On the Run With False Names, He Was Finally Tracked Down

In 1985, at 26, James Arthur Hogue enrolled at Palo Alto High, posing as 16-year-old “Jay Mitchell Huntsman.”

As a member of Palo Alto’s track team, “Huntsman” won a sprint race at the Stanford Invitational.

On the strength of some impressive Scholastic Aptitude Test scores and what a university spokesman called “an interesting background,” Hogue was accepted by Princeton in 1988--posing as a 20-year-old, self-educated ranch hand from Utah, under the alias “Alexi Indris-Santana.”

As a member of Princeton’s track team, “Santana” won several 5,000-meter races.

But a fellow Palo Alto High student, studying at Yale, recognized him at a track meet and told Jason Cole of the Peninsula Times-Tribune, who contacted Princeton officials.

Add Hogue: According to the Associated Press, Cole checked on Hogue and found that the real Jay Mitchell Huntsman, the son of a Salt Lake City couple, had died in 1969 as a 2-day-old infant in San Diego.

Last week, Hogue, 31, was arrested by Princeton police and held on charges of falsifying college admission papers. Authorities also were investigating whether financial-aid applications were doctored to enable Hogue to receive $14,000 a year in tuition and $5,000 in room and board.

And the Utah Board of Pardons filed parole violation charges against Hogue, who had served 10 months of a five-year sentence at Utah State Prison after his conviction in May, 1988, of third-degree felony possession of stolen property in St. George, Utah. He was paroled in March of 1989 and disappeared five months later.

Last add Hogue: Meanwhile, Princeton forfeited some of its track meets and the NCAA deleted “Santana” from its record books.

Said Princeton spokesman Justin Harmon, “We haven’t had this much attention since Brooke Shields graduated.”

Trivia time: Who won the men’s and women’s divisions of the first Los Angeles Marathon in 1986?

Vote early, vote often: On Monday, San Diego right fielder Tony Gwynn got back to Jack Clark.

On Sunday, Clark, now a first baseman with the Boston Red Sox, was quoted in the New York Times as saying that he wouldn’t mind returning to the Padres, if only to confront Gwynn.

Monday, at the Padres’ spring headquarters in Yuma, Ariz., Gwynn said, among other things: “Let’s talk about some of his deficiencies. . . . Let’s talk about him walking 104 times, being a No. 4 hitter. Let’s talk about his not flying on team flights. Let’s talk about him getting booted out of games on a called strike three. . . .

“Maybe I’ll luck out and he’ll be the American League’s All-Star first baseman. And I can make the National League team and get a base hit because I’d love to see what he says. Because he wouldn’t say nothing. He’d just stand there.”

Trivia answer: Ric Sayre and Nancy Ditz.

Quotebook: New York Yankee Manager Stump Merrill, on keeping a low profile in his hometown of Topsham, Me.: “My daughter’s peers have said some things, like, ‘Your dad’s a manager, so how come you don’t live in a better house?’ ”