The Los Angeles Times from Los Angeles, California • 21

vr iifj FROM DESERT TO DESK Super Commuter Spends Four Hours a Day in Saddle in fJiV BY CHARLES HILLINGER Times Staff Writer irt John L. Coulson occasionally feels like "the cork has been pulled and all the sand has run out. Sometimes I come home from work, crawl into bed and call it a day." It's easy to understand why. Coulson, 50, an analytical chemist at Caltech, is a super commuter. He rides his motorcycle 190 miles a day to and from work.

He works in Pasadena and lives 95 miles away in a miner's cabin on the desert east of Apple Valley, at the base of the barren Granite Mountains. On weekends, he prospects for gold and works his mining claims. It takes him two hours to ride his Honda 750 from home to work and another two hours back again in the evening. He has been making the long run for five years-five days a week. "I moved to the desert when aerospace jobs took a nose dive in 1968 and I lost my job," Coulson said as he slipped on his silver nylon suit to leave for work.

"When I was hired by Caltech to work in the moon rocks lab, I decided to continue to live in the desert and commute back and forth." His colleagues call him "Space Man" and the "Silver Streak" because of his appearance in the suit and "It's worth every mile to be able to live out here," he insisted. "To breathe the clear, crisp, smog-free, fog-free desert air. To look up in the sky after dark and see the Milky Way and all the stars. "To leave the masses of people, the noise and the traffic. What a contrast!" During his first years on the desert he hauled in all his water and relied on kerosene lamps for light.

He had no electricity. Only recently did telephone lines reach his stretch of sand at the end of a dirt road. "The cost of commuting is cheap enough. I get 44 miles to a gallon of gas," Coulson said. Coulson has to be prepared for all kinds of weather conditions.

On some days, he has left the warm desert only to encounter freezing weather and snow in the Cajon Pass and then rain along the foothills approaching Pasadena. "Since starting my long runs on the motorcycle I never catch cold or get flu," he said. "It gets so freezing cold on my bike, my immunity is built up." He leaves for work at 7 a.m. and arrives home at 7 p.m. Coulson hopes someday he'll hit it big in mining.

In the meantime, he makes the long drive. fx John Coulson on the way Times photo by Fitzgerald Whitney 1 I 'm 1 4 i 1L II Hog Angeles ORANGE COUNTY CC PART II MONDAY, NOVEMBER 1, 1976 Loophole Allows Development Prior to Hearings BY STEVEN C. SMITH Times Staff Writer SANTA ANA An 88-year-old loophole in county planning and zoning laws is permitting development of a choice piece of property near Yorba Linda in advance of forthcoming hearings on how the land should be used. Although county planning commissioners are scheduled today to consider changing the property's general plan designation from light industrial to residential, several developers already have begun work on the property. The work was made possible by the issuance of negative declarations, which certify that no significant environmental impact will result from the work, on grading permits sought by at least three developers.

The negative declarations were issued on the strength of an 88-year-old tract map, which established legal Please Turn to Page 13, Col. 1 Postscript: mes HOW TO BECOME A WITCH Roberta Fanarof, 25, of Huntington Beach turns herself into a witch for South Coast Plaza's Halloween festivities. Photos by Marv Wolf The KGOF Picture Is Still Out of Focus Orange County Television Station Hopes to Begin Broadcasting Next Year BY RICHARD O'REILLY Times Staff Writer There is nothing easy about starting your own television station, a group of Hollywood celebrities, former FBI agents and Orange County businessmen have learned. and on the job. Times photo by Bruce Cox OUT OF OFFICE Battin Tries to Pull His Life Together BY STEVE EMMONS Times Staff Writer SANTA ANA Last May 24, the day Supervisor Robert Battin was convicted of misuse of public funds and therefore banned from public office in California, he rushed past reporters, refusing to say anything.

Later attempts to interview him were turned away. "I think he was more than stunned," said Frank Manzo, one of Battin's close friends, in a recent interview. "I think for a month (after the conviction) he appeared very disoriented. He seemed to be out of touch with reality. He was sullen, and he lacked feeling when he spoke, it seemed to me.

"But now he's doing quite well. His color is good, and he's exercising again Last time I talked to him, probably a week ago, he implied that he was starting to pretty well break even and support himself. (Battin, 46, a bachelor, is an attorney.) There's just himself, so he doesn't have to make much money. I don't think he's made a lot, but enough to get by. "I think probably the thing that concerns Bob the most right now is this license question," said Manze.

(Notice of Battin's conviction has been routinely sent to the State Supreme Court, which will decide whether Battin will be disciplined.) "If Bob loses his license, that finishes him altogether, and of course it's a very real possibility, a very real possibility," said Manzo, an attorney. Battin, with his conviction five months in the past, recently consented to an interview. Sitting down to dinner in a Santa Ana restaurant, he started off by laying down the ground rules: "No. 1, 1 don't want to screw up my appeal, and No. 2, 1 don't want to screw up my ability to obtain new clients or retain the ones I've already acquired," he said.

He pulled out a thick folder, the rough draft of his appeal research. He said he has been working four nights a week in the county law library, doing, in effect, an analysis of the entire Penal Code. He's doing it himself, he said, because no one else will give it the dedication he will. Bad press now could be harmful, he said. He paused, then volunteered how badly he'd been treated by the press, Please Turn to Page 2, Col.

1 Board of Supervisors probably would be after Jan. 1. "The overwhelming impact of the (mountainous) landscape was a primary concern to all the residents," Cermak explained. As a result, the plan would set densities on steep hillsides and ridgelines as low as one dwelling unit per 40 acres. Residential development generally would be concentrated in the canyon and valley floors and at densities no higher than one-acre sites.

Though the tree-lined residential streets in these areas are "sub-standard," they also are "part of the charm," Cermak said, and should not have to be replaced if development occurs within the guidelines set out by the plan. Two "opportunity sites" where large-scale development could be located are the Irvine Mesa and Holtz Ranch Please Turn to Page 13, Col. 1 Once Mean, Violent Street Tough He Now Studies for the Ministry Golden Orange's president, Pat Boone, still drinks milk and wears white shoes but it has taken so long to bring KGOF, Channel 56, to reality that Boone is about to become a grandfather. And KGOF isnt even on the air yet Armed with two batteries of lawyers, the investors in Golden Orange thought it would take two or three years, maybe four at the most, to win the right to operate the station which the federal government had reserved nominally for Anaheim, Boone recalled recently. Instead, it took seven years for their application to wend its way through the bureaucracy of the Federal Communications Commission in Washington, D.C, in competition with applications from five other groups seeking the license for Channel 56.

Finally, in October, 1975, the FCC decided Golden Orange offered the best programming proposal and granted the firm a construction permit to put KGOF on the air. In the ensuing year, the embryonic station has made little visible progress toward meeting the 18-month deadline April, 1977 imposed by the FCC for it to begin broadcasting. But Boone insists behind-the-scenes progress has been substantial and is confident Golden Orange will win a deadline extension from the FCC and will be on the air next year. The immediate problem is money. In the eight years since the application was made, the economic situations and interests of the original 13 investors have changed so much that four have dropped out of the company.

Age has been a factor. Jimmy Durante, a 7V stockholder, was 75 when the application was made; now he's 83 and no longer able to participate. The years also took their toll on Walter Burroughs, retired publisher of the Orange Coast Daily Pilot, who was a 15 owner. Now 75 and still quite active, Burroughs is no longer willing to take the kind of financial risk a UHF television station requires. Others merely lost interest over the years.

Bernardo Yorba, 55, Anaheim fruit grower and businessman whose ancestors were the first farmers in California, finds that investing in a TV station is no longer compatible with his other business interests. He owned 5 of the shares. Please Turn to Page 3, Col. 1 nothing! It was heavy man, it was heavy For the first time in his 28 years, Freddy Torres got down on his knees and prayed. That was two years ago.

Today, the one they came to call El Feo with fear and respect is a student at the Latin American Bible Institute in La Puente and hopes to become an ordained minister in the Assembly of God Church. The church that helped save him, Victory Temple, is still helping this time with money to see that the new dream of Freddy Torres comes true. And Torres is repaying them and his own redemption by going to the prisons and the gangs to help quiet the rage and change the lives of other vato locos, the. crazy guys, by saying to them "It can be done. There is a way out." But more compelling than his message is his example.

El Feo convinces more when he says simply, "Look at me." Al Martinez Once he was the meanest of the mean, a violent, drug-blurred vato loco with enough hate in him to fill hell, and even in gang-ridden East Los Angeles they made a wide berth when Freddy Torres walked down the street. In prison for five years, stabbed nine times, given up for dead twice, washing out reality with booze and a $100-a-day heroin habit, 1 Feo the Ugly One seemed unredeemable until, as he remembers it, "the time of the miracle." It was after Torres had been released from prison that it happened. Loaded on pills and wine, he had been stabbed with a butcher knife. "I saw all the blood and I ran and ran and ran, saying to myself this is it, man! When am I going to drop? When am I going to die? He bolted into his home and stumbled to a mirror, expecting to see himself brutally slashed, blood-soaked, dying. But "There wasn't a mark on me! No blood, no scars, A more respected, wholesome, talented group of 13 persons could scarcely have been imagined back in 1968, when they formed Golden Orange Broadcasting Co.

and set out to bring Orange County its first commercial TV station. i I 3 1 "the time of the miracle." Times photo 1 SILVERADO-MODJESKA COMMUNITY PLAN Residents Look to the Future Backcountry BY DALE FETHERING Times Staff Writer SILVERADO In the small, garage-like Community Center here, an overflow crowd endured hard wooden benches for several hours to hear county officials decipher land-use maps. A bearded old-timer held up a spotlight to brighten the proceedings, and adding the proper woodsy touch, a couple of birds fled the mountain nippiness outside and darted among the rafters during the meeting. The scene, last week, like the area, is unusual. And the planning task is replete with local and regional issues.

About 1,500 persons live on the acres of private property in the Silverado-Mod jeska canyons area. But there are 3,000 landowners, threats from fire and flood and landslides, little flat land, and a fear that too much development either residential or recreational could ruin the rural life-style. After a year of detailed study, county planners, working with a citizens committee, have finished a proposed Silverado-Modjeska Community Plan. The plan, a spinoff of a broader and earlier Foothill Corridor Policy Plan, covers Black Star, Baker, Silverado, Williams and Modjeska canyons. "We're well on our way to coming up with a plan that's viable for the landowners and acceptable to the community, while protecting the environment," county planner Rick Cermak told about 80 residents.

The 300-page plan and environmental impact report is expected to go before the County Planning Commission for hearings in November and December. Final adoption, by the ffi sUiflliUlllkUk A pensive Freddy Torres. He was part of gang violence until.