Repaying His Debt to Society, if Not to City

There was a time when Robert J. Dixon bought shirts and scarves by the armload, jetted to New York City for ballet performances and dazzled his City Hall colleagues with his connoisseur tastes.

His trilevel in Huntington Beach was awash in opulence. There were $3,000 suits, jewel-encrusted accessories, top-of-the-line steamer trunks and pricey artwork, even a Robert Maplethorpe photogravure titled “A Season in Hell.”

Then came his arrest, his conviction, his prison stint.

At the time of his downfall in 1992, Dixon was a ranking city official and the odds-on favorite to take the reins of civic affairs in Newport Beach. He was known affectionately as “Uncle Bob” in City Hall, a steady and even beloved employee who had worked his way up the municipal ladder from a bottom-rung warehouse job he had taken 17 years before.

Dixon now works for the YMCA in downtown Berkeley, only two blocks from his modest apartment. He took the job after working as a volunteer counselor, helping console people on the threshold of finding out the results of HIV tests.

“I really don’t make much more than the people coming through the doors, but it’s probably better that way,” said Dixon, now 56.

During a recent interview in the cedar-paneled lobby of the YMCA, Dixon was at ease and relaxed enough to smile and call out greetings to fellow workers. He talked with candor about his past but was more guarded about the present.

His work--arranging classes, hiring instructors and working with the homeless--is a penance for his crimes and the betrayal of his co-workers, he conceded.

Dixon was arrested one workday eight years ago on the lawn of Newport Beach City Hall and later pleaded guilty to embezzling $1.8 million from the city. He served 18 months in a San Diego correctional facility, spent four months in an Orange halfway house and finally took refuge at a Bay Area seminary school. He had toyed with the idea of becoming a priest when he was young, and the school seemed a logical place to seek direction and renewal. He began exercising at the YMCA and fell into volunteer work.

He still owes the city $1.6 million but says it is unlikely he’ll ever be able to settle that debt. Though seemingly at peace, Dixon said he struggles still to understand his ruinous behavior and does not trust himself to be around money.

“It was a pattern that kept growing like a concentric circle, getting bigger and bigger.” Dixon said he actually stepped up his thievery at City Hall in his final days, prayed he’d be caught and felt strangely relieved when he finally was.

Dixon said he disclosed his crimes to his new employer and asked that his job be structured so he was not involved with money.

“We are an organization that believes humans make mistakes. What makes us human is that we can learn from our mistakes,” said Fran Gallati, executive director of the downtown Berkeley YMCA and Dixon’s boss.

But if Dixon has picked up the pieces of a broken life, his past is still tailing him.

Newport Beach city officials have hired an investigator to track down Dixon and size up his financial viability. According to a 1992 settlement agreement, Dixon vowed to pay back the city by 2002. From the city’s point of view, time is running out.

Daniel Ohl, a deputy city attorney, said the city probably can claim whatever money Dixon has and could garnishee his wages, even if they are meager.

Dixon, who won’t disclose his salary, said if city leaders want to talk with him, they know where to find him: “I’m not hiding.”

More than the money, he said he suspects, it is the lingering sense of betrayal that wounded his former colleagues the deepest.

“Memories fade and time heals wounds, but I don’t feel any differently,” said Dennis Danner, Newport Beach’s director of administrative services, who worked with Dixon. “I learned a valuable lesson: The only people who can betray you are the people you trust.”

Dixon’s rise and fall in Newport Beach wasn’t the first time he was undone by money and greed.

In 1971, then a graduate student at Georgetown University, Dixon was accused and ultimately pleaded guilty to stealing $87,000 in university funds.

Still on probation for that crime, Dixon took a stock clerk’s position with the city of Newport Beach four years later.

Bob Wynn, city manager in Newport Beach at the time, recalled interviewing Dixon several years later before agreeing to promote him to an administrative assistant position. When he asked Dixon about the Georgetown embezzlement, he recalled, Dixon wept.

“He sat there and cried. He said, ‘I made a mistake, I was young.’ He gave me his word that that was in the past,” Wynn said. “And I trusted him.”

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After his arrest, Dixon told police he began stealing money from the city in 1982, writing checks to fictitious landowners to supposedly purchase land for a water line that was to run from Fountain Valley to Newport Beach. He said he simply deposited the checks in his own account.

Dixon estimated that he wrote 400 checks and stole $1.8 million. Much of the money he spent on extravagances, trips to Europe and weekend outings to New York City.

“I wanted acceptance and thought the only way I could get it was by being someone that others would admire--you know, the guy who’s well-dressed or with the nice car or the great art collection,” Dixon told a psychologist during a court-ordered evaluation.

Wesley Maram, the psychologist, concluded that he suffered from deep feelings of inadequacy and expressed that frustration through an “overwhelming compulsion to steal money and spend it.”

When police took stock of the spoils Dixon had amassed, it was dizzying. He owned property in Montego Bay, Jamaica, museum-quality artwork, 225 neckties, 60 woolen scarves, 30 hats, 30 umbrellas, $18,000 in Louis Vuitton steamer trunks and more than 1,000 compact discs, many unopened.

The years have not cooled the emotions that roiled his colleagues.

“I believe there will always be some resentment,” Wynn said. Now retired as city manager, Wynn said that nothing less than an attempt by Dixon to pay down his debt would be an adequate apology.

Former Mayor Clarence Turner said he was repulsed by Dixon’s thefts and deceits but suggested it was time for the city to put the scandal behind it.

“There’s no way they’re going to collect $1.6 million from an employee at the YMCA,” he said.

Dixon, balding and a bit heavier now, said he feels at home in Berkeley and that the eclectic nature of the university town suits him well.

“There’s no benefit in going over the past. The past is past and that door is shut.”

Dixon said he enjoys his work and his colleagues, and is at relative peace with his austere existence. While he still volunteers to do counseling work through the YMCA, and not long ago spoke before the Berkeley City Council to urge an increased push for HIV testing, he said he found it inhumanly painful to advise those who’d found out that they had tested positive for HIV and faced an uncertain future.

“Thursday the reports would come out. That was the longest day because I might have to tell somebody they have AIDS. It would tear me up for the rest of the week. I finally couldn’t do it anymore.”

Dixon said he often thinks about his own past and seeks answers.

“I’m still trying to find out what happened,” he said. “And why.”

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Dixon Timeline

* 1968--While serving as student activities director at Georgetown University, Robert J. Dixon allegedly begins embezzling funds from campus coffers.

* 1972--A year after being charged, Dixon pleads guilty to embezzlement and a judge sentences him to five years’ probation.

* 1975--City of Newport Beach, aware of Dixon’s embezzlement conviction, hires him as a warehouse supply clerk.

* 1981--Dixon transfers to the Utilities Department, where he begins rising through the ranks.

* 1982--Dixon begins embezzling funds from Newport Beach, according to later testimony.

* 1985--Dixon becomes utilities director, in charge of the city’s water, sewer, gas, oil and telephone services.

* 1990--On two occasions, city employees approach Dixon with evidence of misappropriation of city funds in the Utilities Department. Dixon offers to personally look into the situation.

* Jan. 13, 1992--After receiving a tip from a credit card company, police arrest Dixon for allegedly embezzling from city coffers.

* Jan. 31, 1992--Dixon pleads not guilty to embezzling $1.8 million

* Feb. 29, 1992--Without admitting guilt, Dixon agrees to liquidate his assets to repay some of the money he allegedly stole.

* April 21, 1992--Dixon pleads guilty to embezzlement.

* June 19, 1992--Judge sentences Dixon to four years in prison and orders him to pay restitution.

* July 8, 1992--Newport Beach sues banks and credit card companies in an attempt to recover money embezzled by Dixon.

* Nov. 17, 1992--Auction house offers more than 100 photographs from Dixon’s collection, valued at $200,000 to $300,000.

* January 1994--After serving 18 months in prison, Dixon is transferred to an Orange halfway house.

* March 1994--Dixon is paroled and moves to Berkeley.

* October 1994--A judge rules Newport Beach cannot recover embezzled funds from Bank of Newport.

* August 2000--Newport Beach tries to locate Dixon, who still owes the city $1.6 million in restitution.