10. Aging Boy of Summer | Lost Hills

0:15Speaker 1:Pushkin. Hey Lost Hills listeners, it's Dana. I wanted to let you know that you can hear the entire new season of Lost Hills ad-free along with other great binge listens by becoming a Pushkin Plus subscriber. Find Pushkin Plus on the Lost Hills show page in Apple Podcasts or at pushkin.fm slash plus.

0:44Speaker 2:He used to call me when I was back in California. Half the conversation sometimes we were running about who was out trying to get him, where the FBI looking for him. Don't talk to so-and-so. Don't tell the so-and-so where I am.

0:57Speaker 1:Kevin Naughton and Craig Peterson, the Surfer Magazine photojournalists, kept in touch with Mickey after they left France in 1978. Or he kept in touch with them. He'd always call from a certain phone booth.

1:12Speaker 3:The phone booth was in a, was it Bayonne?

1:15Speaker 2:It was in Bayonne. It was the main telecommunications in Bayonne.

1:18Speaker 3:Yeah, right outside the main telecommunications building in Bayonne. And it's a classic phone booth. And you would go in there and put in your frank pieces of coin in there and try to dial internationally to different places.

1:31Speaker 2:Remember, Craig, there was a couple of dozen phone booths outside the building.

1:35Speaker 1:But Mickey's phone booth didn't work like other telephones. There was a trick to it.

1:42Speaker 3:But Mickey showed us the one that if you put in your coins a certain way, and as the coin was dropping down, you hit it on the side of the machine twice and once at the bottom or something, then it would be unlimited time on the phone.

1:58Speaker 1:That phone booth by the main telecommunications building in Bayonne was the way Mickey kept in touch with his network around the world.

2:06Speaker 2:He would only go late at night when there was no one else around. And He liked to do it in secret like that, you know, and be the guy making these calls, probably because of some time zone changes too.

2:17Speaker 1:What he didn't realize was that he was being watched.

2:23Speaker 2:He kept going there regularly at night. And after a while, it aroused the suspicion of the French authorities. There were vast separatists very active around the French-Spanish border at that time.

2:36Speaker 1:The Basque separatists, a militant leftist group seeking independence from Spain, had carried out a number of high-profile robberies, kidnappings, and terror attacks in the region.

2:48Speaker 2:So the authorities thought, you know, if they're going to blow up something, it might be the telecommunications building, so let's keep an eye on it. Of course, then after a while, they noticed this guy showing up in his van, a foreigner, going back to the well. What's he doing at this same phone, making all these calls? You know, this went on for weeks and then months and going on and on. And they swooped in one night. He showed up, was making a call somewhere and they busted him.

3:16Speaker 2:And that was when all his past deeds caught up with him very quickly. Everything happened at once. They ran an international check on him and it all came collapsed down his world. All because of this one little phone call. in France that he showed us, and he just didn't know enough to stop using it. And he kept going back to it. And that's the single Frank that led to his downfall.

3:42Speaker 1:Mickey was busted in May of 1981. He'd been a fugitive for nearly seven years. Now, he was headed for a moldy French jail cell. And he was one step closer to seeing his long-lost California coast. courtesy of the FBI, which couldn't wait to bring him home. I'm Dana Goodyear, and this is Lost Hills. Lost Hills Episode 10, Aging Boy of Summer.

4:44Speaker 4:Okay, here's a box full of 800 pages of the FBI file. Enter at your own risk.

4:54Speaker 1:This is David Renson again, the journalist who wrote the definitive oral history of Mickey Dora's life.

5:02Speaker 4:I moved to California in 1964 with my family before I left some young classmate, said, you'll be able to go surfing. I said, what's that? And so I got aboard and went with my friends. And I started reading the genre magazines in 64 and 65, Surf Guide, Surfer, International Surfing. So that's how I discovered Mickey.

5:30Speaker 1:He's been fascinated by Mickey Dora ever since he moved to Southern California from New Jersey.

5:37Speaker 4:I found out that, you know, from reading these magazines, he disappeared in 1974. And so all of us wondered what happened. The rumors were, oh, he's a lawyer in Century City. You know, he's living with the Third Reich escapees in Argentina. He's doing this, he's doing that. Nobody knew.

5:56Speaker 1:For most of the 1970s, there were only rumors. All of them added to the Mickey Dora mythology.

6:03Speaker 4:And then... In 1982, I saw a clip that said, famous surfer held in Denver for credit card fraud, Mickey Dora.

6:15Speaker 1:Not only was Mickey Dora not a lawyer in Century City, he was about to be an inmate in federal prison. David was working for California Magazine at the time. He pitched his editor a profile of Mickey, Mickey the Felon. and he submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to the FBI. I'm sitting at David's dining room table, looking out a big window at the ocean. On a chair, there's a box containing all the documentation of the criminal investigations into Mickey Dora. The FBI's file on Mickey Dora is 876 pages long. That's a little longer than the FBI's file on the Zodiac Killer, and not much shorter than its file on Bonnie and Clyde. But the contents of Mickey's file are a whole lot of nothing. 876 pages of tracking and minutely documenting the worldwide travels of a surfer who had, number one, stolen some ski equipment and antiques and violated his probation. Number two, allegedly filed false information on a passport application for a passport that was never issued. And number three, defrauded the diners club while on said worldwide travels. David walks me through the first case, the ski equipment stolen from a shop in

7:54Speaker 1:Mammoth in Mono County.

7:56Speaker 4:Charges are broad. I believe he missed a few court dates, got there, finally pled guilty. You know, Judge Harry Roberts set up the repayment schedule, plus can't own any credit cards and need permission to leave California.

8:16Speaker 1:But instead of sticking around and doing what he was told.

8:20Speaker 4:He applies for a passport in the name of a dead guy.

8:23Speaker 1:So then he's on the run. That's the second case, the passport application in the name of Richard Austin Roche Jr. And that's what caught the attention of the FBI. And once they started looking at Mickey, they couldn't take their eyes off him. They interviewed people up and down the coast of California, staked out Mickey's father's house, intercepted mail. agents spent years interviewing his friends, family, exes, and his, quote, blood enemies. In particular, they focused on surfers.

9:03Speaker 1:Interviewing sources in Malibu and other beach cities, they got an earful about, quote, the surfing god. They call him the cat, one informant told the FBI, because, quote, no one knows when he's coming or going.

9:18Speaker 4:Yeah, this is all the stuff that just, this... brewed up the, where's Mickey, what's going on with Mickey, where's Mickey. Some people know, knew, but they interview his family and friends. Please let us know if you hear from him. It's illegal to harbor a criminal. People would either say, I wouldn't tell you if I did know, or, you know, just put out a bag of jewels in the center of the square and the Mickey Dora snake will slither out and grab it.

9:50Speaker 1:One FBI informant offered to provide information on Mickey, quote, for the right price. Another went on at length about illegal operations Mickey was supposedly the mastermind of, jewelry heists in Central and South America, smuggling counterfeit U.S. currency from Singapore to New Zealand and Australia. According to another FBI source, Mickey had been smuggling drugs into New Zealand using, quote, hollowed-out surfboards. The more the FBI asked around about Mickey, the more interested they got. Agents had been keeping close tabs on Linda Kai when she was traveling with Mickey.

10:34Speaker 1:When she left Mickey and came back to California, they swooped.

10:39Speaker 5:I was sick. I'd just come back from somewhere. I can't remember where now. Some long trip.

10:45Speaker 1:She was recuperating at her parents' house.

10:47Speaker 5:I was in the front room and the dog was barking like nuts. There was some guy ran around through the back gate to be sure nobody was back there with a gun drawn. And the guy comes to the front, you know, plainclothes. And he goes, where's Mickey? Mickey Dora here? And I said, no, he doesn't live here. Why would he be here? Well, you're Linda, right? And I said, yes. And he said, well, we almost caught you in Kenya. And I was like, well, I don't know anything about any of that, you know. He says, yeah, we were close.

11:22Speaker 4:I was like, oh, okay. I was like.

11:28Speaker 3:What else?

11:29Speaker 5:I said, I'm not feeling real good. You know, I'm sick, you know. And he goes, where is Mickey? And I said, I don't know. I said, I haven't seen him at all. And it was just a real, like a quick kind of scare. And, you know, I said, you don't need to have guns, you know.

11:44Speaker 3:Come on.

11:45Speaker 5:This is scary.

11:47Speaker 1:And did you call Mickey right away?

11:49Speaker 5:There's nowhere to call.

11:50Speaker 1:Where was he?

11:51Speaker 5:I have no idea.

11:52Speaker 1:Oh, so you really didn't know where he was.

11:53Speaker 6:No.

11:55Speaker 1:The FBI also visited Jim Kempton. He's now the president of the California Surf Museum, but back then, he was editing Surfer Magazine.

12:05Speaker 7:I got a visit from the FBI.

12:08Speaker 1:First, the agent showed up at his parents' house.

12:11Speaker 7:And of course, my parents being, you know, the greatest generation, 40s people, immediately told him right where I was. Right? Not like, oh, you don't know. You know, like, oh no, my son lives right down here. You'll be able to find him right away. Assuming that, like, I was a total good guy, you know, which probably wasn't the greatest assumption to make. But, Um, so they came and they asked me all about Mickey and what I knew. And I went out of my way to give them as little information as I possibly could without lying to them.

12:39Speaker 7:Cause I knew that lying with the FBI was a crime. So I wasn't going to tell him anything untrue, but I was going to, I was going to, I don't recall as many times as I could, or I don't know as many times as I could without being obvious, but Mickey heard about it.

12:57Speaker 1:For a guy hiding out in a van in the south of France, Mickey was pretty connected.

13:03Speaker 7:So a few weeks later, at Surfer Magazine, this box arrives that I open. It's from Mickey, dressed on the outside so I'd be sure to open it, right? And it's a dried turd with a relatively threatening note in it. And all it did was really make me angry because it made me angry that he would think that I would do that. And the fact that I had gone out of my way not to do that and wasn't being credited by him for having protected his position was very aggravating to me.

13:51Speaker 1:The FBI seemed to really want Mickey. But why?

13:55Speaker 6:Why?

13:58Speaker 4:I thought it was really interesting how vociferously the FBI pursued the Richard Austin Roach thing. It seemed like, so what? I mean, it's a crime. And making a false statement, they would chase him all over the world and send all those telexes back and forth. And that FBI file is heavy, heavy, heavy with that stuff.

14:28Speaker 1:The alleged crime they wanted him for, making a false statement in a passport application for a passport that was never issued, would have meant, at the most, five years in prison or a fine of a couple thousand dollars. It just doesn't seem to justify all this effort. And meanwhile, Mickey was denying he'd done anything wrong. So what was really going on? The third case against Mickey had to do with all those doctored credit cards Linda says they were using in their travels. The Diners Club was alleging large-scale fraud, and Mickey, in absentia, had been indicted in federal court. By the late 70s, Mickey's father was speaking regularly to the FBI. He would sometimes confront Mickey with the allegations against him. Mickey insisted he was innocent. Mickey said he was being framed. Dear Father, Mickey wrote to Miklosch, there is this creature by the name of Don Wilson, the poor man's Dillinger of our times. This person is an escaped convict, a record of forgery, credit card theft, and many other offenses, I'm quite sure. He's been dashing around the U.S. and elsewhere using my checks and credit

16:06Speaker 1:cards and identifications. Don Wilson. The pirate captain. Linda's old con artist boyfriend who'd shown up at their doorstep in New Zealand. Mickey said Don was impersonating him, committing crimes in his name. According to a memo in Mickey's FBI file, Miklos spoke to Mickey about the passport fraud. saying he'd seen the photo submitted with the passport application for Richard Austin Roche Jr., and he recognized Mickey. Miklos told the agents that Mickey had said someone else must have done the fraud and was trying to put the blame on him.

16:47Speaker 1:The memo goes on to state that Mickey claimed that back when he was living in Brentwood, an old friend from the Pacific Palisades, i.e. Don Wilson, had somehow gotten into his house and stolen his credit cards and some other documents. Don Wilson, Mickey said, was likely the person behind the passport fraud, and Don Wilson was probably the one using doctored credit cards with Mickey's name on them. Don had been pulling scams in Mickey's name? Mickey was the victim? It's intriguing. Mostly because Mickey and Don seemed to sabotage each other whenever possible. But I struggle to believe that Don Wilson's mischief explains Mickey's legal trouble. Mickey's storage unit in New Zealand, for example, it was filled with $ 100, 000 worth of antiques and other valuables, 24 used fake airline tickets, and 60 credit cards, many of them altered or defaced that had been taken out in Dora's name.

17:53Speaker 1:I don't think even the pirate captain could have managed to get inside Mickey's storage unit and plant that incriminating evidence. But there is something that doesn't make sense about the case against Mickey. Why is his file so fat? Why did agents trace his movements around the world on such flimsy and insignificant charges? Some people say the reason Mickey was so on their radar was because he was working for them. That he wasn't a target of the FBI.

18:33Speaker 1:He was an asset. The file, all the dirt they gathered on him, the gossip and the rumors, that was collateral. They let him run so far and for so long, not because they were inept and couldn't nab him, but because he was gathering useful information for them in India, Africa, Indonesia, everywhere he went on his search for the perfect wave. This theory turns the whole Mickey story inside out. David Ranson.

19:10Speaker 4:You've got all that stuff about people saying he wasn't really working for the FBI. You've heard of that?

19:18Speaker 1:I don't know what to make of that.

19:19Speaker 4:Because I believe that idea was, notice how he ends up in these hot spots coincidentally.

19:29Speaker 1:I'm tempted to think that this is pure myth-making. Mickey's fanboy is trying to glamorize his exploits. Give a James Bond varnish to Mickey's chintzy three-card Monty approach to life. But David says there's some reason to give credence to the idea that Mickey had a special status with the FBI He says while Mickey was still a fugitive, he'd somehow gotten access to his own FBI file.

20:02Speaker 4:My friend Jerry said he was in Biarritz one day before the repatriation to America and Mickey had his FBI file and said to Jerry, here, look, here it is. And Jerry said, I don't know how he got that And he looked through it and he saw all sorts of stuff that is obviously... I don't know how Mickey got it. Which leads to the... I don't know. I think Jerry's telling the truth. And I talked to a friend of mine who's an FBI agent who did describe to me that sometimes informants, you know, get some privileges, but no guarantees. You know, if they screw up, they could just... It's just a total guess... It's possible Mickey cut a deal, but I don't know.

20:52Speaker 1:Who or what would he have had info on that they wanted?

20:57Speaker 4:Stolen passports, drug smuggling, credit card fraud. I don't know. But that's the nature of Mickey Dora. You never know what's true.

21:07Speaker 1:Or there could be a little tiny bit of truth.

21:10Speaker 4:Tiny bit of truth. You took the words out of my mouth.

21:15Speaker 1:Whatever the truth is about Mickey's relationship with the FBI, the longer he stayed in exile, the more he began to unravel. The records in Mickey's FBI file paint a dark picture of his time in Gittery leading up to his arrest. Linda told agents Mickey was, quote, totally paranoid and emotionally unstable, and that she was, quote, scared to death of him. Mickey, she said, had hidden her passport and her money to try to keep her from leaving. She told the agents she was done with him. Back in France, in his green Mercedes-Benz camper van, Mickey was losing it. Quote, subject recently returned to France from South Africa, believed to be using altered expired passport in his own name and believed heavily involved in narcotics. unquote. Quote, subject becoming paranoid and erratic, unquote. Quote, subject appears to be undergoing nervous breakdown, has alienated a number of friends, and believed to be financially desperate, unquote. Mickey was arrested at the rigged phone booth in May of 1981. His first instinct, formed of lifelong habit, was to try to get out of it.

22:44Speaker 6:He said, well, you know, I'm just calling some friends and I put my 50 centimes in and I don't know, it doesn't ask for more money.

22:53Speaker 1:This is Bob Simpson, an American lawyer who knew Mickey in France. So I just keep talking.

22:59Speaker 6:I don't know what the problem is with this thing, but I use it all the time. I thought maybe this was made available for foreigners or something. So he made up all sorts of stories.

23:07Speaker 1:The French police took Mickey to a damp stone prison known by locals as as Villa Chagrin.

23:16Speaker 6:They took him to jail in Bayan, where he was for several months. And when they were there, the police discovered that he was wanted by Interpol and that there was an international arrest warrant out from the United States, from California.

23:34Speaker 1:According to Bob, they found eight fake passports with different names on them. Mickey no longer had a valid passport, and authorities in France gave him a choice. Go back to the United States and deal with the outstanding warrants, or go to another country of his choice.

23:52Speaker 4:He made the choice. As far as I know, Miklos convinced him to come back, made some suggestion that get it over with now, and it'll be okay.

24:03Speaker 1:Mickey, after consulting some lawyers for the Rothschilds who were helping out, decided to surrender himself. Miklos sent him a first-class ticket. He made a reservation on Air France Flight 003 nonstop from Paris to LAX. A U.S. Marshal was dispatched to meet him. The U.S. Marshal watched as every single passenger got off that plane, and Mickey wasn't there. A few days later, the FBI's man in Paris sent a telex to the director of the FBI. Quote, It would appear that Dora, best described as a quintessential, albeit aging, boy of summer on a perennial quest for the legendary ninth wave, may have returned to Biarritz or some other surfing site instead of to Los Angeles as originally planned, given his surf compulsion and legendary lack of responsibility.

25:04Speaker 5:Unquote.

25:06Speaker 1:A short time later, the FBI learned, Mickey had booked a new flight. The Bureau telex noted, quote, Paris, aware of Dora's hedonic pilgrimage, magniloquently described heretofore, realized he may alter his plans, unquote. Then the FBI lost track of him. The next Bureau communication read, quote, Paris assumes scintillating Sandor has surfed into the sunset and sunk, unquote. Sandor was Mickey's middle name. The FBI's man in Paris was calling him scintillating Sandor, an aging boy of summer with a legendary lack of responsibility on a quest for the ninth wave.

25:59Speaker 1:What is this guy? His handler? He sounds more like a press agent than an FBI agent. And why is he so invested in Mickey's persona and his quest? Maybe Mickey was working for the FBI. Either way, they'd lost him. Mickey was in the wind. Mickey Dora didn't surf into the sunset and sink, though he probably would have loved to. It took another two weeks, but Mickey did eventually arrive in Los Angeles on September 1, 1981. He was arrested by an FBI agent who took him to a medium-security federal prison at Terminal Island. He was 47 years old.

26:57Speaker 1:The first thing Mickey had to do was go up to Mono County and face the judge. He was sentenced to three years in state prison, suspended. He'd need to serve less than six months in county jail. In the Passport case, the FBI's handwriting analysts failed to match Mickey's sample with the writing on the Richard Austin Roche Jr. application. The fingerprint analysis failed, too, so the case was dropped. due to insufficient evidence. That just left the charge over the alleged diners club fraud, which had been whittled down to almost nothing. That case was being heard at a federal court in Denver. Mickey's lawyer, a public defender, later represented Terry Nichols, a conspirator in the Oklahoma City bombing.

27:49Speaker 4:Essentially, the charge was reduced to throwing away your own mail.

27:54Speaker 1:Mickey's biographer, David Renson, Diners.

27:57Speaker 4:Club sends you a bill. You don't pay it. And if you don't pay it or don't open it or don't receive it, it's sent back to Diners Club. But you throw it in the garbage. So you've thrown away the mail and interfered with... That's what he ultimately got nailed on.

28:18Speaker 1:For throwing away his own mail... the judge in Denver sentenced Mickey to approximately six months at Lompoc, a low-security federal facility in California. And the Diners Club auctioned off the $ 100, 000 worth of loot in his storage facility in New Zealand. Among the auctioned items, according to Renson's book, there were six trunks full of tuxedos, cashmere, a pink paisley silk sleeping bag, the street sign from the corner of Hollywood and Vine, and the SS leather trench coat.

28:53Speaker 1:A Maori guy named Mickey bought all of Mickey's clothes. Throughout all this, no matter what he told the judges, Mickey insisted that he was innocent. Someone had broken into his house and stolen his credit card, leading to all those charges. Don Wilson had framed him on the passport fraud. He'd returned the ski equipment to the shop. He couldn't pay restitution because of an accident. He had the probation officer's permission to go to Europe. He had amnesia and hypoglycemia.

29:30Speaker 1:Mickey didn't feel sorry. Not then, not ever. Not that he would admit. But when he wasn't saying he didn't do it, he was bragging about his accomplishments. He'd write, quote, from 1974 to 1981, I covered well over 200,000 miles over four continents, 90% of the time reconnoitering the coastal areas of India, Africa, the Far East, Indonesia, Australia, New Zealand, South America, and hundreds of islands. Only in Europe did Interpol or the Only after five passports and millions of taxpayer dollars wasted on the hunt did I, with a gun pointed at my head, volunteer to return to the USA, just visiting, thanks. Thus ending the most extraordinary surfing odyssey in the history of mankind. While Mickey was waiting to begin serving his time, he was sent to a prison medical facility for a psychiatric evaluation. At his dining room table, David pulls a page out of Mickey's file.

30:44Speaker 4:Subject is alert and displays some inner tension during the interview, but he remains composed and in good contact. He has no health complaints except for asthmatic condition. He states he has to be careful and neither smokes nor drinks, which I think is true. He states the only drugs he uses are prescription plus enormous amounts of health vitamins. You know, yeah, it sounds like Mickey. He's defensive in talking about his arrest, becomes agitated when he's asked about the diner's club matter.

31:12Speaker 4:He denies he's involved in that as an upset because of his personal property was confiscated to pay off the diner's club charges. It appears he's shown some asocial behavior in the past, unwilling to admit responsibility. It does appear at the present time he has now developed a sense of conscience. He's willing to at least face the music and get things straightened out.

31:33Speaker 1:The psychologist noted Mickey's hang-dog expression and gave him a diagnosis of narcissistic personality disorder.

31:41Speaker 4:Narcissistic personality. Well, okay, that's bandied about a lot these days. I'm not sure what that is. But if it's care only about yourself and see people's extension of yourself and know how to wind them around your finger when you need to help yourself, Okay.

32:06Speaker 1:While he was at the prison medical facility for his psych evaluation, Mickey ran into someone he'd known back in the 60s, another notorious Malibu character, Charles Manson. FBI file, 156 pages, to Dora's 876. This is a story that he told us here in France later, and it's been told so many times.

32:30Speaker 6:Is it true? Is it not true? I don't know, but he told it to everybody.

32:34Speaker 1:Bob Simpson, the expat lawyer.

32:36Speaker 6:He said, this man came over and talked to me and he said, I want to thank you for that tip you gave me. And Mickey said, what are you talking about? And he said, well, you know, I'm Charles Manson. And, you know, back in the day when you were doing your little thefts in Los Angeles areas, the celebrity parties with your girlfriends, You gave me a tip to go to one party, and I went there with my friends, and we got a good heist. I just thank you. Thanks for the tip. So Mickey says, okay, you're welcome.

33:10Speaker 6:But he didn't really want to have anything to do with Charles Manson, and everybody saw that Charles Manson knew him. So Mickey all of a sudden became the biggest star in the prison, even more so than Charles Manson.

33:20Speaker 1:He said, I don't like this.

33:21Speaker 6:I need to get out of here.

33:25Speaker 1:While Mickey was serving his sentence, David started trying to figure out how to get to him.

33:30Speaker 4:So I spent, you know, many months talking to people who knew him, who liked him, who, according to Mickey later, didn't like him.

33:44Speaker 1:But of course, he needed Mickey.

33:47Speaker 4:So now my editor said, well, you've got to talk to him. I said, you don't know Mickey. He goes, you've got to talk to him until it's published. And I found him. three days after he got out of Lompoc Men's Penitentiary.

33:59Speaker 1:David had gotten to know some of Mickey's friends, and he asked one of them to act as a go-between. After months of back and forth, Mickey told David to meet him in the library of a small community college in Orange County. David didn't know what to expect. It was May 1983.

34:16Speaker 4:You know, he had a wispy, beard goatee, looked disheveled. He said, why have you taken an interest in me? And I don't know, I probably should have been more afraid or nervous about it, but I was, you know how it is when you interview someone, you just sort of click in. And I said, well, I've taken an interest in you because where have you been?

34:40Speaker 1:What he remembers is that Mickey was angry at Miklos for being the one who convinced him to return to the U.S. and face his accusers.

34:50Speaker 4:In my interview, I said, you came back. And he goes, I didn't want to come back. But he did come back, and he had to stay in prison for a little while, and that he felt was a betrayal.

35:00Speaker 1:Do you think he was changed by his experience in prison?

35:05Speaker 4:I do. I think he said, I'm never going back. I'm not going to risk that stuff. I just, you know, I just sensed a whole change in Mickey.

35:17Speaker 1:After prison, Mickey went back to Gittery, determined not to repeat his mistakes. That meant no more funny business with the credit cards. With no honest source of income, Mickey seemed to be living hand-to-mouth. He got his van back, but it was falling apart after years of being left outside in the salt air. Mickey was showing where to. According to Renson's book, he got tossed out of a health club, for cleaning his clothes in the jacuzzi and putting them in the sauna to dry. Da Cat, it seemed, had used up all his lives. But then one day, as Mickey was lying in his van in a youth hostel parking lot, there was a knock at the door.

36:08Speaker 1:It was someone from the surf apparel company Quicksilver. They were offering a lifeline. an entree to the world of professional surfing and the professional surfers he would have once despised. Mickey had relentlessly mocked the surf industry for years, but this time, Mickey was in no position to be choosy. Next time on Lost Tales, Mickey's Being Recorded.

36:45Speaker 8:I'm in Chile, on the coastline in a little town called Pichilimo. I'm in a little one-bedroom hotel room. It's Niki Dora. Enter Niki Dora.

37:08Speaker 1:That's next in Episode 11, Writing on the Wall. Lost Hills is written and reported by me, Dana Goodyear. It's created by me and Ben Adair and produced by Western Sound and Pushkin Industries. Subscribe to Pushkin Plus and you can binge the entire season right now ad-free. Find Pushkin Plus on the Lost Hills show page in Apple Podcasts or at pushkin.fm.