It was early December 1981 when I got the sad news that my dear friend from San Francisco had suffered a fatal heart attack. As Youth Leader, he went Christmas caroling with the church youth group. Following the caroling he returned home, sat down in his easy chair and suffered a massive heart attack that took his life. The news of his death struck me very hard. I felt deeply grieved for my loss, but even more so for the loss his dear wife suffered.
Following this news, three friends from San Diego joined me in a plan to drive to San Francisco the following Monday. We wanted to support his wife at the funeral scheduled for Tuesday afternoon. One of my friends volunteered to use his diesel Oldsmobile for the trip and with superior fuel mileage it would help minimize our expenses. Since we all had jobs we also wanted to minimize time away from our work. We agreed to leave after work Monday evening. We planned to spend the night in a motel five to six hours into the journey and then continue on to San Francisco for the funeral on Tuesday morning. Our return required us to drive through the night, each sharing the driving to return home by early morning Wednesday, thereby missing only one day of work.
The drive up to Coalinga was uneventful and we found a convenient Motel 6 just off the freeway. In the morning we had breakfast at a nearby restaurant before continuing our journey.
We arrived at the church for the funeral service where we were able to greet and share the special memories we experienced with our dear departed friend. His wife was touched that we took the time and made the effort to come to share this special time with her. After the fellowship that followed we said our goodbyes and set out on our homeward journey at about eight o’clock that evening.
I volunteered to drive the first leg of the return trip home. It was quite cold that evening and we were not well prepared for that, considering we were travelling in a warm car. Fortunately the traffic was light, so we were making good time as soon as we reached Interstate 5. I noted that all my passengers were now sound asleep.
As the interstate highway entered the central valley, a dense tule fog bank moved in and visibility began to become a significant issue. Tule fog is a thick ground fog that settles in the San Joaquin Valley and Sacramento Valley areas of California’s Great Central Valley. Tule fog forms from late fall through early spring after the first significant rainfall. The official time frame for tule fog to form is from November 1 to March 31. This phenomenon is named after the tule grass wetlands of the Central Valley. Tule fog is the leading cause of weather-related accidents in California.
Although traffic was very light, I still cut my speed because there are usually large semi tractor trailers on the freeway and they often travel slowly. I didn’t want to risk coming up on one and not having sufficient space to avoid an accident. Then about two hours into the trip, I noticed something that caused me considerable concern.
The car seemed to be acting abnormal. The engine lacked the normal feel it had before. I poked the owner of the car and woke him up. I explained that I was concerned that something was seriously wrong with the car’s performance. He suggested we take the next exit that had a gas station.
A few miles further I exited the freeway and pulled into a gas station. We inquired as to any available diesel engine mechanics and were told that we needed to go further south to find a station with diesel repair capability. At this point I asked my friend who owned the car to take over the driving.
About a half hour later, the engine suddenly froze up forcing us to abruptly exit the freeway. We maneuvered the car a few feet off the shoulder on an open spot of dirt and parked. In this area, farmland blanketed both sides of the freeway and many miles between exits. On each side of the road was a paved shoulder and then about thirty to fifty feet of open field before a barbed wire fence that bordered a farm. Large balls of tumbleweed littered the landscape. It was quite desolate, foggy and bitterly cold.
At first I was not too concerned, thinking that we would easily find someone to stop and give one of us a ride to the next exit where a tow truck could be summoned. By now it was well after ten o’clock, the fog growing denser and the temperature dropping.
All four of us got out of the car and attempted to flag down someone. I am not sure what the reason was, but after a half hour we were unable to get anyone to stop. Maybe they couldn’t see us for the fog, or seeing four men caused them fear. With the very light traffic, there were not many opportunities either. The weather was also getting to us as our light clothing did not give much protection from the damp cold.
We decided three of us would return to the car and try with just one of us doing the flagging. Soon a light blue Monte Carlo came to screeching halt, bypassing our position by a good thirty yards and kicking up a huge cloud of dust. Now on the paved shoulder, the car backed up and came to a halt adjacent to our car. One of my friends exited our car and three young men exited the Monte Carlo. They greeted us and said they would help us fix our car.
We told them that the engine had seized up and we really needed a tow truck. They said they would take one of us down to the next exit where we could summon a tow truck. I volunteered to go since I had an AAA card with towing privileges. One of my friends, Dave, also volunteered to join me so I would not be alone with the three strangers.
The Monte Carlo was a two-door coupe so one of the men entered the back seat first followed by me in the middle and Dave behind the passenger seat. Then the driver and the other man got in. We reentered the freeway and headed south.
I figured by the appearance of these three strangers and their apparent ages, that they were probably basketball players and maybe attended Fresno State University. I gauged their ages as late teens or early twenties. I quickly realized that they were not interested in engaging my attempts at conversation. Then, the man in the front passenger seat bent down and came up with a sawed-off double barrel shotgun. He swung it around and put the barrels into my face and announced, “This is a stick up!”
As I looked down the barrels of that gun, I suddenly realized in those few moments that my life may be about to end. All I thought of was my wife and my son and my family. I silently prayed. I do not know all of what I asked for, but I do remember thinking: is this all You want of me God, or is there more You want me to do?
I tried to talk the gunman down, but the driver immediately slammed on his brakes. The car skidded off the road sliding off the shoulder into the dirt. As soon as the car came to a stop, the driver turned and grabbed my throat, pushing me up against the rear window and screamed. “If you don’t shut up, we will kill you right now!”
Then he demanded that we give them all our money including our wallets, keys and watches. The man in the back seat collected all that we had and proceeded to count the cash. The driver had warned us that if we didn’t have enough cash we would be shot.
The man next to me finally announced that we had a total of sixty five dollars, which was not nearly enough according to the driver. With this, the gunman exited the car and stood at the open door with the shot gun in hand. He pushed his seatback forward and ordered us out of the car. The driver commanded us to walk to the barb wire fence a few yards away. He warned us not to look back as we did not want to know when the shots were fired.
Slowly, Dave stepped out of the car and slowly took a few steps toward the fence. As I was exiting the car I noticed that the gunman was standing behind the door holding the shot gun pointed toward the ground. As soon as my feet hit the ground, Dave bolted north toward the rear of the car and I immediately followed. We ran as fast as we could, hurdling over the myriad of three to four foot diameter balls of tumbleweed strewn all around us.
The air was cold and humid from the dense fog making breathing very painful. Every labored breath felt like breathing in razorblades. My lungs were stinging and my heart pounding. After running and hurdling over numerous tumble weeds for about thirty yards, I tripped over a large one and fell to the ground. I peered back through the tumbleweed that tripped me up and saw the gunman break open his shotgun, pull out the two shells and toss them into the front seat. He jumped back into the car and they sped off continuing south on the freeway.
Dave and I regrouped and immediately attempted to flag down a driver. Within a few minutes, a large older model Cadillac pulled over and offered us a ride. I got into the front passenger seat and Dave took the back seat. On the back seat sat a large cooler. I told the driver we had just been hi-jacked and needed to get to a place to call the police and find a tow truck for our still stranded friends. The driver said that there was a Denny’s restaurant a few miles further south and we could take care of those needs there.
In the meantime, he offered us a beer from the cooler on the back seat. Then to my shock, I realized that the driver was not only drinking a beer, but he was also smoking a marijuana joint! If that wasn’t disconcerting enough, he was driving at 80 miles an hour through the dense tule fog that offered no more than fifty yards visibility. As I had been praying silently throughout this ordeal for God’s gracious support, I asked Him “What are you doing? It seems we have gone from the frying pan into the fire!”
Soon we arrived at the Lost Hills exit on Interstate 5 and proceeded to the Denny’s restaurant. As we pulled into the parking lot, I noticed a light blue Monte Carlo. “Oh no” I thought, “they are here!”
We cautiously entered the restaurant. There were three men at a table that looked very much like our hijackers, but they had their backs to us so we couldn’t be sure. So we slinked into a closed section of the restaurant where we summoned a waitress. I apprised her of our situation and she guided us to a location not visible to those in the open restaurant area. She brought us a phone and gave us the number of the California Highway Patrol. I called the number and told the officer our story. He said he would be able to get there in about 45 minutes.
The waitress brought us a cup of coffee and told us that there was a tow truck driver at the bar. I asked her to bring him over so we can get him to pick up our friends stranded with the car. The man was quite impressive. He sported a full beard and wore weathered jeans with a large chain looping from a belt loop to the wallet in his back pocket. I explained the situation and he assured us that he would take care of our friends. Then as if to reassure us, he put his cowboy boot clad foot on a chair and pulled up the pant leg to reveal a pearl handled silver 45 pistol. He remarked, “I am covered for anything!” He promptly left to find our friends in the disabled car.
It was now almost midnight, so while we waited for the police to arrive, I called my wife at home in San Diego. I told her what had happened and asked her to alert the San Diego police and to cancel our credit cards.
Forty-five minutes after our initial call, a California Highway Patrol officer arrived at Denny’s. In the interim the three possible perpetrators had left the restaurant. We gave the officer a report of what happened and a description of the car they were driving. He left in pursuit of the felons.
Shortly thereafter, Dave and I were sitting at the bar having another coffee and an English muffin when the door opened and young man entered the restaurant. When I looked at him, a total stranger, he seemed to me to be in shock. He appeared pale and was walking tentatively. I jumped off my seat and ran to him. I asked him what had happened to him. He looked me in the eyes and told me that three men with a double barrel sawed off shot gun hijacked his car and left him on the side of the road. I quickly hustled him to the phone, dialed the police and told him to tell the officer exactly what happened and to describe his car.
I later discovered that within a few minutes, the officer located the perpetrators in this young man’s car and were in hot pursuit. The police pursuit took hours, chasing the three men hundreds of miles at speeds in excess of 100 miles per hour. They raced all the way to the Magic Mountain amusement park on the northern end of Los Angeles. There, the three men abandoned their stolen car and attempted to scale the fences and escape into the park. It was early morning on Wednesday when the police apprehended two of the men. The third, the driver, made good his escape into the park when he successfully scaled the fence before the police could reach him.
With two men in custody, the police summoned a SWAT team. They entered the park and continued pursuit of the final perpetrator. However, he was able to elude the SWAT team and the police canine unit. When the park’s maintenance crew arrived shortly thereafter, they found the last man trying to phone his girl friend from a pay phone and apprehended him.
While the pursuit of the third accomplice was underway, the other two men were brought back to the Shafter police station and booked into prison. While this was unfolding, my two friends who stayed with the car were picked up by the tow truck driver and the car was towed into Shafter where there was a car dealership. The car was dropped off and left for the needed repairs. We rented a car to get home, but before we could leave the police took Dave and me to the county jail for a line-up. As we walked through the county jail, past a row of jail cells, there was a chill that crawled up my spine as I looked at the men incarcerated there. Hate and anger glared from their faces.
We were led into a room with a glass window that was a one-way mirror, so that those in the adjoining room could not see us. Both of us quickly identified the two men that were in custody.
Finally, reunited with our other two friends, we packed into the rental car and headed homeward. All along the way we listened to the news that was reporting whole incident. As we drove we heard that the police had apprehended the third man who had escaped into Magic Mountain amusement park.
Later that day we arrived home, but the ordeal was not yet over. News stations in San Diego and Los Angeles tried to get an interview, but I refused as I didn’t want to jeopardize any future court case. The headlines in our local paper read:
FOG-VEILED ROBBERY: 3 suspects held in heist on I-5
A few months went by when Dave and I were summoned to appear in court in Shafter. We journeyed to Shafter and were again brought to the jail for another line-up. This time we failed to identify the perpetrators. In the time they were incarcerated, they grew facial hair and altered their appearance by changing their hair style. The prosecutors told us that the case was very tentative because we were unable to identify the men. They showed us all the stolen wares that were recovered and we could easily identify our wallets and wristwatches. I noted that my keys were missing. We were asked to stay in a room that housed local high school yearbooks. Along with the young man whose car was hijacked, we spent a couple hours passing the time paging through the collection of yearbooks.
When the prosecutors returned, they told us that the attorneys for the three men negotiated a plea bargain. Their clients were sentenced to nine years without parole in San Quentin state prison. The prosecutor said that when the attorneys peered through the window into the room and saw us in business suits, they realized we would be credible witnesses. Their hard bargaining softened and they gave in to the conditions dictated by the prosecution.
Our belongings were returned to us and we actually got more cash than we had lost. I got my wallet and wristwatch back but lost the only thing that had significant sentimental value, my key chain. The gold plated key chain itself was engraved with my initials, given to me as best man in my brother’s wedding. The chain also had a small gold plated engraved pen knife, given to me as best man in my college roommate’s wedding. But most painful was that it had my wife’s high school ring attached to it.
Turning Points:
The first turning point was that in that brief moment when my next breathe of life was in doubt, my only thought was my family, those I hold most dear, it was vividly revealed what I valued most in life. I had reached out to my God, put myself in His hands and He preserved me.
The next turning point in this experience was the revelation resulting from the loss of what I had held as great sentimental value. By losing it, I realized that it is foolish to place your value on anything material. Rather place your value on the people who you cherish in life. They are invaluable and irreplaceable. Never underestimate their value to you and never limit your love for them.
The third turning point was the deep friendship that developed between Dave and me. His sentiments, expressed in an interview reported in the school newspaper where he worked as a teacher, perfectly define our common feelings:
“I have a different outlook on life now,” explained Polich. “My priorities are different; spiritual things are more important now. I’m a very religious person, and I think God must have something for me to do in life, because there was no reason for the robbers not to kill us – we got a good look at them.”
Finally, in what may seem to be an odd sort of way, I find myself indebted to those three misguided young men. What they intended for evil, God used to create blessings for Dave and me that became turning points for our lives.
COPYRIGHT © 2014 ALLAN E. MUSTERER
Ron & Allan, June 16, 1945
A typical train car on the train to Rutherford New Jersey
