Suspect Caught in the Grip of a Memory

The woman in the passing BMW looked familiar, Charlene Guasch told her husband as they drove through Irvine on Monday. In fact, she looked just like the interior decorator they believe ran off with $8,700 two years ago in Northern California.

James Guasch turned their Porsche around and went after the car. As he followed it down Jamboree Road into Newport Beach, his wife kept peeking out from behind a newspaper just to make sure it was really that woman.

It was “a trillion-in-one shot,” James Guasch recalled Tuesday. “I’m definitely signing up for the lottery this week, with my luck.”

After the woman stopped her BMW in the 3300 block of Via Lido on Lido Island, Guasch jumped from his car and grabbed her. Newport Beach Police Officer Stan D. Bressler answered a call of a fight in progress--a man reportedly had a woman in a headlock.

The driver of the BMW, Sara Jane Seamans, 42, was arrested on an outstanding felony warrant for grand theft, Newport Beach police said. Seamans was wanted, police said, in connection with an $8,700 furniture deposit the Guasches reported as missing last year in Mountain View, 40 miles south of San Francisco.

Seamans was released after posting $35,000 bail and is scheduled for arraignment July 27 in Palo Alto.

The Guasches own a drapery and carpet cleaning store in Mountain View. In 1985, they contracted with Seamans to redecorate their office’s interior. After two months the furniture still hadn’t arrived, and the Guasches grew worried about their deposit. Eventually, they told their story to the police.

James Guasch said none of this history was on their minds Sunday when the couple drove to Irvine to attend the Firemen’s Olympics. Guasch was looking forward to playing soccer for the San Mateo County Firefighters team, last year’s winners.

The next day, instead of showing his soccer prowess, Guasch, a Menlo Park firefighter, applied a wrestling hold.

“If she had run, I would have had her on the pavement,” Guasch said.