Left by Spurned Admirer : Pipe Bomb Goes Off on Secretary’s Car

A pipe bomb ignited on the car of a 31-year-old secretary outside her Seal Beach apartment Friday. No one was injured. The bomb was apparently put there by a spurned admirer, police said.

The device, placed in a blue box on the hood of Sharon Lee Elliston’s car in the 300 block of 7th Street, caught fire when Orange County bomb squad investigators tried to moved it. A note attached to the box read: “To the b---- in the blue Honda.”

Friends of Elliston said Friday that a man had spotted Elliston last week when she attended a retirement dinner for a colleague at the Red Onion restaurant in Lakewood. The next morning, a note on her windshield read, “To the pretty girl in the blue Honda.”

Throughout the week, the friends said, the man left more notes on her car, asking her to meet for drinks and dancing. When she did not, the notes became increasingly hostile.

A police official said Elliston had called the police about 6 a.m. after discovering the box on her car. Police evacuated a few nearby residences and cordoned off the neighborhood. They also called in the Orange County Sheriff-Coroner’s bomb squad.

With firefighters standing by, two bomb squad investigators wearing protective clothing tried to move the 1 1/2-square-foot box by using ropes from a distance of 10 feet away, bomb squad Sgt. Charles Stumph said. The bomb ignited as soon as they moved it, causing a small fire atop the hood that firefighters quickly extinguished.

Police have no suspects and Elliston could provide no description of her assailant. From his notes, police know only that he writes very neatly with a green felt pen and signed his name, Ron.

Linda Penrod, a legal secretary in a nearby office who copied the notes left for Elliston and gave them to police, said the first note read: “From the first time I saw you, I knew you’d be the kind of girl I’d like to meet. . . . Do you like to dance? I like to dance.”

The writer said he had just moved to the area and asked Elliston to meet him the next night at the Red Onion, Penrod said.

A later note read: “To the California airhead. You’re like all the rest,” Penrod quoted.

The final note was most ominous of all. It ended: “Someday you’ll know what it’s like,” Penrod said.

Elliston, who was whisked away by police afterwards could not be contacted for comment.

“She has no idea” who planted the bomb, the female friend said.