STORIES OF THE PAST
50 years ago
More than three hundred pounds of dangerous drugs were dug up in the desert near Coyote Wells over the weekend.
The cache of medicine — much of it addictive narcotics — was discovered by Lavaun McCain of Boulevard on Saturday while she and her husband were looking for Indian relics about a mile southeast of Coyote Wells, in western Imperial County. She spotted two or three small bottles of drugs and reported the find to the sheriff’s office.
Harold Hawes, of the sheriff’s office identification bureau, and investigator Milton Smalling dug up thousands of bottles of “physicians’ samples” of the drugs yesterday.,
They reported this morning that the bottles discovered by Mrs. McCain had apparently been dug up by a coyote which, in dog fashion, had scratched up the dirt at that spot.
The drugs came from a New Jersey pharmaceutical house.
40 years ago
Cesar Chavez said here Friday night he planned to ask President-elect Jimmy Carter to support legislation to give resident aliens the right to vote in general elections.
The United Farm Workers leader plans to meet with Carter in January shortly after he is inaugurated.
Chavez said Proposition 14 was defeated because farm workers who were not U.S. citizens were unable to vote.
He also plans to ask Carter for help in obtaining better protection and education for farmworkers and a farm labor law for the rest of the nation.
The union president reminded the audience, primarily made up of Green Card workers from Mexicali and U.S. resident aliens, that they paid taxes in the United States but were not allowed to vote in U.S. elections.
30 years ago
YUMA, Ariz. (AP) — More than a half-ton of cocaine, possibly dumped by mistake, has been discovered at an airstrip on the Army’s Yuma Proving Ground, federal agents said Friday.
FBI and Drug Enforcement Administration officials in Phoenix said 1,415 pounds of cocaine in duffle bags were found Thursday in a remote area of the desert base in southwest Arizona.
Herb Hawkins, head of the Phoenix FBI office, said the cocaine had a value of $90 million on the street, while a Customs spokesman said his agency estimated the cocaine’s street value at $300 million.
“It depends on how it’s cut (diluted) and where it’s sold,” said Customs spokesman Charles Conroy.
20 years ago
A man whose career as an aircraft mechanic ended when his wrist was shattered in a 1991 motorcycle accident in El Centro was awarded $720,000 Monday by a Superior Court jury.
“He’s been working minimum-wage jobs. He was earning $31,000 when the accident occurred and would be getting about $40,000 now,” El Centro attorney John Breeze said of how the Oct. 7, 1991, crash affected his client, Philip Teague.