She Fixes Guitars, and the City Frets

It’s been a good week for underdogs in Orange County. A man molested years ago as a teenager by a popular Catholic high school principal was sworn in as a lawyer. An illegal immigrant was granted a new trial after an appeals court said a lower court judge impugned his character.

Next in line is Rebecca Apodaca, hoping a Superior Court judge sees it her way in a dispute with the city of Laguna Hills, which says the home business she’s operated since 1978 doesn’t comply with city codes.

Wednesday was a day off from the trial that began last week, and I went to see Apodaca, 49, in search of an answer: Why should she get special treatment? Cities have codes. Why shouldn’t she abide by those in Laguna Hills?

Before I got around to asking her, she brought it up and used those exact words. “I’m not asking for special treatment,” she says, as we talk in the garage that she uses to repair musical instruments. Her business also includes instrument rental and sale of music-related items. “I’m only asking for what’s granted by law. I just didn’t say, ‘I’ve been here for 25 years and should be allowed to stay.’ I opened up legally and have maintained that legal status.”

The city disputes that. Judge Kim Dunning will decide things.

In the meantime, I’m wondering what has the city so bent out of shape. For the record, it says it isn’t; it merely wants Apodaca to make changes.

Apodaca says she’s made many changes and, in short, thinks the city is trying to harass her out of business.

But even that doesn’t address what confuses me.

After spending an hour at Apodaca’s place, I can’t imagine what it is about her operation that so annoys the city.

Her house is on a secluded, well-kept street. She doesn’t have signs hanging outside. Her two main workspaces aren’t visible from the street. It’s not like she’s running a hydraulic press or backing up delivery trucks to her front door. If you didn’t know she ran a business there, you wouldn’t suspect it.

If she were making counterfeit money or trafficking drugs, of course, that wouldn’t matter.

The woman repairs musical instruments. Her tools are screwdrivers and other tiny implements of hobby craftsmen.

It’s a business she started with the husband who left her in 1984. From the outset, the business was licensed. Only in the 1990s, after Laguna Hills became a city and annexed her neighborhood, did Apodaca’s problems begin.

Her lifetime love -- repairing musical instruments -- became a code violation.

On paper, that sounds dangerous. But to the naked eye, the garage is a walled-in workshop that looks like a place Santa would work in. The other “office” is nothing more than an addition built unobtrusively onto the front of the house.

I hope the city has a case against Apodaca, who has had a hip replaced and may need surgery on the other, that genuinely protects the public interest.

I can’t figure what that is.

What I see is the modern-day equivalent of the watchmaker who worked out of his basement and built a clientele. Or the seamstress who stayed home and made a living stitching neighbors’ clothes.

We used to admire those kinds of non-mall people.

I’m hoping Laguna Hills makes a case that goes beyond mere letter of the law.

The speed limit is 65, but cops don’t stop people going 70. They stop people going 90. They enforce the law with an eye to common sense.

Is Apodaca really going 90? Or is she going 70? How does this woman who’s been repairing guitars and flutes since before Laguna Hills was a city now threaten the social order?

At the appropriate time, Judge Dunning, please put pen to paper and enlighten us.

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Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. He can be reached at (714) 966-7821, at dana.parsons@latimes.com or at The Times’ Orange County edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626.