Volume 7
March 1991-February 1992

Hoover Sucks Up a Cop

Why won't Joe McNamara talk to us? We hoped to ask McNamara about his future plans, but the San Jose Police Chief, not generally media-shy, hasn't returned our calls. ... What we wanted to know was whether he'd soon be joining the Hoover Institution. We hear Stanford University is interested in acquiring the GQ fashion icon.

--Public Eye, March 21, 1991

Less than two weeks later, McNamara formally announced that he would be leaving the department for a think-tank position with the Hoover Institution, generating two-inch headline type in the Merc and even covered by the New York Times. "I can't believe no one picked up on your article," he told Metro later, saying he wasn't ready to announce his decision when we called him.


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What's in a Name?

It's not on next week's agenda report, but Eye's been informed that the San Jose City Council will decide Tuesday whether the San Jose Convention Center should bear the name of former Mayor Tom McEnery. Far be it from us to predict how the council will vote. Let's just say there's a good chance the center will be re-christened in honor of hizzoner.

--Public Eye, April 11, 1991

City officials voted to rename it The San Jose McEnery Convention Center. Despite promises from McEnery's backers to cover the cost, the city footed the bill for the signage change--the tab for the contract was $155,895.


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Full Faith and Discredit

When federal regulators slammed the vault shut and declared Bank of Los Gatos insolvent on a summer day in 1987, S&L tycoon Robert H. Hopkins Jr., the bank's absentee owner, was about as far away as you can get without spending pesos. ... It was at the grand opening of Bank of Los Gatos, three years earlier, that Hopkins and a gaggle of cronies glad-handed their way through a crowd of canape-nibbling locals. Bank of Los Gatos was to be the quintessential small-town operation. ... Several former bank officers and directors say that Hopkins and his associates wrenched control of Bank of Los Gatos before it ever opened, effectively leveraging a covert takeover on the desperation of the bank's quixotic founders, who found themselves in over their heads early on.

--John Whalen, "Bank of Lost Dreams," May 2, 1991

In December 1992, a federal grand jury in San Jose indicted Hopkins and five of his banking cronies on 12 counts of conspiracy, bank fraud and other misdeeds relating to the defunct Bank of Los Gatos. They were found guilty, but the convictions were vacated by the judge.


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Head Piece

Pat Dando, a former Tom McEnery underling, is considering a bid for the District 10 seat currently held by Councilmember Joe Head, who plans to seek reelection next year.

--Public Eye, May 23, 1991

Another item attesting to Eye's ability to predict the future, albeit inaccurately. Dando did run for Head's seat--three years later, in 1995, when Head retired.


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Merc Perks

San Jose Mayor Susan Hammer's office is looking to hire a media wizard, and although plenty of applications have been submitted, Hammer chief of staff Gary Robinson tells us that the spin doctor, er, "Director of Communications and Public Information" post is still open. According to multiple sources, at least one candidate got offered the job: the Merc's political editor, Phil Trounstine. Merc insiders say Trounstine turned down the post--but not before he used the offer to coax a few perks out of the daily. We're told that among other things, he sought a raise, a private office and the assurance that he'd be considered Merc editorial page editor Rob Elder's replacement when Elder retires.

--Public Eye, Oct. 31, 1991

Sources say Phil got the raise and one other concession: a column with his picture on it.


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Coffee Generation

In sharp contrast to the club scene of the late 1980s, where the hypnotic dance rhythms banished the art of conversation, local coffee bars provide intellectuals, chatterboxes and health nuts alike with fuel for their social fires. These establishments offer mental stimulation for minds concerned with more than sex, drugs and silicon chips. And you can always ask for a double without worrying about losing your driver's license.

--Rebecca Smith, "Java Huts," Oct. 31, 1991


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Shotgun Logic

On the sidewalk in front of Dennis Scherzer's Clarke Avenue home, a fierce-looking knot of crack cocaine dealers peddle wares to a steady stream of cars driven by addicts seeking the almighty rock. Yet from the pastoral setting of Scherzer's forested back yard, the mean streets of East Palo Alto seem a million miles away. ...

"Yes, someone could walk in off the street," he explains, sipping a fruit drink at a funky old picnic table in the middle of the woodsy yard. "But they don't know where I am, and they do know that I've got the 12-gauge. And they know that I'll use it and point it at them and pull the trigger and take their young lives away."

He's got a point there. On April 23, Scherzer, a one-time San Francisco flower child, shot and wounded a 17-year-old Redwood City youth during a gun fight in his front yard. ... Scherzer loathed having to discharge his weapon--this is a guy who refused to allow his three daughters to play with toy guns. But as he puts it, "The shotgun is like a samurai sword. You pull it out, you got to use it."

--Bob Hansen, "Tough Street," Nov. 5, 1991

Scherzer still lives on Clarke Avenue and was recently reelected to the East Palo Alto Sanitary District's board of directors.


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Reach for the Sky

If you are a serious (or seriously rich) sports fan and have between $62,000 and $125,000 burning a hole in your sweats, there are still plenty of sky boxes left at the under-construction San Jose Arena. Sales of the 64 posh "executive suites" began in April, and to date, the San Jose Sharks have sold or taken deposits on about half of them.

--Public Eye, Dec. 26, 1991

The boxes were eventually all sold out.


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Thanks, Garry

As readers in the benighted Santa Clara Valley know, the Mercury News was one of the few large papers to join the handful of small-town editors in spiking the Doonesbury strips ... [u]ncovering a DEA drug file on Vice President Dan Quayle by [Doonesbury's] fictional Washington Post news hound Rick Redfern. ... We requested permission [from Universal Press Syndicate] to reprint the censored Doonesbury strips. ... Herewith then: the uncensored strips without interruption.

--"Doonesbury Uncensored," Jan. 9, 1992

Despite stiff objections from the Mercury News and last-minute balking by UPS, the strips ran in their entirety. The Universal Press Syndicate demanded a huge sum of money and threatened to sue. Metro's editor wrote cartoonist Garry Trudeau and ask him to "call the dogs off." Trudeau responded with a warm note explaining that he usually doesn't get involved in syndication matters, but in this case he'd make an exception. UPS never raised the issue again.


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On to March 1992-February 1993

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