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President’s War On Drugs : Guests Jam Wilderness to See, Hear a President

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Times Staff Writer

“Please leave all your weapons in your vehicle.”

With that friendly greeting from sheriff’s deputies, some 1,400 VIPs began a journey Tuesday morning that took them through metal detectors, onto buses and up a treacherous, rustic dirt road to a table full of muffins, a long wait and, ultimately, an appearance by President Bush.

True, there were plenty of law enforcement officers among the guests, but the rest of them--including an Olympic swimmer, elected officials, school kids involved in drug-prevention programs and lots of Kiwanis Club types--were less than likely to be toting guns to a presidential visit.

Sitting on rented chairs in a remote canyon east of San Juan Capistrano, they all gushed support before, during and after Bush appeared to announce that he was turning over more than $4.39 million in confiscated, illicit drug money to local authorities. Formerly the hideout of an international drug smuggler, the 213-acre Rancho del Rio visited by Bush has been proposed for use as a law enforcement training center.

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“My father would turn over in his grave if he ever knew what this ranch was used for,” said Jim Heim, 63, whose family owned Rancho del Rio years before the drug smuggler acquired it. “And he would rise up if he could hear that the President was here today.”

Dressed in rancher’s attire--jeans, Western shirt, bolo tie and cowboy hat--Heim recalled that as a child he “climbed over every rock and caught lizards” when his family visited the ranch on weekends and summers. Heim, who was the county’s director of community services before he retired, has great memories of the ranch. “Today (Bush’s visit) really was the cap on it. To see the President here, that’s something I never realized in my wildest dreams.”

Another guest at Bush’s speech, Deputy Dist. Atty. William J. Feccia, said he has other memories of the ranch. He was the first prosecutor assigned to the Rancho del Rio case, working through the night with narcotics investigators to pull together the evidence and obtain a search warrant that was served on the ranch March 1, 1985.

He recalled that officers were tipped off to the large-scale operations going on at the ranch the day before, when one of the drug traffickers involved, in celebration of a recent delivery, started shooting guns in his South Laguna neighborhood. Investigating officers discovered that the man had at his house not only 50 pounds of packaged marijuana but also extensive photographs of the drug operations, documentation, lists of names, everything a prosecutor could want, all of which led investigators to the remote Rancho del Rio, tucked away deep among the hills, brush and oak trees.

The South Laguna suspect, Wade T. (Hank) Westmoreland, was the manager of the ranch, employed by Rancho del Rio owner Daniel James Fowlie. Westmoreland was sentenced to 16 months in prison. Fowlie, who was out of the country at the time of the seizure, has since been taken into custody by Mexican authorities in La Paz.

Feccia said he knew back in 1985 that investigators were dealing with “a large drug trafficker with international connections,” but he “obviously never foresaw the day that the President would come here.” For the event, he and his wife, Karen, brought their 7-month-old daughter, Stephanie, along for her first presidential visit. “She was real good,” he said, as the baby snoozed. “She didn’t interrupt the President of the United States once.”

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It was a family day for many of the guests, who, if they were not directly involved in the county’s drug-fighting efforts, knew someone who is.

Pat Schweinsberg of San Juan Capistrano was invited because she clips the hair of the county’s top drug-fighter, Sheriff Brad Gates.

Ride With FBI Agents

Asked if Gates got a special haircut for his day of honor with the President, Schweinsberg replied, “He sure did.” It was no special style for the occasion, “just the regular routine, but it’s hard to get him in because he works day and night,” she said.

Accompanied by her two daughters, the sheriff’s personal barber said they were particularly thrilled to ride on the bus with FBI agents. “We had lots of protection,” she said. “We heard lots of interesting conversations.”

Schoolchildren abounded at the event, among them swimmer and triple Olympic gold medal winner Janet Evans, who was escorted by a sheriff’s deputy. Janet is active in school drug-prevention programs and was invited by the Sheriff’s Department, but it was not the first time that she has seen the President, she said.

She was invited to the inauguration and was at a reception with him before Bush was elected. So this was old hat to her?

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“Not really,” she said, as her escort whisked her off to sit in a specially reserved area.

Four young girls, all in the fifth grade at Moulton Elementary School in Laguna Niguel, didn’t have the special escort but were just as excited. They were invited, they said, by a classmate’s father who is with the Sheriff’s Department. None of them had ever seen a President in person before, they said. One of them, Diane Fisher, 10, had a camera and had already taken 11 pictures of her friends more than an hour before Bush would speak. “I’ll save one for the President,” she said with a giggle.

Bridget Janecek, 16, a high school junior in Orange, was a bit more reserved. While others were jockeying for the best seats, she deliberately sat down in the last row.

“I’m short, I can’t see, so I can stand up back here,” she reasoned. “It’s one thing to see the President. You don’t have to be close. It just feels good to be here.”

Other guests were less effusive. One man, wearing a name badge that identified him only as Al, declined to talk, referring all questions--even about the first-name-only badges that many men wore--to a sheriff’s spokesman, who later denied any knowledge of who the men were. (Others said the men were undercover agents.)

Wide Range of Outfits

Just what to wear to a presidential affair, located in an area where rattlesnakes freely roamed just a few days ago, posed a fashion problem to many, particularly women. Outfits ranged from jeans with boots to cocktail dresses with spike heels to business suits with tennis shoes.

Anna McFarlin, vice chancellor of Saddleback Community College District, said she took the sensible approach. She wore a business-like blue skirt and sweater, along with incongruous but comfortable-looking black high-top sneakers with coordinated blue socks.

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“I’m one of the smarter ones,” she said. “I knew this was going to be dirt and rocks. I figured, they can look at me from the knees up.” She said she overheard other women on her bus who said they had been told to wear office attire--including high-heeled shoes--”and they were crying the blues.”

Music for the event also was an eclectic mix. A disc jockey played such tunes as “Louie, Louie,” “La Bamba” and “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction” between patriotic marches played by the Marine Corps band.

In fact, during one break in the music, the military band--apparently not used to playing the tune--huddled off to the side and quietly rehearsed “Hail to the Chief” before their commander-in-chief arrived.

The logistics of moving so many people up a 5-mile, steep, one-way road had its snags. Although Bush did not speak until after 12:30 p.m., hundreds of guests were lined up in the parking lot of Caspers Wilderness Park 4 hours earlier, waiting to go through metal detectors and board OCTD and U.S. Marine Corps buses.

Although few complaints were heard, one guest quipped that when he arrived about 9 a.m., “the line was back in Coto de Caza.”

MAIN STORY: Part I, Page 1.

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