Stealing a Souvenir From the Seat of Power

As a collector of the memorable and the trivial, KFMB radio announcer Mark Larson thought he had hit the jackpot at last week’s Sports Arena rally featuring President Reagan.

As co-emcee of the event, Larson spied a 3-by-5 card on the chair reserved for Reagan. Like all good political documents, it was terse but dramatic. In hand-drawn block letters, it said simply, The President.

“I knew instantly I had to have it for my Book of Dreams,” Larson said. “Sure, most people would think I just made it up myself, but at least I’d have the pleasure of knowing that I had something that had actually been sat on by the presidential rear-end.”

But, when the cheering was over and Reagan had departed, the card was missing. Other seat cards for lesser dignitaries remained, but the presidential card was gone.

Larson was crestfallen. His chance at possessing a national treasure had been cruelly taken away.

Then the snapshots taken by KFMB came back from the drugstore. One showed Reagan standing and shaking hands at the rally’s finale. From the row behind him, Assemblyman Larry Stirling (R-San Diego) was caught in the act of leaning over to snatch something from the seat of the President’s chair.

Larson, tongue firmly in cheek, called loudly for the card’s return or, as a compromise, that it be bequeathed to the Smithsonian.

Stirling, it turns out, is also a collector. He wanted the presidential card to go along with his other political keepsakes, like the birth notice for his 18-year-old daughter, signed first by Reagan as governor and then again after he went to Washington.

“I didn’t know that Mark was so interested in history,” Stirling laughed. “I’d be glad to give him the card. I’ll just take my Magic Marker pen and make one of my own.”

Peer Praise

In San Diego, attorney Alex Landon is a political hot potato. Amid a controversy over his past, the Board of Supervisors dropped its previous support for a Landon-led legal aid program for the poor.

The view of Landon among his legal peers nationally seems quite different.

He has been selected to receive the Reginald Heber Smith award from the 25,000-member National Legal Aid & Defenders Assn. for his decade of work to improve legal services for the indigent. (Smith wrote the classic “Justice and the Poor” in 1919.)

The award, the highest given to a full-time defense attorney, will be bestowed at the group’s annual convention, which will be held next month in San Diego.

“We think it’s reprehensible the way Alex has been singled out for personal attacks in San Diego,” said Mary Broderick, an official with the Washington-based association.

A Different Tune

No, the San Diego Symphony did not have Michael Dukakis in mind when it listed among its subscriber benefits: Liberal Exchange Privileges.

Sign of Vigilantism

Something there is in Encinitas that hates signs.

First were the still unknown culprits who scooped up dozens of subdivision signs lining local streets a few years ago and became instant folk heroes. Then Earth First!, the radical environmental group, sawed down a billboard in the San Elijo Lagoon and, later, after the board was restored, splashed it with anti-growth graffiti.

And now the signs of City Council candidates Gail Hano and John Davis are disappearing from lawns. Hano has offered $1,000 for information leading to the arrest of the sign stealers, Davis upped the ante to $5,000.

“We have a group of sign vigilantes who are very active in this community,” Hano said.

Earth First! member Claude Mathis (the group is tribal and therefore has no official leader) says the Hano-Davis signs caper is not the work of Earth First!

“This sounds like small-time vandalism,” Mathis protested. “ We try to do things with some style and wit.”