Homeless Man Blames City for Loss of a Lifetime : Litigation: Mashone Bonner, 45, claims a trash bag containing photos and other mementos of a once-normal family life was picked up by Santa Ana parks employees during a cleanup. He’s suing for unspecified damages.

Like other homeless people living on the streets, 45-year-old Mashone Bonner is a man with a past.

But the mementos of his pre-homeless days, tangible evidence that he once lived a normal life with his family, are gone.

On a summer day in 1989, a large garbage bag holding his possessions--including school pictures of his three daughters, a watch and diamond ring from a failed marriage, his birth certificate, and honorable discharge papers from the U.S. Navy--was seized, he claims, by Santa Ana parks employees during a cleanup of the Civic Center area where he lives.

Charging that the city illegally confiscated and disposed of his personal belongings, Bonner went to Superior Court in Newport Beach on Monday for the start of the trial in his lawsuit, which seeks unspecified damages against the city.

“I don’t know how other people feel about it, but you know, that was my world,” Bonner said of the lost photo collection. “It meant a whole lot to me because they were pictures of my kids from kindergarten to the 12th grade. They are personal. It’s something you hold inside you.”

The case is among a string of civil lawsuits filed in recent years against Santa Ana concerning the rights of the homeless. But after paying cash settlements totaling about $500,000 to homeless people to end most of the cases, the city decided to take this one to trial.

“We do not think we did anything wrong in this case,” said attorney Phillip D. Eaton, hired by the city for this trial. “We are not sure that we took” the belongings.

The city’s argument during the trial, Eaton said, will be based on the fact that the garbage bag was unmarked and stashed in bushes near the Orange County Hall of Administration.

If it was taken by a city employee, Eaton added, Bonner did not attempt to reclaim it from a holding area where lost property was stored for four months.

“This is not a ‘sweep’ case,” Eaton said, referring to another case in which the City Council paid $50,000 to 14 homeless people who sued in 1988 after their bedrolls and other personal property were discarded by park employees.

But Bonner’s attorney, Christopher B. Mears, said he will attempt to prove that the personal property “was taken as part of a citywide policy . . . to force homeless people out of Santa Ana. That violates the California Constitution and his rights to due process. It also constitutes theft.”

Mears said that among the first witnesses to be called to testify today is Recreation and Community Services Executive Director Allen E. Doby, who wrote a staff memo outlining the city’s plans to address the homeless issue.

For Bonner, known on the street as “Big Man,” “Mayor” and “Mister Santa Ana,” this trial is his second legal battle with the city. The other stemmed from a sweep of the Civic Center in 1990, in which police arrested more than 30 homeless people, including Bonner, on suspicion of offenses ranging from littering to jaywalking.

Last August, the council agreed to pay 28 of those people $400,000 for the 1990 raid to settle the civil rights lawsuit filed on their behalf by the Legal Aid Society and several Orange County lawyers who donated their services.

Bonner said Monday that more than half of his $22,000 share of the settlement was given to his mother, daughters, grandchildren, and some of his homeless friends. The rest, he said, has been invested for his grandchildren’s education.

But despite the legal battles with the city, Bonner has not been persuaded to leave Santa Ana. He continues to be homeless, he said, living at the Civic Center.