Town Finds Skater Out of Line

To the people of this bucolic beach town, she was the “mystery skater,” the “roller-blading anti-American,” and a bunch of other names too graphic to be repeated.

How Lynda Ragsdale acquired those names is a tale of contrasting definitions of what it means to be a patriot in a time of war. And how seemingly far-off battles can inspire firefights in the most placid neighborhoods.

Ragsdale said all she was trying to do when she got out her scissors and strapped on her skates last week was to get rid of pro-war clutter attached to the large shade trees that line the town’s quaint main street, Linden Avenue.

That clutter just happened to be yellow ribbons attached to the trees by residents trying to show support for troops overseas. By the time she was done skating and snipping, she had removed two dozen ribbons and made herself public enemy No. 1.

Since then, Ragsdale, a 30-year-old artist and spiritual seeker who is currently reading a book channeled through an angel named Kryon, has been a target for anonymous callers and people cruising by her house.

And then there was the person who shouted: “Why don’t you go live in France?”

L’affaire des skates began innocently enough, when a group of residents obtained a permit to put up yellow ribbons on city property. One of those residents, Karla Armendariz, said the goal was simply to “wish for the safe return of American troops,” 15 of whom are from the town of 14,000.

As they were putting up the ribbons, out of nowhere “came an anti-American on roller-blades with scissors,” said Armendariz in a press release she later sent to local media.

Armendariz didn’t know the woman, but she and others gave chase as the skater rolled down the street wearing Walkman headphones, cutting as she went. The crowd managed to corner the skater at a gas station, where Armendariz snapped three photos of Ragsdale. She included them in her press release and a local TV station put the picture on the air.

Carpinteria is a small town, so it didn’t take long to figure out the mystery woman was Ragsdale. After that, cars started driving by the rented bungalow with purple trim that she shares with her husband, Toby, a computer network designer, and two cats, Meow and Penelope. On the wall above her head when she watches TV is a picture she painted of a baboon’s stem cell.

If she seems a trifle off-center, she admits as much, calling herself a “bourgeois bohemian.” She described her childhood as one of grinding poverty in a white ghetto on the south side of Chicago. Food was not always plentiful, and when the gas was shut off for nonpayment, she and her sister and brother took cold showers. At 14, she said, she went to work as a restaurant hostess. “I had a lot of things to overcome,” she said.

You might say she made herself up as she went along. The result is a determined, voraciously curious woman with unshakable beliefs.

One of those is that war is usually a pretty crummy idea. “If somebody was standing on my porch with a gun, I would defend myself,” she said. But she never saw Saddam Hussein standing on America’s porch.

As for the argument that the ribbons don’t indicate support for the war but only for the fighting soldiers, Ragsdale considers that an intellectual shell game. If you’re pro-troops and the troops are fighting a war, you’re for the war, her theory goes.

Worse, Ragsdale thought putting up ribbons all over town was communicating the message that everyone in Carpinteria was pro-war.

She admits she made a mistake by not asking Armendariz and the others if they had a permit to put up the ribbons. If she had known, she would not have snipped them, she said.

But when she and her husband came out in the fresh sea air after dinner on April 7 and saw the ribbons going up, she was too angry to think of asking. She saw people polluting her beautiful adopted town with war propaganda.

Because her early home life was filled with so much ugliness, she thought she had found paradise when she and her husband moved to Carpinteria three years ago. The couple grows artichokes in the backyard, near a huge old magnolia. At night, they go to bed with the sound of the waves crashing on what the city has long boasted as the world’s safest beach.

“I came home and decided what I would do, because I was really upset,” she said. “I grabbed my skates and my Walkman and my scissors and headed out.”

This is where the fog of battle creeps in. As she was cutting, someone yanked off her headphones, she said. Those on the other side say Ragsdale brandished her scissors at them. Ragsdale denies it. Ragsdale said she was harassed and threatened, which the others deny.

After being cornered at the gas station, she said, she tried to skate off. But one of the crowd yelled, “Don’t let her get away.”

She said she only managed to escape by hiding in some bushes.

Since then, she started doing her laundry in Santa Barbara rather than risk meeting someone who might recognize her in a Carpinteria laundry. She parks her car in the backyard for fear someone will vandalize it.

For Ragsdale to claim victimhood when soldiers are dying on the battlefield strikes some in town as ludicrous. “I have a son in the Air Force,” said Bonnie Donovan. “He gets upset seeing all these protesters.”

The ribbons were replaced, but the issue has become so tender that the City Council held a public debate on Monday about whether to take them down again. In the end, the council voted unanimously to begin its own municipal yellow ribbon program starting May 1.

“The efforts of volunteers have been great, but the ribbons they’re using are made out of plastic and they’re not the type of thing that lasts very long,” said City Manager David Durflinger. “The council is thinking of something more durable, something that can be put up and taken down.”

The decision followed more than two hours of comments by dozens of residents, most in favor of ribbons.

“That’s how volatile this has become in our little community,” said Kent Barbee, a Vietnam vet.

One thing everyone agrees on is how lucky they are to live in Carpinteria. “It’s a great little community,” Armendariz said.