O.C. Woman Turns Tragedy Into Crusade : Activism: After the murders of her son and brother, Collene Campbell champions victims’ rights.

SAN JUAN CAPISTRANO — It was a tender moment shared between brother and sister, one that Collene Campbell fondly remembers.

“My brother Mickey told me, ‘Sis, I’m telling you honey. You’re going to make history and become the first female mayor of San Juan Capistrano.’ ”

Fate, like some giant hand hovering above Campbell’s life, would do strange things.

Her brother, millionaire racing promoter Mickey Thompson, and his wife were murdered outside their home. It only added to Campbell’s emotional toll. Six years earlier, in 1982, her son Scott, 27, had been strangled.

Last December, Campbell did indeed become the city’s first female mayor--one with a special mission. She is a person who displays her emotions proudly and, as founder of Memories of Victims Everywhere (MOVE), is a forceful voice for victims’ rights.

Campbell gave gripping testimony last month at Gov. Pete Wilson’s crime summit in Los Angeles. A week ago, she told a South Orange County crime symposium that MOVE is launching a campaign to oust “soft-on-crime” state legislators.

“We keep hearing so much about the rights of the criminals,” Campbell said. “We don’t worry enough about the victims. And here we have new bills in Sacramento all the time that talk about giving inmates conjugal visits and giving them the right to sue while in prison.”

She has joined with Wilson, who on Monday said that the 1975 law known as the Inmates Bill of Rights--which guarantees prisoners the right to marry, inherit property and file lawsuits--should be repealed.

The recent murder of two Japanese exchange students in San Pedro that drew international headlines has intensified Campbell’s quest.

“Enough! . . . We’re against legislators who say they’re against crime but are game-playing and never vote for major anti-crime bills,” Campbell said, adding that MOVE will target the state Assembly’s powerful Public Safety Committee, where some anti-crime bills have stalled.

A staunch Republican, Campbell is heavily promoted by local Republican politicians, including those who embrace her victims’-rights agenda and have sought her endorsement for their election brochures.

With MOVE, Campbell said she plans fund-raisers to help pay for such activities as sending victims and their relatives to Sacramento to testify during legislative hearings and campaign against certain lawmakers.

However, Democrats say Campbell is simply out to exploit crime as a partisan issue. It is something she hotly denies: “If anybody thinks it’s fun to talk about their murdered loved ones, they haven’t been there yet,” Campbell said.

She is a tough-minded and well-connected politician, a businesswoman who, until last week, was chairman of the board for the Anaheim-based Mickey Thompson Entertainment Group, her brother’s successful corporation that promotes supercross and stadium off-road racing. The job was turned over to her nephew, Danny Thompson, her brother’s 45-year-old son.

“She doesn’t care what political party you come from,” said Orange County Municipal Judge Pamela Iles, a friend and political ally. “If you are supporting the rights of victims in the criminal justice system, she’ll support you. If not, you’re not going to like what she can do to you.”

Through Campbell’s persuasion, Iles said she has stopped officiating at prison weddings. Iles noted that convicted murderer Charles (Tex) Watson, a follower of Charles Manson in he 1969 Tate-LaBianca murders, has married and fathered three children while in prison.

“I told Collene that I worried about the mental health of the inmate, and her response was rather blunt. She said, ‘Who cares if they’re healthy!’ ”

MOVE has set its sights on Assemblymen Tom Umberg (D-Garden Grove) and Bob Epple (D-Cerritos), whom Campbell described as “appearing to be tough on crime when they’re not.”

Ann Peifer, a spokeswoman for Epple, said Epple supported Assembly Republican Bill Jones’ “three strikes and you’re out” bill during three separate votes before it was signed into law by Gov. Pete Wilson two weeks ago.

George Urch, Umberg’s chief aide, said Campbell was taking unfair shots at a former federal prosecutor who has pressed drug cases and who had introduced his own “three strikes and you’re out” bill.

Ramona Ripston, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California in Los Angeles, said she believes victim advocates can be more effective fighting to put more police officers on the streets than lobbying against conjugal visits for inmates.

“I would agree that victims of crime traditionally are the forgotten people in the criminal justice system and should be treated humanely,” Ripston said. “However, in terms of fighting against inmates’ rights, most of those are already covered by the federal Constitution and federal law.”

Campbell “can help wipe out the state’s Inmates Bill of Rights, but nothing much will change because the federal laws cover those, so it’s just grandstanding,” Ripston added.

There is no dispute, political or otherwise, that Campbell has been dealt a tough hand.

“MOVE was founded while we stood at the graveside of my brother,” Campbell said. “That was some five years ago. The group was established not as a political forum but to push for stricter laws and making criminals commit less crime.”

John W. Ben, South Orange County Chambers of Commerce vice president, invited Campbell to speak at the recent crime symposium after hearing her talk at a Republican Party meeting in Burlingame this year.

“She struck me as a woman who never knew about politics because she gave such a sincere talk,” Ben said. “When I heard that speech I said to myself, ‘God, we have to have her.’ I was struck by how much hurt one family can take.”

How Campbell has dealt with both tragedies in her life shows who Collene Campbell is.

When her son died, she said she thought of suicide. “I could join him, I thought, and this isn’t so uncommon from what I’ve learned from other mothers who have lost their children. I could have become a bitter person, too, angry at the world.”

But she chose life and dedicated herself to helping other survivors.

Her emotional well is not dry. Nor is it deep. “I can put up a real good front. I’ve become quite good at that. And, you know what? No one said life is fair.

“I wish there was a pill I could take to let me tell my story without me having to cry or get emotional. . . . “ she said. “I don’t think you ever do get over it. I think when you end up in a position like this, where someone is murdered, it’s very different than a normal death.”

Mickey Thompson and his wife, Trudy, were gunned down March 18, 1988. Police said two young men lurking outside their home in Bradbury in the San Gabriel Valley shot them to death and fled on 10-speed bicycles. No suspects have been arrested, and no motive has been revealed.

Life wasn’t always so grim.

“You know, my first remembrance of my brother,” Campbell said, “is that he took my mother’s old washing machine motor out to build a Go-Kart.”

Her brother would go on to hold numerous land speed records, including including one at Bonneville Salt Flats, “where Mickey hit 406 miles an hour using four Pontiac engines--one for each wheel.”

She worked for her brother for 18 years, handling Thompson’s public relations and promotions and serving as advertising producer in a world of fast cars and off-road racing.

Campbell, 61, grew up in Alhambra, where her father, Marion Thompson, was chief of detectives. She met Gary, her husband of 42 years, when they both were in the second grade. The Campbells have a daughter, Shelly, 37 and three grandchildren.

“He is not only my sweetie, but my best friend,” she said of her husband.

Gary Campbell had his own ad agency but joined the Thompson family team and helped with marketing.

After Mickey Thompson met his wife, Trudy, while on a water ski trip, the foursome grew close. Thompson’s racing activities took them all over the nation, to Parker, Ariz., for the Parker 500, to the Baja 1,000 and to Indianapolis.

Then, 12 years ago, the Campbells’ son, Scott, was strangled and his body thrown from a small airplane at 2,000 feet a mile off Santa Catalina Island. With the Campbells’ help, their son’s two killers were finally convicted five years later.

To their disappointment, they learned that their son had planned a trip to North Dakota to sell cocaine the day he disappeared. They also discovered the intended buyer was a federal drug agency informant.

Prosecutors said that Scott Campbell’s killers, Larry Cowell and Donald DiMascio, would never have been arrested had it not been for the Campbells. They gathered evidence that led to Cowell’s arrest, and Collene Campbell telephoned the informant and convinced him to fly to Orange County from North Dakota and help police trap Cowell and DiMascio into confessing. They also paid the informant’s travel expenses.

“He got involved with a guy who apparently had made an offer for him to bring back some drugs,” Campbell said.

“It’s so hard,” Campbell said. “You lose this child who you worship and then you go to court and listen to defense attorneys and all the dirty things they bring up about your son.

“Most victims’ relatives just can’t step forward,” she said. “It’s sacrificing too much. It’s too painful, they can’t afford it or it’s too embarrassing. You know, I didn’t ask for this education. But I have it and a tremendous amount of knowledge and information that hopefully it will save others from being where I am.”