A cesspool of Judicial Corruption

TEN from my diary

I have maintained a skeletal diary for many years. Life's experience has convinced me that I need to verify meetings, conversations and events. All too often, misunderstandings or liars challenge my recollections. Keywords and dates jog my subconscious–stimulating my memory. In order to illustrate the pattern of events that took place in David's life over the years, I need only consult my Diary.

David was born in Artesia, California, on July 18th, 1956. Faye and I had been married since June 17th, 1954. In order to finance my attendance at law school I worked throughout the summer-break often for 16 hours per day and made enough money to carry us through the school year. David often played in the snow on the University of Utah Campus (Salt Lake City, Utah).

Eisenhower was president. Desegregation was in its infancy. And worldwide, the British and French Empires were collapsing. Communism was spreading throughout the world. The USSR was losing in Afghanistan. The Recession of 1958 was a sharp worldwide economic downturn; it was the worst auto year since World War II. I dropped out of law school.

We moved to Compton, California. We made a deposit on a duplex apartment house, and I managed to get a job on the Southern Pacific Railroad as a brakeman and worked out of Northern California. I made enough in one month by working 16 hours per day–and saving every penny–to cover the deposit on the apartment house. By remodeling and adding on, I turned the duplex into a triplex. In addition, I received a scholarship under a Ford Foundation Grant to attend the University of Southern California (USC) to become a Specialist Teacher. At the same time, I was active in politics. During this time (in the fall of 1962) David started kindergarten. I was Scout Master and by 1968, David became a 1st Class Scout.

Faye and I were making payments for land we had purchased in Ouray, Colorado (a quaint little resort town). Although I was working successfully as a building contractor in Long Beach, in the fall of 1970, we moved to Ouray. Richard Nixon succeeded Lyndon Johnson as president about the time we settled.

By time David graduated from high school via a GED from Western State (In January of 1973), President Nixon had resigned from the presidency, and Gerald Ford finished Nixon's term as president. One year later, on January 1, 1974, during the Viet Nam War David, at age 17, joined the U.S. Navy. While in the Navy, he worked as a helicopter mechanic. He Graduated from the Naval Air Technical Training Center, Millington, Tennessee, Jet Engine Repair School, on August 6^th, 1974, and was discharged from the Navy December 17^th, 1976. He also at became a certified welder.

David later went to Ricks College in Rexburg, Idaho (renamed BYU Ricks) and later to Dixie College in southern Utah. On May 5th, 1976, the Teton Dam broke. David came home to Ouray with four snowmobiles he bought that he salvaged from the Teton Dam flood (In Idaho). He was very proficient as a mechanic, could fix nearly anything.

On December 15, 1979, he married Marda Marie Clark. We gave them a job running a care-home we owned. Next, he attended the University of Colorado at Boulder, Colorado, and received a GRI Certificate in real-estate. He became a licensed Colorado and Utah real-estate broker (December 1981), an Escrow Agent and, in addition, he became an insurance broker in both Idaho and Nevada.

During this time, a severe recession in the United States began in July of 1981 and didn't end until November 1982. Ronald Reagan was president; yet in Ouray, we had been suffering even earlier–and later–from our local recession. Some economists believe that the primary cause of the recession was a "contractionary monetary policy" established by the Federal Reserve System to control high inflation. David and Marie thought they could do better elsewhere. So after one year they moved to Provo, Utah (December 26, 1980).

They moved next to Las Vegas in 1982, bought and sold real-estate, operated three dry cleaning stores and handled cleaning and laundry for casinos. During this time David's youngest brother, Gary Michael, was killed in Ouray (August 5th, 1982) in his 1968 Plymouth Roadrunner sports car that he had just overhauled.

Times were tough for me and Faye, also. For a couple of years, I traveled back and forth biweekly from Ouray to Las Vegas, Nevada. I joined a real estate firm as a broker in Las Vegas and then opened my own real estate office. We had acquired 20 rundown apartment units in Las Vegas, but even Las Vegas was struggling. It was not an easy time in 1984 for David to bring his family to Vegas, but there was more money there than he had seen anywhere in our vicinity.

I helped David get accounts with the larger casinos to launder their bedspreads. He met people easily. He had an uncanny ability to meet people. He was totally uninhibited. I would put him on the phone talking to mortgage brokers; we were looking for real estate options or whatever.

Protocol is not in David's vocabulary. He would talk to rich or powerful people as though they were just other kids on the block. George Mitzel is a good example. David introduced me to George on February 15, 1984. George had been a multimillionaire, built the Castaways Casino on the Las Vegas Strip–nearly all out of pocket. The four-hundred million dollar Mirage Hotel now stands on the same site. George had bought twenty percent of a 950,000 acre tract of land called the Valley Wells Ranch. It's a long story how things ended. However, David, George and I acquired the Plaza Quality Cleaners in 1985, but that venture failed.

Faye and I made the decision to either both move to Las Vegas permanently or try to make a go of Ouray. We stayed in Ouray even though in Las Vegas financial prospects were looking very promising. In Ouray we turned our large 7,000 square feet home into an "Alternative Care Facility." We later increased the size to 10,000 square feet.

David continued to manage our apartments, and he tried other ventures. In April 1985, he started manufacturing soap–that failed. Then he bought an auto garage with all the tools. David could fix anything, but he didn't understand people. The people he trusted just stole his shop full of tools.

On September 1st, 1985, David called me saying,

"Dad, I'm flat broke. I have one dollar to my name." He closed the garage the next month (on October 12, 1985) and said he's going to go back to school–but didn't. He did manage to keep some bedspread accounts though. Yet, on April 12, 1986, he called me again saying,

"I lost the Tropicana account. We don't have any money."

What David had learned about Las Vegas real estate turned him in a new direction. He bought a home for $129,000 with nothing down. On October 18, 1986, he started working a new job installing elevators. Politics was involved, and David quit because of Union intrigue. It seems that David can do anything if he sets his mind to it –except he can't judge character or social complexities.

It didn't take David long to figure out another possibility. He located 5 acres of real estate outside the city limits of Las Vegas. He made a deal with a man who was dying of AIDS. The deal was that David would pay $15,000 in cash. He used creative finance borrowing $30,000 from an equity lender to finish improvements for water, power and septic. David then made a deal (on March 8th, 1987) to buy a livable 70X14 mobile-home for $10,000 cash.

By March 28th, 1987, he had both land and a house for his family. Sadly, just two months later, David's newborn baby, Ashley, died. The family buried her with her Uncle Gary in Ouray.

David fought on–clearing land, digging trenches, drilling for water and fighting local bureaucracy. The BLM granted an easement across federal property to unlock his landlocked property. By February 1988, David and family were still living hand to mouth.

In August, 1988, David initiated a new pursuit–Import/Export. He connected with an experienced promoter who turned out to be dishonest. Interesting events occurred. But by the end of March, 1989, David was no longer in the Import/Export business–that romance was over.

Yet something good came from this relationship. He met a prominent attorney, George Grazedei of the Law Firm Graziadei and Cantor in Las Vegas. David built and networked the law firm's computer system. George took David under his wing. George was a punctilious man with an impressive office-complex over the Valley Bank Building. David had done him an unexpected service. George was grateful but–I think–puzzled. Anyway, George had an air-conditioning problem at his home and asked David if he'd look at it.

"No problem," David said. And it wasn't–for David.

George recognized a talent in David. Before long, David started studying Law and became a paralegal working part time for the Firm writing legal briefs and doing pro bono research. He would plop himself in Mr. Grazedei's Complex in an unspecified area and would designated it as his new office. George was prim and proper, well groomed, and masterful. David, by contrast, would walk into George's office shirttail hanging out and sit on the edge of George's large, oak desk. And their friendship continues.

In 1988 David successfully cured himself in what he believes was a cancer. He used an herbal formula used by the Indians.

He said, "I got the formula and shared it with many people. I’ve worked on many things in the area of energy, health and physics that I would like to share, but time restraints prevented me from achieving many of my goals."

During the month of August, 1990, hostilities between the United States, and Iraq began heating up. Iraq annexed Kuwait on the 8th of August. David called me a month later, on September 25, 1990. He told me about an opportunity that I should look into to acquire a telephone "switch" (a large-scale computer used to route telephone calls in a central office). We met with the company president, worked out details; but the Company's Board of Directors, chose a different path.

This was a volatile time for America. In 1990 David made a little money here and there–just enough to get by. The Cold War had ended, but on January 16, 1991, President George H.W. Bush announced the beginning of the Gulf War and called up the reserves. The Navy did not call up David for that war.

During this time, David was still searching for the hidden combination to unlock his success. More problems, but then he clicked. Persistent, successful people try, experiment but never give up. The sun also rises.