The Register Saturday, February 27,1982

INSIDE Orange County briefs/85

By Cheryl Downey-Laskowitz Register staff writer

IRVINE A student-produced mural, criticized by some blacks for its depiction of the Ku Klux Klan, will hang at Irvine High School, the principal decided Friday. Gary Norton said the decision became an easy one as soon as he determined that the opinion crossed racial lines rather than splitting along them. The multicultural mural, designed to celebrate the high schools' ethnic

diversity, will probably be hung by mid-April in a school building. It will make its public debut at the Orange County Hall of Administration building on March 22 because of a previously arranged two-week showing, Norton said. But the schools will hold sessions to make the mural's negative connotations clear to teachers and students, Norton said. The meaning of the mural also will be made part of the student curriculum, he said. That failed to satisfy mural critic Eugene Cook.

"There's no way I'm going to go along with the Ku Klux Klan on the wall," he said after being briefed on the decision. He said he definitely would appeal Norton's decision to Superintendent Stan Corey. Norton said that when he made the decision he expected disagreement with it. One of the young artists, David Glenn, was overjoyed to hear that the mural would hang five months after its completion. "It's exactly what we wanted," he said about the fact that the mural would be used in

the curriculum. "The mural is very visual to a lot of people. It's to initiate some discussion and start people thinking," said Glenn, who is black. "We're proud of ourselves." An ethnically diverse group of 17 high school students worked on the mural from conception to finish. They carried out their theme of one world, one people by illustrating scenes of inhumanity on the far ends of the 40-foot mural and working toward a center scene of unity around the globe.

Objections to a single scene showing blacks and hooded KKK members emerging from flames have kept the mural in a closet since October, except for two days of public viewing last week. More than 1,100 people viewed the mural in that time and figures released Friday showed that nearly 90 percent of them approved of its display. Of the various groups who submitted opinions on it, 93 percent of the students, 80 percent of school employees and 80 percent of the Irvine residents approved of it.

Although those who opposed it were in a minority, Norton said his main concern was that not all blacks opposed it. It became clear at a public meeting several weeks ago that there were black parents and students who felt strongly that the mural should hang, just as there were some who felt that it should not. The students who created the mural said the scene had to be included as one example of inhumanity and they were unwilling to change the panel containing the scene.

Advisory
By John Westcott Register staff writer

Coastal patrols to
Coast Guard avoids Reagan budget cuts
By Jeanne Wright Register staff writer

NORTH TUSTIN The Santiago Municipal Advisory Council faces an uncertain future following a ruling this week by the county counsel's office that the council owes the county money from a 1980 election. SMAC officials say they simply do not have the money to pay the county Registrar's Office $7,302 for expenses in the election of council reprepresentatives in November 1980. SMAC also has no legal mechanism it can use to raise money through taxes. SMAC is a nine-member body created by the county in 1979 to advise Board of Supervisors on decisions affecting the 32,000 residents in the unincorporated North Tustin area. Now SMAC must turn to the board for help, and the supervisors are expected to put the council's future in the hands of area voters. The board is scheduled to vote Tuesday on an advisory ballot that would ask North Tustin residents if they want money diverted from a special service area to fund SMAC. (Special service areas are districts created by the county to help pay for services supplied to unincorporated communities.) Supervisors are expected to approve the ballot measure for the June 8 election, said Tom Eichhorn, an aide to Supervisor Bruce Nestande. Nestande authored the election proposal. As written, the ballot measure would be advisory only, and not binding on the county, Eichhorn said. Eichhorn and other county officials said the election would probably determine whether the twoyear-old SMAC will continue to exist, since supervisors have refused to fund it from county general funds. Scott Morgan, aide to Supervisor Roger Stanton, said, "I suspect that defeat of the measure would mean the end of SMAC." Should voters turn down the measure, county supervisors would probably phase out SMAC rather than pay for the council's next election this November, Morgan said. The council's budget, which comes entirely from private contributions, contains only about $400, said Neil Harkleroad, SMAC chairman. Harkleroad and other SMAC members have argued that payment for the 1980 election should come from county general funds. The county's other municipal advisory council in Mission Viejo draws money from that area's special service area. SMAC, though, does not draw money from the county service area that includes part of North Tustin. SMAC's founders had decided that they wanted to represent all of the unincorporated territory north of Tustin, which extends northward up to the city of Orange's southeastern border, said Stephen Johnson, SMAC member and the council's government liaison. The county service district serving North Tustin extends only for Fairhaven Avenue and excludes only about 12,000 residents, Morgan said. Because SMAC's boundaries do not match that of the county service area, it is not eligible for any of that district's property taxes, county officials said. In addition, a clause in the 1979 county resolution creating SMAC said that funding was to come entirely from homeowners in the area. Morgan said the 1981-82 budget for the service area in North Tustin is about $403,000. About half the money comes from property taxes, while the balance is state money. However, the county expects to spend little more than $50,000 of the budget. Mostly will go for maintenance of the area's horse trails and roads. Johnson agreed that the expected June election will be basically a referendum on SMAC, and said "all of our enemies will gather to try and defeat us."

Al Gamboa/The Register

Arvetta Sayre shows a photo of Jeff and his girlfriend, Kelley, taken at the 'Halloween Haunt' in 1979. It was their last dance.

Jeff left home and never returned

By Steve Eddy Register staff writer

Where is Jeff? His mother is sure her teen-age son is dead, an undocumented victim in the string of Freeway Killings. A psychic said she has "seen" the boy alive and well in Mexico. She said he has been there since his abrupt and baffling disappearance from Westminster more than two years ago. One police detective said the truth behind the mystery may never be known. But he wants to talk to convicted Freeway Killer William Bonin about it.

But no matter what anyone says, I don't think he ran away. That night he had no jacket, no money, no identification.
Arvetta Sayre

Jeffrey Sayre and his girlfriend, Kelley Hoffman, went out together for the last time on the night of Saturday, Nov. 24,1979. With three of Kelley's younger brothers and sisters, they saw Al Pacino in "And Justice For All" at a Westminister theater. Kelley's mother, Georgia, picked them up after the movie and deposited them at the Hoffman home near Bolsa Chica and Rancho roads. Kelley and Jeff watched television until about 10 p.m., then Jeff left to catch a bus for his home near Main Street and Dyer Road in Santa Ana. Dead or alive, there has been no tangible trace of him since. "I'm convinced it's tied in with the Bonin thing," said Jeff's mother Arvetta Sayre, 51, corporate transportation coordinator for Beckman Instruments in Fullerton. "I can accept it, but I have to find out one way or another. Sometimes I still wonder when I get up in the morning. I need to put the thing to bed." At 15, Jeff was an active, handsome boy, slightly built, with stylish hair. He was a sopho-

more at Saddleback High School, but his mother said he was much more interested in getting a full-time job than in studying. Sayre said Jeff wanted to drop out of school, but she and his stepfather wanted him to remain until at least August 1980, when he would turn 16. "But no matter what anyone says, I don't think he ran away," Sayre said. "That night he had no jacket, no money, no identification." Sayre said she discovered later there were no late buses running that night. Jeff had made the trip many times on Friday nights, she said, and mistakenly believed there also was a 10:30 p.m. bus on Saturdays. She said he would frequently call her or another member of the family for a ride. Sayre said he feels he must have been walking toward a pay phone when "something" happened to him. She said she believes Jeff found himself alone, late at night, on darkened streets in a section of Orange County where many youths had been disappearing. A number of bodies later would be found in the western part of the county. The body of an 18-year-old Long Beach man was found in May 1980 at a service station at Westminister Avenue and Bolsa Chica, a place "where I had picked Jeff up twice."

Georgia Hoffman said Jeff, "a polite boy who was always nice to us," didn't want to trouble her for a ride home after he and Kelley went on dates. He preferred to take the bus, although he had recently described being approached by "strange characters" while riding and had taken to carrying a stick for self-protection, she said. He had the stick the night he disappeared. She said he sometimes caught the bus at the gas station, or at a liquor store at Westminster Avenue and Rancho Road. Late at.night, roads in the area which is between the San Diego Freeway and the Seal Beach Naval Weapons station are quite dark and lightly traveled. Sayre's mind keeps returning to the Freeway Killer. William George Bonin, a 35-year-old Downey truck driver, has been convicted in Los Angeles of 10 brutal slayings. A trial on four more killings awaits him in Orange County, and Bonin also could be prosecuted for additional murders in Riverside and San Bernardino counties. In all, police investigators said as many as 30 deaths dating to 1978 may be attributable to Bonin and several accomplices. He preyed mostly on boys who were walking or hitchhiking. A number of the victims were of smaller-than-average size, as was Jeff, and attractive. At one point, Sayre said, police compared Jeff's dental charts to the teeth of a body found on Ortega Highway, another apparent victim of the murder spree. They didn't match. Westminster police detective Richard Bogenreif, who investigated Jeff's disappearance,
Please see JEFF/B4

NEWPORT BEACH Nationwide U.S. Coast Guard cutbacks that would have affected operations in Newport Harbor, Long Beach and at the air-sea-rescue helicopter base in Los Angeles, were canceled Friday by President Reagan in the face of growing congressional opposition. The cuts locally would have reduced personnel aboard the cutter Point Divide in Newport Beach and shut down the air-sea-rescue helicopter base at Los Angeles International Airport. The Coast Guard also had planned to close the Long Beach district office and merge its operations with the San Francisco district office, a move that drew particularly heavy criticism locally. Orange County fishermen and boaters and California congressmen had warned that the cutbacks could threaten rescue and life-saving capabilities in busy Newport Harbor and the coastal waters off Southern California. Transportation Secretary Drew Lewis and U.S. Coast Guard Commandant Admiral John B. Hayes told a U.S. Senate subcommittee on transportation Friday that the Coast Guard had been able to avoid the need for most of the planned cuts by rearranging priorities, a move that will save about $31 million. He told the subcommittee, though, that the Coast Guard still needed about $15.5 million to keep several other necessary stations and cutters in operations. A Coast Guard spokesman at the Long Beach District Office said the subcommittee expressed support for the supplemental funding and, now "we are anticipating an additional $15.5 million in fiscal year 1982 to keep units open." The merger of the Long Beach and San Francisco district offices will no longer take place, according to the Coast Guard spokesman. The merger had been highly criticized by Rep. Robert Badham, R-Newport Beach, who argued that "it makes more sense" to keep the district office in Long Beach because there is more boating activity here. If Congress approves the additional funding, as is expected, the 82-foot cutter Point Divide in Newport Harbor remain at full staff. The cuts, which were to be effective April 1, would have reduced the manpower on the cutter and the rescue vessel would no longer have been available on immediate notice, according to Coast Guard spokeswoman Lt. Kathleen Donohoe. Point Divide currently can mobilize for a rescue mission in five
Please see COAST GUARD/B3

Amnesty's goals 'something to believe in'

against a government. A recent "60 minutes" television program on the 25,000-member One is a former U.S. attorney gen- group, best known for its lightederal, another an Orange County candle vigils in front of foreign embassies, apparently has done much janitor. A third is a housewife. They have at least one thing in to improve Amnesty's image, its ofcommon: all are members of Am- ficials say. "People finally realize we're not a nesty International, a world-wide human rights organization that won the bunch of draft-dodgers," said Gloria Tierney, the group's southwestern 1977 Nobel Peace Prize. In Orange County, members from states coordinator, referring to the Amnesty's two chapters, in Irvine concept of 'amnesty' that is held by and Santa Ana, write hundreds of some Americans. Unlike its limited recognition in letters and postcards on behalf of people they probably will never America, the London-based organization is well-known in Europe for its meet. The letters they write seek humane accurate investigation and documentreatment for persons Amnesty tation of human rights abuses, Tiermembers term "prisoners of con- ney said. Many involved, from Amnesty's science" men and women jailed in countries around the world for 28-member board of directors something they have written or said which includes former U.S. Attorney
By Donna Davis Register staff writer

General Ramsey Clark to local chapter members like Santa Ana college professor David Hartman and Anaheim housewife Suzanne Darweesh, share a common concern for mankind and a sense of justice, Tierney said. Jean Doan, a retired Garden Grove Unified School District teacher, who joined the Santa Ana chapter last year, agreed. "It's something I believe in," she said. Amnesty's Santa Ana chapter head, Beverly Meiss, explained how the organization functions: Through a variety of sources, including newspaper accounts of persons arrested or who have disappeared, monitored radio reports, families and others, Amnesty obtains the names of persons believed to be jailed or missing.

If officials suspect that the prisoner is in danger of being tortured or killed, Amnesty's Urgency Action Network mounts an immediate onslaught of telephone calls and letters to the detaining government "just to let them know we're aware of the situation," Meiss said. "We're realy professional pests." In most cases, the organization members push for the release of such prisoners. But their efforts also are used to insure that prisoners get the minimum standard of treatment, such as food, water, a place to sleep and access to medical care. Since the establishment of Amnesty International, 8,000 prisoners with Amnesty on their side have been released from government detention throughout the world. Amnesty officials refer to the releases as "strange coincidence."

Not-so-urgent cases are handled by chapter "adoption" groups such as two in Orange County. "Cases" are handed at random to the 2,500 international adoption groups, to insure political and economic impartiality, Meiss said. "We've been accused by both right and left-wing organizations of supporting the other side, so we figure we're doing a good job," she added. The groups' persistence has become its trademark. Adoption group members send letters and telegrams to the prisoner, his or her family, the government and U.S. senators, Meiss said. Frequently, money also is sent to the prisoner's family for food and clothing. Meiss said the Santa Ana chapter's adopted prisoner, Joseph DjosPlease see AMNESTY/63