This Rose Bowl Streak Won’t Go Down in Record Books
Nothing to hide. Or: a streak of bad luck.
San Diego State student David Maiolo remembers looking behind him. He figured he would see two buddies following his naked lead.
He didn’t.
Undaunted, he just kept running: straight down the middle of the field, end zone to end zone, during halftime of the Aztec-UCLA game. The crowd (41,025) at the Rose Bowl cheered.
A streaker at a football game! What nostalgia! At last a student with reverence for the great horseplay of the past!
A bunch of security guards were less amused. Ditto the Pasadena police and city prosecutor.
Maiolo, 26, a political science major and president of Delta Upsilon fraternity, now faces misdemeanor charges of trespassing, public intoxication and indecent exposure. He figures his job as fraternity president is also in jeopardy:
“I guess somebody might say this isn’t such a good example for the younger guys.”
He says his 100-yard dash in the buff was spur of the moment.
“It was just one of those crazy things, a college prank,” he said. “It didn’t hurt anybody. I think it’s one of those things I’m going to be able to laugh about someday.”
Maiolo has become a minor campus celebrity. He gets knowing winks and high-fives wherever he goes.
He’s been called San Diego’s Naked Chicken. He’s thinking of organizing a fund-raiser to pay any court fine (he goes to court Nov. 13).
Still, he has no plans for reruns: “This was my first and last time as a streaker. I don’t want to be known as a streaker.”
And he’s concerned about what a criminal conviction could do to his dream of a career in politics:
“I guess I can’t run as a conservative. Maybe I’ll have to become a Democrat.”
Just Release the Facts, Ma’am
The big news in Rancho Santa Fe is a string of 22 “hot-prowl” burglaries starting in mid-June.
Interestingly, the big news was no news for three months because the Rancho Santa Fe Patrol opted not to tell reporters about the unusual number of break-ins occurring while homeowners were home.
Only in mid-October did patrol chief Matt Wellhouser go public. A few days later some of the loot was recovered and a suspect arrested: Felix Alvarez, 26, an illegal immigrant.
Wellhouser notes that the patrol is a private security force, not a public agency, and thus is under no legal obligation to release crime information.
He adds that many of the wealthy homeowners preferred no publicity about their misfortunes and were worried about reprisals:
“People move to Rancho Santa Fe for many reasons. One reason is that they want to protect their privacy. As their employee, I have to respect that.”
One new resident feels differently. He wrote a stinging letter to the Rancho Santa Fe Review.
Burglars don’t read newspapers, he said, and don’t engage in reprisals:
“Anybody in security protection has a duty to inform the public of the presence of a serial ‘hot prowl’ burglar. They are often armed. The public must be warned when such a criminal is at work.”
Normally, the views of a newcomer don’t mean much in staid Rancho Santa Fe. But this letter-writer does have some standing when it comes to crime and crooks:
Los Angeles cop-turned-novelist Joseph Wambaugh.
From Clean Up to Drink Up
Here we go.
* The La Jolla Town Council plans to send scolding letters to homeowners who have let their lawns go shaggy, their bushes bushy, etc.
* It pays to have friends in high places.
San Diego Gas & Electric ($5,000) and Southern California Edison ($15,000) have both made last-minute contributions to the campaign against Propositions 131 and 140, which would limit the terms of state legislators.
* San Diego Police Chief Bob Burgreen, in a letter to Channel 8, says a cop was wrong to stick his hand in front of a camera to block filming of a plane crash on the freeway near Montgomery Field.
* North County bumper sticker: “Life is a Cabernet.”
