They serve San Diegans with legal demands

Tow truck derivers will use slim jims on your car, the temptations that confront a dance teacher, no more big freeways, the pony-tailed lawyer, inside El Cajon RV salesman

Author

By Abe Opincar, Patrick Daugherty (RIP), Neal Matthews (RIP), Judith Moore (RIP)

Publish Date

July 23, 2022

Showing I.D. “Process servers can’t knock on your door before six a.m. and after ten at night." (Joe Klein)

Leave!

Banse turns off onto the University Avenue exit. “There’s nothing people out here have done that I didn’t do when I was young. I’m streetwise. I apply that knowledge. At 32nd and National I had six or seven papers to serve. The buildings had boarded-up windows, broken bottles, you name it. Immediately I get there, 20 gang members surround me."

By Judith Moore, Feb. 14, 1991 Read full article

“After 20 years of competing against each other, 20 tow companies are supposed to put their arms around each other and become partners?” (David Clemesha)

The shady side of San Diego's tow trucks

Until the late 1980s, the police department divided the city into 16 tow districts. The highest qualified bidder in each district won the three-year contract for police impounds in that area. Some towers paid as much as $30,000 for the contract. When a cop needed a tow, the company in that district was called, and the tower hauled the car to his lot. Then in the early 1980s, San Diego tow company operators found themselves inundated with junk cars they could not sell.

One step at a time

“To make decent money, you have to work hard. A lot of people think it’s a very glamorous job. But it’s very physical, arduous, hard on the body. You dance, you wear out your knees. I am wearing out my joints so fast. At twenty-seven, I already have traumatic arthritis, the joints of a forty-year-old man. So I am usually on medication to reduce swelling.

By Judith Moore and Abe Opincar, July 21, 1988 Read full article

Roads like Old Highway 80 were paved with concrete; but after the war, asphalt paving was perfected. (Dave Allen)

Like your road widened, Mister?

Roads like Old Highway 80, east of San Diego, were paved with concrete; but after the war, asphalt paving was perfected. Asphalt is cheaper to lay down, which is why most surface streets in the cities are paved with it.... Sections of certain roads, such as 163 from Quince Street to I-8, have had to be resurfaced (with less-expensive asphalt) because the original concrete road was designed for lighter vehicles and lower traffic.

By Neal Matthews, Sept. 5, 1991 Read full article

Judge Frederic Link once offered Landon $200 to cut off his ponytail. (Paul Stachelek)

Many people I represent are very, very nice people

“I do it because I am committed to the issues and not necessarily for the fees. It’s understandable why it’s difficult to find people to do this kind of work. Either a person has to be a member of an entity that supports them and pays them a salary or you have to be willing to go out front and do it and hope some of your time will be compensated.”

By Judith Moore, March 21, 1991 Read full article

"You sell the open road." (Dave Allen)

A road less traveled

"My way of doing it is to get acquainted with them, ask them what they're looking for. The thing is, people mostly care only about the monthly payment. You don't press them too hard on the down payment and put them in a squeeze. Mainly that's their problem, getting the down payment. But if they got the down payment then, it's the monthly payments that count."

By Patrick Daugherty, Feb. 21, 1991 Read full article