Alcohol, Drugs Tied to a Bloody Weekend : 7 People Killed; Some Are Victims, Some Perpetrators

Lynne Chaney left her two children in her apartment to drive home their sitter, Kelly Erin Sawyer. It was nearly two hours past midnight Sunday morning.

Richard Wallinger, an unemployed car salesman with cocaine in his car and at least one drink under his belt, was following a few feet behind on Coast Highway in Laguna Niguel. Witnesses who saw Wallinger’s car plow into Chaney’s said the two cars exploded in a “ball of fire.” The roof of her car was smashed to the dashboard, the driver and passenger burned virtually beyond recognition.

Chaney was 38. Kelly was 13.

Wallinger, 25, is reported in stable condition at the UCI Medical Center jail ward.

The day before, Craig S. Saunders--driving a stolen car containing three pounds of illegal amphetamines--raced through an intersection in Lakewood causing a series of collisions that killed three people, including Saunders, 25.

Michael Allen Griswold was 26. Richard Alex Sabala was 34. Two others were seriously injured.

In all, seven people died this weekend as a result of car accidents--four victims of drivers accused of being under the influence of alcohol or drugs.

The unusually high number of traffic deaths is coincidental, authorities said. The rate in Orange County is, in fact, less than in the state as a whole, according to Susan Cowan-Scott, information officer for the California Highway Patrol.

“Attitudes have changed,” she said, explaining that many people no longer tolerate drunk or drugged drivers and judges are handing down stiffer sentences. “We as a society are no longer willing to pay the price exacted by the driver under the influence.”

But friends and families of the seven victims have no choice.

Art and Marcia Sawyer of Laguna Niguel did not know until nearly dawn that their daughter had been killed in the Coast Highway crash.

Kelly had never sat for Chaney before but had been referred through a church. The Sawyers felt comfortable with the arrangement, and Chaney was to have their daughter home by 1:30 a.m. When Kelly failed to return, Sawyer said, he and his wife became worried.

At about 3 a.m., Marcia Sawyer got in the car and drove to the Chaney apartment behind the Dana Niguel Library in Laguna Niguel.

On the way, she passed an accident. She tried to speak with police at the scene, but they would not give her any information.

“She had a premonition” that their daughter had been killed in that accident, Sawyer said Monday.

Sawyer drove to Chaney’s apartment to find the woman’s son and daughter, first- and second-graders, home alone.

“They said their mother had just left with the baby sitter,” Sawyer said

Sawyer returned home, then she and her husband drove to the scene of the accident.

This time, police had two questions for the couple: Who was Kelly baby-sitting for, and what kind of car did the woman drive?

Police told them two people had died in the car and that one of them was Chaney.

The other body had been so badly burned that officials at the scene could not immediately identify it.

After that, “we basically went to pieces,” Sawyer said.

“They saw the devastation of it,” said Julie Mione, 30, a neighbor of the Sawyer family. “At 6 a.m., they took a walk on the beach to talk with God and try to justify it.”

An eighth-grader at Niguel Hills Junior High School, Kelly “was an absolute delight; exactly what you want your kid to grow up to be,” Art Sawyer said late Monday. “She had blossomed in the last 18 months. She had lost weight. She became extremely attractive. Her grades went up. She had absolutely everything going for her.

“Kelly loved to travel (and) she had her mind set on being a stewardess,” he said.

Besides baby-sitting and helping out with garage sales, Kelly was a typical teen-ager--she attended slumber parties, where she laughed and sang with friends, hung out at the mall and the local 7-Eleven, and loved cooking.

She spent the last afternoon of her life helping some younger neighborhood girls sell items at their garage sale. Mione, whose 8-year-old daughter, Claira, was involved with the sale, said that Kelly had bought her grandparents a present from the garage sale.

“She bought them some little dish towels that said, ‘God bless this home’ ”, Mione said. “She told me Saturday she was going baby sitting and that she would be out until 1 a.m. “

Mione and other neighbors began organizing Monday to tend to the Sawyers’ cooking and housekeeping needs for the next few days while they recuperate from the tragedy.

The neighborhood also began taking up donations to contribute to Mothers Against Drunk Driving.

Jean Trygstad, principal of Niguel Hills Junior High, said she intended to announce the death to the school’s 950 students today.

“It will be very difficult for the young people,” Trygstad said. Chaney was divorced and her former husband lives in Europe, said Heather Bingham, a neighbor who said she had baby sat for Mrs. Chaney. Her mother, Carol Bingham, called Mrs. Chaney a “real sweet, real polite woman.”

Carol Bingham said Chaney called Kelly after Heather and another neighborhood girl were unable to sit.

“It could have been any one of (the girls who baby sit), she said.

Neighbors and police officials say Chaney’s children are being cared for by their grandparents.

Richard Harold Wallinger Jr., 25, of South Laguna is an unemployed car salesman with no criminal record. According to the Department of Motor Vehicles, he received speeding tickets in 1985, 1986 and 1987, all of which he promptly paid. His neighbors said they knew nothing about Wallinger.

CHP officers, who found six bindles of cocaine in his car--”something you might use in an evening”--said Wallinger was charged with two counts of manslaughter and one count of felony drunk driving.

Tall and blond, Michael Allen Griswold, 26, was a private investor working toward his broker’s license, according to his mother. He was a member of the Long Beach Ski Club “and was a whiz at computers,” she said.

Friends described Griswold as a quiet, friendly young man who prided himself on his knowledge of the stock market and financial matters.

“To say I’m shocked is an understatement,” said Khalid Ashraq, 26, Griswold’s neighbor at the Olive Tree Apartments in Norwalk.

He said the last time he saw Griswold, it was Friday afternoon and Griswold was talking about going to the Hotel Meridien in Newport Beach the following day to ski down a 250-foot slope of melting ice cubes on the hotel’s parking garage roof. The event was staged as a fund raiser for the U.S. Ski Team.

Ashraq wished his friend luck, and they promised to see each other again on Sunday for their weekly volleyball game at the apartment complex.

“When he didn’t show up, I didn’t think a whole lot about it,” Ashraq said. “But to think he died like this. . . .

“The funny thing is, Mike didn’t even drink, at least as far as I knew. A lot of people drink beer when we play volleyball, but Mike always drank water. I don’t think he even drank at all.”

Griswold’s mother, Shirlea Griswold, a Los Angeles psychologist, blamed police and their high-speed chases.

“What upsets me is that this did not need to happen. There is no reason why the police--and in this case there were five police agencies involved--have to pursue somebody for eight-plus miles at speeds over 100 m.p.h. Am I upset? Yes. Three people died needlessly and two people are badly injured and I don’t know how many lives are affected by this.

“What I want to do, and I don’t know how to do it, is to take this to the state level so there will be no more high-speed chases.”

Saunders, a star-struck young man from Beloit, Wis., moved to California after high school to become rich and famous, according to his mother, Marion Saunders. He did some modeling, told his mother he was writing songs, but supported himself with money that he was awarded in a malpractice suit settlement, other members of his family said.

Authorities say although he never received a California driver’s license, he had three tickets on his record: a misdemeanor drunk-driving citation in 1982; a citation in 1986 for driving without a license, making an illegal turn and having an open container of alcohol in the car, and a Sept. 3, 1987, citation for stealing a car in Westminster and joy-riding.

On Saturday morning, he raced a stolen car from Fullerton in a high-speed police pursuit that ended in the bloody crash that claimed three lives, including his own.

Police found three pounds of illegal methamphetamine hidden in an ammunition box under the car hood.

“He was an easy-going guy,” said W.S. Anaya, Saunders’ neighbor for several years in a Buena Park apartment complex. “He used to walk around here, limping on his crutches.”

Anaya described Saunders as a young man who never grew up, who after winning the insurance settlement let “the money go to his head. He used to live it up, going out to party and always treating his friends. He blew money left and right.”

The night before he died, Marion Saunders called her son from Wisconsin. She wanted him to come home for the holidays. “We were very close,” she said. “Every chance he had, he called me. He was going to build me a home out there. He wanted to stay there and become rich and famous. He was going into some business. I don’t know what it was.”

Cynthia Lynn Nichols, 21, had been working as a cashier at a Long Beach grocery story for more than a year, trying to save enough money to move into her own apartment. In the meantime, she had been staying for the past year with her aunt and uncle, William and Helen Vogl, at their Norwalk home.

Late Friday, she left her 13-month-old daughter with her aunt and went out for the evening.

“We really don’t know what happened,” Helen Vogl said. “Cynthia doesn’t remember anything. She just kind of wakes up and then falls back to sleep.”

Helen Vogl said Nichols also didn’t remember that the passenger in her Chevy Luv pickup, Richard Alex Savala, 34, of Whittier, died when their truck was rammed broadside by the car being chased by police.

“When she woke up she was asking about Jessica. We think she thought her daughter was with her. That shows how little she remembers,” Vogl said. “They say the man who caused this was on drugs, and I think that’s just terrible. I don’t know what kind of drugs, but they’re all bad.”

Sawyer said funeral services for for his 13-year-old daughter, Kelly, would be Friday at an as-yet-undetermined church.

A defense lawyer who has handled drug cases, Sawyer said he was having trouble dealing with his job now that his daughter had died in an accident that police said involved drugs.

“A third of my income over the past 13 years has been defending drug cases,” he said. “Now, all of a sudden I’m on the other side of the coin.”

Times staff writers Jim Carlton, Lonn Johnston and Richard Beene contributed to this story.

FATALITIES IN DUI ACCIDENTS

Since 1982, Orange County has consistently ranked among the top five counties in the number of persons killed and injured in DUI traffic accidents--those caused by drivers under the influence of alcohol or drugs. In the first half of 1987, the county had 1,784 DUI-related traffic injuries, the second highest in the state behind Los Angeles’ 6,945. The county had 58 deaths and ranked fourth behind Los Angeles (176), San Bernardino (99) and Riverside (68).