Roger Hedgecock Show Flashfax for 11-25-03!

KOGO/AM 600 - 3P - 6P (Pacific)

SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA

THE RADIO MAYOR OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 25TH, 2003

NEED ANOTHER THING TO BE THANKFUL FOR?

(save a life)

AND HAVE SOME FUN AT THE SAME TIME…join ROGER today live at the Town and Country Convention Center in Mission Valley. We’re there from 3p - 6p but the event opened at 7am and runs until 7 this evening…Free food (a lot of it and a lot of variety from pizza to hotdogs to sweet stuff) live music, clowns and balloons and Charger players and the Charger Girls and more. All to lure you to roll up the sleeve and give up a pint of life saving blood. Not a bad way to begin the season of Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Listen up today as ROGER tells stories of lives that have and are being saved by donated blood. Visit in person (we’re right in the main lobby, can’t miss us) and meet the children and adults who depend daily on your donations of life fluid. This event is pure San Diego. A tradition for a quarter century now. Yikes!! Lots of parking. They’ve cut wait times (but while you wait you eat and get entertained and get signed autographs and get a free t-shirt…how good is that?)

And if you need another lure, we’re told that Santa takes blood donation into consideration when he decides that naughty or nice stuff. You don’t need no more coal.

JULIAN IS OPEN FOR BUSINESS…but hundreds of folks in the surrounding communities won’t be back in business for a few months at least. Entire communities outside of Julian are gone. Just ain’t there no more. So ROGER lent a hand yesterday with a live broadcast from the Town Hall in Julian. He worked to get out the word that Julian needs you to come by and spend a spell…spend a lot. A whole lot of folks who lost homes up there still have their business in town and need to stay in business. Fire folks made saving Julian a national story (more on that later) but it won’t be saved if the merchants go belly up and the town gets shuttered. We think we helped. ROGER was told by several merchants that his appeals of last week brought tourists to town last weekend.

So visit Julian but do yourself a favor…go up thru Ramona and 67/78. The Cuyamaca routes off Sunrise Hiway and thru Descanso take you thru our version of ground zero. You don’t want those images in your head.

WHERE TO NEXT? Well ROGER gets an appeal on the radio yesterday while he’s live in Julian. Bring the show to Wildcat Canyon. A tear voiced woman from there calls the show. Tells of the terror there….most of the deaths that happened during the gummint debacle fire, happened there. Not a lot of Lexus’ there. But a whole lot of need and far too much being ignored by media. So ROGER will take his show to the canyon sometime next week. Then perhaps to Valley Center. We may still need to be in Harbison Canyon and perhaps even Scripps Ranch. ROGER committed to going where he thinks his Community Forum can do some good.

THANKSGIVING KUDOS are due to a whole lot of folks in our community…who have come forward to help fire victims. Pacific Trust Bank and it’s owner Hans Ganz. He helped ROGER set up Operation Firestorm with a 50-thousand dollar seed check. As of this date we’ve given away more than 120-thousand dollars to fire victims. No long interview, multiple form fill out….just a need and we write a good sized check thru our tax exempt Warrior family organization, Operation Homefront. No overhead, no big exec limos, no office space or phone ops…every dime gets to a neighbor in need. We’ve kinda been running out of funds of late….but that problem has eased a little. After yesterdays show in Julian ROGER handed me a check for 10-thousand dollars for Operation Firestorm. Given to him by a friend (the boss has a lot of those). Not sure we should mention the name of the giver but since nobody said don’t: our Thanksgiving Thanks to Donald P. Shiley and Darlene V. Shiley…boss also gave me a check for $300 dollars given to him in Julian by Julian residents Craig and Melanie Straube. Those are precious dollars that will end up in fire victims hands within a day or two…that’s how quick we meet needs.

OTHER THANKS…Sycuan Band in Dehesa. You know they distributed 1000 dollar checks (no questions asked) over the weekend to fire victims in Crest, Harbison Canyon and Dehesa. You know they’ll pay to clear the slabs of the uninsured in those areas…and they’ll rebuild the Community Centers in Crest and Harbison and rebuild a church as well.

Thanks to Alex Spanos…he’s given a million dollars to fire relief. AT&T gave up 100-thousand dollars. Callaway Golf gave 50-thousand. KGTV did a phone bank appeal and came up with 1.3 million in cash and a million more in donated stuff. The California Coast Credit Union has put 100-thousand dollars aside and will make that money available, without pay back, to members who lost their homes.

AND DON’T FORGET BILLY GRAHAM…the good Doctor made a visit to San Diego earlier this year. And he did more than bring the word of the Lord with him. Whenever Billy does a Crusade his team arrives in city months beforehand and networks with the church community. His team outreaches and grabs hands with churches big and small. He mobilizes the Christian Community. And when the Crusade is over…that vital new network of fellowship and congregations remains.

And in the aftermath of the firestorm of 2003 that network has been re-mobilized. A whole bunch of the volunteers we met up in Crest last Friday came from the church network. Students, young adults, grown folks called by their church to put on goggles, gloves and masks to help clear away the debris, load trucks and hug a fire victim. (how important is a hug these days?). There’s an untold story here.

GOT AN EMAIL the other day. From a city of San Diego fire captain. Daniel J. Saner. He wrote to take ROGER to task for telling on the radio that an SD fire crew tried to jump on board a fire engine during the raging fire in Scripps Ranch and was told to get off the rig. The engine had been sold to Mexico. Turned out the engine had been sold to Miramar College. But the crew was kicked off anyway. ROGER was told on the radio by fire folks that if the SD fire crew had actually drove off and fought the fire with that engine they’d have been charged with stealing. And the fire official went on to say the engine was one of seven that SD fire had sold recently. Four did go to Mexico.

Why would we sell fire engines when the Chief is bitching he don’t have enough equipment? Well the engines got old. Not old enough to fight fires in Tijuana nor old enough to be used to teach fire fighting at Miramar College but too old for this fire crew to jump on and put out fires in Scripps Ranch.

We get away from our tale but the radio story outrages ROGER’S listeners. One of whom calls and tells us that his fire department is still saving homes with a 1949 engine.

Back to the story: Capt Saner writes a long email detailing how the old engines are dangerous and cannot be used and like that…and kinda concludes that ROGER and his listeners are stupid cause they don’t know squat about fighting fires. Well I get a copy of the email and respond rather simply that based on conversations I’ve had with a neighbor friend who used to be Chief of the Dehesa Volunteer Fire Department that fire fighting comes down to something pretty simple: “Put Wet On The Red.” Now I know we can spend years in classrooms and in field exercises but don’t it finally come down to wet on red? So that’s how I respond to Capt. Daniel J.

Capt. Daniel J. is kind enough to forward my response to his boss…Chief Jeff Bowman:

Chief Bowman,

I spoke with you today regarding the e-mail I sent Roger Hedgecock on his criticism of you and SDFD regarding the Miramar fire engine and I just wanted you to see the caliber of response I received from his staffer...... It begs the question, why do people of any intelligence listen to his show?

Respectfully,

Captain Dan Saner

We bet Capt. Daniel J. is in line for a promotion, ya think?

GOT SICK OVER THE WEEKEND…felt good until the late news came on Channel 8 on either Saturday or Sunday night. Then I got the urge to puke. The upset caused by a story live from Scripps Ranch where the Toys-R-Us folks were either giving away toys to fire victims or cutting prices real good. (the report never did say free or cheap)…Nice interviews with well dressed kids with braces. And as they leave the store they jump into the back seat of a four door Lexus.

Now I don’t begrudge a fire victim anything. I remain pissed however at the media’s continued focus on Scripps Ranch. Rich kids should get free or cheap toys…all kids should get toys.

But how about you put that friggin live truck up in Harbison Canyon or Crest or Wildcat Canyon or Cuyamaca? We got people living in tent cities. Cooking grub on a propane burner. Playing hit the ball on a small patch of grass outside a church relief center tent. Playing tag around generators and boxes of used clothing.

I took a bunch of Pepto…didn’t work. Hadda gulp several fingers of Jack D.

I WANT YOUR FIRE STORY…You are likely sick to your own stomach hearing me whine and feel sorry for myself…now it’s your turn. There are at least 3000 stories to be told. The family in Peutz Valley that has adopted everyone in that valley bypassing Red Cross etc and taking recovery into hand. The folks like Dan Smith in Alpine who stayed and saved his home with a garden hose and a full nights confrontation with fire. (Dan woke up in the morning and discovered half of his t-shirt had been burnt off). The Peutz Valley family that had a CDF truck drive up as they fought to save their home…CDF didn’t pour any water…couldn’t hook up to the families water tank because CDF didn’t have the right kind of adapter…idiots on the truck said that was the homeowners responsibility…drove off. This family lit a backfire….it worked…their home still stands.

I WANT THESE STORIES…I want to know what folks heard, saw, experienced and went thru. Who were the heroes. I want their names. Who were the culprits. I want their names. (I hear that CDF folks wanted to back fire outside of Julian…a fire that would have taken 30 homes…only talked out of it by a smart Julian resident who put the CDF guy in his truck and drove him around to show how the backfire would do more harm than good)…I want to know if scores of homes were sacrificed to save one street in Julian because Julian had become a national symbol.

I want to know what you lost. Stuff passed down thru generations and set to pass on again. Unique and remarkable stuff…and plain and ordinary stuff…I especially want these stories.

I’LL USE YOUR NAME IF YOU ALLOW…AND WON’T IF YOU DON’T …we’ve never failed a confidence in the 18 years ROGER has been on the air. But we need to know the truth…and collectively we are the truth. I know a lot of folks are afraid to talk. They work in CDF or other fire ops. They work for gummint agencies that fed the fire. I’ll protect your confidentiality.

I’LL USE THE INFO for whatever legal action might be available, investigation, probe or whitewash will have to confront your truth. And perhaps we’ll bind this stuff up into a book that details the worst our gummint has to offer. This fire was a classic example of why 911 happened. I don’t make a direct comparison but fact is we are being killed by government sent to save us.

DON’T HAVE A STORY…but a friend does…pass on my email address… jimmy@adnc.com

AND I CAN USE PICTURES…each one will save me a 1000 words and likely tell your story better than I can. Same email address works.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING

GOD BLESS AMERICA

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