Scout Fined for Using CB in Boat Rescue : Rules: Laguna Hills homeowners’ group is miffed over banned radio, even if 6 people were saved.

An Explorer Scout who helped save six people aboard a boat stranded off Dana Point is now in icy water with his homeowners’ association, which purportedly wants to fine him for the way he did it--using his citizens band radio.

On the night of Dec. 28, Richard Wright and two other CB operators responded to a distress call from an 18-foot pleasure boat. Through questions and communication relays, they guided a Coast Guard helicopter and Orange County sheriff’s patrol boats to the stricken vessel five miles offshore.

Wright’s good deed had a very short afterglow.

“The president of the (homeowners’) association called our manager and he notified my mom that they want to fine me $150 for using my CB radio inside the association grounds,” Wright, a 20-year-old member of Explorers Post 540, said Tuesday.

Sure enough, Ron Meixell, president of the 124-member Moulton Parkway Assn. No. 1, confirmed that the association’s board will decide at its meeting next week whether to fine Wright.

According to Meixell, the youth had promised three months ago to stop using his CB radio after several condo owners complained that it interfered with their cordless telephones and television reception.

“I think he and his mother are simply using this rescue thing to help them out,” Meixell said Tuesday. “The Coast Guard even called me up, and several newspapers. This whole thing is a basket case.”

He claims Wright used the CB a week before the rescue, which resulted in the threatened fine. But Wright said he was notified of the possible fine shortly after he used the CB to assist the rescue.

The Coast Guard is clearly on Wright’s side.

In a letter to the association, a ranking officer called it “ludicrous to fine the boy for saving lives.”

“If it wasn’t for his helping us,” Coast Guard Petty Officer Randolph Reid added Tuesday, “it could have ended up in serious injury or loss of life to the boater and his family.”

It’s not the first time that Wright, an aspiring firefighter, has won praise for his actions.

In 1992, he was recommended for a certificate of valor from the Orange County Fire Department after he kicked open the door of a burning condo and searched for people possibly trapped inside. He found no people, but broke out a window to help the family dog and pet hamsters escape.

And in October, the youth and other Explorers who are part of an emergency services squad responded to the Laguna Beach fire and assisted in the staging area for emergency vehicles. A week later, the same post volunteered to help line muddy streets in Laguna Beach with sandbags after rainfall caused damage from flooding.

His latest adventure involved two other CB operators, Richard Bianchini, a Mission Viejo teen-ager, and another CB user known only as “Shorty.”

The skipper, Jose Santana of Anaheim, was aboard the vessel with his wife, two children and two other adults without flashlights and only a few blankets, Reid said.

Through a series of questions and communication relays, the three radio operators were able to approximate the boat’s bearings and forward the information to the Coast Guard.

Wright said the youths used their familiarity with the Orange County coastline and quizzed Santana on physical landmarks he could see that night.

“We asked if he could see San Clemente hill, which has a big red light up on top, the big green light at Dana Point Harbor and then the San Onofre power plant,” Wright said. “When he said San Clemente hill was closest to him, I gave that information to the Coast Guard on my cellular phone that I grabbed from my house.”

Wright said he remained in his car with an open line to the Coast Guard while relaying messages through the two CB radio operators. From time to time, the signal was weak, Wright said, and one of the three operators would lose or gain the signal during the three-hour rescue operation.

“We first got the May Day about 5 o’clock,” Wright said. “And, it took us about an hour to find out where the (boater) was. The whole thing ended like close to 8 at night.”

While they remained in communications with the stranded boat, which had engine problems, they learned the pilot already had used up his signal flares and had only a camera with a flash attachment.

The Coast Guard had instructed Wright, whose CB handle is “911,” to notify Santana that when he heard the helicopter approaching to flash the camera at least twice.

“The rescue copter came on the air,” Wright said, “and said: ‘Unit 911, do you still have a copy on the boat?’ And, I said, ‘yeah.’ They then said, ‘We now have a visual on the boat.’ ”

Wright’s mother, Sue Sampsell, said she believes the homeowners’ association and its president are targeting her son for previous conflicts the family has had with the group.

“We’re renters, and I don’t think they like that. I don’t feel we should have to pay this fine. We acknowledged that my son used the CB, but this was to save some person’s life. This is what my son was brought up to do.”