Good Citizen Takes His Find to Deputies, Has Them Scurrying

There it was, shiny and new and free for the taking: an expensive-looking leather briefcase, lying in a Castaic dumpster.

And when retired handyman Irving Greenhouse spotted it Saturday, he figured it would bring top dollar at the hospital thrift store where he works as a volunteer.

But after Greenhouse, 73, showed his prize to the manager of his nearby mobile home park, the man told him he had a problem on his hands: the briefcase was stuffed with explosives.

Greenhouse got a similar reaction Sunday morning when he showed up with the case unannounced at the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department station in Valencia. A sergeant took one look inside the case in the trunk of Greenhouse’s car and ordered most of his co-workers into the basement.

“It’s easy to Monday-morning quarterback, and he’s a very nice man . . . but I wouldn’t have touched it,” Sgt. David Stunson said.

Sgt. Ron Moya of the sheriff’s bomb squad said the explosives--20 strips of rubberized material similar to plastic explosives, plus two coils of detonating cord--were “relatively stable” and posed little threat.

Moya said officers were trying to determine who owned the material, often used in the aerospace and high-tech industries. He said it is being stored as evidence in a magazine at the Peter Pitchess Honor Rancho in Castaic and will be detonated later.

Greenhouse said he was scavenging for aluminum cans when he found the briefcase. The dumpster is in a field off the Old Road near Parker Road, surrounded by homes, some of which are as close as 100 feet.

Greenhouse’s arrival at the station touched off a “quite hectic” scene as deputies rushed to cordon off the street and a nearby parking lot and to herd other station personnel into the basement, Moya said.

“At least he didn’t dump it off somewhere else,” Moya said. “He probably should have called us first. . . . But being a good citizen, he brought it to the station.”