New Times SLO celebrates 30 years

Vol. 31, No. 4

August 18, 2016 For distribution until August 25

SAN

LUIS

OBISPO

COUNT Y’S

NE WS

&

ENTERTAINMENT

THIRTY YEARS

• NEWS

Lake Nacimiento’s residences and forest are burning

• OPINION

Differing views on the same officer-involved shootings

• A RTS

Trent Burkett’s abstract visions of nature are at SLOMA

• FLAVOR

Granada’s whole hog makes the SLO Farmers’ Market delish

• HOT DATES

The Stone Soup Music Festival in Grover Beach and more

• NTMA s

It’s your last chance to enter this year’s contest

New Times is still kicking, and its founder’s legacy lives on in stories and past and present staffers

BY JEFF MCMAHON

What the ‘New’ means in New Times

O

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO US New Times celebrates 30 with a look back at some of the stories that affected our writers’ lives

N

ot every newspaper—daily, weekly, alternative, or otherwise—functions in quite the same way that New Times does. It’s a 30-year-old paper with a legacy of an awkwardly intimate relationship with the community it serves, which definitely leaves a mark on all who wander through its pages.

This mark is especially deep for the journalists who crawled into its newsroom and attempted to make a difference in San Luis Obispo. Some of the stories they told burned a legacy into more than just paper. They indelibly changed the lives of the journalists who reported and wrote their hearts out. Stories can carve a hole into the universe, cast doubt, or alter a way of thinking.

They can be powerful. As powerful, intricate, complicated, and thought-provoking as the man who founded this paper. A man I never met, but I’m told I would like. A man who I’ve come to believe was inseparable from the community he loved to cover.

His legacy is intricately woven into the stories New Times continues to write long after his death. We asked some past staffers to tell us about the mark Steve Moss left on them and the stories he pushed, encouraged, and sometimes forced them to pursue.

Read on and reminisce.

—Camillia Lanham

n Feb. 8, 1995, New Times published a sympathetic cover story profiling four local anti-abortion activists.

Exactly one week later, the San Luis Obispo Planned Parenthood clinic was gutted by an arsonist.

That cover story, penned by Coleen Bondy, was written under pressure from New Times publisher and editor Steve Moss.

Steve often pressed us to write against our own political views, to consider the opposition perspective, to write from the side that made us uncomfortable, even angry.

Steve might have done that because he was a Republican, and his newsroom staff at the time leaned left, pro-environment, pro-choice. That’s how I interpreted the pressure at the time. And in a heated exchange on the morning of the Planned Parenthood fire, I told him as much.

Back then the New Times offices were on Santa Rosa Street, and the Planned Parenthood clinic was next door. We stood in the parking lot while firemen doused the ashes, the acrid smell of smoke hanging in the air.

“We emboldened them,” I argued.

“We didn’t embolden them,” he shot back, snapping the word like a twig.

But even as I resisted Steve, I also began resisting my own political bias. Because deep down I knew Steve was right about one thing: Journalists should be independent—not only of government interference, not only of advertiser influence, but also of partisan ideology.

We should be independent of partisan ideology not because of some moral precept—thou shalt not—but because it damages journalism itself.

In 1995 Steve saw what I hadn’t yet: that ideology has blind spots. I’ve since learned

that’s really what ideology is for: It papers over inconsistencies and gaps in a systemic view of the world.

Frederick Engels linked ideology to “false consciousness.” Louis Althusser called it an “imaginary relationship.” All ideologies are incomplete, all partially wrong, because no system of ideas conceived by humans can fully organize the phantasmagoria of sensory experience that confronts us.

But ideology pretends to be complete and pretends to be right.

When we write within the confines of a political ideology, we stop seeing the world in its variety. We see it through the narrow lens of our own beliefs. And we end up writing only for those who share those beliefs.

The alternative press flourished amid the anti-war protests of the 1960s, speaking for a revolution unserved by the mainstream press. A lot of its writers cherished—still cherish—those revolutionary ideals. We relished the opportunity to indulge them when we joined alternative weeklies.

“No more writing for The Man!” we thought as we pranced into alternative newsrooms.

Steve quashed that party at New Times.

Not that he censored us—he was usually tolerant of our biases—but he brought The Man into our editorial meetings and asked us to consider his perspective. Look at The Man, Steve was saying. The Man’s not so bad.

That was the new in New Times.

Today, looking across the smoldering ruins of the alternative press, it’s easy to see that the big-city lefties fared worse than smaller independents like New Times. That’s partly a function of market differences, but it didn’t help that partisan papers had limited their readership before the collapse.

PHOTO COURTESY OF JEFF MCMAHON

MEET THE PRESS A copy of Jeff McMahon's press pass from 1994.

26 • New Times • August 18 - August 25, 2016 • www.newtimesslo.com

A similar recoil is happening on the right.

While Steve and I were arguing on that smoky morning, someone driving down Santa Rosa was undoubtedly listening to Rush Limbaugh on a car radio.

The next year, Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes would found Fox News. Fox would prove you can build a huge audience on partisan ideology, you can even become No. 1, but you can’t keep that whole house of cards from collapsing.

Now even Republicans blame the demise of Republicanism on right-wing media, which vilified compromise, promoted extremist candidates, strong-armed moderates into extremist positions, and fed voters a dubious reality.

Partisans may feel comfortable inside echo chambers, where challenging views are never seriously considered, only refuted, but the echoes amplify the blind spots, fomenting a pernicious ignorance that ultimately dooms the cause.

In the most recent election cycle, fake news sites have taken the trend further, mining specific ideologies for clicks, preying especially on Berners and Tea Partiers.

These sites distort or invent stories to take advantage of confirmation bias, collecting clicks like a fountain of dimes.

When alerted to false stories, the readers who share them often don’t care that they’re false. They seem “truer than true” because they correspond to the readers’ beliefs, which are increasingly informed by fake news.

Soon each camp has its unique and unassailable truth, each of them false.

Writers can confront this problem by writing across audiences. That’s all Steve wanted: to keep New Times open to the most readers.

It makes practical sense. If we write about the imperiled earth, for example, we ought to write for the many who are wrecking it, not just for the few already trying to save it (though they too need to be reminded to lay off the gasoline, the air-conditioning, the meat).

Traditionally American writers have attempted to cross divides by feigning objectivity, but that’s another house of cards.

The alternative press exposed objectivity as a pretense and urged its writers, instead, to be honest about our biases.

To write for a broad audience, we don’t have to be objective, we just have to be curious. We have to stop pretending to be the exclusive knowers of what’s true and holders of what’s right. We have to admit we have something to learn from our readers.

Curiosity doesn’t require objectivity, it just requires sensitivity to other possibilities.

“Sensitivity in its highest form is intelligence,” said the philosopher Jiddhu Krishnamurti. And “it does not come from books.”

We acquire sensitivity through freedom, Krishnamurti said—freedom from what we think we know, freedom from the past, freedom from “the center formed by thought.”

When we step out of ideology, into freedom, we can teach and we can learn again, and we can do good in the world.

“All ideologies are idiotic,” said Krishnamurti, “whether religious or political, for it is conceptual thinking, the conceptual word, which has so unfortunately divided man.”

I don’t know how much Steve Moss cared about philosophy on that smoky morning in 1995. Steve was mostly a mystery. But through thornier thickets than he yet knew, he pointed the way. ∆ Jeff McMahon wrote for New Times from 1994 to 2000. He teaches journalism at the University of Chicago and covers the environment and energy for Forbes.

This story ran on Feb. 8, 1995, the week prior to the fire that gutted San Luis Obispo’s Planned Parenthood. Here are some excerpts:

Pro-life lives

O

utside the modern, white stucco building that houses the Los Osos Christian Fellowship Church, palm trees waved above a parking lot crammed with the cars of Sunday worshipers.

Inside the church, Jim Coles was about to present the “Sanctity of Life” program, complete with a five-minute film showing the bloody, dismembered bodies of aborted fetuses.

Pastor Randy Nash, a tall, slim, soft-spoken man, addressed his congregation solemly.

“Today is the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, a tragic decision that we’ve suffered for ever since,” he said.

Nash told the crowd that church

BY COLEEN BONDY

leaders had agonized over the decision to let Coles present the pro-life program, including the gruesome film, during a Sunday church service.

“There are certain aspects of following Jesus that are not comfortable,” he told his followers.

“We’d rather not have [the program], to be honest.”

Nash then sent children in the eighth grade and below into another room, where they would watch a film about the growth of a baby in its mother’s womb. … … Coles spends most of his spare time trying to get people to acknowledge that a fetus is a human life—even if they don’t believe in souls or God. “I want to challenge those who

consider themselves pro-choice to put themselves in the shoes of the baby, so to speak.”

His best argument, he said, is won by starting with birth instead of conception. He does it by asking someone if a baby is human an hour before it is born.

They always say yes.

Then he asks if it is human two hours before it is born. How about a month before it is born? Or two months before it is born? Working backward, there is no point someone can pin down as the time when a fetus becomes human, he said.

“If I can get someone all the way back before the sixth week, I’ve made them pro-life. And they don’t even know it,” he declared. … ∆

The full versions of these two stories were printed a week after the Planned Parenthood fire, on Feb. 22, 1995.

‘No protection’

C

arlyn Christianson surveyed the torched Planned Parenthood clinic she’d run for the past five and a half years in San Luis Obispo.

She pointed to an examination table with metal foot stirrups attached to its end, in a room with a charred number “3” on one door.

“That’s a hydraulic table. It’s very heavy,” Christianson told the moving man. “Everything’s got to go out that back door. The floor in the front is not too stable.”

In rooms where doors had been closed, the damage was limited to the effects of smoke, heat, and the water used to fight the fire. But the front rooms of the clinic told a different story.

The waiting room had once been decorated in pastel shades with cheerful white wicker furniture.

BY COLEEN BONDY

On Friday, Feb. 17, two days after an arson fire destroyed most of the clinic, the room was a blackened mess. … … In the wake of the earlymorning Feb. 15 fire, fingers of blame have pointed at pro-lifers, pro-choicers, and even New Times.

Pro-choice activists condemned the pro-life movement for using terrorism to keep women from having abortions.

Central Coast pro-life groups also condemned violence against abortion clinics via press releases and phone calls to the media. But several of them suggested the pro-choice camp may have been responsible for the fire.

“Planned Parenthood and abortion clinics kill,” said Mary Alice Altorfer, a volunteer with Santa Maria Right to Life. “If they

Conspiracy theory protection’

T

he word traveled like a flame torched to gasoline—another clinic had burned.

Pro-choice activists across California knew what happened to San Luis Obispo’s Planned Parenthood before the ashes had cooled. Few reacted with surprise and when they heard “San Luis Obispo,” their minds rewound to last July.

Protesters crowded the sidewalks on both sides of Santa Rose Street that warm morning last summer.

They held signs aloft with pictures of fetuses or carefully painted slogans—“Stop the Baby Killers.”

One man lurched into traffic and yelled at passing cars, waving his sign as they passed.

The protest lasted two hours at most.

Quickly the protesters vanished.

can kill, they can lie, and they can set a fire.”

Christianson said that assertion is ludicrous. She questioned why the media would even report it.

“Is that responsible reporting? I think the media needs to ask itself that question. Obviously those types of statements are absurd.” … ∆

BY JEFF MCMAHON

“San Luis Obispo was visited by Operation Rescue last summer on their caravan. We were there. SLO was the first place we picked them up,” said Tom Burghardt, perhaps the pro-choice movement’s leading expert on anti-abortionists. … … “I think it’s not coincidental that we’ve had four arsons since the month began,” agreed Barbara Ellis of the Strong Link Coalition, a group that provides protection to doctors and clinic staff. “Three of the four fires occurred along the route of that caravan last summer.”

The Modesto Planned Parenthood burned Feb. 1 after an arson fire started in an adjacent building.

On Feb. 9 an arsonist placed a tire doused with gasoline against the door of the Family Planning

Associates clinic in Ventura, causing $1,000 in damage. On Feb. 10, a burning tire damaged the Physicians’ Medical Laboratory in Santa Barbara. Police believe the tire was meant for the nearby Santa Barbara Women’s Medical Group, which provides abortions. Fire gutted San Luis Obispo’s Planned Parenthood Feb. 15.

Federal investigators have confirmed arson in each case, but they have named no suspects and drawn no connection between the fires. “We’re really outraged that nobody seems to be showing that this is a conspiracy,” Ellis said.

“There are similarities. It’s not every day that you find a tire and gasoline at two different clinics that perform abortions or refer for abortions.” … ∆

www.newtimesslo.com • August 18 - August 25, 2016 • New Times • 27

Moss and New Times, bucking the trend T

BY STEVEN T. JONES

“

omorrow’s issue of the Bay Guardian will be its last,” the new corporate publisher of the San Francisco Bay Guardian told me and the other newsroom staff on the morning of Oct. 14, 2014, abruptly ending the 48-year run of a groundbreaking alternative newsweekly.

It was the latest bad news for the newspaper industry in general, and the alt-weeklies in particular, following the closure of Boston Phoenix and soon to be followed by the shuttering of Metro Pulse in Tennessee. Many surviving newspapers have shrunk to thin shadows of their former selves.

Yet every time I return to SLO to visit family and friends, there’s New Times, still kicking ass with a full staff and standing tall as the exception to this troubling media trend. I’m happy and proud to see New Times doing so well, and I hope its readers fully appreciate it.

As my newspaper career ended that day almost two years ago—a 24-year run at two daily newspapers and four altweeklies, all in California, culminating with becoming editor-in-chief of the Guardian—I found myself reflecting on my time at New Times and what the paper and its founder, Steve Moss, instilled in me.

Moss started New Times in 1986, the same year I became a journalism student at Cal Poly, which is where I was when we met. I wrote an opinion piece for him opposing the build-up to the first Gulf War, brought him to campus to speak to other student journalists, wrote a couple of more articles, and we stayed in touch after I graduated and left town to start my journalism career, occasionally writing for New Times from afar. He finally hired me in 1995.

Coming from the daily newspaper world, with its mainstream orthodoxy and confining standard of objectivity, writing for New Times was like suddenly getting my shackles removed and being free to explore the castle grounds and surrounding countryside in all their glory.

And Moss—with his boundless curiosity, quirky creativity, and fearless truthtelling—became my guide and mentor.

His nimble mind and deft way with words encouraged me to stretch myself as a writer, playing with different voices and unusual story structures. His unwavering support and sage advice gave me the courage to pursue deep investigations and go after big fish. And his exacting standards and clear vision for what he wanted New Times to be toughened me up and made me expect more from myself.

When I exposed high-profile businessman Carl Hagmaier as a whitecollar criminal (see “The Rise and Fall of Carlton J. Hagmaier”), Moss supported me in the face of legal threats and throughout the more than three years it took to finally help send Hagmaier to prison for four years. And in wrapping up what that meant to me and society, he let me stretch my wings to tell the story in an unconventional way (see “Judgement day”).

I carried these lessons and encouragement throughout my career as a writer, and they gave me a model for the kind of editor that I would become.

It’s rare to find someone with such talent and vision in a media market the size of SLO, and even rarer to have it endure for decades and inspire excellence long after you’ve slipped the mortal coil.

But New Times has stood the test of time—at a time when so many other newspapers are in decline—and San Luis Obispo is a better place for it. And I’m a better man for having worked there. Happy birthday, New Times. ∆

Three years later, Jones wrote his final piece on the matter, after Hagmaier’s federal sentencing hearing in Los Angeles. It was printed on May 6, 1999.

The rise and fall of Carlton J. Hagmaier

BY STEVEN T. JONES

C

WORKING HARD? A young Steven T. Jones looks over a document at his New Times desk.

Steven T. Jones, a New Times staff writer from 1995 to 2000, now works as a media specialist for the Center for Biological Diversity.

The full version of this story ran on June 27, 1996.

arlton J. Hagmaier was a San Luis Obispo success story.

Several years before he reached his current age of 33, Hagmaier was a millionaire, well-known around town and his country club for being a big spender.

He drove expensive cars, lived in an expensive house, bought expensive furniture and jewelry, wore expensive suits, drank expensive wine, and ate expensive food.

At both Cafe Roma and Giuseppe’s Italian Restaurant, two among his favorite pricey haunts, Hagmaier would sometimes drop a few thousand dollars a month wooing clients and friends. Hagmaier was also a regular at major wine auctions here and in Napa Valley, shelling out big bucks for the best wines.

After work, he would socialize with SLO’s elite, including prominent developer Rob Rossi, whom Hagmaier considered his “best friend.” With Rossi, Hagmaier got involved in commercial real estate, building his $2.5 million office building at 444 Higuera St. and becoming a partner in the sprawling Promontory office building down the street.

True, he was only an insurance

FILE PHOTO

agent, working as this area’s general agent for Guardian Life Insurance Co. But he also sold and administered the company’s lucrative pension plans, and he parlayed his nearly $500,000 annual salary into a personal fortune.

But, perhaps, there is another side to Carl Hagmaier.

Some of Hagmaier’s clients say he financed his expensive tastes and social climb by stealing their money. They accuse him of forging a multitude of documents, depositing clients’ pension funds in his own account, using financial sleight-ofhand to raid the equity from life insurance policies, and stealing money that was intended for his clients.

Among Hagmaier’s accusers is Rossi, who says his former friend betrayed his trust to steal from his family members’ trust funds and skip out on a loan. Rossi brings Hagmaier’s name into the most serious of the financial misdeeds of which he stands accused: taking PIC Manufacturing’s $600,000 employee pension fund.

HAGMAIER continued page 32

28 • New Times • August 18 - August 25, 2016 • www.newtimesslo.com

Judgement day

I

’m tired of writing about Carl Hagmaier, or rather, of having to write about Carl Hagmaier.

I’m tired of waiting for justice from a system that doesn’t process whitecollar criminals with nearly the vigor or efficiency that it reserves for violent offenders or druggies or petty thieves.

But tomorrow my wait will be over.

Tomorrow Hagmaier will be sentenced, finally brought to justice for what he has done, what was so obvious he had done when I first looked at the evidence against him nearly three years ago. … … I read all the many lawsuits against him. I studied his forged documents. I read his early incriminating deposition, and those of many of his victims, and spoke with many more victims, many of whom were once Carl’s friends.

The victims. Victims of Carl Hagmaier. Victims who tell tales of Hagmaier’s particular blend of charm and pathology. He was slick, credibleseeming, and convincing. They had been lied to, again and again, having no reason not to believe. Hagmaier was believable. It was his stock in trade, the thing that gave him his career and his taste of the good life, a taste that would fuel his crimes.

I’ve often wondered what was going through Hagmaier’s head at the time, about how he was able to justify his behavior to himself. More than that, how he could have possibly thought he would never get caught. … … It’s the first time in years some of us have seen Hagmaier, and here he is,

BY STEVEN T. JONES

looking tan and trim in his death-black suit and short haircut, walking with his lawyer, Eugene Moscovitch, and wife, LeeAnne, toward his day in court.

As he passes the group, his eyes stare straight agead, ignoring the prying eyes of his accusers.

“Carl, are you sorry for what you’ve done?” I ask.

Hagmaier ignores the question, which doesn’t even cause him to break stride.

“No comment,” LeeAnne whispers in my ear as she passes, smiling sweetly, touching my arm in a surprisingly friendly way, although perhaps with a touch of condescension. Whatever it is, it will later turn to anger.

“I have instructed my client not to comment,” Moscovitch then tells me.

Hagmaier is apparently saving himself for his big performance, the statement to the judge, that, if well-executed, might knock months or even years off his sentence. For this slick salesman, who talked his way out of trouble so many times before, this will be the biggest test of his abilities.

The trial starts about a half-hour late. Only a few times do glimmers of the defendant’s old arrogance cross his face, a disgust that he is having to go through this, always quickly concealed.

I’m a journalist and we aren’t supposed to have emotions. But I have to admit, here in print, after watching Carl defy his victims and justice for so long, after he labeled me a liar for the things I wrote, I do feel slightly vengeful toward Hagmaier. I want him punished. … ∆

Getting it right S ometimes stories I’ve written have haunted me. In 2010, I got a call from Greg Lampert who was the subject of an article I wrote about surfing localism and the violence it can spawn. Mr. Lampert called to tell me I ruined his life.

In the story, I explained how Lampert had been arrested for assault after he got into a fight with Paul Winje, who had cut off Lampert in the waters of Shell Beach. During interviews with Lampert, he revealed a difficult childhood and admitted to a history of violence.

Lampert’s story appeared on the cover of New Times on March 23, 2000. His call came more than 10 years after the story was published. He wanted me to print a retraction … 10 years later.

I found the story, “The violent world of Central Coast surfing,” in our archives, re-read it, and felt my reporting was fair and accurate, but Lampert’s call was a reminder that what journalists do can have a real effect on people. It’s never my intent to hurt people or to make their

FILE PHOTO

BY GLEN STARKEY

lives more difficult. When people agree to talk to journalists, they’re trusting us to get it right. I take that trust seriously.

More recently, when I wrote about local prostitution in “The oldest profession unmasked” (July 14, 2016), my principal subject, the pseudonym-named DJ Dalton, got cold feet and wanted me to pull the story after I sent her a document with her quotes to confirm accuracy.

She felt I made her “sound dumb” even though I recorded the interview and the quotes were verbatim. Luckily, when the final version of the story was published, she approved.

After my cover story “May I have some more, sir” (Aug. 21, 2008) about the California Men’s Colony’s vocational work program was published, I got an email from the sister of a victim killed by one of the men I interviewed. She felt I painted the convicted murderer too sympathetically. Maybe I did. Maybe I should have thought more about the prisoner’s victim and the victim’s family.

I still struggle with the pain I caused this woman when she read a story about how well her brother’s killer was doing in his prison work program.

New Times founder Steve Moss always reminded me that a sacred trust exists between newspapers and the public. It’s our job as journalists to get CONNECTION Steve Moss (left) and Glen Starkey it right. We’re writing laugh during an art exhibit opening in Cambria about people’s lives, after in 2004. all, and the stories we tell can have profound effects on individuals long after last trust and the argumentative, brash, and week’s issue has been replaced by next sometimes abrasive man who taught me week’s. It’s something I try to remember how to be a writer. ∆ whenever I turn on my computer and place my fingers on the keyboard. I have Senior Staff Writer Glen Starkey has a photograph of Steve and me on my worked at New Times since 1991. Contact desk to remind me about that sacred him at gstarkey@newtimesslo.com.

This story was published in full on March 23, 2000.

This story was published in full on Aug. 21, 2008.

The violent world of Central Coast surfing

BY GLEN STARKEY

I

f California had a state sport it would have to be surfing. It’s all about living on the coast, facing individual challenges, and being close to nature.

But for many, the search for the perfect wave has a dark side. In recent years, the local surf scene has disintegrated into a backbiting, angry, violence-prone free-for-all, stripping it of its joy and making an already dangerous sport even more so. … … In the case of Van Curaza, a local surfer and surfboard shaper, he was ostracized and run out of business when a photo of him surfing Hazard Canyon in Montaña de Oro was published in Surfer magazine in 1996, even though neither the spot’s name nor its location were revealed.

Why? Because the “locals” who surf the break saw the photo as a betrayal and an exploitation of their “secret” spot—even though Hazard’s is probably the most well-known “secret” spot on the West Coast. These locals set about hassling and “vibing” anyone riding one of Curaza’s boards until he suddenly found himself without any clients.

While Curaza’s problems were primarily financial, surf altercations often turn violent.

In Shell Beach a few months ago, two surfers—both 30-something adults, mind you—ended up fist fighting on the beach because one “cut off” the other.

Greg Lampert pummeled Paul Winje, resulting in an assault charge.

Many local surfers believe Winje “got what he deserved,” since he “cut off” Lampert. California law, however, doesn’t take into account surfer etiquette, and Lampert was charged

with a crime. … … After the fight, as Lampert was gathering his things and leaving the beach, Winje walked beside him and said, “You’re going to jail.” Winje went up the cliffs and called Pismo Beach police, who pulled Lampert over a few blocks from the beach.

“I feel like I was defending myself, because he started the fight in the water when he endangered me by running his board into me,” said Lampert.

Most surfers agree Winje was in the wrong, but most also agree that Lampert went beyond mere “selfdefense,” administering a punishment more severe than the crime warranted.

“If he would have hit me once or twice, I wouldn’t have said anything,” said Winje. “But he kept pounding me. I had to have two of my friends pull him off, and he still wouldn’t let go of my hair!”

Lampert doesn’t understand how he became the bad guy in the eyes of the authorities “This guy cut me off and ran into me with his board,” said Lampert. “He voluntarily comes to the beach and voluntarily fights me. Well, guess what?

He lost, and now he’s hiding behind the police. He could have injured me.

These are things people aren’t going to understand and I’m probably going to lose in court, and on top of that he can probably sue me. But it’s not OK to enforce localism.

“I’m not trying to romanticize myself. I don’t hate this dude. I just don’t like that he pulled this localism stuff and then called the police. I hope this story will put pressure on the DA to open his eyes.” … ∆

May I have some more, sir?

BY GLEN STARKEY

I

n his own words, Mark Delaplane “killed a guy,” and for the last 32 years, he’s been paying for the crime. He’s gone through all the programs and certifications; he has seemingly been a model prisoner. He exudes an obvious intelligence and reads management books on corporate quality control theories for fun.

Yet when he talks about what he misses most about life outside of prison, this is what he says: He’d like to walk into a store, buy a fresh peach, and eat it.

“We don’t get fresh fruit in here, just a few mealy apple slices.”

The reason? “They’re afraid we’ll make alcohol with it.”

California’s prisons are overcrowded with inmates with the sort of resourcefulness it takes to turn apples into applejack wine, but, for the most part, their industriousness rarely transcends the prison walls.

This is a story about an exception to that rule.

About three years ago, when Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger issued an edict that state prisons must be reformed, it appeared that a seismic shift had occurred within our state prison system.

Schwarzenegger changed the name of the California Department of Corrections to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR). Instead of focusing on punishment, California’s prisons would focus on rehabilitating prisoners.

For 700 or so California Men’s Colony (CMC) inmates currently

involved in the Prison Industry Authority (PIA) programs, the state’s much ballyhooed promise of rehabilitation feels within reach.

These are the select few men in one of the CMC’s three PIA-managed business enterprises—a shoe factory, a knitting factory, and a printing shop—who are working at coveted jobs, which pay from 30 to 95 cents an hour. These lucky 700 are allowed to work and take classes after work hours to complete their GEDs— the equivalent of a high-school diploma. Other CMC inmates must choose between work and earning a GED. And these 700 men can also participate in certificate programs that train them vocationally, such as forklift operator or hazardous waste disposal certifications that can lead to well-paying jobs on the outside.

Without question, the PIA offers the most successful rehabilitation program in the state prison system. The recidivism rate for inmates who have gone through PIA training is vastly lower than general population inmates— about 25 percent compared to 70 percent. Yet in a state system that currently houses 170,000 prisoners, only 6,900 are employed within PIA programs; for 163,100 prisoners—5,900 of them at CMC—the promise of rehabilitation is, so far, largely unfulfilled.

Adding “Rehabilitation” to the name of the state prison system doesn’t necessarily make it so. … ∆

www.newtimesslo.com • August 18 - August 25, 2016 • New Times • 29

Happy Anniversary

to New Times from your friends at Meathead Movers!

3600 S. Higuera Street

805.544.6328 (MEAT)

30 • New Times • August 18 - August 25, 2016 • www.newtimesslo.com

866-843-6328 (MEAT)

PHOTOS COURTESY OF ALEX ZUNIGA

OLD SCHOOL In 1986, Alex Zuniga was fresh out of Cal Poly when he started helping with a fledgling New Times, which wouldn’t be produced fully digitally until the early 2000s.

Copy, cut, and paste (literally) The evolution of producing New Times

BY RYAH COOLEY

I

t was only his first job, straight out of Cal Poly. He figured he’d stay a year, tops. Instead, several decades later, Alex Zuniga still gets up and does the same things he’s done for the past 30 years: produce and design New Times, San Luis Obispo County’s weekly newspaper—although, now he’s also one of the paper’s owners.

It was Aug. 12, 1986, the day before New Times was born. Newspaper founders and friends Steve Moss (the writer/editor) and Bev Johnson (sales/ advertising) were getting a little too close to deadline and they had no one to help finish putting the paper together.

Enter Zuniga, who met Moss through a friend at school.

“They were scrambling around and had lost their production person,” Zuniga said. “I came in and it wasn’t rocket science for me because I had already been doing that at Cal Poly.”

After that first issue, he stayed on, helping to design the paper and even delivering a few, working for experience initially. The three worked on a single early Mac computer, taking turns to get everything done.

“It was a shoe-string operation in the beginning; we didn’t have the money,” Zuniga said. “I was a student. We had one computer and would share it.”

While Zuniga designed the paper on the computer back in the day using the Mac program Page Maker, the digital influence ended there. The different elements of the paper—the words, the photos—were printed out, cut up, and arranged on boards. On deadline day the newsroom floor was littered with tiny scraps of paper. The boards were then sent to the printing press where a special camera took a giant negative of each page and put that on a giant photosensitive plate and then printed

the paper. With this method the design options were limited, to say the least.

For a time, the paper was flown from SLO to Southern California where it was printed, adding another level of stress to getting things done on time.

“You couldn’t be late, you’d miss the plane,” Zuniga said.

When the paper was turning a profit, Moss sat down with Zuniga to talk money and shares in the company. Moss wanted to know how long the kid might stick around.

“It was kind of crazy so I said, ‘I imagine I can maybe stay a year,’” Zuniga said. “I wish I would have said longer because I would have gotten a larger percentage, but it worked out.”

New Times is the only grown-up job Zuniga has ever known. He’s seen it housed in different offices; he’s seen different editors, designers, and writers come and go. He’s also seen the

production of New Times go completely digital. But the newsroom wasn’t devoid of scraps of paper in production until the early 2000s (around the time New Times got a sister paper, the Sun in Santa Maria), which sounds absurdly late, but the printing presses weren’t really equipped to work with digital files until then. From a design standpoint, it was a whole new world.

That first cover in 1986 was completely in black and white, save for the red New Times logo. The cover story was on the burgeoning restaurant scene in SLO and featured a boxy image of hands holding a knife and fork, with black outlining the photo. A recent 2016 cover on prostitution (written by veteran writer Glen Starkey) featured a purposefully blurred color image of a leggy woman accepting cash.

“I was really excited about the new computers and their capabilities,” Zuniga said. “We tend to be more visual and image oriented now.”

He started out as the young college grad on staff, but today Zuniga is the veteran at New Times, the sole founder at the paper. The paper has changed and evolved since its inception, even during the Moss days, but he thinks the future is bright.

“We’ve been weaker, but I don’t know if we’ve been much stronger than we are now,” Zuniga said. “We’re in a good place. We have a strong staff and it shows in the work that we do.” ∆ Ryah Cooley hand drew newspaper dummies for Paso Robles High School’s paper, the Crimson Chronicle, back in the day at rcooley@newtimesslo.com.

Read all about it Check out New Times in real life on a newsstand near you or online at newtimesslo.com.

THE ORIGINALS New Times was founded by (left to right) Bev Johnson, Alex Zuniga, and Steve Moss. www.newtimesslo.com • August 18 - August 25, 2016 • New Times • 31

Boy, some people just can’t take a joke HEY WHAT’S THAT IN MY PEPSI? Has anyone heard the

supposed real story behind that recent piece in the TelegramTribune about the deputy SLO County prosecutor recently suspended for allegedly offending one or more female employees at the District Attorney’s office?

Apparently the suspended deputy wasn’t the only male employee in the DA’s internal investigation.

The Shredder hears there were up to three men accused of doing things their female co-workers thought were, well, let’s say a tad bit offensive.

The rumor mill also has it that there were as many as six women who complained about rude humor and raunchy jokes, not to mention an office party where a deputy prosecutor took down his pants in front of one or more women who for some reason just didn’t think the stunt was particularly funny.

Amazing how rumors get started.

UH, WE’LL GET BACK TO YOU ON THAT ONE The pro-

choice rally a couple of weekends ago in SLO Town sponsored by the local chapter of the National Organization for Women (NOW) looked more like a Gloria-Ochoa-forCongress rally than anything else.

Just wondering why no pro-choice candidates other than Ochoa, a Democrat, were speaking.

After all, if the pro-choice abortion issue really transcends party ideology as NOW contends, you’d think they’d have invited Republican congressional candidates Michael Huffington and Democratic Assembly candidate John Ashbaugh—two widely acknowledged pro-choicers—to address the rally, too.

Unless you’ve been dead, you know by now that umpteenterm incumbent Republican Bob Lagomarsino is fervently anti-choice and that any true pro-choice voter would want anyone in office but gagrule Bob. It’s not complicated: if the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade, it could be up to state legislatures to decide the issue.

HAGMAIER from page 28

In addition to financial ruin and a half dozen civil lawsuits, Hagmaier could also face criminal charges. His alleged misdeeds are currently being investigated by both the FBI and California Department of Insurance.

Yet Hagmaier remains resolute.

“I didn’t do anything wrong,” he maintains. … … Court records contain several documents and assertions that seem to indicate financial mismanagement and potential criminal wrongdoing by Hagmaier.

At the center of most of the accusations are alleged forgeries committed by Hagmaier that led to hundreds of thousands of dollars going into his bank account.

Signatures were allegedly forged,

Republican Assemblywoman Andrea Seastrand? That’s right: your local dyed-in-the-wool, fight-tothe-death right-to-lifer.

OH, GO FLY A KITER And it’s too bad the district of Republican Congressman Bill Thomas— formerly one of SLO County’s two reps in Washington—was drawn back into the San Joaquin Valley and out of this county.

Because it’d have been great fun voting against him this June, considering he bounced well over 100 checks at the House bank. With characteristic congressional regard for the people’s right to know, one of his top aides was quoted on a Bakersfield TV station as telling a reporter something like “It’s none of your business” when asked what Thomas bought with all those bad checks.

SEEEEEEEE YA It seems Bob Tapella, long-time local aide to Thomas, has jumped ship, swimming over to the Huffington campaign. Word has it that Tapella had been working with the Lagomarsino campaign, but didn’t seem to get along too well with some of the Lago crew. The Shredder hears Tapella’s move to Huffington has ruffled feathers on some Huffington supporters because of the fashion during this political season to shy far away from anything to do with the “I” word—

they don’t want their tidy candidate sullied by any of that messy, sticky, hard-to-wash-off incumbent dirt.

SCHMIDT HAPPENS

Outgoing SLO Planning Commissioner, New Times columnist, and full-time rabble rouser Richard Schmidt is giving serious thought to running for mayor of SLO, according to those in the know. Why? Mayoral candidate Penny Rappa’s pro-state water pronouncements. Why else?

GEE, WHAT A GREAT WAY TO START OFF THIS YEAR’S EARTH DAY Last

Thursday the county gave the boot to county Recycling Coordinator Karen Casper. According to the county engineer’s office, Casper didn’t pass her six-month evaluation period and, well you know, these things do happen so, hey, it’s really no big deal.

But word has it Casper was no milquetoast and was axed due to her habit of speaking her mind—a definite no-no in the county bureaucracy. Just ask Van Laurn, the guy who was in charge of the state water project for the county Engineering Department until he was “removed from the project” last year. Couldn’t seem to keep his mouth shut either when it came to saying what he thought about state water. When will these people learn to shut up and behave, anyway?

’CAUSE THEY’RE, LIKE, I MEAN, YOU KNOW, REALLY FAR OUT Just a

mention that Roger Freeberg’s bumper stickers for his county supervisor campaign look mighty psychedelic for our resident, selfproclaimed anti-drug czar.

SOMETHING STINKS Boy, get a good whiff of that recent “economic study” paid for by the tobacco industry to determine the impact of SLO Town’s no-smoking ordinance. Whew! Give us a respirator!

The startling conclusion of this so-called study was that (can you believe it?) the smoking ban is bad for business!

What else could the conclusion have been? Imagine a study paid

changing policies and giving Hagmaier higher commissions. Signatures were allegedly forged in taking out loans and receiving dividends against the equity of Hagmaier’s clients’ life insurance plans, with those monies deposited in his bank account. And signatures were allegedly forged endorsing Hagmaier’s clients’ checks for deposit into his account.

In most cases, Hagmaier is accused of having benefited directly from the alleged forgeries. In some cases, the documents show Hagmaier signed off as the witness to the signature, which further indicated he was involved in taking money from his clients.

The two most serious lawsuits against Hagmaier are from PIC Manufacturing, a Paso Robles firm that makes a specialized printing part, and from PIC’s owner, Michael Camp. …

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for by the tobacco industry that said a smoking ban is good for business.

Yeah, right.

AND NOW, THE HOLE STORY

Speaking of business, anybody read in the Telegram-Tribune about the Copeland family and how successful they are at business and how they’ve bought the big French Hole in Downtown San Luis and how they’re going to make a great, successful business out of it?

And then did you read a few days later about how the Copeland family freaked out completely over the story because their corporate policy is to never talk to the press and never allow the press to write things about them, and how those impertinent T-T folks did it anyway so Copelands pulled all its T-T advertising because the newspaper had the gall to disobey corporate policy and write about the Copelands without permission?

It wouldn’t have meant anything to anyone if the Copelands hadn’t blown their cool and started a letterwriting campaign to the T-T from family friends, all of whom seem to have little sense of community and its right to know who bought the big hole and what they’re going to do with it. The Shredder’s Press Onward Award this month goes to the T-T for delivering a story we all needed to know. Corporate policy?

In your face. ∆ The Shredder’s been keeping it real since April 16, 1992, and has no plans to stop anytime soon.

Send comments to shredder@ newtimesslo.com.

… Early this year, a federal judge ordered Hagmaier to give a deposition about the PIC fund. He did so on April 29 in Los Angeles, against the advice of his attorney, James McKanna, who advised him to exercise his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.

That deposition, with its insights and apparent contradictions, could prove to be the key to Hagmaier’s undoing.

“PIC gave us free rein to decide where to put the moneys—gave me free rein,” Hagmaier said. That statement contradicts written instructions from PIC stating, “Securities and investments are to be limited to life insurance contracts, treasury bills, notes, bonds, certificates of deposit, and money market funds offered through and guaranteed by Guardian Life Insurance Company.”

Sh F red irst de re ve r!

n s ra l 16, i h T pri A on 992.

1

So what does Hagmaier say he did with the money?

“There are two main investments in the plan. One is a series of loans to an individual, Rob Rossi, another is a loan to—a couple of loans to—Henry Byzinski,” Hagmaier stated.

In answering questions, Hagmaier went on to say that both the $250,000 “loan” to Rossi and the $175,000 “loan” to Byzinski were undocumented and included no promissory notes.

The terms were supposedly 8 percent interest and a 90-day call and he said nothing had been repaid.

Byzinski could not be reached for comment, but Rossi said Hagmaier is lying.

“I totally deny that he, or he through the PIC pension funds, loaned me any money.

It is an untruth and it is ridiculous,” Rossi said, adding that the statement “is just outright slanderous.” … ∆

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