A tall tale unveiled

Pssst. Did you hear what happened last weekend?

Buffy the Vampire Slayer used a stake as a last resort to avoid a

beating. Pass it on.

Guess what? Muffy the soccer player was a poor sport because she

refused to give the other team a proper greeting. Pass it on.

Ohmigosh. Did you hear a trailer in Newport was closed down

because it didn’t have proper heating? Pass it on.

What??!! Costa Mesa Mayor Karen Robinson called for a police

escort because she was late for a meeting?

And so goes the local rumor mill, in which perfectly rational

stories are heightened to scandalous events with each passing

account. In the days between the Tet Festival in Garden Grove on Feb.

1 and Monday morning in the newsroom, gossip had turned Robinson from

a levelheaded public official into a demanding, power-abusing

politician.

All over town reports spread about Robinson and her alleged

request for a police escort because she was late for an appointment.

Whispers were shared, off the record sources called in, jokes were

made and the mayor’s reasonable query about the possibility of

gaining special access to a huge regional event -- to which she was

invited -- turned into a tale of egotistical power mongering.

At the end of the grapevine, Robinson had asked for a Code Blue --

reserved for life or death situations only -- and wanted lights

flashing and sirens blaring to make sure she was on time.

“It wasn’t that way at all,” Robinson said in a telephone

interview Tuesday. “Ohmigosh, now I am starting to understand how

these things work.”

The real story is this:

For the past two years, the kickoff of the three-day Tet festival

and the Santa Ana Black History Month Parade have fallen on the same

day. And for the past two years, Robinson has been invited to both

events.

Robinson, who is notoriously busy, visits Santa Ana in the morning

and heads to Garden Grove in the afternoon.

If you know anything about the Tet festival, you know it is huge.

Streets are blocked off, dozens of police guard the perimeter and

many notable public figures attend. Gov. Gray Davis was reported to

be there this year.

“No one can avoid that traffic,” Robinson said. “It is absolutely

necessary to get some kind of help to get in there. You would never

make it without it.”

Last year, Robinson was lucky enough to ride in on the coat tails

of another local mayor’s police escort but this year, she found

herself stuck at the outskirts just minutes before she was scheduled

to make her appearance.

Robinson said she called Costa Mesa dispatch to see if someone at

the city’s Police Department could put in a courtesy call to the

Garden Grove or Westminster police (who were both providing security)

to get someone to help her get inside.

“I don’t want anybody to get the wrong impression that I was

trying to misuse police resources,” Robinson said. “I was merely

trying to find out the protocol for letting another police department

know I was present so someone could move a cone or something.”

By the time her call was routed from dispatch to the front desk to

the watch commander, Robinson had already gained access to the event.

“As soon as I flashed my card to the guy, he said, ‘Oh, Mayor

Robinson, right this way,’” she said.

So, the gossip was accurate in the fact that we have Robinson in a

hurry and something to do with police. Then comes the rumor portion

of the suburban legend.

I’ll admit, I wasn’t above the gossip. I was right in the fray,

salivating over such a perfect column topic, prompting my fellow

reporters to confirm the news and write a story. I even stayed late

Monday to finish my Wednesday column because I was “on a roll.”

How could a politician be so self-consumed to have the audacity to

ask for a police escort, I thought? I remember turning to my

colleague and saying, “This is great. You can’t make this stuff up.”

Truth is, you can.

Truth is, Robinson was not abusing her power. And the saddest

truth lies in how energized people can get (myself included) when

they want to believe the worst in people.

Truth is, we should all be relieved to know it’s not true.

Hopefully the facts will spread as quickly as the fiction but I doubt

it. It’s just not as fun.

“It is really interesting to know how this got out to anyone,

considering this was a call from the mayor to the city Police

Department,” Robinson said. “But now I know and I’ll be more careful

next time.”

* LOLITA HARPER writes columns Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays

and covers culture and the arts. She may be reached at (949) 574-4275

or by e-mail at lolita.harper@latimes.com.