Sylmar Man Arrested in College Vandalism : Crime: Telephone operator, 22, becomes first San Fernando Valley adult to face felony graffiti tagging charges.

In the annals of bumbling San Fernando Valley criminals, Job Matas’ name can be inscribed among the very elite, if what authorities say about him proves true.

On Thursday, Matas became the first adult in the San Fernando Valley to be charged with felony graffiti “tagging,” after doing $6,000 worth of damage to Los Angeles Mission College last March, according to police.

Matas, police said, might have gotten away with it, since no one actually saw anyone etching the tagger moniker LOST into the glass of dozens of windows and mirrors on the campus during class registration sometime the first week of March.

The problem for Matas is that months earlier, while doing community service work as part of his sentence on an earlier tagging conviction, he boasted to others on the work crew that he was the ubiquitous LOST, and the crew supervisor passed word along to police, said Los Angeles Police Detective Craig Rhudy.

So when the Mission College vandalism appeared, it was just a matter of putting all the information together, Rhudy said.

Members of the Police Department’s San Fernando Valley-based Community Tagger Task Force looked in their files to see if they had any information about LOST. There was Mata’s name, thanks to his own admission, said Rhudy, the task force coordinator. The task force also had Mata’s address, because of the misdemeanor conviction and because he was on probation for a felony burglary conviction.

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The 22-year-old telephone operator was awakened Wednesday morning when authorities searched the Sylmar house he shares with his mother and sister. Matas was arrested after LAPD and Mission College police officers found evidence of tagging, including examples of his work, Rhudy said.

“Admitting, when he is on probation, who he was and what his tag was, to a work crew, isn’t the smartest thing to do,” said Capt. Bill Stevens, Mission College police chief. “They don’t think anyone ever coordinates, but since the Tagger Task Force is around, a lot of this stuff is cross-referenced and coordinated, when it didn’t use to be.”

Matas, who police said never actually attended classes at Mission College, told authorities he had been tagging for more than 10 years, since he was in seventh grade, said A.J. Rotella, the campus police officer who investigated the case.

But after the search at his house, Matas told police he had stopped tagging.

“He said he had given it up and was trying to clean up his act,” Rotella said, “but I guess things are catching up with him.”

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Rhudy said task force members have had much success in getting prosecutors to file felony charges against juvenile taggers, but that at least three cases in which police wanted adults charged with similar felonies were reduced to misdemeanors by prosecutors. He said Matas was the first adult to be charged with a felony in such a case.

Matas was in custody Thursday on $35,000 bail. If he is convicted, the parole violation count could bring a much stiffer sentence than usual in graffiti cases.

“He’s probably going to go to jail, or state prison,” Rhudy said.