The lobby of a newspaper can be a powerful attractant to people who believe their story should be told.
Over the years I’ve heard tales of lost gold mines, crooked probate courts, scheming landlords, high-level CIA/FBI conspiracies and heart-wrenching stories detailing the cost of drug abuse, rape and murder.
It’s the stuff that used to make talk radio appealing.
That was back in the time before hosts stopped taking calls and simply turned to using their three hours of radio time to rant and spew ala Limbaugh, Hannity, Kobylt and Chiampou.
That said, very few of the tales I have heard ever made their way into print.
I could probably list a dozen reasons for that: lack of space; lack of time; lack of verifiable sourcing. But it doesn’t stop the tide of storytellers who believe that newspapers are their last resort.
In recent weeks, I’ve been visited several times by a woman who thinks she has one of those stories. She brought me a ream of paperwork that includes bank statements, court records and handwritten notes. She asked that I hold onto them because she feared possessing the documents would cause her harm.
I’m not sure why she feels that way, the documents that aren’t public record are indecipherable.
The woman, who identified herself as Marilyn Ross, has been back two or three times, and little-by-little more of her story has emerged.
In the mid-1990s Ross turned her son in for murder. She said the act brought her scorn and ridicule in the community. Nonetheless she said she appeared on the “Rolonda Show” and discussed the case.
“He was a Crip, and I did the right thing,” Ross recalled.
Since then, she’s bounced from home to home, primarily in Los Angeles, but now she’s living on the streets of West Covina.
I asked where.
“There’s a church with grove behind it, so I stay there,” she said. “Or I go to the Starbucks at Eastland.”
That’s probably the whole story. I’ll never know. And doubtless there are many men and women living through similar tough times on streets throughout the San Gabriel Valley.
Sometimes they just need someone to listen.
The first time I encountered this was when I worked at The Los Angeles Herald-Examiner in the late 1980s.
One gloomy Saturday morning in June a security guard at the back door called up to the city room. He asked Chuck Hubbs, the editor, if someone could come downstairs to speak to a guy with a story idea.
As the copy boy, I was low man on the totem pole.
I made my way down, and standing in the alleyway was a 6-foot, 7-inch bald monster of a man clutching a ream of ledger paper stuffed into a binder with a bunch of other stuff piled on top.
His gripe was the government conspiracy out to ruin his life.
The CIA had planted a bug in his brain back in the 1960s. Every move was monitored.
After about 20 minutes, I excused myself and called upstairs.
“Chuck, what should I do?”
“Is he wearing a foil hat?” Chuck responded.
“Nope.”
“Tell him we’re part of the same conspiracy and get back to work.”
I’ve never seen a big man move so fast.