An Earnest Desire to Show Gratitude Turns Into an All-Points Search

Ernest Garcia simply wants to say thanks.

He wants to hook up once more with the man who set his life on the right path, a Korean War veteran who befriended him one summer long ago in the chow line at the old Veterans Administration hospital in Sylmar.

But he can’t find him. And the search has become the grand mystery of his life.

It’s been almost a year now, and no luck--none in the phone books from all around, in musty libraries, in drives around Sylmar, not even at meetings of the Cauliflower Alley club (Wednesdays in Hollywood) for old wrestling and boxing aficionados.

It’s tough when the guy you’re looking for is named Jack Hall. Too common. It’s tougher when you don’t have the keys that unlock computer secrets, date of birth or Social Security number. It’s really tough when you haven’t seen the guy in 30 years--and he very well could be dead.

Still, Garcia swears he’ll persevere. Recalling events long ago, he said, “It’s like someone put me in the middle of the desert and all of a sudden I found a shepherd who guided me. This is why I need to find him--to thank him.”

When Garcia, now 48, arrived in the San Fernando Valley in the fall of 1964, he was 19. Eager to get out of New York, where he’d grown up, he’d arranged a job with a family friend, a doctor who did cancer research at the Sylmar VA.

Garcia became his lab technician. The doctor also arranged for Garcia to stay at the hospital and to eat at the hospital cafeteria.

That took care of room, board and some cash--the basics, but not enough for a lonesome kid far from home.

One day in the chow line, Garcia said, the man in front said hi. It was Hall, who was a patient at the hospital.

Eventually, Hall introduced Garcia to his family--his wife, Dee, and a 14-year-old daughter from an earlier marriage, Doris, who was nicknamed Dobbie.

Jack Hall was discharged from the hospital, and Garcia began spending most of his free time at the family’s Sylmar home or at a Union Oil service station on San Fernando Road, where Hall got a job pumping gas. “Pretty soon, he’s treating me like a son,” Garcia said.

Together, Garcia and the Halls--who hailed from somewhere in the Deep South--marveled at the mountains, the palm trees, Mexican food, drive-in movies, orange orchards. They were awed by the 1965 Rose Parade.

The Halls were avid horseback riders, and there were often riding sessions at Hansen Dam. “Doris’ horse was named Rex,” Garcia said. “He was brown and big and he kicked me. I didn’t know any better and went behind the horse.

“She laughed and I got back on the horse. Wherever Rex took me, I went because I didn’t know how to steer him.”

In the summer of 1965, the U. S. government was only too glad to offer Garcia some direction. The Army needed troops for the buildup in Vietnam. So did the Marine Corps.

Jack Hall had a different plan. He took Garcia aside and told him to find a way to serve his nation with pride--but, while he was at it, to learn a trade and to stay safe.

“If I’d gone to Vietnam, he didn’t think I’d make it back,” Garcia said. “What did I know? He knew. He said, ‘Become somebody. That way, when you get older, you won’t have to do the same kind of work I’m doing today. Make something of yourself.’ ”

Garcia enlisted in the Coast Guard. Four years later, he was honorably discharged with expertise in electronics. He went to work for NBC, and stayed for 23 years, until just a few weeks ago, when he decided to move on.

Working off the air as a sound and camera technician, he covered war in Nicaragua and earthquakes in Mexico. He shook President Reagan’s hand. He did OK for himself.

Last June, Garcia decided the time had come to tell Jack Hall he had done OK. But the Halls, it turned out, had moved away from Sylmar--and essentially disappeared.

Garcia placed a classified ad last November in The Times. He scoured genealogy libraries. He pored over horseback club rosters. He searched school records and phone books. Nothing.

Garcia hooked up with Don Ray, a Burbank-based investigative journalist who spends his spare time helping people look for people. The Halls had rented the house in Sylmar. The landlords couldn’t be found. The neighbors were all new.

Two faces down from Doris Hall in the 1965 Olive Vista Junior High yearbook was Jan Hardie, her best friend. By tracking a newspaper obituary of Hardie’s father, Ray and Garcia found her in Shaw, Ore. She volunteered that she was sure she had seen Doris on TV in the late ‘60s--in the roller derby.

On the TV derby, Doris was Jeri Hall. That led Garcia and Ray to join the Cauliflower Alley club. The word has since been spread that the search is on for old-time lady roller derby players. But still, so far--no luck.

“Ernest is genuine,” Jan Hardie Birdsell, now a 41-year-old horticulturist, said by phone. “He’s innocent and honest. He’s childlike in his wonder at the world. And this is so important to him.”

“The more you work with Ernest, the more you love him,” Ray said. “He’s just one of those great human beings you want to do stuff for, and he wants to do stuff for you.”

In an interview last week, Garcia dabbed at tears while trying to find the right words to explain his obsession.

“The mention of their names makes my heart beat 20,000 times faster,” he said. “I can’t express it to you, really. I just want to say thank you.”