Fallbrook Isn’t Big Enough for 2 Metzgers

It can be decidedly unfun to have the same last name as a well-known person, particularly if you both live in the same small town.

If the well-known person is a self-avowed racist, life can be downright miserable.

So Jan Metzger, owner and operator of Village Yarn & Sweater Co. in Fallbrook, has put a sign near the cash register to make clear she is not related to Tom Metzger.

She got tired of people cussing her out because of a mistaken belief that she is related to Tom Metzger. She was equally tired of people saying “right-on” and asking how they can join Tom Metzger’s knot of white supremacists.

“Since the Geraldo Rivera Show (where Metzger’s son was involved in a brawl), I must have had 15 inquiries a day between the yarn shop and my dog-obedience classes in Vista,” Jan Metzger said. “Even if people don’t ask, you can tell they’re thinking, ‘I wonder if she’s related to him.’ ”

One elderly woman became particularly irate before Jan Metzger could explain she has no relationship and no sympathy for Tom Metzger. Then she noticed numbers tattooed on the old woman’s wrist, marking her as a Nazi concentration camp survivor.

Jan Metzger now has a sign near her cash register:

“Before You Ask!! No . . . I Am Not Related to Tom Metzger, the Grand Dragon of the KKK. My Name is Jan. My Husband is Don. Tom is Not My Brother, Uncle, Cousin or Relation by Birth or by Marriage. OK?”

The sign includes a picture of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

High-Stakes Cruise

When Candace Bahr and Ginita Wall, co-founders of the Del Mar-based Women’s Institute for Financial Education, board the cruise ship Sagafjord in Honolulu today, their goal will be to spread the joy of asset allocation, portfolio management and personal wealth building.

Cunard Lines hired Wall, a financial planner, and Bahr, a stockbroker, to lead the 800 passengers in playing The Reward Game, a high-stakes Monopoly-like board game invented by Del Mar writer Brian Wiersema, during a 10-day cruise to Ensenada.

The game aims to be as realistic as possible: introducing variables like fluctuating interest and inflation rates as players juggle commodities, debts and equities. When time expires, everybody liquidates.

Wall and Bahr have taught the game to stockbrokers in San Diego and El Paso and to accountants in Kentucky. A younger version is used in San Diego schools.

“It opens people up to the whole possibility of money--particularly people who are afraid of money,” said Wall. “A lot of people think of real estate and the stock market as nothing but a crapshoot. The Reward Game teaches them the fun and fundamentals of making money.”

Coming to Blows

Shades of beatings past?

Sheriff’s detectives are investigating a street brawl that broke out after the San Dieguito High School-Mt. Miguel High School football game last Friday in Encinitas.

One of the half-dozen suspects is a 17-year-old La Costa youth who was among seven San Dieguito athletes convicted last year in a string of North County beatings.

A 23-year-old woman says the youth, the son of a prominent home builder, hit her twice in the face, sending her to the emergency room. She says he stopped only when his father intervened.

The 17-year-old, a burly former football lineman, retorts that the woman and her brothers started the fracas. He wants them charged with assault.

In the 1987 case, the youth was fined and sentenced to perform community service after admitting his role in beating a Leucadia family after a night of partying. As part of his probation, he could be sent to the California Youth Authority for up to four years if convicted of any future assaults.

Detectives hope to file a report next week with the district attorney’s office, which will decide if any charges will be filed.

“What we had was a full-out street fight,” Sgt. Mack Smith said.