One Man’s Battle to Save a Rabbit on San Diego’s Indifferent Streets

Presented for your consideration this morning, a slice of San Diego street life, 1991.

Feel free to find a moral.

Brad Tamm, 39, a retired Navy chief turned law student, went to lunch the other day from his summer job with the law firm of O’Mara & Holzmann in San Diego.

He’s walking down Laurel Street when, at about 3rd Avenue, he sees a driverless VW Rabbit rolling slowly backward down the steep hill.

He also notices that nobody else is noticing. He figures he better get involved (“I’ve had some experience pushing planes on flight decks.”)

He stops the VW from rolling and then pushes it out of traffic. But before he can get it safely into a parking spot, the steering wheel locks; the doors are locked too.

Now he’s really stuck, if he lets go the VW will continue its journey down the hill. He yells for help but passers-by pretend not to see or hear him.

Quickly, Tamm remembers he’s got one of those nifty PacTel cellular phones ($699 retail) in his back pocket. He got it about five minutes earlier on a tryout basis.

Using one hand to brace the VW, Tamm calls 911.

Five minutes later, a cop car cruises by, but somehow it misses him. He calls 911 again.

The owner of the car then appears. She had parked the car at Laurel and 6th, three blocks away.

She thinks Tamm is stealing her precious car and starts yelling: “Stop, car thief.”

In exasperation, Tamm screams back at her: “If I was going to steal a car, it wouldn’t be a dirty little VW. It would be a Porsche 911 Turbo Carrera, cream-colored.”

A second cop car appears.

After a few minutes, the cop straightens things out; the owner drives away, and Tamm continues on to lunch.

Tamm, a native San Diegan, says he’s not really surprised that nobody came to his aid:

“If I had driven by and seen a guy in suit and tie, standing out in the middle of the street with a VW and yelling, I’d have probably figured he was just a nut, too.

“You see so many strange things on the streets these days.”

Living on the Edge

Houses, homes and power.

* Peter Navarro’s San Diego address.

A rumor making the political rounds says Navarro, whose slow-growth plan for San Diego appears headed for the June, 1992, ballot, actually lives in Del Mar.

Close but not quite. Navarro lives in Del Mar Heights.

The house next door is in Del Mar, and the back stretch of Navarro’s property is a Del Mar easement, but Navarro’s house is in San Diego.

* Money and motherhood.

The top contributors to Navarro’s initiative are the plumbers’ and pipe fitters’ unions ($41,000) and Evelyn Littlejohn ($34,000 in cash, $16,000 in computer equipment) of Boynton Beach, Fla.

The unions like it that the plan would require that “prevailing wages” (often defined as union wages) be paid on all residential and commercial construction projects.

Littlejohn is Navarro’s mother:

“She has seen Florida go to hell in a hand basket and she doesn’t want it to happen to San Diego.”

* “Forever Plaid,” the musical spoof now playing at the Old Globe, goes to the White House on Monday for a command performance.

Not the Globe troupe. The cast now doing “Plaid” at Ford’s Theatre in Washington.

* Now it can be told.

The bill cited by the Public Utilities Commission when it killed the Edison-SDG&E; merger stipulated that mergers “not adversely affect competition.”

Gov. George Deukmejian would never explain why he didn’t veto the bill, as he had other anti-merger bills.

Here’s why: San Diego Republican blueblood and merger opponent Gordon Luce had met privately with Deukmejian and gently called in his IOUs as a longtime political supporter and fund-raiser for the Duke.

Grudgingly, Deukmejian let the bill become law without his signature.

At Last, an Honest Bumper Sticker

North County bumper sticker: “My Kid Was a Jerk at Sunshine Preschool.”