Happy Trails in Valencia Now That Band of Burglars Is Gone

If Donna Rice and Gary Hart had rendezvoused in Valencia instead of on Capitol Hill, things might have gone much better for Hart’s presidential aspirations.

When Rice failed to emerge that infamous spring night five years ago from Hart’s townhouse, reporters who had staked it out concluded that she had spent the night with the married Colorado senator, then the front-runner among Democratic candidates. The scandal killed Hart’s chances of bedding down--with anybody--in the White House.

Had the tryst occurred in Valencia, the couple could have claimed that Rice slipped out undetected through the back door into the labyrinth of secluded, internal pathways known as paseos that wend their way behind the houses and condos.

After all, others have employed the paseos as an escape route, much to the chagrin of the developer who built them to entice buyers hungry for a relaxed atmosphere.

During the summers of 1990 and 1991, a band of burglars used the 12 miles of paved trails, pedestrian bridges and tunnels to elude the police, according to Lt. Marvin Dixon of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.

“The paseo system allowed some of the criminal element to move unobtrusively through the community,” Dixon concedes.

Moreover, when officers on mountain bikes were first deployed to stop the mini-crime wave, they got lost on the winding trails. Many of Valencia’s 10,000 tract houses and condominiums are painted in earth tones, lending the community a certain homogeneity.

“I always knew I was somewhere in Valencia,” says Deputy John Bomben, one of the officers on the bike patrol. “But it takes time to get used to those paseos. You’d be listening to radio calls and want to get there in a hurry, only to find yourself going down the wrong street.”

The deputies eventually got their bearings, but the bike patrols were axed this year because of budget cutbacks, Dixon says. Fortunately, the burglars moved on, he says, leaving the trails to be used and enjoyed by the relatively few Santa Clarita residents who know about them.

The paseos are the city’s most-hyped amenity, yet they remain its best-kept secret. Newhall Land & Farming Co., which first started building them in 1967 as part of the master-planned community of Valencia, proudly asserts that they are the only ones in the entire state, and no one has disputed it yet.

The master-planned community of Irvine in Orange County also has an elaborate system of pathways, but it is external, not internal like Valencia’s.

Paseo means walkway in Spanish, and although very few Latinos live in Valencia--which is 85% Anglo, according to the census--the developer adopted the name to connote “a Mediterranean feel,” said Newhall spokeswoman Marlee Lauffer.

Where else in Los Angeles County can you find well-lit, litter-free paths shaded by olive trees, towering pines and flowering bushes, Lauffer rhetorically asks.

She doesn’t bring up the unpleasant side effect of elusive burglars.

The cleanest pedestrian tunnels in Los Angeles County are located in the paseos, she asserts--and not without reason, for they look pristine, thanks to armies of maintenance workers.

All this suburban bliss is paid for by Valencia residents, who fork out monthly homeowner association fees of up to about $100 to maintain the paved pathways and pools and clubhouses that are also part of the system. Only the paseos are open to the public.

For all that Valencia residents are supposed to be an upscale lot, the truth is that they spend a lot of time in these passageways behind their houses, sort of like hanging out in the alley in eastern cities of a time past.

That gives the streets of Valencia a lifeless appearance--scattered cars, no pedestrians or playing children--but only because everyone is out of sight, back in the paseos.

Children take them to school. Joggers and walkers, bicyclists and skateboarders, mothers wheeling strollers--the list of paseo users holds few surprises.

And then there are the teen-age lovers.

Who needs the back seat of a car, and all that tedious hunting for lonely roads, when there are 12 miles of shrub-lined paseos from which to choose?

(For some reason, Newhall Land doesn’t tout this particular facet of the system either.)

One young couple encountered recently said that “making out” is tolerated by passersby, but drinking alcohol is verboten.

“You can’t drink in here--I know, I’ve tried,” the 17-year-old boy said.

Newhall Land will furnish would-be paseo-ists with maps of the maze-like system, which stretches from Lyons Avenue on the south to Valencia Boulevard on the north.

The glossy, eight-color map makes it clear that Valencia is composed of clusters of cul-de-sacs. The paseos run up through the center of each cluster like the spine of a leaf.

Armed with a map, anyone can navigate from Point A to Point B. But even without one, there’s no lasting confusion because all roads lead to suburbia’s most representative Mecca: a shopping mall.

In this case, it’s the newly built Valencia Town Center.

Partly owned by Newhall Land, of course.