Parking Violations Pay Off for Firm With Towing Pact

The plump, middle-aged man stepped up to the customer window trying to stay calm. In a deliberate monotone he declared: “I came for my car.”

Yes, answered the garage dispatcher after checking her computer screen; the car had been towed in two days earlier.

He sighed, relieved, but only for a second. Then he shook his head angrily, whispering something that sounded like, “I can’t believe this!”

Finally he reached for his wallet. “How much?” he snapped. It was more than $80. “This is a rip-off, man,” said the car owner, tossing the bills across the counter, one by one, in mock generosity. “You people just rip people off.”

It’s not unusual for dispatcher Patti Mercer, 19, to be cussed at in three languages before her lunch break. She’ll be called a crook, a racketeer, a greedy rip-off artist preying on the poor--all in a day’s work.

The insults don’t bother her much these days; after all, it’s the nature of the business. Towing cars and facing their angry owners have become a family tradition for the Mercers.

Older brother Art Mercer, 32, and sister-in-law Dolores Mercer, 33, own A.T.S. Northeast Tow Co., the towing business on San Fernando Road where Patti Mercer works. Aunt Mary Lou Monge is the garage bookkeeper; her husband, Ruben Monge, owns the storage yard, which he rents out to his nephews; Aunt Beulia Nieto does office work during the summer.

Paid $9 an hour, Patti Mercer gets more abuse for the money than an IRS auditor since Art and Dolores Mercer landed a $1-million contract with the Los Angeles Police Department last year. The contract gives them exclusive rights to all police towing business in Northeast Los Angeles.

That means about 1,500 cars every month come into Mercer’s tow yard three blocks east of the Glendale Freeway. With the going rate of $56 a tow and $9.30 a day for storage, plus the sale of unclaimed vehicles, business is booming.

An unlikely corporate head of a $1-million-a-year operation, Art Mercer is a stocky, tough man who still goes to work wearing blue jeans and a striped uniform shirt complete with the name tag, “Art.”

And he’ll still tow in cars with his white-and-blue tow truck if the other drivers are busy or the garage paper work is light.

The son of immigrants, Art Mercer left his home in an Arizona border town as a young man to seek, like so many others before him, California’s version of the American Dream.

After 10 years of combing highways in search of troubled cars for lesser clients, Art Mercer struck gold last April when his firm became one the city’s 18 designated car-towing companies.

“I’ve been dreaming about this contract ever since I bought my first tow truck” 12 years ago, Art Mercer said recently.

Winning the city contract has not significantly changed the Mercers’ life styles because most of the company’s profits have gone into construction of a new office at the tow yard. They continue to live modestly in a rented house in Alhambra with their three children, ages 9, 8 and 6.

While he’s made a career out of towing other people’s property, Art Mercer wants people to know he’s no ogre.

‘Just Making a Buck’

“I wish people could understand,” he pleaded, “that I’m just making a buck like everybody else.”

His office, located temporarily in a trailer while the permanent structure is being built, resembles a fortified bunker. To get inside, workers have to remove a cardboard sign reading “Employees only; stay out!” and make their way through a tight side alley between the back of the trailer and a cement wall.

The protection is not always enough to keep intruders away. Once a man made his way into the office, shouting angrily in a language Art Mercer could not understand. The intruder would not leave or calm down, Mercer said, until police came and took him away. A couple of hours later he was back in the office, this time screaming in English. “He called my mother all kinds of things,” Mercer said.

Both Art and Dolores Mercer like to tell towing war stories--especially Dolores, the tow yard’s queen. Among the sweaty, tobacco-chewing, unshaven drivers and yard keepers, she easily stands out--a wholesome, brown-eyed, energetic senora.

And Dolores loves it. The yard, the trucks, the guys, the tough talk. The memory of young Art working in his uncle’s junk yard, then buying his first tow truck, and eventually starting up his small towing company is enough to put her on the verge of tears.

“When Art started, I was pregnant with our first baby, and oh, those nights . . . Art would be driving the truck and I’d be dispatching. We never thought we’d end up with a big city contract. When we made our bid last year,. everybody said we were small-time. We didn’t have inside connections.”

Sleepless Nights

But they stayed up sleepless nights, rehearsing their presentation word by word, anticipating questions, making sure every detail was taken care of, she said.

“We walked into that Police Commission room knowing exactly what to say,” said Dolores Mercer, “and we impressed the hell out of everybody.”

In each of the city’s 18 police divisions a single tow service handles all police-ordered towing and impounding. The contracts are guaranteed for three years and are considered gems because they generate enormous amounts of business. The Police Department does not collect any revenues generated from towing services, said Steve Bernard, a police detective in charge of the department’s towing operations.

Last year alone these garages towed 250,000 vehicles and the number is steadily increasing, police statistics show.

Mercer’s A.T.S. Northeast Tow Co. beat out 13 contenders last March for the prize contract. During the commission hearings, Art Mercer was praised for his professionalism and credited for his 12 years of experience, including work for the Alhambra Police Department and the California highway Patrol, Barnard said.

Along the way, the Mercers have had their share of thrills.

While they matched anecdotes in the office yard, attendant Nelson Hernandez walked in for a quick coffee break.

“Hey, Nelson, remember the crowbar?” Art Mercer asked with a chuckle.

Yes, Hernandez remembered being chased by a crowbar-swinging woman who did not like the condition she found her car in.

Meanwhile Patti Mercer, co-dispatcher Jesus Moreno, and driver David Cash sat around the police radio, listening to heavy metal music on a worn-out tape recorder, patiently waiting for an accident report.

Sweep Rained Out

This was supposed to be very profitable day. It was highlighted in yellow on the office calendar as the day that the Department of Transportation picked for its monthly sweep for abandoned vehicles and other illegally parked cars. But the operation had been rained out.

There had been no pileups on the freeways that day. Nobody, it seemed, was blocking rush hour traffic. Nobody double parking or improperly using a private parking space. Everyone seemed to be driving a properly registered vehicle. And it would be some time before the next big concert at the Greek Theatre, where superstars like Julio Iglesias and Carlos Santana attract 30 to 40 serious parking violators on any given night. The radio was silent. Art Mercer was temporarily out of business.

“I used to wish that people would break the law to get their cars towed,” Art Mercer said. “But I don’t wish it on anyone anymore.”

With the parking and traffic problems Los Angeles faces today, he doesn’t have to. Los Angeles police have become so efficient at nabbing parking scofflaws and others that business for towing contractors generally is good, Art Mercer said.

Despite her brother’s success, the towing world doesn’t seem to excite Patti Mercer--a wide-eyed, quiet, seemingly unaffected teen-ager whose efficient work barely covers up her lack of passion for the job.

“I’ve wondered a lot why I put up with this,” she said. “My friends think I’m crazy. I don’t know. It’s good work experience, I guess.

As closing time approached, a small group of costumers made their way to window.

“I demand my car,” the first stated bluntly to Patti Mercer’s amusement. “I see,” she answered in a matter-of-fact tone. “May I see your driver’s license?”

The next person in line started laughing nervously when he was told that he had to pay $210. “This is so sad, so sad, it’s funny,” he sighed.

‘Authorized Car Thieves’

But grocery clerk Burnaquetta Pickens, 25, was not laughing as she pulled her old Chevy out of the yard, after giving Patti Mercer a piece of her mind. “They’re authorized car thieves,” she hissed. Pickens said her $800 car was towed by 8:10 a.m. from a curb that was marked “No Parking from 8 to 11 a.m.”

“They were just waiting for me, because they wanted my car,” she said. “The police wouldn’t tell me my car had been towed until after I found it here. They take advantage of the little guys like myself.”

Art Mercer shows little sympathy for the Pickenses of this world. “So what’s her problem?” he asked, watching her complain from a distance. “Well, whatever it is, I’m used to it. Heck, we try to give them a break, help them start their car, give them some gas if they need it, but some people just don’t appreciate it. You try to help, but this is a business and not a charity.”

Besides, Art Mercer said, most people create their own problems and deserve their fate. “It’s not my fault if people drive with expired registrations. It’s not my fault if they don’t pay their parking tickets.”

But nothing gives more pleasure to Art Mercer than extracting money from drunk drivers. “I hate drunk drivers. I wish we could get them all off the streets. When I tow their cars, it makes my day.”

What people don’t realize, he added, once again seeking to be understood, is that A.T.S. Northeast Tow Co. only acts at the request of a law enforcement agency.

If only his customers would keep this in mind when they come to pick up their cars, he concluded, “they would realize that we do more good than bad.”