System Sticks It to Citizen Trying to Register Parking Ticket Complaint

Consider the lament of Gisela Hoschek, 51, tax-paying citizen, research biologist at UC San Diego, and resident of Nardo Road in Encinitas.

On a recent morning, Hoschek found a ticket beneath the windshield wiper of her 1981 Peugeot parked in front of her house.

A sharp-eyed employee of the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department had noticed that the Peugeot’s rear license plate did not have its current registration sticker.

As the ticket shows, the employee had punched the license number into a computer and knew full well that the owner had indeed paid for current registration.

Still, the sticker was not on the license plate and that’s against the law. Gotcha. Punishment: $28.

(Fair is fair: We lean here on the Sheriff’s Department but truthfully all police departments write sticker tickets. Lots of justice, very little mercy.)

“They were standing in front of my house when they wrote the ticket,” Hoschek fumes. “It would have been nothing to ring the doorbell or leave a note instead.”

Hoschek remembered that her son had told her the night before that some suspicious individuals of the teen-age persuasion had been milling about the car.

She figured they peeled off her sticker. She figured she’d explain her plight to the appropriate authority, pay $7 for a replacement tag and get on with her life.

She went to the Automobile Club of Southern California office in Solana Beach. No luck. The club can process a replacement sticker but not dismiss a ticket.

Go to the Sheriff’s Department station in Encinitas, Hoschek was told. Which she did, but because it was Saturday, the station was closed.

She returned Monday and was told to go to the county marshal in San Marcos. Which she did and was told to go to traffic court, also in San Marcos.

She steamed over to traffic court and was told she’d have to plead innocent, wait for a court date and pray that a kind-hearted judge would buy her explanation.

She envisioned more time lost from work, possibly in a losing cause. She decided instead to pay the ticket.

She wrote on her check, “Under protest.”

She supplies the moral to her own story: “The policeman is your friend? Phooey. The policeman is a bully.”

Of Beeps and Bach

Everywhere you look.

* San Diegans are being warned about the latest electronic rip-off.

Your beeper beeps and displays a 212-number (New York) for call back. It works like a 900-number, you call it and get billed $55 for nothing.

* Bumper sticker in Rancho San Diego: “Growing Old Is Not For Sissies.”

* Art light.

The 4th Annual Coffee-Themed Mail-Art is set for Saturday night at Sushi Performance Art Gallery in San Diego. Artists have been mailing in small works (including coffee-stained T-shirts) praising coffee.

Music by San Diego’s Bach Society Chamber Orchestra. Johann Sebastian’s “Coffee Cantata,” naturally.

* It is strictly a coincidence that the Del Mar Aquarium is directly above the town’s increasingly popular sushi bar, Shirahama Japanese Restaurant.

* No, the log lady will not be along as a chaperon.

The new Loews Coronado Bay Resorts has ordered a 50-foot Grand Fir for its first holiday tree. The tree is on its way from Snoqualmie, Wash., better known as the real-life “Twin Peaks.”

* The latest edition of Liberty, the newsletter of the San Diego Libertarian Party, quotes Jonathan Swift: “Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies, but let wasps and hornets break through.”

A Steal, Courtesy of a Thief

A steal.

Among properties to be auctioned off soon by the county for unpaid taxes: a nifty 9.62-acre undeveloped parcel in San Marcos. Minimum bid is set at $150,000, which is one-quarter the assessed value.

It’s not unusual for owners to try to buy back their properties at such auctions. But don’t look for it to happen this time.

The property was owned by Don Dixon and his Vernon Savings & Loan of Texas. Vernon is kaput, and Dixon is in federal prison.