Aging arc drops anchor in Samohi parking lot
SAMOHI — In the same week a sea lion surfaced in the central valley, swimming up area creeks and tributaries, an aging arc washed ashore here at the home of the Vikings, apparently the result of an illegal early morning dump-and-run.
Security guards found the roughly 20-foot wooden hulk last Friday shortly after school gates opened at 6 a.m. On Thursday, the vessel remained in dry-dock, stretching across three and 1/2 parking spaces in Samohi’s north lot, as educators deliberated about what to do with it.
No one has taken responsibility for abandoning the ship. But whoever left it at Samohi did leave one clue behind — the trailer it rests on has a California license plate with registration tags that expired nearly four years ago. Authorities are working the case.
Cathy Tangum, a security guard with the district for the past 24 years, said police told her the tags trace back to a Texas man, but added they didn’t provide any further details.
Lt. Frank Fabrega, spokesman for the Santa Monica Police Department, did not return calls seeking comment. A policeman on the scene said he didn’t know who dumped the trailer, adding it wasn’t the responsibility of officers to get rid of the old boat. Had the perpetrator left the boat in the adjacent alley, city workers would have been responsible for its removal, but because the boat was left on school property, officials contend it’s up to Samohi to foot the estimated $150 bill and have it carried off to a dump.
That is, unless someone else decides they want it first. Artist Michael McMillan, whose work appears at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and who is designing banners for the Santa Monica Pier, expressed an interest in taking ownership of the boat, which likely has seen the last of its sea-faring days. That’s an option that would please cash-strapped educators.
In the meantime, students and school staff alike were making light of the situation.
“It looks like a little Noah’s arc,” said Tangum, whose security stand is anchored less than ten yards from the old boat. “It looks like somebody’s project that lived in the driveway, and somebody said, ‘All right, honey, it goes or I go.’
“And here it is.” The dumping has put a squeeze on an already difficult parking situation at the 3,400-student high school. Of an estimated 800 seniors at Samohi, only 40 are given parking spaces each year. The rest — as well as any other students with cars — park on adjacent residential streets that are already overburdened with cars, or anywhere else they can find a spot.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on February 13, 2004. Read the original PDF.