Suspect’s Plans for Fast Escape Were Out of Line : Crime: Douglas Girard wanted to ‘blend in’ with the crowd at a La Verne McDonald’s. Instead, he found himself saddled with 20 hostages.

At the age of 10, Douglas Eric Girard was arrested for stealing a coop full of pigeons from the roof of a fish market. Like the birds he filched, his criminal career never quite took off.

“I guess it’s true, crime does not pay,” he recently told a probation officer, noting that he has “made enough money to get by but not to get rich.”

Even his turn in the spotlight Monday, as the central figure in a 6 1/2-hour hostage incident, apparently was a result of a botched attempt to elude La Verne police, authorities said.

An officer responding to the robbery of a children’s clothing store saw Girard and a companion, Frank M. Teresi, get into line at a nearby McDonald’s, investigators said. If the two suspects were trying to blend in, they failed. Both were heavily tattooed, and wads of money bulged in their socks. Girard, witnesses said, carried a gun in his back waistband.

Suddenly, the employees were huddling in the basement, customers had hit the floor and Girard had 20 captives, whether he wanted them or not. He paced, smoked cigarettes, changed his shirt and shrugged helplessly from time to time until sheriff’s deputies stormed the restaurant shortly before midnight.

No one was harmed. “He never pulled the gun out,” said Ramiro Gironas, the restaurant’s assistant manager.

“He’s a thief, but not a violent one,” said Girard’s younger brother, Vincent.

The 32-year-old Girard--known to his friends as “Dougie”--has spent most of his life in and out of youth camps and jails. Police and court records say Girard and Teresi are both heroin addicts.

Teresi, described by police as the alleged “driver of the getaway car and possible lookout,” is a burly 38-year-old who weighs about 250 pounds and has a history of several convictions.

He was captured by police in 1983 after accidentally shooting himself in the leg with a derringer. He pleaded guilty to three counts of armed robbery in March, 1984, and served three years of a six-year prison sentence, state officials said.

Girard is a short man, with slicked-back, reddish brown hair, the fourth of six children. He was born to a mechanic and a housewife in Waco, Tex. The family moved when he was a youngster to Los Angeles’ South Bay.

His mother, Phyllis Hernandez, said in an interview Tuesday that she was separated from her husband. “We were poor, real poor. We had to live in bad neighborhoods,” Hernandez said. “We did have a roof over our head, but it was always scrounging.”

Vincent Girard said his brother’s first brush with the law occurred at age 10. He was arrested, along with some others, for stealing pigeons from a cage on the roof of a Wilmington fish market. The charges were later dropped, the younger Girard said.

Douglas Girard kept stealing bikes and breaking into cars, his brother said. “All we knew was crime,” Vincent Girard said. “Your surroundings make you what you are. And once you put a kid in jail, that’s it. He just gets harder and harder.”

Douglas Girard attended Miller Kilpatrick High School at a county Probation Department camp in the Malibu hills.

Court records reveal almost annual convictions since 1976 for burglary and theft of, among other things, televisions, cameras, jewelry and videocassette recorders. When he was not in custody, a probation report said, he was a self-employed painter.

In April, he was released on his own recognizance in a Riverside County burglary case. He was required to stay on 24-hour home detention with his mother and stepfather in San Jacinto, a small town about 25 miles southwest of Palm Springs.

He divided his time between his mother’s house and that of a friend, Kathleen Newman, across the street. Girard “was thinking about going to school,” Newman said. “He wanted to . . . just get something going for himself.”

In June, he was discharged from state parole. On July 11, he pleaded guilty in Riverside County Superior Court to one count of burglary. Sentencing was set for Sept. 17, but Girard did not show up. The judge issued a warrant for his arrest.

Then Monday, Newman said, she asked Girard to go to the store for her in her Volkswagen.

He did not return, even though he had promised his mother to clean the bathroom at home.

Early the next morning, Vincent Girard called his mother into the room where he was watching television. There was Douglas on the screen, with blood on his shoulder and a puffy face. His brother had recognized him by a tattoo on the right side of his neck.

Later, Douglas Girard phoned from jail. “I guess I’m not going to be able to do your bathroom,” he said.

Times staff writers Jenifer Warren and Eric Lichtblau contributed to this story.

DRAMA IN LA VERNE: A CHRONOLOGY The sequence of events leading to the arrest of robbery suspects, one of who terrorized 20 people for 6 1/2 hours at a McDonald’s restaurant in La Verne. MONDAY: 5:20 p.m.-La Verne Police respond to report of an armed robbery at the Kids Mart clothing store located at 2361 Foothill Blvd.

5:30 p.m. - Suspects Douglas E. Girard of San Jacinto and Frank M. Teresi of Anaheim leave Kids Mart and flee toward their car parked in front of MacDonald’s at 2269 Foothill Blvd. The pair enter the restaurant.

5:30 to 6 p.m. - La Verne Police surround MacDonald’s. Teresi walks out and surrenders to officers. Girard stays in the restaurant along with nine customers who take cover on the floor and under tables. A group of 11 employees escape from the serving area and barricade themselves in the basement.

7:30 to 8 p.m. - Los Angeles County Sheriff’s SWAT team arrives.

8 to 8:30 p.m. - MacDonald’s assistant manager Anis Hussain, hidden in kitchen, motions to one of the hostages, a minister, who crawls into the kitchen area. Hussain leads him to safety inthe basement.

8:30 to 10:30 p.m. - SWAT members confer with owner of McDonald’s franchise on building layout, map out strategy and prepare equipment.

11:25 p.m. - The 11 employees plus the minister who had hidden in the basement flee the building through an emergency door under the protection of SWAT.

TUESDAY:

12:05 a.m. - SWAT members throw flash-bang explosive devices into the building to confuse the suspect. Deputies leap over the counter and apprehend Girard.

Source: La Verne Police Department, Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department and witness accounts.