Why does Long Beach resident Bill Napier want to ‘Free Sheriff Mike Carona’? He has his reasons–and now, one more

PHOTO by JENNIFER STOCKDALE

“Do you know who owns that weird car out there?” I asked, pointing to the strangest Toyota ever glued together—part camper, part car, part spaceship and the part that most interested me, a big sign that read: Free Sheriff Mike Carona.

I’d been wondering since the first time I saw the thing sitting unattended on Second Street in Naples, silently shouting its message of liberation for Orange County Sheriff Mike Carona, who has been indicted on corruption charges but has yet to spend a night in jail—who, in other words, already happens to be free.

A few weeks ago, I knocked at a nearby apartment and asked the lady who answered.

“Oh, it’s an older man. I don’t know his name,” she told me, already beginning to close the door. “He lives in the other building.”

A guy was just leaving that other building as I arrived, but my question got him to pause. “Well, don’t tell him I told you,” he said, making sure I wouldn’t by not telling me who he was. “But his name is Bill. He’s the assistant manager for this apartment complex. He lives in No. 10.”

Mystery solved, and as I walked down the narrow sidewalk toward the wide-open door of Apartment 10, I was a little disappointed that it hadn’t been more difficult—or more interesting.

Then I got a look at the man. He was facing the door, sitting shirtless, his rough-hewn face topped by closely cropped gray hair, reading the Press-Telegram in a recliner the color and texture of a dead prom queen. I recognized him.

Bill Napier attends City Council meetings when the issue and spirit move him, and he usually has something to say. I’d heard him speak several times about issues related to the reconfiguration of the Long Beach Breakwater. He was in favor of it . . . I think. He can be a little confusing.

Once he said he was 56, and in the next breath mentioned he was a Korean War vet who served in Seoul in 1971. He looks much older than 56, and the Korean War ended in 1953. But Napier is respectful and sincere, and when he delivers his dissertations in an it’s-only-common-sense tone, it’s kind of sad when some people in the crowd snicker.

My intrusion startled Napier. He got to his feet, touched his glasses, cleared his throat and sort of stuttered, “I’m sorry, but I’m not really interested in buying . . .”

“Oh, I’m not selling anything, sir,” I replied, and gave him a proper introduction. I explained that his Free Sheriff Mike Carona sign had caught my eye, that I was investigating it for the District, and asked if he had time for a few questions.

“I don’t have any answers for some of the things I do,” he replied. “But sure, come in.”

In a grandfatherly way, Napier excused his messy apartment, the size of his living space and his partial nudity while spreading out newspapers on his mattress for me to sit on. It was only a mattress, too, plopped on a floor covered with three rug samples.

But the mess was fabulous—an aftermath of opened Frito-Lay bags, news clippings, empty liters of Pepsi, clean stonewashed Levis stacked next to the bathroom door and a fishing reel disassociated from its pole. A plywood shelf next to his recliner had a small arsenal of lens cleaner, nasal spray, Dole banana stickers and Mardi Gras beads—all covered with a film of dust.

“I’ve given up cleaning,” Napier explained. “There’s just a tremendous amount of filth that blows in here from the port. I scrub and scrub with soap in the shower, but the dirt soaks in.”

The living space—a painted white brick box—could barely accommodate the two of us, especially with Napier’s big blue surfboard in a corner and blue bicycle parked in the center of the room. I could touch the doorway with my foot and still shake his hand as he sat in his chair.

“This is the last original unit,” Napier said, grinning. “All the others have been remodeled.”

He said he gets a lot of use out of the bike.

“Younger people need to get their fill of driving,” he said, “but when you get older, that bike looks better and better.”

On the walls hung a black and white poster of Marilyn Monroe bench-pressing in a brassiere, an album cover for The Best of the Animals and a handwritten reminder for Thursday and Friday street cleaning. When Napier pulled a neon green tank top over his naked torso, it read, “Go take a hike.”

Those street cleaning reminders have been crucial to Napier during the six weeks his Free Sheriff Mike Carona sign has hung from his car window. He’s a man of principle, but he doesn’t want to get a ticket for it.

“I put the sign up when the investigation started on Carona,” Napier said. “He really doesn’t deserve this kind of treatment.”

The federal corruption charges against Carona, the elected head of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department, stem from allegedly illegal gifts (a boat, boxing tickets and $112,000) and his connections with purported mobsters.

“They’re Goodfellas in a good way,” Napier contended. “Carona and his force kept the criminals in Orange County honest. They should let him be. Drop the charges on him.”

Napier first noticed Carona when most of America did: the night in 2002 when Larry King introduced him as “America’s Sheriff,” after he quickly found the rapist/murderer of 5-year-old Samantha Runnion.

“For me, it started with the little girl,” he said. “She was just a little girl. She was killed in a horrible way, by a horrible man, and Carona was the one who set it straight. People forget that.”

So how long will the sign stay up?

“Till it feels right,” he said. “I’m just leaving the sign out and not doing too much thinking about it. Every day, like today, though, I’m given a new reason to keep it up.”

After an hour of that, I thanked Bill Napier for his time, excused my intrusion in a granddaughterly way, and headed out. As I left he said again, sadder this time, “I don’t have any answers for some of the things I do.”

Tags: Long Beach, Naples, Orange County, sheriff carona