Santa Clarita / Antelope Valley : Copter Patrol Cites Trespassing Joy Rider

Brian Gruhlke was trying to get his pickup truck unstuck from a desolate field just after midnight Monday when a blinding light suddenly focused on him from out of the sky.

Nearer and nearer it came until it landed in the field nearby.

But this was no close encounter. It was a sheriff’s deputy in a helicopter who gave him a ticket for trespassing on the field.

“Actually, I was a little bit surprised,” Gruhlke said.

Gruhlke, 20, who lives in Valencia and works at a Pizza Hut, said he had taken a friend for a joy ridethrough a large field at the east end of Rye Canyon Road, near the site of the new Valencia High School.

But after making a partial circle around the field, the 1988 Toyota pickup sunk into the dirt.

Deputy Mark Cohen, an observation deputy for the helicopter at the Santa Clarita Valley Sheriff’s Station, spotted the truck at about 12:30 a.m. Tuesday and asked pilot David L’Hureux to land. Cohen said he was worried that the plowed field, owned by the Newhall Land and Farming Co., might be planted with seeds.

Cohen disembarked from the helicopter and asked Gruhlke if he needed help with the truck. Gruhlke said no, and then Cohen gave him a misdemeanor citation for trespassing.

Gruhlke said he did not know the field was privately owned.

Cohen said the station’s helicopter is used primarily for emergencies and to patrol remote areas of the Santa Clarita and Antelope valleys. But it has been useful for spotting people driving illegally in off-road areas, he said, and for spotting people getting too close to flooded rivers following a storm or acting suspiciously in areas where brush fires could be set.

“We’re out there not to give these people tickets because we like to, but because we’re trying to prevent stuff,” Cohen said.

Gruhlke isn’t sure all that extra effort is worthwhile.

“It seems to me that they have nothing better to do than harass young people, when there’s (more serious crimes) going on in other parts,” he said.