Fugitive, gadfly, but mostly a character to remember

If he hadn’t already, Sid Soffer now officially passes into local legend.

Not for being a former Newport Beach restaurant owner, which he was. That’d be too tame.

Not for being a former Newport Beach and Costa Mesa city council gadfly, which he most certainly was. That may come off as too trivial.

Not even for being a millionaire who wore a bushy white beard, jeans and T-shirts and kept a collection of “classic” cars on his lawn. That would be too cliched.

He becomes a legend because he died last week as a fugitive in Las Vegas, his public hideaway for the last 11 1/2 years after he flew the Orange County coop instead of going to jail over misdemeanor building code violations. Technically, his last offense was for violating an order to comply and not showing up for sentencing in 1995. He sent his lawyer instead, and a municipal judge issued a warrant for Soffer’s arrest.

Two years into his Las Vegas exile, Soffer discussed his escape with The Times’ Scott Martelle: “The police missed me by 20 minutes. I envisioned getting to the border and there’d be 92 sheriff’s cars and a blockade, and they’re checking everybody’s ID. That’s what they do in the movies.”

As far as we know, he never returned -- at least for very long. Out of sight, out of mind.

But when he died at 74 after fighting leukemia and diabetes, people’s memories were jogged of the man who regularly sniped at the two city councils -- especially Costa Mesa -- on all manner of incompetence, real or imagined. One of our two lengthy stories on him from the ‘90s says he sometimes would go from one council meeting to the other on the same night.

He may have fought more three-minute rounds than Mike Tyson.

Ron Winship of Newport Beach met Soffer in 1962 when he walked into his Blue Beet restaurant in Newport Beach around 12:30 a.m. Over the years, Winship came to admire Soffer for his unbending challenges to whatever city hall was irking him and for always staying in character.

Staying in character, that is, as a character.

“He had a type of character and personality that was so unique,” Winship says. “You’re not going to cookie-cutter this guy.”

I won’t pretend to capture that in this short space, but perhaps nothing spoke to it more than his refusal to do what might have been a few months in jail over his fight with Costa Mesa. The dispute involved the renting out of his garage as an apartment.

The city attorney called him a slumlord, but Soffer was convinced he’d done nothing wrong. He had previously done a couple short jail stints over the matter, but faced with a longer term, he fled.

“I feel like Al Capone,” Soffer told Martelle in 1997.

Winship says Soffer’s Vegas act wasn’t phony. “You put your whole life into a community, which he did with Newport Beach ....” Winship says. “But he just didn’t want to have the epaulets torn off. They were sending him to jail, to totally strip him of any credibility. You’ve met the old curmudgeon guys who say, ‘I’m too old for this stuff.’ I think that’s what Sid did.”

Richard Schwartzberg represented Soffer during his tiff with Costa Mesa. He didn’t know Soffer had died when I phoned him Monday. He said their relationship was more business than personal, but noted, “He was a character. You don’t see very many of them anymore. He was willing, if you think about it, in essence to banish himself from a home, Southern California, that has obviously been very important in his life, over what he viewed as unfair treatment.”

Normally, we don’t think of fugitives as heroic, but something about Soffer apparently has allowed former antagonists to forgive and forget. Former Costa Mesa Mayor Sandy Genis fondly recalled Soffer in an e-mail she sent me.

“One of a kind,” she wrote. “Sid could drive you up the wall one minute but then come up with something breathtakingly brilliant the next. You had to respect him. Those who underestimated Sid did so at their own peril.”

I never met Soffer, but I remember his letters over the years. I had to check our files to see if I’d written about him, and I hadn’t. I probably brushed him off as just another goofy gadfly.

My mistake. Missed a date with a legend.

Martelle got the gig instead. And in explaining why he chose exile in the desert instead of a few months in jail, the free bird Soffer told him: “I wouldn’t go back to jail for anything. There’s nothing in the world like when you’re in court and the judge says, ‘Bailiff, lock him up.’ ”

Dana Parsons’ column appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. He can be reached at (714) 966-7821 or at dana.parsons@latimes.com. An archive of his recent columns is at www.latimes.com/parsons.