<Begin Segment 3>

HM: And so anyway, the, the mail had finally filtered down to me. And I was in Fort Meade in the bachelor officers' quarters there for about a week because I waiting for this friend of mine to get separated. And we were going to go down the coastline to Florida and New Orleans, and he was going to ride in my car. And the major that we hauled back from Korea because he had had the $50,000 tag on his head. He was of the head of an informant network in Korea. Anyway --

TI: And so you had to actually go there and escort him back?

HM: Yeah. Gallagher's -- one of the las -- one of the jobs that we had was to go get this guy and make sure he comes back alive, even if you have to sacrifice your own life, because the major's more important than you are. This kind of crap.

TI: And the $50,000 price tag was someone who was after him that was...

HM: Yeah.

TI: ...like a, a bounty?

HM: Yeah, the North Koreans. And supposedly the intelligence group from North Korea was -- because he had this huge group of informant network system. And they were able to confirm the military movements of different groups and all this kind of stuff. And he was, he was well-known. He could speak Korean fluently. And he had adopted a Korean kid at that time.

Anyway, part of the problem was to get clearance for that Korean kid to come to the United States. And this is one of the children, that he had lost both his parents. And Molina had used one of the parents as his informants. And he, he was, he was really a very strong, religious, morally supportive person. And he felt compelled to bring that kid back with him. So anyway, that took a little while in Korea. And then he got clearance through the state department and immigration department. And he came back with the kid. And then I lost track of him until I went back down to Fort Meade, and he was assigned as the operations officer down there for the detachment.

And so during the course of waiting for Delbridge to get separated, he says, "I want you and Delbridge and my son," -- he calls him his son -- "to come to dinner." So we went to this restaurant, and he says, "Here's what I'd like for you guys to do." And he says, "I'm going to go into the priesthood for the Catholic church, and I am going to resign from the army. I have to relinquish all my," -- what do they call it? "My, my tangible assets. And I have a piece of property down on Biscayne Boulevard in, in Miami Beach." And, what is this coming to? I look at Delbridge and he looks at me, and he says, "I've been watching you guys, and I feel fairly good about having you become my son's guardians. I'll make you a deal." He says, "If you will take the property on Biscayne Boulevard, both of you, and you do whatever you feel like doing, and if you can take care of my son until you go through college, you can have that property, lock, stock and barrel." It's, he says, "It's title free. I mean, it's, it's -- only thing you have to pay right now is taxes on it." And that was the deal he propositioned us with.

TI: And give me a sense of how valuable this property was.

HM: Well, this was about a mile from the Fountain Blieu Hotel, which at that time was the main drag of Miami Beach. And it was ideally suited for a restaurant. In fact, the, that whole strip, they had a bunch of high-class restaurants on the place. And this was reason why we were going down to Miami Beach, to take a look at the property. And Molina's parents were located in Tampa, Florida. So the kid was either up in the Fort Meade area or during school time he would be transported back to Tampa. And the grandparents would be more or less taking care of him.

And so then anyway, Molina explained that, well, you're Oriental, and you understand the Orient a little bit, and you understand Koreans and so forth, so you can bring that part of the parenthood and guardianship to bear. And then Delbridge, you're a good money man because he was in the finance control area. And so that was the proposition he made. So Delbridge and I thought, well, he was about three days from his separation. So we said, well, are we going to take this thing seriously or just forget about it? He says, well, just as a favor to him, let's, let's do it. So anyway, that's the route that we selected. We wanted to go down Miami Beach first, go to Tampa, visit the parents, and then take this kid around down in, in Tampa. So that's how we configured our trip. And then we wanted to go down to New Orleans and stay down there for several days, and then take this other kid home to Oklahoma. He was another kid that was being separated the same day as Delbridge. So I thought, well, that would make a good arrangement. And so that's how we planned our trip. And we did that. We did take him to Jai-Alai and dog racing and all these things that Delbridge liked, horse racing down there in Tampa. And we got along with the kid real well.

TI: And how old was the kid?

HM: At that time he was, he just got to be twelve years old at that time. So I kind of pictured in my mind, when I went to camp, about his age.

TI: Right.

HM: And he was growing up in this, this same kind of maturity function. So I felt very comfortable with him. He was a nice kid. But anyway, when we got through with Tampa, Delbridge says, "Hey, I'm in no position to be a guardian for this kid." I felt the same way.

TI: And what would it mean to be guardian, to essentially, take care of him?

HM: Take care of him, yeah.

TI: He would live with you?

HM: Yeah, and have him go to school and all this kind of stuff, you know. So, when we were in New, New Orleans we called Molina up and says, "You know, you'd better have to, you're gonna have to take, make some other arrangements because we're not capable of doing that." And his parents were getting kind of old, too, at that point. So he was worried that the parents wouldn't be able to take care of the kid. So that, that was the end of that. But, anyway, we take this kid back to Oklahoma up in the boonies. And we used to call him the "Okie." The country that he came from really was out in the boonies, really rural, the "Okies" area.

TI: This was the other one that was separated at the same time?

HM: Yeah. Same day as...

TI: Right.

HM: Delbridge was.

TI: Right.

HM: And then we dropped him off. And the, we took the parents out for dinner that day, and we talked about their son's experience with the CIC. And they were happy to hear that he had such a good record, because he came from this hick-town and going with the big boys. But then I got a little bit of a semblance of how the Oklahomans lived, and it's kind of interesting. And then we drove to the Grand Canyon, then we went up to Las Vegas. And went up to Lake Tahoe because Delbridge wanted to look at some property up there, and right on the state line there, where that huge development took place. Anyway, then we drove back down to LA. He lived in Eagle Rock, in the LA area, and stayed at his place for a few days, and then drove up to San Francisco to see this, well, the, the prison was a little bit north of Sacramento, I guess. That's where we went to see the kid that, that got imprisoned.

TI: Oh, that's right. That was in prison for, what? We said three to five?

HM: Yeah, yeah.

TI: For getting caught.

HM: But they got him out a little bit earlier than the three years. And then they purged his record for the, his jail record. But anyway, we went to go see him at the prison. Then I took him back to San Francisco Airport, and then he flew back to LA, and I drove back up to Seattle. But at that point I don't know what to do. My mother wanted me to stay in Seattle because I had only been there four times in the last five years. And she thought that because she and my father were getting older that I should try to take care of the house. And I, I had a lot of different feelings at that point. And Hammersley, the guy that originally signed me up for FAA, he had a letter waiting for me at my house there.

<End Segment 3> - Copyright © 1999 Densho. All Rights Reserved.