It’s the One That Didn’t Get Away : Crime: Mark Kalez wondered why his buddy’s boat was being towed along Interstate 5, so he called on the car phone. The craft was stolen, it turns out.

Something seemed fishy to Mark Kalez when he recognized a friend’s 26-foot boat being towed down Interstate 5.

So the San Clemente contractor did what any friend would do. He grabbed his car phone and called Gary Meier to find out why his boat, Out ‘A Line, was on the northbound freeway in Mission Viejo at 5 p.m. instead of parked at Dana Point Harbor.

Kalez’s suspicions were right. The $70,000 boat with a marlin painted on the side had just been stolen--trailer and all.

“They just went down and hooked it up and drove off with it,” in a truck that had been stolen separately in Covina, said CHP spokeswoman Angel Johnson.

Kalez stayed on the phone as he pulled off the freeway and then got back on to get behind the craft and read its name to be sure.

“We thought he was joking around until Mark saw the name,” said Bryan Meier, the owner’s 15-year-old son. “Then it became serious business.”

Kalez tailed the boat, and Gary Meier, a firefighter who works in West Covina, called police.

CHP officers waited near Grand Avenue in Santa Ana, Johnson said. But instead of obeying orders to pull over, the truck driver accelerated, leading police on a chase that ended in the parking lot of the MainPlace mall, Johnson said.

Both men got out and ran, she said. A bystander tackled the passenger, while the driver ran through the busy mall. Shoppers pointed the way for pursuing police as the suspect raced through a clothing store and out an emergency door--into the arms of Santa Ana police, Johnson said.

Robert Cassano, 27, of Woodland Hills and Robert Givot, 32, of West Hills were booked on suspicion of grand theft of a truck, boat and trailer, Johnson said.