From Messy Professor to Wanted Woman

Even $50,000 is not enough, apparently, to entice Elena Zagustin out of hiding.

The former Huntington Harbour resident whose garbage-filled house enraged neighbors and sparked a decadelong court battle disappeared in September after a judge ordered her to serve a 30-day jail term for violating health and safety laws.

The controversy cost Zagustin her $301,500 house, her job as a respected civil engineering professor at Cal State Long Beach, and now possibly the $50,000 left over from the sale of her home after neighbors succeeded in a foreclosure action.

The money awaits her at the West Justice Center in Westminster. All she has to do is pick it up, something authorities doubt will happen.

“She’s afraid she’ll get arrested,” said Lt. Cherry May, warrant bureau commander of the Orange County Marshal’s Department. “She’s very well-known at that office. People know her by her appearance. Her name. Everything.”

The marshal’s office has been following clues that lead from Huntington Beach to Las Vegas.

Despite Zagustin’s notoriety, a Huntington Beach police officer failed to recognize her in November while writing her a ticket for a broken headlight. Police often don’t run warrant checks on drivers pulled over for moving violations, authorities said, so Zagustin slipped away.

There are few other clues to her whereabouts.

A moving company transported her furniture, including a piano, to a house in Las Vegas on Sept. 10, but authorities said Zagustin never showed. All of Zagustin’s belongings are currently in storage.

Now the moving company owner has been added to the long list of people to whom Zagustin owes money, including several neighbors who have won thousands of dollars in civil cases against her, according to her attorney, Anthony Cosio.

Zagustin, he said, was a victim of overzealous city officials who violated her rights to live as she pleased. He said Zagustin is running out of fear for her own safety. “She had a real phobia about the jail system,” he said. “She felt that she was going to be harassed.”

Zagustin’s frequent presence in the courthouse often caused a stir. Her case attracted national media attention, and cameramen often jostled her during court appearances.

After refusing a court order to improve conditions at her house stemming from a 1998 conviction on 69 health and safety violations, Zagustin faced 30 days in jail. Instead she went into hiding.

The house was taken over in September by new owners, who opened it to neighbors before cleaning it.

All the rooms were covered in 2 to 3 feet of trash--everything from rotting vegetables and old newspapers to vintage records and aging exercise equipment. In the kitchen, the oven was teeming with maggots, piles of dishes filled the sink, and flies buzzed around rotting bell peppers. Faucets leaked, toilets were backed up and mountains of garbage teetered atop beds.

Authorities said there is little chance of apprehending Zagustin if she fled the state. People with outstanding misdemeanor warrants are low on the priority list for extradition, said May.

“It’s a shame that at this stage of her life she has been reduced to this status of being wanted,” May said.

“It’s a sad demise from being a brilliant scholar.”