Norco '80

by Peter Houlahan

  Man, that’s great, Ken, Reynard said, slapping his fellow deputy on the back.

  At twenty-three, A. J. Reynard was still a “probie” with three months left on his eighteen-month initial evaluation period and desperate to do everything right, make a good impression, and, most importantly, keep his job. Reynard was part Cajun by heritage but a true born-and-raised Southern Californian with a unique mix of hyperkinetic energy and laid-back attitude to go along with a vocabulary somewhere between surfer and stoner, of which he was neither. He was quick-witted, a bit of a prankster, and a full-on adrenaline junkie. He was smart enough to have been accepted into the pre-med program at UCLA, but in his heart, he wanted to be a cop. He dropped out of school after a year, did a stint in the Marine Corps, and then began putting in for jobs with the different police agencies in the area. He was quickly snatched up by the RSO.

  His fellow deputies liked A.J., even if they might have initially resented the fact that he was one of the few recruits ever fast-tracked straight into Patrol & Investigation without working the traditional twelve- to fourteen-month initiation period inside the county jail. But right off, they could tell A.J. had the instincts for the job: streetwise, able to defuse tense situations, while at the same time unafraid to mix it up with a suspect when all else failed.

  The experienced McDaniels was giving Reynard a few tips on how to handle a gang riot as they reached Reynard’s patrol unit for the day. Slightly distracted and perhaps a bit more hyped up than usual after all the talk about a riot, A.J. slid the key into the door lock of the Plymouth Fury and heard a snap. McDaniels stopped midsentence. A.J. looked down at half a car key in his hand, the other half broken off in the door lock. Fuck, Reynard said. How much shit am I going to be in for this little maneuver?

  You still on probation? McDaniels asked.

  Yeah.

  That’s too bad, McDaniels said, suppressing a smile. You could definitely get terminated for destroying county property. Probably extend your probation period another six months at the very least.

  Reynard looked nervously around the vehicle yard. Help me out, Ken, he said, nodding in the direction of the kiosk in the center of the yard where the notoriously ill-tempered garage attendant guarded the extra keys to the fleet of sheriff’s vehicles. Distract him while I grab the keys to a different cruiser.

  McDaniels looked over at the little man, who eyed the two deputies with suspicion. He flashed A.J. a smile and headed in the direction of the kiosk.

  While McDaniels chatted with the man, Reynard leaned inside the kiosk and quickly slipped a set of keys off the board. It was a close call.

  Whadya get? McDaniels asked as they walked away from the cage.

  Reynard looked at the keys for the first time. One of the Chevys, he said with equal parts excitement and concern. Everyone preferred the Impalas over a Plymouth Fury or, worse, the Dodge Aspens. The Chevys were newer, had way more pickup and top end, far superior handling, bigger inside cab, and great A/C. It didn’t hurt that a higher dashboard meant a few more inches of cover should a semitruck or fleeing suspect send some sort of projectile through the front windshield. The problem was, the veterans on the shift sure as shit did not want probies like A. J. Reynard snagging the best cruisers out from under them. Uh-oh, Reynard said.

  Uh-oh is right, McDaniels agreed, pointing at the Impala. That’s Franklin’s 511 unit you just took.

  Everyone at the RSO knew about deputy Kurt Franklin and the 511 unit. He loved that goddamn thing.

  Shit, Reynard said under his breath. He glanced at the attendant in the kiosk. Too risky to try another swap.

  Not good, McDaniels said, walking to his own unit. But you might as well enjoy it while you got it.

  A few minutes later, Kurt Franklin arrived at the vehicle lot to begin his shift. He stopped and looked around. Who took my 511 car?

  ANDY DELGADO SAT OUTSIDE SHERIFF BEN CLARK’S OFFICE WAITING AS THE clock ticked past the 7:00 a.m. meeting time. Bickmore came out smoking a cigarette and looking aggravated. Get in here, Delgado, he barked. Clark, who had been sheriff for the last seventeen years, glanced up at Andy and then went back to reading some paperwork on his desk.

  Andy swallowed hard and took a seat beside Bickmore and waited while Clark leafed through a few last pages and then set the papers aside in a neat stack. He took a sip of his coffee, studying Delgado over the rim of the cup. Well, Andy, he said, finally. Here it comes, Andy thought. I’ve been reading nothing but superior reviews about your performance for years now, the sheriff went on. Our deputy chief here says you’d make a good detective. Is that something you would be interested in?

  Andy Delgado reflected on his life as he drove the sixteen miles east to his beat in Norco. The mother who gave him away, the grandmother who loved him and died, the relatives who abandoned him, and the cop who saved him. After all he had been through, things were finally falling into place. A family of his own, on the verge of a college degree, and now a promotion and pay raise to detective. The child Andy Delgado had been could never have imagined any of this.

  Andy arrived in Norco twenty minutes later. He had grown quite fond of Norco and all its quirkiness and stubbornly Old West feel. Where else in the greater L.A. metro area did residents ride their horses down to the supermarket to pick up a loaf of bread? The Inland Empire might have been called “Cow County,” but Norco liked to call itself “HorseTown USA.” The almost constant presence of horses walking down the main drag and residential side streets and tied up in front of the feed stores, country diners, and family-owned establishments of downtown supported the claim.

  Norco was no Kentucky bluegrass Thoroughbred country. Like most of the Inland Empire, Norco was scrappy, working-class all the way. These were real horse people who were willing to put every last cent of extra income into their animals. You would not find any lush grazing meadows, whitewashed four-rail fences, or fancy jumping rings in Norco. Every inch of the town was zoned for horses, and most kept theirs in backyard corrals and rode them among the cottonwoods and rattlesnakes down in the Santa Ana River basin bordering Mira Loma. Although far from a life of equine luxury, owners were expected to keep up standards of care and living space for their animals. Neglect or mistreatment might result in a call to animal control or a pistol-whipping from members of the Norco horse-owning community. Live and let live might have been the attitude toward one’s neighbors in Norco, but don’t ever fuck with a horse.

  Still, Norco was not immune to the encroachments of the far less charming aesthetics of modern twentieth-century Southern California. Bisecting the town on a straight north-south line was Hamner Avenue, the real main drag of modern Norco. Hamner was more boulevard than avenue in feel and function, with two lanes running in each direction, a “suicide lane” down the middle for left turns, and an additional lane flaring out at major intersections to accommodate right turns. The forty-mile-per-hour speed limit was widely interpreted to mean somewhere between fifty and sixty miles per hour on the one-mile stretches between traffic lights. To jaywalk or cross against a light on Hamner was to put one’s life in serious jeopardy, a fact deputy Andy Delgado acknowledged by ticketing anyone he saw stupid enough to try it.

  The south end of Hamner itself was lined with 7-Elevens, IHOPs, dry cleaners, supermarkets, gas stations, banks, hardware stores, and a dizzying array of fast-food chains. This was the area of Norco where most of the day-to-day consumer business took place and which made it utterly indistinguishable from dozens of other main commercial thoroughfares throughout Southern California. However, head north beyond Fourth Street, and commercial properties rapidly grew fewer among the empty lots of dirt and dead grass. Just past Seventh Street, Hamner passed over the usually dry Santa Ana River bottom and the area transformed into the Riverside County of old—mostly rural farmland, wide-open fields with grazing cattle, horse corrals, and rows of lettuce, tomatoes, and beans. There Hamner marked the western border of the Mira Loma neighborhood that Chris Harven and George Smith ca
lled home.

  As usual, Delgado began his patrol by driving the length of Hamner Avenue. If you wanted to get the current pulse of Norco, Hamner was the place to do it. It was a usual busy Friday but otherwise calm. Andy decided to allow himself to do something he rarely did: relax a little bit and enjoy his accomplishment instead of aggressively seeking out the bad guys.

  Andy Delgado was not always easy to get along with and he knew there were some on the force who would not be so happy to hear of his promotion. He had a fiery personality and could be confrontational when he felt he had been slighted or let down by another officer in the field. He drew his conclusions quickly, forming strong, often immovable opinions of his fellow deputies or supervisors, divvying up the men around him into categories often based on a single incident. Lion or coward. Good cop or shitty cop. Stand-up guy or goddamn liar. Friend or enemy. Andy was the type of cop he thought everyone else should be, a composite of all the brave, honorable, and loyal peace officers like Darrell Creed and the others who had sat around the kitchen table when he was a child. In Andy’s view, most of the deputies at the RSO were, but he had been let down by more than a few along the way. Those experiences had eroded many of Andy’s cherished ideals about the nature of police and police work.

  By midafternoon, deputy Chuck Hille noticed Andy was not generating his usual amount of radio traffic running plates, reporting suspicious activity, or bringing in arrests. Hille was an experienced cop who had lateralled over from the city of Orange PD. He was a stout, tough ex–high school football star whose mere presence was often enough to deter a confrontation with a suspect. Some of the other deputies found Hille, a smart guy with an intellectual manner of speaking sprinkled with long words, a bit off-putting. He and Delgado had first met while working out of the Blythe substation years before, and their history together had not always been positive.

  About three in the afternoon, an hour before the end of their shift, Hille radioed Delgado for a 1087 meet-up at the Stater Bros. supermarket parking lot at the intersection of Fourth Street and Hamner Avenue, the busiest intersection in town. In addition to the always-bustling market, the intersection was anchored by other popular businesses: a Carl’s Jr. fast-food restaurant, which occupied the corner of the Stater Bros. lot, Redlands Federal Savings Bank, and Murphy’s Hay & Grain store. Directly across Hamner Avenue from the Stater Bros. was the Norco branch of the Security Pacific National Bank.

  Arriving at the parking lot a few minutes later, the two deputies pulled their patrol cars side by side pointing in opposite directions, so they could talk out the driver’s-side windows to each other.

  “You’re pretty quiet today, Andy. You okay?” Hille asked.

  “Just taking it easy,” Andy answered, having been told by Bickmore to keep word of the promotion quiet until the official announcement. But Andy was dying to tell someone the news, even if he was not especially close to Hille. “Actually, Chuck,” he said. “I just got promoted to detective this morning.”

  Hille nodded his head approvingly and smiled in his understated way. “That’s great, Andy,” he said. “You’re a good cop and I’m really happy for you.”

  Andy was surprised and a bit touched to hear Hille say it.

  Over the radio they heard deputy Glyn Bolasky sign on to start the “cover watch” that bridged the transition between the two-shift and night shift. Between the hours of 3:00 and 4:00 p.m., the RSO would have three deputies patrolling Norco rather than just two.

  “Come on, I’ll buy you a cup of coffee,” Hille offered Delgado. “I’ll meet you at the Donut Corral,” he said, referring to a shop a mile north on Sixth Street between Hamner and Sierra Avenue.

  The two deputies might not have taken any special notice of the green van parked just fifty feet away in the supermarket lot. But the five heavily armed men sitting inside the van had certainly noticed them. The unexpected arrival of the sheriff’s patrol units had even caused them to consider calling the whole thing off. But when the two RSO units suddenly peeled off and headed out of sight up Hamner Avenue, the leader of the men inside the van made his decision.

  The time was 3:25 p.m.

  4

  TAKEOVER

  May 9, 1980. Norco, California.

  GARY HAKALA KNEW ALL ABOUT HOW A PERSON’S LIFE COULD CHANGE IN AN instant long before he drove his van into the parking lot of the Brea Mall, twenty-five miles west of Norco. Orphaned at age six when both of his parents died unexpectedly within months of each other, Gary had found himself on a train headed from his home in sunny Southern California to the cold and barren coal-mining country of Central Wyoming to live with relatives he had never met. There he learned early that when you’re an outsider and smaller than the other kids in a place like Rawlins, Wyoming, your choices were to run or to fight. Gary chose to fight, eventually getting good enough at it that the other kids left him alone. At thirteen, Hakala began working summers as a ranch hand, spending brutal fourteen-hour days stacking hay, mucking stalls, breaking wild horses, mending barbed wire fences, and riding the range. His fellow ranch hands were tough, unforgiving, hard-drinking men who had no affection for some teenager living among them. It was there that Gary learned how to exist among dangerous men.

  Now thirty-five, with seven children and in the middle of a rough divorce, Gary owned a small, single-machine dehydrated food–canning operation in nearby Fontana. Hakala was in the process of making payments on a dark green 1975 Dodge Tradesman van still bearing the name of the previous owner’s company, D’MANNO CAPPUCCINO, written across the logo of a large coffee mug with a frothy wave cresting above the rim. The Tradesman was big and powerful enough to pull the rented flatbed trailer Hakala used to carry his usual pickups of dehydrated foods for his canning operation.

  Although Hakala chose the van purely for work purposes, it came with the custom interior of a vintage seventies SoCal shaggin’ wagon. Behind the two upholstered captain chairs in front was a cargo area tricked out with gold shag carpeting and simulated wood-grain paneling throughout. At the far back, cushioned faux-leather seating blocked access to the rear doors and extended in an L shape several feet along the passenger side. Two passenger-side cargo doors swung out for easy loading. Running along the driver’s side of the cargo area were sixteen-inch-deep floor-to-roof wooden cabinets. The only windows in the cargo area were the two large tinted ones on the rear doors. When not in the service of the canning business, the Tradesman was roomy enough for hauling around all seven of Gary’s children and comfortable enough for him to camp in on hunting and kayaking excursions.

  The men who kidnapped Gary Hakala on the morning of May 9 did not give a shit about his life, his divorce, or his big order to fill; they just wanted his van. The problem was, none of the three men assigned to the task had any experience carjacking, let alone kidnapping. They had already screwed up once that morning.

  Steve Cantelli was only a few hours into his shift as a field service representative for General Telephone when he pulled his company van into the Westminster Mall parking lot at 9:30 a.m. to look up the location of his next customer. Glancing up from his Thomas Guide map book, he was surprised to see three men standing beside his window, one of them aiming a .38 Special straight at his head. When ordered to “get out of the fucking van, now!” Cantelli stepped out and then just kept going, running as far away from the thieves as possible.

  Sitting in his car several feet away, Anthony Savala was just as surprised as Cantelli. As Savala watched, one of the men entered the van through the side cargo doors, only to jump back out seconds later shaking his head. Not surprisingly, the cargo area of a telephone company service van was filled top to bottom with telephone equipment. The three men abandoned their catch and fled the scene in a blue Matador headed for the Brea Mall twenty-three miles away.

  That morning, Hakala was pulling the rented flatbed trailer behind the Tradesman on his way to pick up a big order of powdered food in Los Angeles. He exited the 57 Freeway and pulled into the parking
lot of the Brea Mall to fix a loose side mirror and, on a more practical level, to take a piss at the Sears department store. Upon entering the lot, Gary took note of the three suspicious-looking characters staring at him through the windshield of what he would remember as an early 1960s metallic-blue customized Chevy lowrider.

  Parking sixty feet away from the blue car, Hakala decided he would take the extra step of padlocking the trailer to the van hitch should the men have any designs on stealing it. He had just climbed into the cargo area to grab the lock when the side cargo door and both front doors of the van flew open at once. In an instant, Hakala was looking down the barrels of three handguns pointed at him.

  “Get down, get down, get down!” Manny Delgado barked at him, jumping inside through the driver’s door, climbing past the front seat and into the cargo area. “I told you to get the fuck down now!” growled Delgado, pushing Hakala facedown onto the carpeted floor, planting a knee in the small of his back, and striking him on the back of the head with the butt of the gun. Hakala caught a brief glimpse of a second man standing outside the cargo door before the man slammed it shut, ending any chance that someone in the parking lot might see what was going on inside.

  “Get back here and tape this motherfucker up,” Manny yelled at Billy, standing by the passenger door.

  Billy Delgado clambered over the seat holding a roll of nylon-reinforced, heavy-duty packing tape and began taping Hakala’s legs together, wrapping him from the ankles nearly up to his knees.

  Manny took the tape from his little brother and, still pinning Hakala down with a knee, wrapped the length of his forearms together behind him. “I swear to God we will fucking kill you if you try anything, you fucking understand?” Delgado threatened when he was done.

  “Yeah,” Hakala managed to say under the weight of Delgado’s knee in his back. “But could you put my glasses somewhere, they cost me a lot of money.”