HOT HASS: Wednesday’s avocado heist (D5) was...

HOT HASS: Wednesday’s avocado heist (D5) was part of a growing problem, says the Santa Ana-based California Avocado Commission. . . . “It’s really horrible,” spokesman Avi Crane says. “It’s gotten to a point where field men from the different packinghouses are scared to go out in groves, that they’ll run into a theft in progress and be history.” The 11,000 pounds found in Temecula were the popular Hass variety, developed near La Habra in the 1920s.