The Nail (originally written in May 1997)

I took a quick glance at my watch. 8:25 a.m. Great, I should be at Seattle U in 15 minutes, 20 tops. And that’s if there’s a “traffic slowdown”, which can be counted on like rain.

I am heading north on I-5 in my Honda Civic, just south of Boeing Field when it happened. I never even saw it, I don’t even know what it was but I sure heard it. There was a loud thump under the car. I mean loud. I quickly assessed the damage. The oil pressure looked good. The engine temperature was fine. Turning down the radio, I could hear that the engine sounded normal. Then the noise. It really didn’t sound fatal, but it was enough to make me pull over.

I signaled and made a quick maneuver across the 2 lanes with the skill and confidence of a seasoned Indy driver heading for the pits. I found the emergency lane and coasted to a stop. With only one foot on the ground I could already see the problem….. a flat tire. No problem, I can handle this, no one really looks for me until about 9:00 anyway. I’ll just grab the spare and get started.

Moving mountains of stuff that always seems to be above the spare tire compartment, I reach and find……oh no!! It’s one of those wimpy temporary tires about the size of a bagel. No Problem. I’ll change it and head into Seattle and have the original repaired for the drive home. I grab the jack, the lug wrench and all the other junk they give you for this experience and head up to tackle the job.

With cars whipping by at 70 miles an hour (ok, it Seattle, 35 mph) I kneel to loosen the lugs nuts. Oh no! The wrench is too small for the nuts. No problem. I am prepared. I’ll just grab my cell phone that I have just for this purpose and call AAA Road Service. By golly, I’m getting my $40 worth this year. I grab the cell phone and my wallet with a single movement only to find that I don’t have my AAA card. It’s in the van which is in front of the house. I’ll just give Melodie a call and ask her to get me the number. Oh no! I forgot that she was up all night with Alessandra who is sick with the flu. The poor girl has vomited nearly 15 times. The last I saw Melodie was finally getting some sleep.

Well I don’t have much choice. I’ll call and hope she understands. With some apprehension, I dial anyway. The line is busy. Well that’s OK at least I know I won’t be the one waking her. A few tries later, I finally reach her only to find out she was up because Ali had vomited once again. After a quick explanation she agrees to get the number and call me back.

5 minutes, 10 minutes, man its 8:45. She hasn’t called me back yet. Well I don’t want to act impatient, but I gotta get moving. I’ve been sitting on the side of the road for nearly 20 minutes reading the sports page. Traffic has slowed to about 10 miles per hour, and I notice that people won’t even look my direction. They probably would feel compelled to help me. It’s better to just pretend I’m not there. Even the cops ignore me.

I muster the nerve to call her and decide my strategy is humor. She answers and I say, “Melodie, I wanted to let you know that I actually have a flat tire right now instead of planning on having one, and I really need that number”. She tells me, “I did call, I left you a voice mail at the office, I didn’t know where you were.” I can’t believe it.  “Melodie, I thought if I told you that I had a flat tire, it might dawn on you that I was in the car and to call the cell number.” We had a good chuckle and I finally contact AAA. No problem they tell me, “Rudy’s Towing will be there in 15-20 minutes”. Great I’ll finish reading about the upcoming Sonics/Rockets game tonight.

I lift my eyes from the paper only to see a “WaSP” pulling in behind me. A Washington State Patrol. Down in California they have “Chips”, up here we have WaSPs. No problem, I tell him. I’ve got AAA on the way. I’m standing next to the epitome of machismo here in Washington and decide I’ll save face by telling him I would have been done and on my way if my lug wrench had of fit the lug nuts. Oh Great…. He wasn’t to take a look. Does he think I’m some ignorant stranded motorist? Sure glad I’ve got Washington plates on the Honda.

He takes one long look and tells me to remove the hubcap in order to get to the lug nuts. I get down and look again. He’s right; the nuts I was trying to fit the wrench onto are only plastic mock ones on a $5 wheel cover. The WaSP is really starting to bother me now. He actually wants to change the tire for me. I’m an American, keep your hands off my lug wrench.

I manage to regain my manhood and change the tire in such a fashion as to show him that it wasn’t my first. I lower the newly installed bagel to the pavement and thank him for his help. My pride is bruised, but I did appreciate his help. He lets me know that he’d already cancelled the tow truck.

I climb back in my car and pull into traffic, taking caution to follow all the steps one follows after having just received a ticket. Once I get back into the flow of things it occurs to me that I am still the object of ridicule and scorn.  People are actually staring and pointing at the bagel I was calling a front tire.

Ignoring jeers and insults, I fight my way to the office and found in the Yellow Pages a tire shop nearby. I limp in and they quickly repair the flat. I wait and wait for the bill. Finally I go up to the counter. “No charge”, he says. Maybe the day is going to turn for the better after all.

I have a genuine smile on my face as I pull away, windows down and enjoying the nice weather of the day. The sun was shining ever so brightly and the birds were singing. I turn onto South 4^th Ave and as I do a large 5 ton flatbed truck comes barreling by. It passes, and then I hear it. “Ching…….ting………ting.”

I glance out of my window and see a large rusty nail that has just fallen of the truck. In slow motion I watch as it cartwheels across the warm asphalt right towards the path of my newly repaired tire.

I’m able to slow and swerve in time to miss the nail and its torpedo attitude. It comes to a completed stop just inches from where my tire is. I smile to myself. It’s going to be a great day after all. 

The Mouse That Roared!! – Part 3 “The Next Issues and Period”

Editorial note: This is the third installment and will make little sense if read out of order. Please see earlier posts directly below.

Well once the members of SODE’ learned that Gary McCoy, company President had asked for more, we felt obligated to deliver. After all he was the boss.

We spend another week putting together the next issue. We continued and may have even upped the level of intensity. We attacked about 3 or 4 departments in this issue and even more in the subsequent issues. Since Gary had asked for “more of it” we felt we had been given a free pass.

We attacked and attacked, making less effort to cloud who and what we were attacking. Names of departments and certain managers was alluded to and in some cases spelled out entirely. This proved to be a poor decision. I believe if we had been less specific and left names out of the publication all would have gone as expected.

Another bad decision was that we as editors felt we could own up to our efforts. It wasn’t that we put our names on the paper but we didn’t keep our efforts anonymous either. If asked, we all agreed, we would admit we had been behind this. In hindsight it was a good thing that we had disassociated SODE’ with the paper because that would have put all of us, and maybe me individually, responsible for making Kandi cry a year or so earlier.

About 4 issues and 6 weeks later the word came down. Kevin, Bill, Ryan and I were “invited” to the ivory tower at the request of Gary McCoy. As we arrived at the admin office and looked at one another it was clear that no one really knew what was going on. But at the same time we were pretty sure that it had to do with our brainchild “The Mouse That Roared”.

When we stepped into Gary’s office that morning and saw all the past issues of TMTR our suspicion was confirmed. Gary invited us to sit down and then got right to the point. He held up the issues that were on his desk and said. “Enough, the only reason I don’t fire you here and now is that I stood in front of 45 managers and asked for more of this. However, it has gone too far. If you want to keep working for this company not another written word out of the four of you. Is that clear?”

Well I can’t speak for the other 3 members of SODE’ and coauthors of TMTR but I understood exactly what he meant and needed no further explanation. I reflected back on how foolish I had been in and felt really lucky that I hadn’t lost my job. I never mentioned this to Melodie. The SODE’ cartoons, the issues of TMTR or my brush with unemployment were not known to her until years after I left Mammoth

As we got into the elevator in the tower and headed down to “where we belonged”, there was no snickering or scoffing at how close we had come. We knew we had dodged a large bullet.

However, by the time we got ready to carpool home that night our spirits were lifted up and we came up with one last plan. We decided we needed to cease publication in a classy manner. We took our TMTR masthead and on the front page, just below it, put a large 4” black dot. The next day we sent out 10 copies as usual and let the Xerox crowd do the rest.

There was much speculation as to what it meant. Some thought it was a hidden message. Others thought it represented a hole that the mouse had crawled into. For us it was simply a punctuation mark, a period if you will, indicating that our work was finished.

The Mouse That Roared!! – Part 2 “Dormancy and Resurgence of SODE`”

Editorial note: This is the second installment and will make little sense if read out of order. Please see earlier post directly below.

Well, it didn’t take long for Dave, Earl and I to realize that we may have ruffled either too many or the wrong feathers with the Titanic cartoon. While Dave and Earl were single, I had a family at home. Regardless we all decided that softening the blow and the frequency of the cartoons might be a wise move, if we wanted to keep our jobs. We continued to put out some cartoons but we much more cautious about this effort. Over the next 18 months or so it got to the point where we put nothing out at all.

About 1990 things had not improved much for the company and Earl was caught up in a layoff and a year or so later Dave moved on to other pastures. One could never know if the pasture he moved to was greener or not. Dave was an interesting guy. I remember one afternoon I saw him in our office and noticed that he had missed a button on his shirt which forced his collar to be so off kilter that it stuck up in a very obvious and peculiar way. I simply said, “hey, Dave, you collar is sticking up because you’ve misbuttoned it.” He looked at me and replied, “Oh yeah, I noticed that this morning at break.” and he simply went on with his day. He didn’t care at all. I miss Dave…sorry for that brief tangential walk down memory lane.

I found myself as the lone founding member of SODE`. No one, except for Dave and Earl even knew what the acronym stood for or who was involved. I never spoke of it to anyone.

In the fall of 1991 there was a large layoff at the ski area. Once again moral was down as employees found their friends and co-workers were gone and wondered if they would have a job next week. The company bus and van-system up from Bishop had all but disappeared and we were forced into carpools. I found myself riding with Kevin, Bill & Ryan each and every day.

With nearly an hour drive each way it didn’t take long before the four of us began to complain, once again, about fiscal decisions that seemed harmful to the health of the company. Someone brought up the topic of the cartoons from years past and how they missed SODE`. After a few more drives of this topic I decided I could trust these 3 and tell them of my involvement. After swearing them to secrecy we talked of the originally meaning and purpose of SODE`. They wanted in!!

After contact Dave & Earl and receiving permission to admit them we made it official. Kevin, Bill, Ryan and I were now the only four active members of the newly awakened Secret Order of Disgruntled Employees.

We never discussed any of our activities outside of the car we traveled in. This assured no else knew or overheard. We decided that we did not want to go the path of cartoons and that like a sword, the written word, if carefully wielded could be more effective. A newspaper, written and copied offsite for security reasons, and distributed in the same fashion would be most impactful. The only change is that we would not put the name SODE` on the work. We didn’t want to associate the new campaign with the former campaign at all.

We talked of content, length and format of the newspaper. But what most of the discussion involved was the title. Since Mammoth Mountain’s mascot was a woolly mammoth it made sense that we choose a mouse, a nemesis to the elephant, as our mascot. We hoped that our printed voice would be loud and clear so we named our newspaper “The Mouse That Roared”, or TMTR as we referred to it.

We worked on the first issue of our rag for weeks. There were first efforts and group revisions all done within the drive to and from work. In our first anonymous printing we included some humorous things but we also took some pretty direct editorial shots at departments and at department managers. We were careful not mention anyone by name but our efforts were so clear that it was easy to know who we were targeting. The first edition of TMTR grew from the initial 10 copies until we noticed them on nearly every desk. It was a huge response as far as distribution went.

About a week after the first issue was released there was a normally scheduled department manager’s meeting in the ivory tower. I heard this story from my manager who was in attendance. Normal matters of business were discussed and then towards the end, Gary McCoy, son of Dave McCoy (brother to Kandi), and President of Mammoth Mountain stood. He slow held up a copy of TMTR and said something like, “I don’t know where this came from, (pause) I don’t know who is behind this, (longer pause) but this is some of the best damn writing I’ve seen in a long time. I want more of it. It’s efforts like this that keep us thinking and keeps us on our toes.”

This proclamation didn’t take long to reach the members of SODE` and in our subsequent drives we talked of what our next step would be.

Within a matter of a few weeks we gave Gary McCoy exactly what he asked for. The question is, “Did he get more than he bargained for?”.

To Be Continued. “The Next Issues and Period”

The Mouse That Roared!! – Part 1 “The Birth of SODE`”

Disclaimer # 1. The actions of the individual(s) described in this blog were foolish. I was a much younger and shall we agree a stupider individual 20 plus years ago. May the follies of my youth not hinder me any further than they already have.

Disclaimer # 2. I have changed the names of all guilty participants in order to protect them from any association with the imminent description of said stupid actions. It is possible that some of the participants may still be employed at this business.

Ok…with that out of the way I’ll get started. In the mid to late 80s I worked for Mammoth Mountain Ski Area. It was then a large, family owned ski resort that employed about 600 people year round and nearly 1500 during the peak of the ski season.

Many of the department managers, capable as they were, had worked themselves up through the employee ranks from the 60s and 70s and enjoyed what seemed to be quite an easy existence. They were provided company vehicles, free gas and seemed to do very little but drive around. It appeared that they spent most of their time skiing, golfing and cycling. Looking back with more years of experience I’d have to say they probably worked a lot harder than I knew.

This was also a challenging time for the company. They had purchased a much smaller ski resort, June Mountain, and ran it separately as its own entity. June Mountain never seemed to be able to make a profit and seemed to be a cash pit as we tried to make it viable.

I had two fellow employees, Dave & Earl, whom I shared a common office with. We would sit there and discuss all of the bad decisions the company was making, the cash we seemed to be dumping into June Mountain and also how the managers seemed to be on a vacation all the time. Dave, Earl and I formed an informal group, SODE`, (pronounced So Day) which stood for Secret Order of Disgruntled Employees. We were the founding and charter members, yet there was no effort to grow this group. We had plans and too many cooks in the kitchen would ruin the porridge.

Earl was a cartoonist by hobby and one day showed Dave and I some things he had worked up. They were essentially some rough “corporate political commentary” cartoons. This innocent effort turned into our first official plan. We decided to draw up some well-done cartoons that allowed us to exhibit our frustration. Once we completed enough we would distribute them around the company and see what reaction we got. Our plan was to distribute 1 cartoon each week and each cartoon would be signed SODE` giving credit and credence to this unknown organization.

We drew up four or five. Dave, Earl and I all had a hand at creation but some were better than others. We knew that we could not do any of this drawing at work so we worked on them on our own time. We also knew that if caught making copies of these cartoons with company copy machines that could be problematic. So our decision was to copy them at a public machine, which in those days meant a library or Safeway, and then simply post them, clandestinely, around. We would make only 10 copies of each cartoon. We put 2 or 3 in a few mailbox cubbyholes in the mail room and we posted the rest near time clocks in multiple buildings. We were pretty confident that if we kept it simple our fellow employees would become our distribution network with very little encouragement on our part.

The first cartoon that we posted was of a company truck, logo and all, with bicycles mounted in the back. In the truck were two managers with $$ dollar signs coming out of the tailpipe. It was that simple. The statement was made and the SODE` movement had been launched. Within days there were many copies of this cartoon circulating throughout the company. There was a lot of buzz about who this “person SODE” was. The three of us joined in the discussion as if we knew nothing of it.

After a few more cartoons had been distributed in the same fashion we put out our most controversial cartoon. This depicted Mammoth Mountain Ski Area as the Titanic and June Mountain as the iceberg that sunk the great ship. It was the opinion of SODE` that June Mountain was going to ruin the main resort and jeopardize our jobs. This cartoon seemed to be the most popular.

A week or so later there was a company wide meeting where about 500 employees gathered in the lunchroom. The company was in financial trouble and the owners felt like we needed to know what the plan was to climb out of debt and back into prosperity.

Dave, Earl and I found a seat near the front of the hall and sat at a table not too far from the family. There were introductory comments and then it was opened up to a Q & A. We had no plans to ask questions but there were many who did. One of the questions offered was about the financial viability of June Mountain and its impact on Mammoth Mountain. The CEO decided to turn that question over to Kandi McCoy, daughter of founder Dave McCoy, and President of June Mountain.

Kandi stood and began to do her best to answer the question but her answers seemed so empty. Then things went from bad to worse. She began to get emotional and teary eyed. While this was unfolding I glanced over at the family and some of them were lowering their eyes and shaking their heads in embarrassment. I’m sure they felt that this was no way for a company President to act. I was embarrassed for them and for her. Then things went terribly awry.

Kandi, through her tears and intermittent sobbing said the following, “We here at June Mountain are doing the best we can. Maybe you all think that we are the iceberg that is gonna to sink Mammoth, but we’re not. That’s not gonna happen, it’s not I tell ya.” It was pitiful. It was more like a rant that spewed from the mouth of a 3^rd grade kid. The family was shamed beyond description. Sitting less than 10 feet from her brother, I could feel it.

Dave McCoy, her dad, stood up and tried to gain control of the situation and give us all hope but the damage had been done and the meeting quickly came to an end.

Dave, Earl and I couldn’t even look at each other. We left the meeting and met up a few minutes later in our office. Although there was some laughter and some congratulations about how much of an impact SODE` had had on this meeting, we did feel bad. Our intention was to be a thorn in the side of the corporation, cause some discussion and hopefully some change. It was never our goal to embarrass an individual or make this personal. Nonetheless that is what we had accomplished so far. It would be a year or more before SODE made another impact. This one was much larger.....

To Be Continued. “Dormancy and Resurgence of SODE`”

Green Motors Fire – Epilogue

So I finally have gotten around to writing the fourth part of my 3-part story. Just the fact that I have taken this to 4 parts has been enough to discourage me from finishing. However, if I don’t get it done this week it will be mid to late August before I do and it’s already been too long since I posted Part 3. So here goes. The events that followed the trial and acquittal of Joe Green transpired over many months but will be condensed here as if it was only a few weeks.

Once I learned that I would be a witness in this trial I was informed that my travel and lodging expenses would be covered by the City of Bishop, as I was acting on their behalf when the fire occurred. Although I had plenty of vacation time as an employee of Mammoth Mountain Ski Area I decided to ask the city if they would be covering my wages that I would be losing from taking off 3 or 4 days from work. There simple answer was “no”, you are a volunteer firefighter.

I questioned that decision. There were full time police dispatchers that had spent their entire time sitting in a rolling chair in front of the radios who were also being required to testify. They would received travel & living, PLUS lost wages. I protested. They didn’t budge. I asked them the following question. “If I was self employed and had been asked to take off days at a time to testify, there would be no compensation?” The answer was yes and if you don’t like it, you can resign from the fire department. Well, the end result was that I took time off, with pay, from my job but I was not happy with the way it had been handled.

Months after the trial had ended I decided to contact the CSFA (California State Firefighters Association) about my concerns. I was put in touch with the liaison to the Volunteer Departments. After many phone calls and letters written, explaining the situation the CSFA committee for volunteers decided this was a cause worth championing. I worked for many months with a state Senator (name long forgotten) and his staff person, Terry, to get a bill authored and to a committee for consideration. The bill would require city and counties to pay volunteer firefighters for lost wages when they are required to testify in court proceedings stemming from their volunteer firefighting efforts.

In the spring of 1992 I was invited to come to Sacramento to speak to this committee. Terry wanted to be sure that I came in full dress uniform, as this would give some level of importance to my efforts. I took Charlotte and Cara with me. They were 11 and 9 respectively. We ended up staying at the late Cory Wolfersberger, Suzie’s brother’s house and were very comfortable there. One side note about this trip is that we traveled to Sacramento via Stateline, Nevada. While in route the discussion between the girls and me was about eating at a buffet. We stopped at Harrah’s there and learned that their lunch would be $12 each. Mine was $16. That was a lot of money then but we went ahead and entered the buffet. My kids have always been good eaters and will try just about anything. Let me just say, they got my money’s worth.

The next day we arrived at this senator’s office and were given tours and other fun stuff prior to my testimony. We had a great lunch in a nice Chinese restaurant not too far from the capitol.

Testimony came and went. Travel home was uneventful. Within days I learned that the bill was passed and that this senator would continue to move it forward and I was thanked for my efforts. I wish that I had written down more information about which senator, bill number etc. but at the time I didn’t see the significance in it. Today it feels good have fought back and won.

Green Motors Fire – The Trial (Part Three)

The very next morning, the second day after the fire, I found myself being deposed. As I sat at the Bishop Police Department interview room, which could be called an interrogation room depending on which side of the law you found yourself on, it was very hard to be comfortable. I knew that I was there as a witness only and not as a suspect of any sort but it still was difficult to relax with both Scotty Baker, a commissioned police officer along with his fire investigator status, and Detective Bruce Dishion sitting across the table from me.

There were some welcoming comments and niceties designed to help me relax, then "click". The old cassette recorder was turned on. Introductions were made so that anyone listening would know who was being recorded. They asked me to introduce myself, my role as a fire fighter and acknowledge that I had given them permission to record the deposition. Once that was over, the questions began to fly.

For the next 2 hours I was asked and gave answers to any question that either of the interviewers asked. There seemed to be little formal process to this as either would ask any thing that came to mind. When it was all said and done I was thanked and allowed to go about my day. I didn’t know it at the time but this interview had produced over 18 pages of typed text. Somewhere I have a copy of it, on yellow paper for some reason. Was that standard for a deposition or just the color that was left in the copy machine? It’s an answer I’ll probably never get.

My testimony in the deposition along with much more evidence resulted in the arrest of Joseph Green for the crime of “Arson”. The theory of the County Prosecutor’s office was that the business was in debt to the tune of approximately $150k. They believed that the evidence showed that Joe Green had entered the place of business just after closing and had poured a flammable liquid in and around the parts department before lighting it. It was their theory that since the bank owned the autos for sale and the building was leased, the parts department was the only thing literally owned by the Green family that could be cashed in for insurance. The value of the parts department inventory was approximately $160k.

The investigators were convinced that what I had witnessed was remnants of the flammable liquid pour that had not ignited until I was there to witness it. Pockmarks and burn patterns seemed to show evidence of what I had witnessed as well.

The arrest of Joe Green was big news in our little town of Bishop, California. Everyone in town and possibly the entire county of 18,000 residents seemed to have an opinion on whether he was guilty or innocent.

Before the trial could start the defense was successful in getting a change of venue and the trial was moved to Ventura County. I do agree that it would have been impossible for the accused to get a fair trial in Inyo County, although before I received my subpoena to testify for the prosecution I knew that a trip to Ventura would be in my future travel plans.

There were about 6 of us, from me all the way to Assistant Fire Chief, Stan Lloyd who were called to testify. John Williamson, who entered the fire service with me in a class of 8 back in 1984 was one of the 6. Because of when the prosecution expected us to testify we traveled together and shared a hotel room. We were to travel in Engine 11 to Ventura and back. Engine 11, was really nothing more than a red pickup truck with lights and siren that the chief drove from time to time. Chief Phil Moxley drove his personal pickup most of the time so Eng 11 was often used for hauling iced pop and water out to a fire scene. We were happy to use it, either way.

On our way to the courthouse we heard over the radio LA County Fire dispatch a bunch of trucks and engine companies to a structure fire. One of those dispatched was “Engine 11, Please respond”. John looked at me, I looked at him and said “hey we’re Engine 11, right?” In our stupidity we lit up the lights and siren and drove code three, to nowhere of course, weaving in and out of traffic through Ventura. Had we been discovered there would have been serious consequences, the least would have been removal from the Bishop Fire Department. We were young and dumb and didn’t always think things out, but we had fun for more than 2 miles before we decided to “cancel” our self-imposed dispatch.

The trial was a blur. I only saw my side of the testimony. I was never able to see anyone else testify or hear any other questions by prosecution or defense. The bottom line here is that the defense prevailed. Joe Green was found “not guilty”. The defense was able to put doubt in the minds of the jury that what I saw was actually fuel poured by the defendant. The claim by defense experts was that what I saw was actually petroleum based roofing products that had dropped down from the roof the floor as the fire progressed.

I wasn't troubled at all. I had done my duty and told what I had seen. The jurors had done theirs. That’s the system.

TO BE CONTINUED: Green Motors Fire – The Aftermath (Part Four)

Green Motors Fire – The Investigation (Part Two)

It was well after midnight that March day that I finally crawled into bed. Melodie rolled over, as she had hundreds of times before and would hundreds of times after this day, and whispered to me that she was glad I was home safe. I don’t think she was ever 100% behind my desire to “play fireman” but I also think she knew there was no stopping me. She kissed me on the cheek and we talked briefly as I unwound and fell asleep.

Later that morning I stopped by the fire scene on my way to work. There is something about a fire this large that just gets under your skin and it was common for me to want to go back and see what had actually occurred once the smoke had cleared and the morning sun arrived to signal the new day.

I arrived and found 2 or 3 chief officers there already, along with Scotty Baker, an Arson and Bomb Investigator with the California State Fire Marshall’s office. He had driven all through the night from the Sacramento area to be on scene first a.m. and had already begun to gather data and samples. Scotty was an excellent, well-respected investigator with a good ol’ boy, slap you on the back, southern boy attitude that seemed to have a connection with the Bishop Fire Department. I never knew if he had a work assignment that included our jurisdiction or if he just jumped on every chance to come to the Eastern Sierra that he found. Nonetheless, I worked along side of him more than once after this point.

One might think that an Arson Investigator is called only when there is a suspicious fire, but in a situation like this where there is likely to be lots of financial loss followed by much finger pointing, an investigator is always summoned to not only try to determine the point of origin but also to try to determine the cause. Once the investigator has thoroughly made a visual inspection, taken hundreds of photographs, interviewed as many witnesses as possible he or she must then make one of the following determinations. A fire cause can be listed as:

Accidental

Incendiary

Mechanical

Electrical

Natural

While a fire scene might be suspicious, this is not a “cause”. Although there is much science with this effort to put it into a nutshell an investigator looks at burn patterns, char depth, fuel load indicators to “read” the fire. With much experience the investigator can effectively locate the place of origin and then narrow down the actual cause.

As I approached the small group of men through the same door that I had crawled through and hastily retreated through just a few short hours before, I looked on as they discussed various areas of particular interest. I stood quietly for some time as to not disrupt the brain storming session I was observing. I looked down and realized I was exactly 60 feet in and standing near a tow truck that I had knelt next to.

It was then that Dick Moxley, Battalion Chief and baby brother to the Fire Chief Phil Moxley, broke away from the group with Scotty Baker. The two of them began discussing an unusual mark on the concrete floor. The two of them mused about the mark, more than 30 feet in length that just didn’t make sense to them. One of them said, “This just doesn’t make sense, I can’t understand what happened here.” Without thinking I uttered a sentence that would impact me far beyond what I could have comprehended. I butted in “I can tell you exactly what that is because I watched “it” happen.” Scotty turned to me and said, “Tell me more”.

I went onto explain that during fire suppression I was leaning against the front passenger tire of the tow truck. I had been directing a hose stream above me and to my right to the seat of heavy fire. Something caught my eye and I glanced to my left to see a portion of concrete about 6 inches wide catch on fire and then run about 30-35 feet to my left in just a few seconds. It reminded me of how lighter fluid might catch on fire. I recalled that I had turned to Dick Weller who was behind me and tried to ask through my mask and the noise and excitement of the fire if he too had seen what I had seen. He didn’t respond and I went back to my duties. I had actually forgotten about what I had seen the night before until I was there listening to the investigators.

Before I knew it I was scheduled for a deposition with Scott Baker and Bishop Police Detective Bruce Dishion, who would later become police chief. I was interviewed for about 2 hours and every word that I said was documented. Without knowing it, I would become a key eyewitness to one of the largest arson cases in Inyo County history.

TO BE CONTINUED: Green Motors Fire – The Trial (Part Three)