Raging Fires, Financial Woes and a Fugitive

Ventura County’s 2003 was memorable for its battles to rescue an old rugged cross and save a small rural hospital, for generating the first graduates from the region’s new university and for taking the final steps to shield open space from development.

The year started with a fugitive rapist and ended with a run on community clinics, as streams of residents waited hours for flu shots in a mad scramble to fend off the bug.

And it was marked by a gun battle at the Sheriff’s Department station in Thousand Oaks and a pair of fast-moving brush fires that raced for a week from one end of the county to the other, leaving a trail of blackened land and gutted homes.

In between, it featured acts of good will, including a Christmas gift giveaway by Ventura police to children living in motels.

“There are so many needy kids out there and they really are the victims of circumstance,” said Det. Pat Stevens, who launched the program years ago. “It’s really nice to be able to help.”

Help came from an unlikely source after accused rapist Andrew Luster, the great-grandson of cosmetics legend Max Factor, fled in January. He was being tried on charges that he drugged and raped three women at his Mussel Shoals beach house.

In his absence, a jury convicted Luster of multiple counts, and a judge sentenced him to 124 years in prison. Enter Duane “Dog” Chapman, a leather-clad bounty hunter in snakeskin boots who set out to track down the fugitive in hopes of collecting part of Luster’s forfeited $1-million cash bail.

It took five months for Chapman to sniff out Luster’s trail, finally tracking him down outside a sidewalk taco stand in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.

Luster went to prison. But Chapman came away empty-handed after a judge said he could not condone tactics used by Chapman, who ran afoul of Mexican law, in capturing Luster.

In another high-profile law enforcement case, former handyman Michael Schultz was sentenced to death in March for the slaying of Port Hueneme resident Cynthia Burger a decade ago. At trial, prosecutors argued that Schultz, 34, raped Burger in her Port Hueneme townhouse and then strangled her so she could not identify him.

In November, Simi Valley serial rapist Vincent Sanchez, convicted of the kidnap-slaying of 20-year-old college student Megan Barroso, was sentenced to death. The case had cast fear over the suburban community, routinely ranked as among the safest in the nation. For five years, residents had been terrorized by a rapist who brazenly slipped into the homes of young women and assaulted them at knifepoint.

Neighboring Thousand Oaks was stunned in August when a gunman opened fire on the sheriff’s station near the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, igniting a fierce gun battle with deputies that left the assailant dead.

In Oxnard, Police Chief Art Lopez pushed an ambitious plan to create a charter school for the city’s most troubled youths, in an effort to stem a tide of violence that claimed 23 lives last year.

“I’ve listened to people talk about what needs to be done,” Lopez said, “but sometimes we talk an awful lot and we don’t get anything done.”

Two brush fires roared across Ventura County in late October, among the first in a string of blazes that burned from San Diego to Simi Valley.

Yet for all of their fury, the county was spared the widespread destruction experienced in other areas of Southern California. Of the 3,000 homes and businesses destroyed, just 38 were homes in Ventura County, even though more than 172,000 acres burned.

In the aftermath, state and local officials cited a variety of factors that helped minimize Ventura County property damage, including strict brush clearance laws, county growth guidelines and aggressive firefighting strategies.

“We didn’t have enough resources to put a firetruck at every house,” county Fire Chief Bob Roper said of his department’s strategy. “[Firefighters] had to triage a situation: ‘Can I save it?’ And once the fire burned past, they would jump on the engine and go to the next street.”

Fire wasn’t the only thing to scar the land.

In May, a Ventura County judge found William Kaddis, 58, of Los Angeles guilty of illegally bulldozing 300 oak trees from his Ojai property. Kaddis was fined $500,000 and sentenced to 210 days in jail.

On a brighter note, the state Coastal Conservancy moved in October to restore one of Southern California’s largest seaside wetlands by earmarking $23 million to buy at least 500 acres at Ormond Beach near Oxnard.

In November, the state closed its deal to purchase the 2,983-acre Ahmanson Ranch, formally ending a 17-year battle by conservationists to keep the rolling, oak-studded property from being developed.

“I’ve always known we were going to save Ahmanson Ranch from development,” said former Calabasas City Councilwoman Janice Lee. “It has been a monumental effort by literally thousands of people.”

Two local groups took up distinctly different causes in 2003.

Beating out four other bidders, the historic preservation group San Buenaventura Heritage purchased the Grant Park cross after the Ventura City Council put it on the auction block.

Acting under threat of a lawsuit, the council decided in August to sell the 24-foot-tall wooden structure, seen by some as a piece of history and by others as a religious symbol unsuited for public property.

A citizens’ group heeded the call, collecting $104,216.87 to outbid all others and ensure that the cross remains a reminder of Ventura’s mission heritage.

In Santa Paula, supporters of the small general hospital rallied to keep it open as it slowly succumbed to financial losses and debt. Despite a series of 11th-hour talks between county officials and hospital trustees aimed at rescuing the facility, the tiny hilltop medical center shut down Dec. 19.

The hospital had operated the only emergency room between Ventura and the Los Angeles County line along California 126.

“We’re all crying on the inside,” said nurse Nancy Rudolph, a 10-year employee who treated the last few patients the day the hospital closed.

It was also a year of special moments.

In what may have been the smallest graduating class in Cal State history, Erich Pearson, Sigifredo Cruz and Mark Lara became the first to receive diplomas from Cal State Channel Islands, the system’s newest campus, near Camarillo.

A team from Moorpark High School became national Academic Decathlon champions in May, beating out 37 other high schools and earning an invitation to the White House from President Bush.

Residents of the poverty-plagued Nyeland Acres neighborhood north of Oxnard received an invitation of their own, this one to a block party to welcome a 5-ton freeway Santa statue to its new home.

For a while, it looked as if Santa’s days were numbered.

Fortunately, after being evicted from its Carpinteria home, the fiftysomething Santa settled between a mobile home park and an auto dealership off the Ventura Freeway.

Thanks to an outpouring of donations from community members, the statue underwent more than $75,000 in improvements and found itself the center of attention at a November party.

“This place was all ugly, with all kinds of broken glass everywhere,” said 12-year-old Brenda Martinez, who was among the neighborhood children who worked to beautify Santa’s new pad.

“I never thought they could build something so pretty right here.”