‘Surfer Bandit’ Suspect Nabbed After Fountain Valley Bank Heist

The “Surfer Bandit” wiped out Friday, minutes after his 10th bank robbery in Orange County, police said.

Fountain Valley police arrested Gary Bourette, 28, of Huntington Beach and identified him as the serial bank robber nicknamed by FBI agents for his tan complexion, platinum hair and “propensity to rob in the beach communities and wear casual surfer attire,” FBI special agent Randy Easterling said.

Originally dubbed the “San Juan Surfer” for bank robberies in San Juan Capistrano, the bandit later moved to northern beach cities where he robbed five Huntington Beach banks and three in Fountain Valley, including a World Savings and Loan Assn. branch Wednesday, police said.

“In our history, we don’t remember one individual who hit three of our banks,” Fountain Valley Police Lt. Bob Mosley said. “He was definitely on our most wanted list.”

Bourette has been living in a small metal shed behind a Huntington Beach home in the 600 block of 10th Street. His landlord in the front house, who met Bourette 10 years ago through Bible study, said his tenant was a house painter.

The robbery that led to Bourette’s arrest Friday began at 10 a.m at the National Bank in the 17300 block of Brookhurst Street in Fountain Valley, Mosley said. A blond man wearing a turquoise shirt and baggy pants waited in line and then slipped a note to a teller reading, “I have a gun, put $4,000 in this envelope.”

He then passed the teller an envelope and voiced the same demands. Another bank teller overheard him and activated an alarm. Before police arrived, the robber fled with an undetermined amount of cash on a 1983 maroon Honda motorcycle, police said. He wore a red helmet.

“In almost every other robbery he’s suspected of committing, he used the same note, with the same amount of money on it and wore the same red helmet,” Mosley said.

Moments later, traffic officer Bill Hufnagel saw a suspect at Warner Avenue and Newhope Street. Seven other officers chased him into a business complex at Harbor and Warner near a Jack in the Box restaurant, where the suspect abandoned his motorcycle and escaped.

Fountain Valley Police Sgt. Lee Pepka then saw a man matching the suspect’s description throw a red helmet and a package into a dumpster area as he ran. Officers finally caught the man and two tellers later identified him, police said. An undetermined amount of cash also was recovered at the scene.

Bourette remained Friday in the Huntington Beach City Jail on $50,000 bail.

Neighbors said Bourette rarely spoke and often wore a blue knit cap as he warmed up his aging motorcycle.

In November, he knocked on the door of neighbors across the street and quietly inquired about their litter of kittens, taking a gray one named Goober.

“We kept asking him how the cat was, and he wouldn’t answer,” said the neighbor who gave Bourette the kitten. “He would just ignore us.”

The landlord, Jack Real, 52, said he rented what used to be a tool shed to Bourette for about $200 a month. Real said that he had offered Bourette a room in the house, but the young man asked instead to live in the shed, furnished only with a rocking chair and a bookcase. He had a key to the house and used the kitchen and bathroom, sometimes watching television with Real but rarely talking.

“Gary is a different kind of guy . . . ,” Real said. “He’s not real savvy.”

Real said Bourette was a painter but had not been working steadily in recent months.

“He was working right up the street as a painter,” Real said. “When that job ended, I kept saying, ‘Are you making it all right?’ And he’d say, ‘Yeah, I got some money saved up.’ ”