Behind the Violent Acts of Vandalism

They were an unlikely quartet. Their partnership even surprised classmates at Tustin High.

One was a former police Explorer Scout and another was so disruptive in Sunday school he was sometimes banned from the church.

The third had a history of minor run-ins with the law, shoplifting CDs and clothes. The fourth was an honor student active in his church, a lineman on the football team so determined to land a college scholarship that he spent hours lifting weights, even in the off-season.

The foursome came together like a band of outlaws tearing through a Wild West town, according to police accounts. Investigators say the teens stormed through Orange County for five weeks, causing $100,000 in damage in more than 100 acts of vandalism.

Police say the boys started out overturning portable toilets and the destruction progressively got worse, culminating a week ago with the uprooting of mailboxes that then were tossed through windows of cars and houses in Orange. Their parents were told they even turned over three Volkswagens and a Porsche.

“In the 26 years I’ve been here, I haven’t come across this type of case where there was the extensive damage these four young men have done,” Orange Police Lt. Art Romo said.

It was after the destruction in Orange that the four were arrested. One, 18-year-old Victor Sarvis, is out of jail on $5,000 bail and back at school. The other three, all 17 or younger, remain in Orange County Juvenile Hall. The Times generally does not name minors accused of crimes.

Sarvis declined to discuss the case and the three younger teens were unreachable in Juvenile Hall. But their friends, teachers and parents all are asking what it means: If the accusations are true, what caused the senseless vandalism, not just once, but over and over, weekend after weekend, each incident more serious than the last?

The boys told a police detective they did it for the adrenaline high, investigators say. When their parents confronted them, their sons shrugged their shoulders or grunted. Two of them told their parents that last weekend was going to be the end of their spree.

So the parents are left with agonizing questions: “In retrospect, what could I have done?” wondered the former Explorer Scout’s father. “I don’t know. Are they out there having a secret life?”

Said the football player’s mother: “Unless you’re a parent, I don’t think you can understand the grief this causes.”

The boys apparently had started out that final night at Tustin Lanes for Rock ‘N Bowl, where high school kids throw bowling balls at glowing pins in darkened lanes while a DJ plays rock music.

Their parents expected them home shortly after the lanes closed at 1 a.m.

The father of one boy reached his son on his cell phone about 9:30 p.m. “He said, ‘We’re just finishing up, I’ll be on my way,’ ” the father said. “He always comes home before midnight.”

Sarvis was driving when they all were arrested, police said. He had shown hints of problems for several years, according to church members and classmates.

For example, members of his church, Red Hill Lutheran, said he often disrupted youth group activities with unruly behavior. He was kicked out of the youth group, only to be allowed back in, and then kicked out again.

He also would act out in class, doing things like belching loudly, classmates said. “I know he wants the attention,” said Vinnie Castillo, 18, a senior at Tustin High. “It’s the kind of guy he is.”

After receiving his driver’s license, Sarvis wrecked two cars within a few weeks, and it was not unusual for him to go screeching through the church parking lot, adults at the church said.

This was Sarvis’ first year at Tustin High. He had been going to Foothill High, but “goofed off,” failing some classes, said his father, Paul Sarvis. So the young man went to Hillview High, a Tustin continuation school, for a year before enrolling at Tustin High.

Sarvis’ best friend, the 17-year-old former Explorer Scout, also had trouble with his grades. Beginning last year, the 11th-grader’s father required him to get his teachers’ signatures on a weekly report to make sure he had at least a C average, or else he would be punished.

“It’s the only thing that works,” the father said. “I try to prevent problems at all costs. It seemed to be working.”

The boy’s room last week was the typical teenage mess, empty soft drink cans on a table and piles of clothes strewn about. A red Fender Telecaster guitar lay on the floor. He works at a local movie theater, and film posters cover the walls--”The Nutty Professor,” “Spy Hard,” “Enemy of the State.”

The boy had been a member of the police Explorers for at least a year and had considered becoming a cop. “He passed through the weekend boot camp,” the father said. “That wasn’t an easy thing. We were very proud of that.”

More recently, he had talked of training to manage a movie theater, or teaming up with Sarvis so they could become truck drivers.

He had been active in the youth group at Red Hill Lutheran, but he often worked Sunday nights at the theater, so he wasn’t attending the meetings often.

His father is still trying to figure out why this happened. “That’s the million-dollar question. That’s the one we’re all asking. I don’t even think they know.”

“I’d almost feel better if drugs were involved,” said the father, although police said there was no evidence of drug or alcohol use.

The two other teens, both 16, come from similar backgrounds. Their parents say they are struggling from paycheck to paycheck: a mom who works as a receptionist, a father who earns $10 a hour operating a copy machine and a father whose hours as a crane mechanic have been cut to part time.

Both teens are being represented by a public defender, while a private attorney represents the other two.

“I can’t even afford to dream of hiring a private attorney,” said the father of the 16-year-old who has previous run-ins with the law. The father said he recently turned in aluminum cans for their redemption value in order to buy dinner.

Apart from their family backgrounds, however, the two are very different.

One boy, with a history of shoplifting, had been arrested twice before and sentenced to probation and community service, his father said. The boy’s grades are below average, and a teacher said he misses class about 40% of the time.

Although he is over 6 feet tall and weighs about 270 pounds, he seems young for his age, his father said. At 16, he still plays with Matchbox cars and while at Juvenile Hall, has asked his father to bring his Batman books.

The father’s anger seeped out as he talked. “If I was there [during the vandalism] I would have bonked him in the head with the mailbox myself,” he said. “I’d put him in the trunk and let him ride around a while.”

The involvement of the football player, also 16, is the most puzzling to those who know him. He has been an honor student and attends Hope Christian Church in Tustin twice a week. His mother said he accompanies the church’s youth group when it passes out food to the homeless over the holidays. He also does yard work for the elderly and never asks for money.

“I was absolutely floored when I heard about it,” Tustin football Coach Myron Miller said. “I would have picked him and my two sons as the last to do it.”

Said his mother: “Everybody is looking at me, what did I do wrong as a parent? From all indications, he was a very good kid. He was involved in church, did athletics, did well in school.”

Players on the team said football was his life, and he was usually the first one in the weight room and the last one out. He hoped the combination of his grades and athletic ability would land him a college scholarship, because his parents can’t afford to send him to school.

“When I first heard about it, I thought it was someone else,” freshman running back Ricky Miller said.

In the past, the young football player’s father said, his friends were kids who were on the team or were from the church. “This kind of threw me,” his father said, “that he wasn’t hanging around with the same kids.”

His father worries about what will happen when his son gets out of Juvenile Hall.

“He doesn’t like when he fails at anything. I know the disgust in people at what he did. He’s going to have a hard time with that. He doesn’t handle rejection very well. He knows he screwed up real bad. He’s told us that over and over.”