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Columnists - Columnists: Jeff Jardine

Tuesday, Apr. 28, 2009

Jardine: GPS finds truck and suspected thieves

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BIG BROTHER -- Stanislaus County still leads, like, the entire world in per capita auto theft. But this time, score one for the tech types.

Monday, Rick Hasten of Riverbank emerged from his home at 6:25 a.m. to find that his company service truck had been stolen from his driveway. He works for Central Boiler and Industrial, a company that installs and services boilers -- really big water heaters -- in commercial buildings.

He spent the morning looking for it, no doubt boiling that his truck was gone.

Two hours later, Stanislaus County sheriff's deputies converged on a home east of Oakdale, where they found the truck, and suspects sifting through the toolboxes. They detained and questioned two women and five men as an 8-year-old boy looked on.

Two others, deputies later learned, fled into the hills -- hills known to hide a rattlesnake or two -- behind the house.

In this case, they might as well have tried to steal one of the "bait cars" that auto theft detectives use to lure thieves.

The 2002 Chevy service truck is equipped with a more advanced version of the global positioning satellite technology that law enforcement uses to monitor certain probationers.

According to the GPS service, the truck was stolen at 4:49 a.m. Every five minutes, or every time the engine stopped, the computer charted its location.

"They made several stops," Hasten said.

They stopped along the Oakdale-Waterford Highway. They stopped at a home near a wrecking yard east of Oakdale, confirmed by a friend who called Hasten to report seeing the truck there.

Hasten kept in touch with the GPS service, which had tracked the truck to the 14000 block of Orange Blossom Road.

The deputies arrived moments before Hasten.

"When we pulled up, they had their guns drawn on them," Hasten said.

Hasten stood at the entrance to the property, perhaps gloating a bit as some of the suspects stood, handcuffed, about 50 yards away.

"The thieves didn't know we had GPS," he said.

Sheriff's Sgt. Kevin Davis said investigators still were trying to sort out the who-did-what among the suspects, and hadn't booked any of them as of midafternoon Monday.

Hasten is just happy to have his truck and tools back, and that high-tech Big Brother -- the GPS -- did its job in leading them to the vehicle.

"I love it when something good happens," he said.

KNOW THIS GUY? -- Last week, authorities in Sacramento arrested Earlis W. Gray, also known, among his many aliases, as E.W. Arrington Gray and Obispo Gray, on a perjury warrant from Stanislaus County. Gray is a self-ordained minister -- Obispo, in Spanish, means bishop -- whom authorities say used multiple names and Social Security numbers to obtain multiple California driver's licenses.

He also turned a north Modesto farmhouse into an illegal dormitory for registered sex offenders. According to the property's zoning, one person could live there, or two if they were related. According to some of the offenders, as many as 25 people lived there at a time.

Gray received $575 a month per offender from the state for room and board.

Some offenders told investigators that he charged them a similar amount, claiming the state had not made the payments. Authorities believe he took one offender to the bank and the cleaners at the same time, getting the offender, who received a sizable check, to open a bank account naming him as a co-signer. The next day, authorities said, Gray emptied the account.

"He knows how to work the system pretty good," Sheriff's Detective Randy Watkins said.

Watkins wants to talk to anyone who dealt with Gray, Arrington Gray or any other names he used. Call Watkins at 525-7085.

IMAGES -- On April 18, a day after her son died of brain cancer, Kathy Dickens went to buy a digital picture frame at the Radio Shack in Vintage Faire Mall. She took her compact flash memory card, containing more than 100 photos, including one of Mark Dickens participating in the 2008 Relay For Life cancer walk.

When the clerk finished with the card, Kathy Dickens put it back into its plastic case and put the case into her pocket. Somewhere between the Radio Shack and the parking lot on the north side of the mall, she thinks, the card fell out.

Mark Dickens, 45, taught math and coached baseball at Oakdale High School. He was struck by an errant ball during a January 2008 practice. A few days later, he became woozy at school.

His wife, Mila, took him for an examination the same day. CT and MRI scans showed spots on his brain, some of which were inoperable. Chemotherapy and radiation treatments reduced the inoperable tumors, and he had surgery on the others, his mother said. But the cancer returned, and the father of two boys died April 17. He was buried Monday in Escalon.

Kathy Dickens hopes someone found the memory card and will return it either to the Radio Shack in the mall or call her at 847-1210 or 499-2598.

Jeff Jardine's column appears Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays in Local News. He can be reached at 578-2383 or jjardine@modbee.com.