OC WEEKLY

Vol. 10 No. 42 June 24 - 30, 2005

Diary of a Mad County

by STEVE LOWERY

Thursday, June 16

I feel the earth move under my seat while eating lunch in the office. “Oh man, that’s an earthquake,” says Theo Douglas, but I don’t pay much mind to Theo, and I mean ever. But when I see the blood drain from fearless reporter Scott Moxley’s face, I get nervous. Scott, who’s not originally from California, says, “What are we supposed to do?” To which I, a native Californian, begin to pace in ever-tightening circles, much in the same manner as brain-damaged zoo animals. My usual response during an earthquake is “Lemme sleep five more minutes, Mom.” Sylmar quake? Slept through it. Northridge? Don’t remember Northridge, except that after it was over I had to go out and talk to people whose windows had been broken by the quake and ask them what they were going to do and they all said, “Get new windows.” I wrote that for the paper I was working for at the time, and they ran it as part of an article about local heroism. Now, I do know one thing you’re supposed to have in case of an earthquake is a flashlight, and this may explain why a good deal of the Garden Grove Police Department shows up at the Westminster home of Theresa Dang today. Or they may just be screwing with her. The cops are on high alert because word on the street is that Dang took an officer’s flashlight—DUH DUH DUUUUUUH!!!—which has Homeland Security officials considering raising the terror level to eggshell. The cops say they have videotape of Dang taking the flashlight during a demonstration against Minuteman leader Jim Gilchrist. About 300 people showed up May 25 in front of the Women’s Civic Club of Garden Grove where Gilchrist was to speak. Things got out of hand, with protesters blaming cops for being too aggressive and police blaming protesters for hurling stuff at them. All of this distracts from the central issue—A FLASHLIGHT HAS GONE MISSING, PEOPLE! Dang says she’s being targeted because she made remarks critical of the cops’ handling of the protest. The cops say they are well within their rights to search for the flashlight. Defending the search, Lt. Mike Handfield says, “We have a video of her taking the flashlight. We are going to try and do everything we can to recover the flashlight.” All of this begs the question: What kind of response do you think you’d get from the cops if you called up and requested they go all Daryl Gates because you believed your flashlight was being held in a neighbor’s house? I’m guessing it probably wouldn’t be the same response, even if it was a really nice flashlight, like the best flashlight ever, with a Blaupunkt and olive bar. As it turned out, Garden Grove police never found their flashlight, which, tragically, was just two days away from retirement.