Persistence With Ponies Pays for Garber : Horse racing: Tarzana man owns thoroughbreds for nearly a decade before hitting jackpot with Quintana, who ran sixth in last year’s Kentucky Derby.

Minutes before post time at Santa Anita recently, nine thoroughbreds and their owners paraded to the paddock area in an entrance only slightly less grand than that of Caesar returning to Rome. While the general public queued behind white barricades, trumpets erupted, bright silk pennants flew, camera shutters crackled.

Waiting for jockey Eddie Delahoussaye to saddle up for the sixth race, Diane Garber and her 27-year-old daughter Lisa stood by their horse, Command the Fire. To the Garbers, this pre-race paddock ritual was as glamorous and exciting as a movie opening at Mann’s Chinese. Just one of many perks of owning a horse, it gave them a chance to put on their party clothes and get in on the fun.

The guy next to them, however, looked like an interloper at a garden wedding. In fact, he was Diane’s husband Gary, the actual owner of the horse. Garber, a 50-year-old plastics manufacturer who lives in Tarzana, is focused only on the race. Is the horse ready? How will the No. 8 post position affect their chances? Are the 11-1 odds too high? Everything else is superfluous.

“When we get to the track, I go to the Turf Club, Gary goes to the barn,” said Diane, who has been married to him for 28 years.

Even at last year’s Kentucky Derby--the Oscar ceremonies of horse racing--Garber left the socializing to his family and did not attend any of the many Derby bashes before the race. As the owner of Quintana, a horse running in the derby, Garber could have been the toast of Louisville, but he is too low-key and unassuming, a man who makes plastic but disdains superficiality.

“Dad was glad to be at the Kentucky Derby,” Lisa said, “but he knows there are more important things in life.”

Garber learned that in a graphic way: On Feb. 24, 1989, he and Diane were flying to New Zealand on United Flight 811 when a cargo door malfunctioned, shredding a gaping hole in the Boeing 747. Eight people directly alongside Garber and the man in front of him were sucked from the plane to their deaths.

“(Diane and I) probably should have died,” said Garber, who always has had a premonition of dying in a plane crash. “As it was happening, I thought to myself . . . I was right.’ Psychologically, you don’t recover from something like that. Your whole perspective changes.”

Until the moment the pilot miraculously landed the plane safely in Honolulu, Garber’s “greatest thrill” had occurred at Hollywood Park nine years ago, when the first horse he had owned, a 4-year-old filly named Fabulous Mary, won its first race.

“You can’t describe it,” Garber said. “It’s almost like an extension of yourself when a horse does good. Or bad. But I get the same kick out of a horse winning a $10,000 claiming race as a horse winning a stakes race.”

Garber shares the same emotional feelings with owners of NFL teams, which is one of the reasons he got involved in horse racing. “I always wanted to own a pro franchise,” he said. “This is the closest I could get.”

Until last year, Garber had not made a big splash in the world of horse racing--he estimates that his horses have won 20 to 25 races in his 10 years as an owner--but then his 3-year-old chestnut colt Quintana won the $100,000 Rebel at Oaklawn Park in Hot Springs, Ark., and finished sixth in the Kentucky Derby. Suddenly, Garber was in racing’s select circle.

“In the back of every owner’s mind is to have a horse in the Kentucky Derby,” Garber said. “But you progress up to it. It was hard to believe it happened that fast for us.”

Quintana was spotted by Garber’s trainer, David Cross, in a $50,000 claiming race last February at Santa Anita. Cross, who trained 1983 Kentucky Derby winner Sunny’s Halo, liked Quintana’s ability to run a long race.

“I thought he could run around two turns and be very competitive,” said Cross, a trainer for 37 years.

The night before the claiming race, Cross phoned Garber and recommended claiming Quintana. Garber checked the performance charts and wasn’t impressed with the horse, but he told Cross to go ahead with the purchase. Quintana’s emergence as a top 3-year-old, however, startled even Cross.

“When we claimed Quintana, we were not looking at any Kentucky Derby, I guarantee you,” Cross said. “If a trainer could see something like that, this would be an easy business.”

Success in horse racing depends on many factors, none so critical as the fragile health of the spindly-legged animals. “One cracked bone and you’re left with nothing,” said Garber, who owns eight other thoroughbreds along with Quintana. “But you try to maintain an even keel because this business has so many ups and downs.”

Quintana has supplied some of the downs. After finishing sixth in the Belmont Stakes last June, the animal was flown to Kentucky for surgery on the knee of his right foreleg. Only now is he rounding back into top shape and he is entered in the Early Times Classic at Churchill Downs today, the day before the Derby.

Diane Garber says her husband “gets to know the horses more as pets” and becomes attached to them, which makes their demise more difficult to handle. Last fall, Garber was present when Ask the Man, his 6-year-old gelding, broke down at Hollywood Park and had to be destroyed.

“It broke my heart,” he said. “They’re great animals. When you have a horse that tries, that’s all you can ask.”

Although horse racing is a hobby to him, Garber is a hands-on owner, visiting morning workouts a couple of times a week. “I try to stay out of everybody’s way,” he said modestly. “I just enjoy being there.”

But Garber, Cross said, is far from being a lump on a bale of hay in the corner of the barn.

“He understands horses and he understands the business very, very well,” Cross said. “I’ve had no one better as an owner. The costs in owning a horse are murder, but he’s the most generous man in the world, which is a rarity in owners.”

The admiration is mutual. “David is one of the few people at the track I’ve met who I trust,” Garber said.

Garber gives Cross carte blanche. “If I like a horse, I buy him,” Cross said. “Mr. Garber has never told me not to buy a horse.”

Horse racing, Diane Garber said, has become her husband’s “first love,” but it’s also given him a lot of aggravation. He particularly gets annoyed at some two-legged creatures at the track.

“Jockeys are a sore spot with me,” he said, standing in his barn at Santa Anita, watching longtime foreman James (Hoppy) Lindsey prep Command the Fire. “Jockeys and agents. They’re a different breed. You just can’t trust them. They lie to you. Some agents, they couldn’t care less about you.”

After leaving the barn, Garber met his wife and daughter in the paddock and accompanied them inside the grandstand. There they parted company. The women, who were with Cross’ wife Patty, entered the Turf Club to watch the sixth race, but Garber went into a general-access area and watched on a TV monitor.

Arms folded across his chest, Garber was expressionless as Command the Fire never made a run at the leaders and finished sixth in the $30,000 race.

“That,” he said deadpan, “is the heartbreak of America.”