cast members diligently and took copious notes in the special clue book provided to all participants. “This is really fun,” she said, “but I don’t think I’m coming up with the right conclusions.”

First prize for the people who solved the mystery would be a round-trip flight to Paris for two, courtesy of Air France.

Among the other film and television personalities who came on the trip were actors Richard Anderson, Mary Cadorette and husband Michael Eisen, Bud Cort, Olivia Hussey, Virginia Mayo, Pat Petersen and Robert Prosky, comedians Yakov Smirnoff and Taylor Negron, composer Albert Hague and his singer-wife Renee Orin, singer Sam Harris, and TV magazine host Howard Stevens.

“We haven’t done anything as ambitious as this,” said actress Lynn Chaplin Noe, who co-wrote the train mystery script with her actor husband Buzz Noe. “No overnights and nothing before on a train.”

A Dual Role

Lynn Noe played the part of the mystery writer, Felicity Mannors, and Buzz Noe portrayed a dual role as a private detective and a long-lost relative of Murray.

The couple started their firm, Capers, a year ago with another partner, Jessica Hayes Wineteer, and have produced about 100 mysteries and adventures for private clients, corporate parties and other charity fund-raisers.

“In doing our research, we came up with one real fact,” Buzz Noe said. “It was a coincidence, but the Monterey Plaza really sits on the site of what was the Tevis Murray mansion at one time. It was a real mansion and became a honeymoon hideaway. After it was torn down, it became a cannery. And there really was a Hugh Tevis, who died on his honeymoon in 1904. I think of yellow fever. There was a Murray, too, but nothing was written about him. So we created Gregory Braithwaite Murray and the rest is fictitious.”

The Capers founders produced the mystery at cost for the charity group, and the owners of the restored railroad cars, four built in the late 1940s and one in 1926, also offered their cars and services at cost for the fund-raiser.

“We try to do one worthwhile charity event a year,” said car owner Dennis Ryan, who provided the twin-unit Overland Club diner and lounge with his partners Dennis Kogan and Craig Rasmussen. “We had read of Selma and her work, and after we met her, we went to some of the counseling sessions. The people there are intelligent, worldly young people and this is a very positive approach to cancer and what’s happened to them.”

Ryan said that he and the other car owners--Bill Hatrick, Bryan Reese and Gordon Crosthwait, who owns the parlor car built in 1926--and many regular crew members volunteered their time and services.

“This normally would be a $60,000 trip,” Ryan explained. “We’re doing it for $25,000 because it’s a valid opportunity for the cars to provide a worthwhile service. I can’t say enough for the Vital Options people. Whenever you start feeling stressed out just with the problems of living, go to one of their encounter groups. It’s incredible.”

In addition to the train crew, 15 young people from Vital Options were volunteer waitresses and waiters for the round-trip event.

After leaving the guests in Salinas, the cars and crew went on to spend Friday and Saturday nights at the Amtrak yard in Oakland. They returned Sunday to pick up their charges for the 8-hour trip home to Los Angeles.

Once they disembarked at the Salinas depot, “Encounter” guests were transported in a caravan of 35 Lincoln town cars to the Monterey hotel. Many Salinas residents stopped on street corners to watch the motorcade, complete with a police escort to the edge of town.

At the Friday-night welcoming cocktail party for the group, actor Tom McGreevey, as character Marcus Widrich, was “murdered” on the marble main staircase of the hotel.

Beforehand, the Noes had lined up two off-duty Monterey paramedics to participate in the mystery caper. The two young women carried McGreevey off on a stretcher and into their waiting van.

On its late news, a local television station that had filmed the event ran a “simulated for TV” disclaimer with the film.

Returning to their rooms Friday evening, “Encounter” participants each found a note on his or her pillow that contained the last words of Marcus Widrich. The notes read: “Dear Sleuth, ‘Like father like . . . ‘ was the last thing he said. We all watched in terror and pronounced him dead.”

On Saturday after breakfast, the mystery players scurried around Cannery Row, picking up additional clues at 11 shops.

“The people are playing very hard,” Lynn Noe said of the group at one point. “Some love to play and they play very hard. Others won’t play at all, and some are too shy to play. That’s what we always find. But some of these people kept us up until 2 a.m. questioning us. They’re really serious.”

The final clues came at the cocktail party preceding a lavish Saturday-night banquet at the hotel, and a show done by many of the participating entertainers.

By that time, Cammy Sue Cadwilder, portrayed by Jan Devereaux, had mysteriously reappeared after her kidnaping at Union Station; the late Marcus Widrich had been found to be her father; Sonny Diamond, played by Buzz Noe, had been determined to be her half-brother, as had Wendell Lepescue, played by Mark Neely.

Answer Five Questions

“Encounter” players filled out their questionnaires--they had to answer five questions correctly--and turned them in early Sunday morning. The winner, Buzz Noe said, would be announced at 2 p.m. on the train ride home.

“Everybody seems to have had a great time,” said Vital Options member Susan Spain, a 25-year-old from West Covina, who had volunteered to be a cocktail waitress on the train trip. “And they’ve learned about Vital Options, which is the important part. Vital Options was, more or less, my outcoming back into society. Without the group, I think I might have given up. After I was diagnosed, I was fighting against myself. I wouldn’t be here today if it weren’t for the group. They fought with me and for me.”

Spain was diagnosed as having Hodgkin’s disease a year ago on July 18. “This is my so-called anniversary,” she said. “I’m in remission now, but I had to have the maximum dosage of radiation. I went to a cancer support group in Arcadia that was recommended to me, and the youngest person there was 65 years old. I was only 24. They all were talking about going out in style. I thought, ‘I just started my life, my career. I’m not thinking about going out.’ ”

Last August, a representative at the American Cancer Society referred Spain to Vital Options, and she has been going there every week since then.

“I walked in there and there were about 30 people just like me,” she said. “I had gone from 136 pounds to 103, I lost my hair, lost my taste buds, had lots of general aches and pains and shortness of breath. I thought I was the only one. But they were all the same. And everyone there supports everyone else, regardless of being different races, different sexes, different financial backgrounds.”

Learned to Accept Illness

Since being a member of Vital Options, Spain said she has learned “to accept my illness, to work with it and to use it to help other people.

“After I learned to accept what I have, things have been looking up,” said Spain. She is just starting a new job selling janitorial supplies and has just become engaged.

“I thought I’d never be able to work again, never get married,” she added. “But if you can learn to deal with your cancer, then you see a light at the end of the tunnel.”

Soon, Spain, other Vital Options members, train crew and mystery trip guests gathered in the lounge car for the much-awaited announcement of the winners.

Singer Sam Harris of “Star Search” and Mary Cadorette of “Three’s a Crowd” won the prize, concluding correctly that Cammy Sue Cadwilder had murdered her father, Marcus Widrich, and filling in the right answers that led them to that decision. Cadorette and Harris had teamed with her husband, Michael Eisen, and Harris’ road manager, Ed Rada, in solving the convoluted plot.

But the entertainer and actress had their own surprise twist for the group.

They announced, amid loud cheering, that they were donating their air trip to France to Vital Options, so that two of the young people from the group could go to Paris. Their names could be drawn in a lottery to be set up by Selma Schimmel at a later date.

“This makes the whole trip,” Schimmel said with tears in her eyes. “This is the perfect ending.”