Captain Larry Carlson in Snorkel basket: "We don’t even have to have someone in the basket to use the nozzle."

Pinned inside our car

Thank you for re-printing the June 8, 2000 article “A shift at San Diego’s 2nd busiest fire station") by Ernie Grimm about the North Park fire station.

Chow time at Station 14

We recently had an interaction with both the police and the fire department when our car was crushed by a van in Normal Heights. They both arrived within minutes. No one was hurt. But my husband was pinned inside our car by two vehicles. Very scary.

The police department especially gets a lot of heat these days, but I have nothing but praise for the police and firefighters who spend the day responding to incidents that most of us wouldn’t go near.

The next time anyone has a complaint about either agency, ask yourself what you do in the case of a heart attack, burglary, assault, or fire. We are very grateful to have these lifesavers in our midst.

• Barry and Phyllis
• Normal Heights

We eat dollar-store food

I could not believe the woman that took such advantage of the guy that could just not say no to the woman asking for groceries (Golden Dreams). I bet he was not the first person of the day to help her, but he was most likely the most.

The total was $250, more than my own family’s weekly grocery budget.

I was in the Navy and have a hard time now getting by, as it seems my money is gone after I pay the bills each month, and if there is any left, I try to take my daughter grocery shopping, but for the last few months, I can’t make it, so we eat dollar-store food and dollar menu items from fast food to make it. I would rather go to the store and spend $150, but if you only have $40, it’s not worth the hassle.

I’m hoping this month again I can buy food, still not sure yet, had a flat tire that took all I could come up with. I could not imagine asking people to buy me groceries; there are food banks, food places, and more if I got that far down, but I somehow make it each month, so far anyway. $250 worth of food, and steaks, my God, what a good life.

I can’t even go to the meat section, except for hot dogs, the guy that paid, that will just make more people come out after reading that, I could have seen him buying them lunch, but a cart full of food, you could of helped the military wounded with that money, but if he can afford to give it away to strangers, good for him.

• Doug
• El Cajon

Did not work for President Trump

Don Bauder’s column, “Kasowitz flack cut his teeth in San Diego,” has both misleading statements and errors. I received one call from Mr. Bauder on July 14. Counter to my normal practice, I did not call him back. I have no knowledge of any other call or email from him other than that first call.

Winston Wolfe (played by Harvey Keitel) in Pulp Fiction

Having said that, non-responsiveness does not absolve your columnist or your publication of ensuring that what is published is accurate and not misleading. While I haven’t communicated with Don in some time, this is atypical of the work I have seen from him over the years.

Here are some examples:

Mr. Bauder writes: “And the top dogs really mismanaged Wickes, while Sitrick sang their praises. In 1980, Wickes bought a hodge-podge consumer company, inheriting a bundle of debt while interest rates were soaring.” I didn’t join Wickes until mid-May 1981, so I couldn’t have been singing management’s praises in 1980. Further, senior management was very much aware of the position the company was in when I arrived and I didn’t “sing their praises” during the nine months between the time I joined the company in 1981 and Sandy Sigoloff took over as CEO as 1982. I did, however, point out Mr. Sigoloff’s past and current achievements.

Mr. Bauder writes: “Sanford Sigoloff, a notorious hatchet man, took over Wickes...Sigoloff got mixed up with junk-bond king Michael Milken and sold off much of Wickes while making even more acquisitions. Sitrick told the press how astute this asset-shuffling was.” In fact, Mr. Sigoloff saved the company. The bankruptcy judge called it “a miracle” in open court. Mr. Sigoloff not only restored the company to health, but saved tens of thousands of jobs. I would call that astute management.

His column continues: “One of Sitrick’s clients was San Diego’s Metabolife, which built a huge pyramid-marketing business convincing people that its ephedra-laced product was a great dietary supplement. Sitrick took the account even though the two founders had run afoul of the law for operating a methamphetamine lab... I was chasing the story and talked with Sitrick. Sweetly, he oozed, “Don, we have worked together for many years...” as he explained how clean this company was. But the company had concealed from the government its many reports of health problems. A cofounder went to prison for that. The company paid a criminal fine of $600,000 for income-tax evasion and went bankrupt.”

We worked for Metabolife in late 1998, 1999 and 2000 and a few days into 2001. There was no allegation made, that we were or are aware of, during the time we worked for the company that anyone made false statements or was obstructing FDA proceedings. According to news reports, this is what they were indicted for in 2003, which was more than three years after we ceased work for them. The CEO was sentenced to six months in prison in June 2008, more than eight years after we ceased work for the company.

The column states: “Sitrick’s company did the flacking for the software firm Peregrine Systems, San Diego’s biggest scam, in which shareholders lost $4 billion and nine executives were incarcerated.”

According to a Wall Street Journal article dated Oct 7. 2004, “The indictment, filed in a federal court in San Diego, named eight former Peregrine officials, one of its outside auditors and two company business partners. The government charged that over a three-year-period beginning in early 1999 the defendants used various means to improperly improve the company’s reported results in order to “fraudulently inflate and sustain” Peregrine’s share price, which topped $79 a share in 2000 but subsequently collapsed to below a dollar. In 2002, the company filed for bankruptcy-law protection, from which it emerged last year.”

Our work with the company was from June through November 2002, in connection with the Chapter 11, subsequent to the time that the alleged fraud was to have occurred.

The column states: “Hollis-Eden Pharmaceuticals hired Sitrick. In 2009, it fired its founder and chief executive “for cause,” which could mean anything from harming the company in some way to committing fraud. The company clammed up on the reason, changed its name twice, and has struggled.” We worked for that company only during 1999, a decade before they fired the founder and CEO for fraud.

There is more, but I will end with one last point. The column states: “Oh, yes. Another former client of Sitrick was Trump Hotels and Casino Resorts. Fortune magazine calculated that over 13 years when Donald Trump was chairman, the company lost $1.1 billion and went bankrupt twice, while Trump himself raked in $82 million. Maybe airbrushing that is how Sitrick got into the Trump inner circle.”

Our work for Trump Hotel & Casino Resorts was in 1997 and 1998, long before any Chapter 11. We have not done any work for President Trump or any of his companies or entities since that time. Further, we have not done any work for the administration. The work I did was for Marc Kasowitz, personally and his firm. Mr. Kasowitz is a long-time friend.

I believe fairness dictates the publication of this letter in its entirety and an update or retraction of the column.

• Michael Sitrick
• Founder, Chairman and CEO, Sitrick And Company

Don Bauder replies:

Sitrick misses the point. He admits he did not return my call. He was the only person who could answer my questions about past clients. I got the list of San Diego clients from his website. In the column, third paragraph, I carefully stated, “although not all his clients are not trying to slither out of scandals.