Point Reyes Light - November 22, 2000

Vandals hack up golf cart at Valley golf course

The San Geronimo Valley Golf Course became the latest victim of a string of destructive pranks in the San Geronimo Valley when vandals damaged several of its golf carts in a Saturday night attack.

This latest episode comes just one week after several Valley residents offered a $500 reward for information about who deliberately flooded several Lagunitas businesses on Nov. 12 by running a garden hose through an upper-story window at the Lagunitas Station office building.

Notices posted in the Valley remind residents that downtown Forest Knolls - including a recently painted mural on The Little Store - has also been targeted by graffiti vandals. The posters do not mention that the Valley's postoffices and Lagunitas School District have also been damaged by vandals in recent months.

Although vandalism is nothing new to San Geronimo Valley Golf Course, general manager Robert Pickett said it is becoming increasingly destructive and expensive. In last week's incident, he said, one golf cart got dismantled with an ax.

'Extremely malicious'

"This is extremely malicious," he said. "This isn't kids having fun. Their intent is to destroy things."

Because the golf carts are such a seductive target, workers have tried disconnecting their batteries and locking them up with heavy chains. However, Pickett said, the vandals just return with better equipment to wreak havoc.

Between destroyed golf carts and damage to the golf course itself, Pickett said, vandalism can cost the San Geronimo Valley Golf Course anywhere between $2,000 and $7,000 per incident.

Pickett said he can understand and even tolerate some late-night mischief, but not such wanton destruction. "Mischief is mischief," he said. "Mischief I wouldn't mind. Outright maliciousness is another matter."

Business owners in Lagunitas are still cleaning up from the deliberate soaking they received a week ago and wondering why anyone would do such a thing.

Dentist washed out

Dentist Steve Boughton canceled two days of appointments while he disassembled his office to dry out his floors and walls. Boughton said Monday that neither his office nor his appointment schedule will be set right until after Thanksgiving. He said it is distressing to feel suddenly vulnerable in a community so close-knit.

Bill White, who owns the sodden Lagunitas Station building, said he doubts the vandals understand the distress they have caused its tenants. Like Boughton and other Valley residents, he contributed a small amount to the reward fund in hope of finding the responsible party.

"I'm hoping it's just some kids who are pranksters and somebody gets to them and says 'Enough is enough,'" White said.

Forest Knolls mural

That approach worked earlier this summer when the mural on the side of The Little Store was first covered in graffiti, said Barbara Lawrence, a Forest Knolls artist who helped organize the mural project with Valley students. She said the young artists eventually met with the youths responsible for the graffiti and explained their disappointment to them.

But since then, she said, other vandals have sprayed more graffiti on the mural. Lawrence conceded that she expected the mural would become a target for vandalism. Like most others contacted for this article, Lawrence suspects local youths are responsible, if only because their actions seem so immature.

As an artist, Lawrence said she can relate to the urge to act out, but she notes that such energy must be channeled into something positive, not destructive pranks.

"I understand their motivation, but I have the maturity to do something about it in a non-damaging way," she said. "It's unfortunate that people don't have the forethought to think about how destructive it is."

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