Onetime Hostage of Iran Dies

Jerry Plotkin, a Sherman Oaks businessman who was the only non-government employee held during the Iranian hostage crisis, has died in Los Angeles. He was 62.

Plotkin, who had a heart transplant about six years ago, died Thursday night after he was rushed to a San Fernando Valley hospital, his friend Alex Paen said Friday.

Plotkin was one of 52 Americans held hostage for 444 days after Iranian militants stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran on Nov. 4, 1979. The Americans were released Jan. 20, 1981, shortly after Ronald Reagan was sworn to succeed Jimmy Carter as president.

“The longer they kept me a hostage, the prouder I became of being an American,” Plotkin told The Times shortly after returning to the United States. “There’s no place like America.”

He described the treatment by the Iranian captors as “horrible from the first moment we were taken.”

During the ordeal, Plotkin lost 40 pounds and resumed smoking.

“They tried to destroy our spirit,” he said, “and they couldn’t.”

The trip was Plotkin’s first outside the United States, and he said he went because of U.S. State Department encouragement to reestablish American business in Tehran.

When then-Mayor Tom Bradley declared “Jerry Plotkin Day” and the Los Angeles City Council presented Plotkin with a plaque and resolution Feb. 3, 1981, the former hostage denied any heroism, adding:

“There are not enough words to express my appreciation. This warm reception is truly overwhelming . . . and it’s great to be home.”

Plotkin and other California hostages were also honored in Sacramento by then-Gov. Edmund G. “Jerry” Brown Jr. and the Senate and Assembly.

After the celebrations subsided, Plotkin became embroiled in administrative and legal wrangles stemming from the captivity.

He was one of eight hostages who signed a 1991 letter demanding that Congress investigate allegations that Reagan’s campaign delayed their release and manipulated the crisis in order to defeat Democrat Carter. A bipartisan congressional task force found no credible evidence of such maneuvering.

Plotkin also filed a $60-million libel lawsuit over a Daily News of Los Angeles story published the day after his release. The story quoted law enforcement sources as saying that Plotkin had been under investigation by the Los Angeles Police Department and that federal agents were to question him on whether there had been “any inkling Mr. Plotkin was involved in drugs in Iran.”

Police and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration later denied that Plotkin had been under investigation. In 1988, Plotkin settled the lawsuit for an undisclosed amount.

After his return to Los Angeles, Plotkin worked as an insurance adjuster.

Survivors include his wife, Deborah, whom he married a year before he was seized in Iran, and several children.