“If we knew then what we know now, we’d have done Fiesta Island a little differently,” Earnest reflects. “We would have mixed the west bay sand with the east bay muck to fill Fiesta Island.”

The Son, Rick Valdez: In a lot of ways my brother and I were opposites. Steven was conventional and I was the rebel. He was the good boy, and I always questioned things. We were …

I was 19 when World War II broke out. I turned 20 going into Bataan on my birthday, the 12th of December 1941. I was in the antitank company, 31st Infantry, the only American infantry …

Kroc got on the phone and in a very high-pitched voice he said, “Mommy, I bought us a baseball team today.” There was a long silence, but I imagine what she said to him.

I don’t know why we expanded like this. I guess I’m a damn fool and like to work and create things. We had to have jobs, industry. San Diego wasn’t like Pittsburgh and Pittsburgh Steel.

It was one of those days when the beach is living cloisonne. Luminous layers of smooth gold, dappled brown, and rippling indigo. San Onofre State Beach on a bright February afternoon. To the north of …

Convinced that the City of San Diego had made a mistake when it acquired only half a city block for its new public library, civic luminary George W. Marston stated in 1899, "I believe the …

In mid-August, American customs agents stopped a southbound car at a checkpoint near the Mexican border. The car belonged to Jorge Hank Rhon, owner and operator of Tijuana’s Agua Caliente racetrack. Hank’s driver was at …

Mr. Van Winkle asked the Student Council Reps, to indicate to the classes that if they can convince him through sound logical arguments that they should ride skateboards to school that he will reconsider his position.

In the pre-dawn gloaming, the roadbuilding machines are just black shapes lined up beside the southbound lanes of Interstate 15. From the overpass at Miramar Way, only the light from streaking headlights betrays the angled …

Government bounty hunters netted $26 million in San Diego County last year by seizing the property of people believed to be selling, transporting, or manufacturing illegal drugs. This was the seventh largest take in the …

Years of drought and neglect led to a stunting of the tree’s growth as the thirsty roots searched beneath the asphalt parking lot for water. Vandals have defaced its intricate trunk with carved initials.

If San Diego is eventually forced to build a multi-billion-dollar secondary sewage treatment system, the legal mandate for such an undertaking will be found in Federal Judge Paudi Brewster’s ruling on March 28. After an …

Heald’s surrender to Los Angeles police was delayed until he recovered from self-inflicted wrist slashes. Jim Holtzman told staffers if Heald was given probation instead of jail time, he would have the job of executive producer of the Channel 8 news.

It's 8:30 Sunday night, January 20, and 41 tow trucks are lined up with their engines revving behind the Dow stereo store on Sports Arena Boulevard. For the tow truck drivers, this will be a …

“One year Jesse and I were working on something we thought was a white dwarf. It was listed in all the white dwarf catalogues. I got a spectrum on it and realized it was a quasar.”

Rogers named the oldest group the San Dieguito people because their stone tools were found along the San Dieguito River. The next group, whose artifacts rest above those of the San Dieguitoans, he called the La Jolla people.

Ten years ago, two architects resigned in protest from the San Diego Historical Site Board, frustrated over the board’s inability to protect historic buildings that were in the path of the downtown redevelopment juggernaut. Architect …

It looks like a big vacant lot along the cliffs on the western slope of Point Loma, just below Point Loma Nazarene College, between Ladera Street and the fence marking the U.S. Navy property. There’s …

To Kit Goldman’s way of thinking, a new era has dawned for the Gaslamp Quarter Theatres, and all the rancor of the past three years is erased. She may be right. Then again, she may …

During the autopsy, the medical examiner carefully studied Rodger’s throat to determine if he had been choked into unconsciousness before he was placed in the car, but no such evidence was found.

Last Wednesday, May 2, was a day of reckoning foretold by many Tijuanans. They may not have been able to peg the exact date it would happen, but they knew it was coming: Antonio Vera …

The details published here are just a fraction of what Plumlee knows about U.S. government actions in Central America. He can rattle off names of pilots and the secret, illicit missions they flew until the listener’s eyes glaze over.

A COLD RAIN STARTS TO FALL AS MAX'S DOVE-GRAY COFFIN IS UNLOADED FROM THE BACK OF A DARK HEARSE PARKED IN THE MUD. EMILIO VELASQUEZ, DR. CARLOS DIAZ, AND TWO OTHERS EASE THE COFFIN ONTO …

Right now, San Diego taxicab owners can charge any fare they like up to $1.40 for the flag drop and $1.80 a mile thereafter. Some of the city’s 892 cabs are charging the full $1.80 …

Sandy and a girlfriend had gone into a liquor store, robbed the clerk, They locked the clerk in a walk-in cooler. Sandy started feeling bad about the guy. She went back and let him out.

A first-hand look at marine life near the sewage outfall at Point Loma.

Philip Kees lives downtown in the Armed Services YMCA. and as he shuttles about on Broadway in shorts and a sailor hat pulled down over his bald head, he's indistinguishable from the mass of sidewalk …

Manager Jack McKeon says he talked to Show about his politics in 1987, and he told him "to give it a rest. Personally, I don’t have any problem with it. But sometimes, Eric just talks too damn much.”

It’s the hottest place in hell you can imagine: not knowing what you are,” Jerri Sousa declares. She’s been there. Born a woman, wishing, and fantasizing, and finally believing that she was really a man …

It was one of those Friday afternoons along Orange Avenue in Coronado when even the threat of rain couldn’t chase off the boys in wetsuits pulled down to their waists, the women in muumuus and …

The dawn’s light is just beginning to angle through the mist to strike the cloud-colored F-14 fighter jet parked in a row in front of hangar three. The flight line at Miramar consists of 7 …

The F-14 Tomcat prototype crashed on its maiden flight December 21, 1970, and ever since then questions about safety have dogged the Navy’s frontline fighter/interceptor. Five F-14s, four of them based at Miramar, crashed in …

Early on a frigid Tuesday morning in Sacramento, state senator Larry Stirling is quietly answering constituents’ letters in his office. You walk in, he jumps up and says, “You asked me yesterday about what I’ve …

Four high-rise office buildings opened for business downtown in 1982, flooding the market with 1.7 million square feet of office space and immediately giving San Diego the highest vacancy rate in the nation. But what …

Eugene Ellis is a forty-nme-year-old San Diego lawyer specializing in defending drunk drivers. He recently agreed to speak with reporter Neal Matthews about the changing nature of drunk-driving enforcement Matthews: In the city of San …

Now that he’s out of jail, off probation, and living contentedly in Vista, former San Diego vice squad officer Bob Hannibal can finally talk publicly about the job that precipitated his downfall. He says that …

At the Thirty-second Street Naval Station, the instructors made us conduct a search on the bottom of San Diego Bay at night without lights. There was no moon, and we crawled along the bottom muck in total darkness.

José Tasende has one request: “Make me the subject of your interviews, not the object. Take what I say and use it. But don’t make me the story. Write about what I say, not what …

When Jay and Geri Sobarnia filed for bankruptcy in 1980, they owned a $550,000 house, a couple of small businesses, and two apartment houses, and their monthly payments were current on the $1,670,000 they owed …

It’s not quite 7:00 a.m., and the fog hangs so thick over Otay Mesa that Richard Cacho cannot see all the way across his cucumber field. At least it’s not windy, or raining, or freezing, …

San Diego's first and only official earthquake alert was sounded in June of 1985, after swarms of small earthquakes started a five-day rumble beneath San Diego Bay. Three of the biggest shakers, with Richter scale …

He turns a corner near 38th and Acacia, where a new auto body shop has been squeezed between two homes. Nielsen shakes his head. "Only in Southeast. Where else would that be allowed to happen?"

Thirty years of accumulated sportscasting experience was about to be marshalled into two hours on the evening of September 30, when Jerry Gross sat down at the microphone to perform his radio show, Hotline Sports, …

In May of 1986, Clint Cary, the Spaceman of Ocean Beach, was convalescing in a South Bay nursing home. It looked like curtains for him, after the sight in his one remaining eye was destroyed …

IN THE NEXT FEW WEEKS, the San Diego City Council will be grappling with a proposed master plan for Balboa Park. In all, there are now six alternatives to that original plan, drawn up by …

IT IS SIX IN THE MORNING at the stockyards in Mexicali, and Frank Enders is rummaging for his cowboy boots and his ancient straw cowboy hat in the back seat of his U.S. government-issued Chevette. …

On Sunday, April 19, the last known California condor was snatched from the wild. Depending on your viewpoint, this event was a great tragedy that marked the extinction of the wild condor or a great …

Avenida Revolucion, where two great civilizations collide to form a Himalayan range of apposite images and attitudes, has made business geniuses out of men like Hector Santillan. Starting as a shoeshine boy in the 1940s, …

George Gueria was an engineer at the posh Westgate Hotel on Second Avenue downtown from 1978 to 1984. now he's designated by the Social Security Administration as "totally disabled." he contends in a lawsuit filed …