Requiem for a Booster

Richard Neubauer is one of those spiritual souls who seeks mystical connections in what others might dismiss as the random quirks of fate. He says his wife was the same way, that she “believed she was here for a reason.” And so on a hot and sultry Monday afternoon he sits on a living room couch and, speaking softly over the thrum of a fan, begins connecting the dots for a stranger.

There’s one right there. “Connecting the Dots” was the title of a column Dottie Neubauer wrote for the weekly Territorial Dispatch. Her last effort was about an overseas trip to promote the virtues of Yuba City and Marysville, the “twin cities” of the Feather River. This was her calling, to sell this region to a wary world.

They had met 13 years ago in Marysville’s “Silver Dollar Saloon.” Old-timers, Neubauer explains, know the saloon by another name, the Guadalajara. It was where Juan Corona picked up his victims. Twenty-five years ago, again in May, they started digging up the dismembered remains of 24 migrant farm workers, buried on a farm four miles up the river. There are so many dots that connect here that Neubauer stops, almost gasps.

For starters, the mass murders stamped this place. Ask outsiders what they know about Yuba City, and it’s likely most will remember only Corona. A smaller number might recall the Yuba City school bus crash of 1976. Maybe a few noticed the Money magazine survey of last year, which ranked Yuba City dead last for livability among 300 U.S. municipalities. The Gold Rush history, the rivers, the thriving prune industry--these are overlooked charms.

In early May, a Money reporter called for Dottie. An update was in the works: Yuba City one year later. She wasn’t around so Richard--her partner in a public relations firm--handled the inquiry: “I started listing all the good things, like the low crime rate . . .”

He shakes his head. Another connection.

Every little town has a Dottie Neubauer. Rarely do their stories get told. The 46-year-old mother of a grown daughter, she belonged to every sort of community organization, planning river festivals, charity feeds, the works. She sought to knit together various community factions--the farm workers, say, with the townsfolk. She and her husband published a Twin Cities tourist guide. Last year, she was named the Marysville Kiwanian of the Year.

Two Saturdays ago, the Olympic Torch Relay came through town. Dottie helped with crowd control. Afterward, she attended a campfire at the river. The next morning she slept late. Richard finally woke her and asked if she still planned to take part in a Chamber of Commerce river excursion that morning.

“She said, ‘No, I don’t think I’ll go.’ Five minutes later, she was up and dressed.”

He pauses a beat, wondering why he didn’t just let her sleep.

She said her hair still smelled like campfire smoke, wondered if she should take a shower. He said she’d come back from the river grungy, might as well wait. Later, when he saw her for the last time at the hospital, he would notice her long, beautiful hair still smelled like a campfire.

“It’s how I will remember her,” he says, “and she hated camping.”

The idea of the river outing was to explore ways to tap its tourism potential. There were several boats in the party. About four miles up the river the engines were cut, and Dottie and the other civic sorts drifted on the slow-moving green water and admired the overhanging oaks and cottonwoods. Her last comment was “what a beautiful, peaceful spot.”

The boats powered up and started toward town. No one heard the shot. Dottie grabbed her arm. “Ow,” she said, “I am hurt.” Then she collapsed. A single bullet had cut down across her body, from arm to hip, splitting the aorta. She was dead within minutes--killed, as one of her friends would put it, “in the line of duty.”

Later in the week, a migrant farm worker was arrested. Investigators told Neubauer the man--he has pleaded not guilty to murder--was taking target practice and, “on impulse,” squeezed off a single round toward the boat. The rifle was found buried under bushes, on the same farm where Corona had disposed of his victims.

And here the husband stops his narrative, and attempts to apply a moral. Dottie, he says, would not want her death seen as a lesson in lawlessness, as red meat for immigrant haters. Nor would she want it used as a chance to once more kick around her town. No, he says, the story is about how hard one woman worked for a place, how she believed it was worth fighting for, and more. This is how he believes the dots were meant to connect.