Ex-High Flier Is Now Rooted in Santa Paula : Profile: Czech’s colorful history includes being a defector, hijacker and stunt pilot.

Mira Slovak has been a defector and a hijacker. But Santa Paulans consider him the Czechoslovakian Charles Lindbergh of their small community.

In 1968, Slovak piloted a tiny glider on a trans-Atlantic journey from Santa Paula to West Germany and back. For years, he was known as the daredevil who broke records and his own bones navigating airplanes and hydroplanes.

But the Santa Paula businessman has traded his airplane for an office. Today he would rather pick a petunia than fly upside-down through the clouds.

“Records are between a person and the weather and the good Lord,” Slovak said.

Labeled a madman by some spectators who used to watch his aerial stunts, the 60-year-old now markets Italian-made airplanes.

Slovak came to the small Santa Paula airport 30 years ago after hearing that a vintage 1947 Bucker Jungman built in his native Czechoslovakia was sitting unused in a hangar. Then a commercial airline pilot, Slovak decided to move to Santa Paula permanently and instantly became a hero to a group of teen-agers.

“He kind of took us under his wing,” recalled Mark Hanson, now 39 and a Santa Paula Police Department commander. “We cleaned his airplane. In return, he taught us to fly.”

Hanson said Slovak is still one of the most colorful members of Santa Paula’s small and respected colony of commercial pilots. But he was a tough taskmaster. Slovak demanded that the teen-agers who worked for him scrub his airplanes from top to bottom, Hanson recalled. “He was a stickler for wanting everything nice and clean,” Hanson said.

Slovak’s reputation has been anything but tidy.

Thirty-seven years ago, Slovak was a pilot in the Czechoslovakian Air Force. But at age 23, after five years under Communist rule, he decided he had to leave his homeland.

On the night of March 23, 1953, Slovak, who was the co-pilot of a DC-3, held a gun to the pilot’s head and forced him to fly from Prague to Frankfurt, West Germany. When the plane landed in the West, he asked for and eventually received political asylum. A year after the incident, he came to the United States.

After the hijacking, Slovak said, he was considered a traitor to his country and would have been executed had he returned.

In a Hollywood treatment of his life, the Slovak character yells at the DC-3 pilot: “Don’t move an inch, or I’ll blow your head off!” The screenplay was never made into a movie.

But despite his not becoming a Hollywood “top gun,” he was profiled on the 1950s-era television show “This Is Your Life” and met several Hollywood actors who boarded their planes at Santa Paula Airport. A photo of Slovak and Cliff Robertson hangs on the wall of his office, as do photos of long-dead friends who perished in aerial stunts.

There is also a photo of Slovak in a hospital after a May 26, 1968, plane crash. After piloting a motorized glider to West Germany and back, he crashed 19 feet short of the Santa Paula runway, breaking most of his ribs and injuring a lung.

“Stupid” is how he now characterizes himself for missing the runway. The accident laid him up for more than nine months and damaged his left eye. But he kept flying.

Slovak did stunt work in a couple of movies but stopped when the landing wheel of his plane nicked a cameraman in 1975. The man suffered a dislocated shoulder, and Slovak recalled, “I didn’t even know I hit him.”

Slovak has faced danger on water as well as in the air. He has had four accidents while piloting a hydroplane. In one, his hydroplane exploded during a race, but he was not injured.

Though he renounced his Czechoslovakian citizenship decades ago, the former daredevil still loves his native land.

In March, Slovak went to Czechoslovakia to witness the political changes in his homeland. He returned to his hometown of Cifer to stand at his father’s grave. It was an emotional moment, he said. When he went to the capital city of Prague, he was overcome with nostalgia.

“Prague is as beautiful as it used to be,” Slovak said.

Still, Slovak is not inclined to return to his native country. America, and in particular Santa Paula, is where he would rather be.

“Santa Paula has nice people,” Slovak said.