Robber Stole Innocence Along With the Cash

A bank robber has fled from Ramona with several hundred dollars and a chunk of the community’s dwindling small-town naivete.

“It’s another sad sign that Ramona is growing up,” said Chamber of Commerce President Eddie Bacorn, who owns a freight company.

“We never thought it would happen here,” said Yutta Moore, manager of Ramona Hair Co.

Indeed it hadn’t happened--at least not since 1886, when the community got its own name and post office and when community record-keeping began. Bank robberies may be epidemic elsewhere, but Ramona’s five financial institutions had been untouched.

That ended one recent afternoon when the “Envelope Series” robber struck the Security Pacific National Bank by thrusting a note scribbled on an envelope at a teller and simulating a gun in his pocket. He’s wanted by the FBI for similar hits in San Marcos, Fallbrook, Escondido, Carlsbad and Encinitas.

“This was definitely our first bank job,” said Ramona historian Guy Woodward. “We had a bomb scare when the Mitsubishi Bank opened, but it didn’t turn out to be much.”

The holdup was so quick and smooth that most employees and customers didn’t know it was happening. That, too, is a sign of how much Ramona and the rest of rural North County have changed, said bank manager Margaret Edsall.

In the old days, she said, everybody would have known if a stranger walked into the bank. Word would have spread immediately.

“I guess that day is gone forever,” Edsall said.

In Memory of Old Boys

Solana Beach has been a city for 2 1/2 years, but residents haven’t forgotten the final years of absentee governing under the watch-us-grow Board of Supervisors.

So when Councilwoman Margaret Schlesinger stepped down this week as the city’s first mayor, former leaders of the pro-incorporation movement--now calling themselves Residents Against Tacky Stuff (RATS)--presented her with a hammered-brass, spittoon-looking object.

It was meant to symbolize Schlesinger’s role in liberating Solana Beach from the old-boy politics of the past.

“We remember those round trips to San Diego (to the supervisors’ meetings), where either the issue was delayed or nobody would listen to us,” said RATS leader Gayle Paparian.

Mayor Sour on Sweet Talk

No one doubts that Howard P. Allen, the boss of Southern California Edison, has political clout when it counts.

Chula Vista Councilman David Malcolm, one of the more outspoken opponents of Edison’s planned buyout of SDG&E;, calls Allen “one of the roughest, toughest, best politically connected persons in the state, who has only begun to play hardball with San Diego.”

When Allen was rebuffed in a bid for a private meeting with San Diego Mayor Maureen O’Connor, who is leading the anti-buyout drive, he turned to one of his oldest political friends, U. S. Sen. Alan Cranston. Cranston is also a longtime friend of O’Connor and her husband, Robert O. Peterson. Failing to reach the mayor by phone, Cranston has now written her a letter, saying, in part:

Allen “simply wanted me to tell you that he is an OK guy--and I am glad to do so. I’ve known Howard for about 40 years. . . . He is a fine person, honest, not a reactionary utility type, and I am confident will do his best to treat San Diego consumers fairly.

“I assume he will be wanting to talk to you sometime soon now that the merger is accomplished, and I urge you to see him.”

Cranston told O’Connor, a fellow Democrat, that, although Allen is a Republican and has helped raise money for Republican Sens. Robert Dole of Kansas and Robert Packwood of Oregon, “he has also helped in some of my fund-raising efforts.”

So far, Cranston has not been able to return the favor.

There will be no private meeting, said the mayor’s press secretary. All communication between Allen and O’Connor will be in a public hearing.