Ex-Port Worker Finds 2nd Time Around a Charm--for Prison

There is no reason you should remember William Garrett, so I’ll provide some background.

Garrett was the highest-ranking employee of the San Diego Unified Port District charged in the purchasing scandal that may have skimmed $700,000.

He wasn’t the brains behind the scam, but he got an oven, a dishwasher and a stereo system to stay silent.

He pleaded no contest. His defense was that he was just playing the piano, and he had no idea what was going on in those rooms upstairs.

The judge bought it. Garrett got probation and some community service (he could have gotten four years in prison). He vowed to go straight and sin no more.

Promises, promises.

Now a jury has decided that Garrett, 52, once the port’s $60,000-a-year director of marina operations, was involved in a (separate) scheme to swindle his relatives before, during and after the Port District case.

How’s this for unrepentant timing?

On July 12, 1989, Garrett entered his no-contest plea in the Port District case. On July 14, 1989, Garrett sent a letter to his sister in Tennessee, undervaluing their late father’s estate by about $120,000.

The sister got suspicious and hired a private attorney, who contacted prosecutors. Garrett was charged with stealing $143,410.72 from the estate.

“One of the shocking things that came out at trial,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. Jeffrey Brodrick, “was that, not only did he steal from his sister’s kids, he also stole from his own kid.”

He was found guilty of grand theft and related misdeeds. Last week, Superior Court Judge Norbert Ehrenfreund sentenced Garrett to six years in prison.

Oh, yes, during the trial it came out that a buddy of Garrett’s at the Port District (who doubles as a notary) provided Garrett with a notarized document purporting to show that the father had willed his estate to Garrett.

A problem: There was no conclusive proof that the dying father ever authorized such a document.

The statute of limitations for providing a fraudulent notary statement has run out, but the buddy has relinquished his notary license.

The buddy is still employed at the Port District, but that’s another story.

A Hot Ticket

Visions and revisions.

* Jan Beck says she saw a bumper sticker on Interstate 805: “Perot/Murphy Brown ’92.”

No, Perot has not hired a private detective to find the driver. Not yet.

* The weight of dead men’s words.

A book dealer from Sonoma County who is in town for next weekend’s San Diego Book Fair is fuming about getting a ($66) traffic ticket for driving an overloaded vehicle.

“Overloaded with books,” says the ticket, issued at 7 a.m. on I-15.

The dealer from CM Lee Fine & Rare Books in Santa Rosa snorts that it’s just another sign that America has degenerated into a “post-literature era” where books are no longer honored.

* The New York Times predicts that a San Diego firm, Alliance Pharmaceutical Corp., will win the biotech race to produce the first human blood substitute for accident victims or surgery patients.

A major medical breakthrough if it happens.

* Over-the-Line team: Free Betty Broderick So She Can Marry Another Attorney.

* Pre-production work has begun for a second made-for-television movie about the Broderick case.

* San Diego-based syndicated columnist Raoul Lowery Contreras says he spotted a car at the Blood Bank near Balboa Park, with the license plate HIV NEG.

What Future?

Read it and weep.

Ann Shanahan-Walsh, the San Diego political consultant who guided the successful campaign for the school bond measure, Proposition O, had her car stolen from outside her Hillcrest apartment a while back.

Now it’s been found abandoned in East San Diego.

The thief or thieves left a bunch of litter, trashed the dashboard and stole the car jack.

But the thief or thieves showed no interest in a stack of Proposition O campaign brochures headlined: “Drugs, Dropouts, Gangs and Crime, It’s a Future We Can Live Without.”