Lancaster probe top 1998 story

What began as an investigative report on one mid-level administrator in the Public Works Department quickly became a journey into the workings of City Hall.

More significantly, the Valley Press investigative report on Public Works Superintendent David Mulkey figured among the launch points for a federal investigation that continues into the new year.

The story examined and largely confirmed allegations of official misconduct, favoritism, misuse of city property and slipshod hiring practices.

And even as reporters were trying to track the reactions of a City Hall reluctant to comment, FBI agents and hazardous materials units raided the Public Works yard in Lancaster to seek evidence of what they suspected might be a toxic waste dump of some kind.

By year's end, the original subject of the probe - Mulkey - left his job under pressure. Meanwhile, city officials and employees were preparing to give testimony before a federal grand jury, and City Hall quickly ran past the $100,000mark in legal expenses.

Where it all will lead beyond that is a story for 1999.

2. Everybody loves a mystery, and the No. 2 Antelope Valley story of 1998 was an original.

It all began June 28, 1997, the day Hollywood screenwriter Gary Devore vanished without a trace while driving his Ford Explorer home to Carpinteria from a job in New Mexico.

Authorities had just about given up hope of ever finding 55-yearold Devore, when an amateur sleuth in San Diego came up with the theory that Devore's big vehicle ran off the highway and into the California Aqueduct on the outskirts of Palmdale.

Sure enough, sheriff's divers found the vehicle and Devore's body inside.

At year's end, authorities still had no definitive cause of death for the writer of such screenplays as "Running Scared" and "Raw Deal." Nor were investigators able to say for certain how Devore's SUV managed to get into the aqueduct without being witnessed.

3. The politics of health care was in full bloom in 1998 as Antelope Valley Hospital CEO Robert Harenski became a lightning rod for controversy.

Already embroiled in a long dispute with elected board members over terms of his complicated contract, Harenski delivered an ultimatum to the board in July to resolve the issue in his favor or face a lawsuit.

The board responded by placing the CEO on paid leave, which later became a negotiated termination. In the aftermath, the hospital board turned over in the November election, and new directors brought back Mathew Abraham, a former interim administrator as the newest interim administrator.

4. Beginning before dawn on April 1, Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies began "Operation April Fools Roundup," the closing act to a massive covert sting operation code-named "Project Men In Black."

But unlike the characters in the movie, "Men In Black," who went after renegade extraterrestrials, this M.I.B. team of 360 law enforcement officers served arrest warrants at dozens of Antelope Valley locations, arresting individuals who allegedly sold drugs and stolen goods to a storefront operation staffed by sheriff's investigators.

The storefront, operating within sight of the Lancaster Sheriff's Station at Lancaster Boulevard and Sierra Highway, was open four months beginning Nov. 15, 1997. By the time the storefront operation was finally closed on March 15, undercover deputies had recovered more than $1 million worth of stolen goods by paying slightly over $83,000 - about 8 cents on the dollar.

While 55 men, women and juveniles were arrested in the big sweep involving 85 locations, 17 others, identified by deputies as the most violent criminals, were arrested in the days leading up to the roundup.

When it was all over, 72 people had been arrested at locations throughout the Antelope Valley. In all, warrants were issued for 90 suspects.

The money and backing for the operation came from the city of Lancaster, which put up about $350,000 from a federal grant without knowing details of the operation. Deputies said 93% of those caught in the sting had criminal records and 38% of those arrested in Project M.I.B. were also out of prison on parole or were on probation. Forty percent were identified as gang members.

5. State Route 138, also called Pearblossom Highway, is a toll road with a heavy price, costing the lives of 74 people in the past five years.

The two-lane "California Deathway" between Palmdale and Victorville was slammed back into public consciousness in August when three Antelope Valley people were killed in a four-car crash.

Since 1993, 1,719 people were injured in accidents on Highway 138 between State Route 14 and I15, according to California Highway Patrol statistics. Less than 1% of the 1,823 accidents reported on this stretch of highway in the last five years were non-injury.

The nature of accidents on Highway 138, which are all too often head-on collisions, make for spectacular impacts, and horrific results.

The August fatalities were added to California Highway Patrol records that already showed Highway 138 east of Palmdale had the most fatalities of any road in the Antelope Valley, with eight fatal crashes since 1996.

Antelope Valley officials have lobbied the state for decades to have the heavily traveled highway widened and improved. Caltrans, which plans for construction to begin in 2002, intends to widen Highway 138 from 47th Street East to State Route 18 near the San Bernardino County line.

6. Skunk Works and X-planes: Events of 1998 showed that reports of the aerospace industry's demise in the Antelope Valley were greatly exaggerated. Led by the Lockheed Martin Skunk Works, local aerospace projects gained new altitude in some critical areas as older programs wound down.

Boeing and Lockheed captured headlines with their race to win the joint strike fighter prototype competition, and area officials scurried to create an atmosphere which would induce the winner to build production models at Air Force Plant 42.

A downside story on the aerospace front was the federal government's refusal to allow the planned merger of Lockheed Martin with B-2 bomber builder Northrop Grumman.

7. Rite Aid: House-rich and jobpoor Antelope Valley got a shot of workforce happiness when the giant national drugstore chain Rite Aid announced in January that it would build a 1 million-square-foot regional distribution and customer support center in the Fox Field Industrial Corridor.

The center, due to open in the fall of 1999, is expected to employ about 400 people at opening and up to 850 with complex expansion to 1.5 million square feet in about three years.

8. Weather: El Nino, the longpredicted deluge from warming tropical seas, delivered an El Grande-size weather pattern to the Antelope Valley, with seemingly endless days of record rainfall producing floods and a bumper crop of desert wildflowers.

9. Mullins: The mysterious murder of Renee Mullins, one of the most shocking Valley crime stories of 1997, became a top courtroom drama of 1998.

At year's end, Scott Mullins, estranged husband of the victim whose body was found in the California Aqueduct, was awaiting sentencing after being found guilty Dec. 1 of second-degree murder.

Scott Mullins, 35, was arrested in May 1998 after a seven-month investigation led Los Angeles County sheriff's homicide detectives to conclude he was responsible for killing his wife of 14 years. DNA evidence was key to the arrest and prosecution.

Renee, a popular public relations employee at a well-known Valley orthodontist's office, vanished Aug. 10, 1997, after she failed to keep an appointment with friends.

Her body was found three days later, tangled in a control gate in the aqueduct near 110th Street West.

10. The Valley was stunned when a popular and successful Paraclete High School honor student, school leader and top athlete was accused of injuring a motorist by throwing a chunk of concrete onto her car on the AV Freeway.

Football star Tommy Breech was arraigned in juvenile court in Lancaster a day before his high school team's CIF Southern Section Division XII championship game.

Paraclete beat Kilpatrick 25-14 at Antelope Valley College to become the third Valley team to win consecutive titles.