Man Disturbs His Neighborhood : Tujunga: For 13 years, Ludovit Salka has been watching people he says belong to a huge drug ring. Authorities say it’s his imagination.

Atop a mountain in the Tujunga Hills, Ludovit Salka stood hunched behind a small pine tree, peeping into the next yard.

“Now!” he said, his 6-foot, 200-pound frame nearly shaking with excitement as a middle-aged man emerged from a garage and entered the house.

“Today is Monday! People should be at work!” he whispered loudly. “What are they doing?” he asked, then answered his own question: “Producing drugs!”

Ludovit Salka has spent the better part of the past 13 years watching, photographing and taking notes on his neighbors’ movements. The 72-year-old Czechoslovakian immigrant is convinced that the entire middle-class neighborhood surrounding his comfortable Estepa Drive home is part of an elaborate ring that produces “tons” of cocaine, PCP and other illegal drugs. He believes members of the “ring” are trying to kill him.

Salka has told nearly everyone who will listen--police, fire and health officials, City Council members, county supervisors and Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley--about the elaborate clandestine drug labs. He also has told them about the underground tunnels used to transport drugs all over the city, and about the toxic fumes emitted from the labs. The fumes, he says, have killed huge pine trees in his yard and driven away the birds.

Authorities say such claims are as far-fetched as they seem and, except for the effect on Salka’s neighbors, could be dismissed as nothing more than harmless delusions.

Last month, Salka earned the dubious distinction of being the first person ever in Los Angeles County to be prohibited by a court order from using the 911 emergency number to report narcotics activities. The Los Angeles Police Department sought the order after he called a record 582 times during July.

“It’s an unusual step,” Deputy City Atty. Mary E. House said of the restraining order. “But this is an unusual situation.”

Indeed. Salka said the fumes also make it impossible for him to stay overnight in his home, and for the past seven years he has slept in his rickety brown van in various parking lots on Foothill Boulevard.

“The fumes are so deadly,” he said with a pained expression, rattling off a list of illnesses he and his wife say they have suffered as a result. “I only call when my life and the life of my wife are in danger.”

Deputy City Atty. Jeffrey Harkavy said of Salka, “He’s a very tortured and tormented man, but there’s just no foundation in reality” for his beliefs.

Still, Salka has pursued his claims doggedly, and, ironically, has created a textbook example of how to use the legal system and governmental agencies to combat a neighborhood problem, real or perceived.

His crusade, neighbors say, has made them feel under siege and powerless, despite attempts to fight back in court.

“It’s really unfortunate,” Jackie Tanker said. “He knows how to use the legal system really well. It’s sad we have to suffer.”

Salka’s neighbors have won a series of restraining orders against him dating to 1982, court records show. He has been convicted of illegal burning and served 134 days in jail for violating terms of a probation order. Other cases, some of which were dismissed, have dealt with charges of disturbing the peace. The court cases number at least 14--all related to Salka’s belief that his neighbors are manufacturing drugs.

Court documents show that Salka normally starts out representing himself in legal proceedings, but is then ordered by a judge to hire an attorney. Neighbors complain that he has managed to delay cases for years, by requesting continuances, firing attorneys and attempting in vain to subpoena the entire city attorney’s office or Foothill police division.

In 1982, Linda Paugh and 17 other residents of Salka’s neighborhood won a restraining order prohibiting Salka from harassing and molesting them. But they say it and other similar orders have not stopped him.

“We have been the victims,” said Paugh, who lives directly across from Salka on a cul-de-sac in the 7200 block of Estepa Drive. “We have been punished on a day-to-day basis. It’s just been a nonstop battle.”

According to Salka, Paugh is the “ringleader” of the drug conspiracy.

At 4 feet, 11 inches, wearing shorts and with her hair pulled back, Paugh looks more like a high school cheerleader than a drug dealer. Sitting at her kitchen table, the walls covered with photographs of her new grandchild, she sorted through a mound of court papers and photographs and the business cards of all the governmental agencies that have investigated her and her family over the years because of Salka’s allegations.

“One day I’m going to put this all in a box and burn it,” she said.

Problems with Salka began around 1977, when Paugh and others noticed increased police patrols in their quiet hilltop neighborhood. She asked one of the police officers what was going on and was told that she and her neighbors were being investigated.

“Then it just kept getting worse,” she said.

Soon Paugh and others began receiving regular calls and visits from the Police Department, the county Health Department and others investigating Salka’s claims.

“I’ve had the Health Department in my house about six times,” said Dennis Nicholson, who lives next to Salka. “I’ve had the narcotics squad, the police came up regularly. Virtually every city agency has been up here.”

Shortly after the increased police activity, Salka began patrolling the streets in his van, apparently trying to spot and interrupt drug activities, Paugh said. Even now, he drives slowly up and down the streets, parks in front of a house and watches.

Then came what they dubbed “smell-o-meters”--homemade noisy contraptions that apparently are supposed to detect drugs in the air. He also has made attempts to prove scientifically that drugs were being produced.

In the past, he has walked up and down Estepa Drive in the early morning, swinging a lantern or shining a flashlight into houses, causing dogs to bark.

In 1983 Salka tried to smoke the drug dealers out--literally. On several mornings during that summer Paugh and her neighbors awakened to the stench of rubber burning and saw thick black smoke coming from Salka’s yard.

Salka served a 21-day jail sentence for illegal outdoor burnings, according to court records.

Paugh, an accountant, and Dan Drake, a friend of hers who is an auto mechanic, said Salka constantly photographs them and their visitors and jots down the license plate of every strange car parked on the street.

But his nighttime sermons are perhaps the most disconcerting of all Salka’s activities.

Standing in his yard, which overlooks the street, Salka shouts at the top of his voice the addresses of his neighbors followed by a rambling diatribe accusing them of being murderers, drug manufacturers and criminals, Paugh said. “My daughter never had company over, and he was the reason why,” she said, recalling the impact Salka’s accusations had on her life and the lives of her two children.

A 1987 California law requires that homeowners disclose to buyers all defects as well as all litigation that involves the property.

So when Jim and Jackie Tanker bought their house across the street from Salka three years ago, the seller had to tell them about their new neighbor’s behavior. But they had no idea the problem was so extensive.

“He met us on the first day and told us there were people manufacturing drugs in the neighborhood . . . that we should join forces with him,” Jim Tanker said.

Shortly after, the Tankers were added to the enemies Salka shouted about nightly.

In 1987, in connection with a court proceeding for violating a restraining order, Salka was ordered to undergo a psychiatric evaluation. A court-appointed doctor found him competent to stand trial.

“He’s not crazy,” Nicholson said. “He’s just obsessed.”

Sitting in his home, dressed in a short-sleeved shirt and slacks and a tie, Salka does not look the part of a madman.

But he readily admits to the behavior his neighbors describe. “What am I supposed to do? I have to shout because I get no help from nobody,” he said, accusing the police, fire, and health departments of conspiring with the drug manufacturers.

On request he displays photographs he has taken that he believes prove his claims, letters he has written to officials requesting assistance and a neatly drawn map of his neighborhood: Red arrows indicate what he says is the flow of toxic fumes being shot from drug labs toward his house.

Salka and his wife, Kristina, 67, own a seven-room house on a wooded 3/4-acre lot. Salka built the home and decorated it with ornately carved antique oak furniture, red Persian rugs and brightly colored couches that seem brand-new.

But Salka no longer sleeps in his house. Nor does he entertain company there. “After a while the house feels like a gas chamber,” Salka said in a lilting Czech accent. “We have to flee to escape a certain death.” He returns every morning.

Kristina Salka claims to have suffered temporary blindness from the fumes. She said when the fumes are too strong, she leaves the house, walking with her dog in the middle of the night.

But the Salkas say that even outside the house, they fear for their lives. Kristina Salka said she has been the target of drive-by shootings many times.

“Sometimes they follow me for 2 1/2 hours,” she said in broken English.

A retired real estate broker and mechanical engineer, Salka served with Axis forces during World War II and immigrated to the U.S. in 1952. Now he spends much of his time and “a terrible amount of money” attempting to prove what many others, including many city agencies, have dismissed.

“Every police officer in the Foothill area knows Ludovit Salka or knows of Ludovit Salka,” said Detective Jim Soles. “Never has it ever been . . . found that what he is complaining about is happening in his neighborhood.”

Between 1982 and 1985, the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services conducted at least six investigations into Salka’s claims and found nothing. The city Fire Department and the South Coast Air Quality Management District also investigated, with no result.

But Salka vows to continue his fight. “I’ve been to court 14 times and to jail seven times,” he said, almost proudly.

In one criminal court case he submitted letters from 30 people supporting his claim, and says there are at least 20 others who support him as well.

Jesse R. Williams, a private investigator, wrote that he “experienced a burning sensation in my nostrils and throat” when in the neighborhood. “It is my opinion someone in this neighborhood is working with toxic chemicals.” Williams, whose company, Delta Investigations, is based in Sacramento, was paid by Salka, and some of the others who have written letters in support were hired by Salka through newspaper ads. Neighbors and others have dismissed their testimony as meaningless.

Despite the restraining orders against Salka, his surveillance activities continue and neighbors say they have run out of options.

“He’s just a very sick man and we’re really not sure what to do at this point,” said Paugh, who has lived in her house for 25 years. “It is not just a hoax. . . . He is very serious--that’s the saddest part of it. He does believe it.”

“Frankly, they are incredibly tolerant people,” Harkavy, the deputy city attorney, said of Salka’s neighbors. “Mr. Salka is fortunate that these people are working through the legal system and not taking matters into their own hands.”

Neighbors fear that he may one day turn away from the system that he has placed so much faith in, perhaps becoming violent. Drake, Paugh’s frequent visitor who has been watched and photographed by Salka, said, “His obsession is dangerous.”