Crescent City Police are looking for the “meanest thief in Del Norte County” following a complaint filed by a local man that his car had been stolen.

Emil Hartig of Crescent City reported that someone had stolen the family car, a 1958 model, as it was parked in front of Veteran’s Memorial Hall.

The car contained his 14-year-old Chihuahua dog and his wife’s crutches. The Hartigs have had the little 3-pound dog all these years. Due to its age, the dog has no teeth, needs special care, and can only be fed certain food.

If the car is not found, Hartig will have to buy his wife another set of crutches so she can get around. Both are retired senior citizens and are living on a modest pension.

Oldest veterans sought

When you watch a football game, every offensive play starts with the center snap. Ray played the center position for the Warrior junior varsity and varsity during his entire four year career. I know that as a football coach I always looked for someone I could trust to put in that key position. With Ray there I knew the play would always start right, whether it ended that way or not.

Ray only played baseball  for one year as it was not his favorite activity. The sport that he was really good at beside football was swimming. Ray swam in the local age group swim program from the time he was old enough to do so and was very successful.

After graduation Ray became involved with coaching in the local youth program. It was something he did for 10 years as he served as head coach in two different age groups.

After his experience with the youth program Ray joined Steve Luis, Del Norte’s junior varsity head coach as his offensive line coach. At two different times, when Steve was waging his battle with cancer, Ray served as interim head coach and did an excellent job. Ray is now serving as the varsity offensive line coach for the Warriors under Bob Hadfield.

Ray has worked for the Department of Corrections for several years and just recently took a position at Pelican Bay as a fire captain.

That was the case about 8 years ago when we were heading north. We pulled off the highway and drove under the Welcome to Bandon arch and parked next to a gift shop called The Brass Rose. The shop is gone now, but when it was open for business you could walk right through it to the public restrooms between the shop and a real estate office.

This particular time Rick wanted to stop and I decided to wait in the car. Rick zipped in and zipped out of the shop, and when he came out he was carrying a small book. “What’s that?” I asked. “I saw it and it looked interesting, so I bought it,” he said.

The most incredible part of this true story is that Rick actually shopped during his 5-minute excursion into this typical coastal gift shop filled with nautical knick-knacks and souvenirs. Rick is not a shopper. He won’t go into a store without a list and never deviates from his list. If we need bananas, for example, he’ll drive to one of the grocery stores in town and come home with bananas, just bananas, nothing else.

In last Tuesday’s column I had written that “summer is over.” It wasn’t an easy admission, since I’m a summer person by nature and we don’t get nearly enough of it. I sent the column in over the weekend, and so the pending storm was a complete surprise to me Tuesday morning, when the barometer plummeted and my ears began to pop. Summer over indeed!

I don’t have television, don’t listen to the radio and take my weather as it comes. I just try to have emergency supplies on hand. Other than The Daily Triplicate, my source of news is a well-balanced weekly news magazine. The Week keeps me informed so I can vote responsibly on other than local issues, without subjecting me to a daily deluge of hysteria and a sense of helplessness.

I’m one of the many fortunate residents of our area who suffered no storm damage whatsoever, if you don’t count the drips that developed into a waterfall that flowed from the top of a bedroom window. It was actually sort of pretty.

Laura and I headed out aimlessly for a walk late Saturday morning. Maybe a jog. We didn’t have a specific plan until we saw something special at sea.

There’s an unusual access at the north end of the Pebble Beach Drive bluff, just before the road curves into its descent toward Washington Boulevard. A long stairway takes you not all the way to the beach, but to the flat top of a rock wall. It’s a mini-adventure getting down to the sand from there at low tide. You wouldn’t even try at high tide.

We often descend these stairs partway to a perch perfect for watching sunsets. If the tide is way in, the waves crashing against that rock wall provide their own entertainment.

On Saturday, we just happened to arrive when the tide was way in. It was the peak of the highest tide in many weeks, and we didn’t need a chart to figure that out. Muscular waves were lining up for their crack at the shore.