In San Clemente, Crime ‘Crept In Unnoticed’ : Safety: Longtime resident Dorothy Fuller laments the advent of urban-style violence that has fueled her fears and tarnished the reputation of the picturesque city.

There was a time when Dorothy Fuller could stroll along the streets of this town late into the evening, never giving a thought to her personal safety.

She’d swing past the former Nixon house, then shoot down to the seaside before finally meandering back home. On occasion, she would run into a police officer who would insist upon accompanying her--more out of a sense of duty than any fear of criminals lurking in the darkness.

“San Clemente was such a happy, unworried place. I just loved the feeling of safety,” Fuller, 68, recalled wistfully during a recent interview. “But that’s no longer the situation here. Now, I’m afraid to walk out on the streets at night.”

Like many Orange County residents who moved here from Los Angeles, Fuller, president of the San Clemente Historical Society, is coming to the painful realization that the very same urban ills that plague most big cities have taken root in what she once viewed as a suburban paradise.

A former Citizen of the Year who spent summers in San Clemente as a child during the 1930s, Fuller is one of the town’s most enthusiastic boosters. Still, she laments the advent of urban-style crime that has fueled her fears and tarnished the reputation of this picturesque city nicknamed the “Spanish Village by the Sea.”

“It happened like that old poem about fog,” said Fuller, who married a local police officer and settled in San Clemente a year after World War II ended. “It just crept in unnoticed and suddenly took over.”

While statistics show that the average Orange County resident actually has very little chance of becoming a victim of violent crime, residents’ growing concerns about crime were evident in a survey released by UC Irvine last week. For the first time in the 12-year history of the Orange County Annual Survey, crime surpassed other historic concerns such as jobs and traffic as the single greatest factor threatening the quality of life.

Fuller, who has never been the victim of a violent crime, blames highly publicized media reports of the most bizarre and gruesome acts for heightening her fears.

Most recently, the October killing of 17-year-old Steve Woods became a symbol of tragic proportions for people in Orange County who feel that violent, urban crime has invaded their suburban refuge. The high school senior was killed not far from Fuller’s home, when someone rammed a metal rod from a paint roller through his skull as he and some friends tried to flee a confrontation.

“It’s mostly what I’ve heard that makes me much more cautious,” Fuller said. “There is just a feeling of a lack of safety.”

Fuller says she first began to notice a change about 10 years ago. One evening, she said, a man jumped in front of her window, exposed himself, then disappeared.

It was about that time, too, when she started becoming aware of reports of homes being burglarized. Suddenly, friends were advising her to avoid certain areas of town at night because of the danger. And, almost reflexively, she and her husband began to double check the locks on their car doors whenever they went out.

She laughs now when she remembers that she once chased a “peeping Tom” and attempted to apprehend him.

“The policeman asked me what I would have done if I had managed to catch up with him,” she said, laughing at her foolhardiness 20 years earlier. “I’d certainly never do that nowadays with all the weaponry out there.”

But back then, Fuller said, crime was not even a concern.

“Our idea of crime was people having a little bit too much to drink or a family squabble,” she said, “or once in a while, someone not paying a restaurant check because they didn’t have the money.”

But now Fuller, the mother of a 45-year-old son, said she worries about the safety of her three grandchildren.

Fuller worries about her grandsons, 10 and 11, who attend San Clemente public schools, where residents have become increasingly concerned about the emergence of gangs. She said she will be relieved when her son returns to his permanent home in Utah in a few months and takes the boys with him. Her other grandchild, a 21-year-old woman, attends Saddleback College.

“There haven’t been any problems with them in school, but then again, I have that fear,” she said. “I just feel that when they go back to Utah they will be much safer.”

Fuller, a former member of the city’s Human Affairs Committee, was among those commissioned to study the city’s gang problem a year ago.

“Prior to that, most of the trouble that we had had was with people from the Marine base,” Fuller said. “The kind of crime that they were talking about occurring with gangs was a whole new thing for us because we hadn’t had to face that kind of thing.”

Despite her concerns, Fuller said she plans to stick it out.

“San Clemente has the same problems that are experienced everywhere else, but it’s the best place to experience them. At least you’ll keep your health until someone rubs you out,” she quipped.