Man to Be Tried on Phone Hacking Charges : Courts: He allegedly jammed hospital lines for hours at a time and reported false emergencies to 911 operators.

A telephone hacker who allegedly tied up lines at Palomar Hospital for hours at a time has been ordered to stand trial on dozens of felony wiretapping and eavesdropping counts.

Rick Ivkovich is accused of using his touch-tone telephone to jam the lines of the Escondido hospital, bringing switchboard operators to tears.

From as early as April, 1990, prosecutors allege, he occasionally blocked calls to and from the hospital and connected hospital operators to outside lines, including 911 emergency lines and the county jail here. He also allegedly reported false emergencies to 911 while making it appear that he was calling from the hospital.

Escondido Police Detective Richard Hardy, who investigated the case, testified at Monday’s preliminary hearing that Ivkovich, 25, admitted to “getting a little carried away” in his phone calls to the hospital.

In an interview, hospital communications official Jane Miller said Ivkovich “would grab access to one of our (telephone) trunks and then call 911 and say he was in the hospital and that somebody was chasing him with a knife. . . . He did it to the point where our operators were in tears, and they couldn’t take it any more.”

Outside the courtroom, Deputy Dist. Atty. James Valliant said Ivkovich “had a gripe with the operators at Palomar. He wanted to use their telephone system and he wasn’t allowed to.”

After his testimony, Hardy said Ivkovich had been “locked up” in Palomar’s mental health unit and had been arrested by sheriff’s deputies “several times,” but could not elaborate.

Ivkovich is charged with 18 counts of wiretapping, 18 counts of eavesdropping and nine counts of falsely reporting an emergency, all felonies.

Escondido police tracked down Ivkovich in December through a series of telephone “traps.”

Public Defender William Saunders argued that there may have been no violation of the law.

“The calls are not private communications as required in the (eavesdropping) statute. First of all, he’s a party to the call,” Saunders told the court. “Any call to 911 is a taped call . . . and I don’t think there is any expectation of privacy there.”

Saunders argued that wiretapping charges require physical attachment to telephone lines, and Ivkovich had none.

But Vista Municipal Judge Harley Earwicker said “there was an unauthorized connection,” which met the wiretapping provisions.