A Wacky Adventure
Chief Big Balls and The Mysterious Case of the Missing Totem Pole
A spry geriatric scuttling a wheel barrel through a Fred Meyer flower bed caught my attention. Not something you see ever day at Freddies. And I should know…as a mother of four young children it always feels like I’m running to the grocery store for something.
So I made a second loop around the parking lot. I’m always on the hunt for quirky characters and unusual situations for the column I write in my local paper—and something about that septuagenarian qualified.
Or maybe I was just avoiding the inevitable—ho hum grocery shopping on a Sunday morning.
I slid my minivan between the lines staring, on the horizon I could see the gardener’s eggplant colored beret (think young Leonardo da Vinci). Was that an eagle feather sticking out of his jalopy beret?
This old guy was definitely more interesting than early Sunday morning grocery shopping. So I veered my cart and children toward the man.
The fun thing about being a writer and a mom is that the kids usually learn a thing or two about what I’m writing about.
The flip side of that card is regardless of the scoop if baby starts shrieking in public—well, that always trumps a lede on any story. So despite the smattering of frog pins adhered to the business end of the gardener’s beret like badges on a boy scouts sash I had to walk on by.
Inside shopping was uneventful—the same tediously long wagon trail line next to the ghost town 15 or less checkouts. I was grateful when the manager two-fingered me over to create a new line.
“Looks like someone’s doing a cleanse?” The manager inquired as he placed my psylum husk on the scale. I smiled searching for a subject change. The image of the old guy resurfaced.
“Who’s the guy in your bed?” I asked.
The manager appeared stumped.
“Out front,” I say. “The senior with the eagle feather?” I pointed in the direction of the southern exit.
“Oh, he’s no gardener.” He said between beeps as he resumed scanning yogurt containers. “He’s an artist. A wood carver. Fred Meyer is restoring a totem pole. It’s going to be a big thing with the commemoration of the 100 anniversary of Renton High School. But you know artists…they never want to commit to a timeline.” The manager shook his head, and looked at me expectantly. The way people do when they want you to agree with their plight, in this case a flaky, noncommittal artist with a deadline.
The problem with false familiarity is that I was fairly certain I had more in common with the beret wearing, frog encrusted, eagle feathered, flaky gardener-artist guy than the starched white collared store manager.
But I didn’t say so. I nodded agreeably morphing into a human bobble-head wearing an “I feel your pain” expression.
I abandoned my flaky kind like a hunting dog follows the whiff of prey or in this case a good story. And to the sound of my infant pounding the keys of the credit card machine and my three-year-old climbing up the check out counter using the adhered courtesy pen as a rope.
I discovered the manager was concerned about the logistics. Uncertain if the pole would be refurbished in time for the splashy re-dedication celebration scheduled for May 7th with the Rotary Club, Mayor’s Office, Renton Municipal Arts Commission and Kiro News.
By the time I rolled my groceries outside the wheel barrow was banked alongside the flower bed.
“Where’s the wood carver?” I asked a new man who stood with a shovel in the center of the flower bed. He wore jeans, t-shirt, white baseball cap and turquoise studs in his ears. I introduced myself and explained that I wrote a column for the Renton Reporter.
“I’m White Bear,” he said, as he set aside his shovel and walked over to me. I pointed to a scrap piece of corrugated wood leaning up against the raised, concrete flower bed. The words, DANGER HOLE were spray painted in black.
I glanced over on tiptoes at a hole that was roughly the size of a watermelon.
White Bear explained that the wood carver had left to continue his work at his workshop restoring the totem. And that he, was now digging what would become a seven foot hole that would be the new site of the old totem.
I asked White Bear how he became involved with the restoration of the totem pole.
Two years ago White Bear was parking on the fringe of the Fred Meyer parking lot. He looked up and what most had believed was a faded telephone pole surrounded by weeds and garbage. Was actually upon closer inspection a totem pole. White Bear began researching the pole at the Renton Historical Society and realized it was the Henry Moses Honoring Pole. It was his plan to restore the pole.
“And then it was stolen.” He said.
“What?” My ears perked up. “Stolen? Who stole it?”
White Bear didn’t answer my question. In a round about way he began to explain the bazaar circumstances by which the totem pole was found alongside another totem pole eight months ago— A West Seattle iconic 18-foot totem pole with wings — on a trailer parked at a senior center in Keizer, a suburb of Salem.
His skirting the issue of actually naming the individual who stole the totem.theft question reminded me of a Beatles lyric…I never give you my number, I only give you my situation.
Which of course like an unrequited love only encouraged my questions.
“But who stole it?” I cried impatiently.
White Bear explained that a crane operator was duped into believing he was assisting a member of the Seattle Arts Commission who was taking the West Seattle Totem Pole back to his property to refurbish it. At dusk in early December 2009 the crane operator with the alleged Seattle Arts Commissioner riding shotgun on a boom truck brodied up and over a curb and across a manicured lawn of a West Seattle park.
The phony arts commissioner unbolted the totem pole with large tools and the crane operator lifted the 500-pound, 18-foot-long totem pole onto his truck. Then the heavy truck sank into the mud. The crane operator called a local towing company. The police were called and directed traffic as they along with the towing company and crane operator unknowingly assisted in the theft.
I sat looking at White Bear stupefied. I had to see the totem. So I went looking for the wood carver.
I was in a frenzy to understand a story that had been going on for a while and yet I couldn’t believe that someone would steal a totem pole. It seemed so ballsy. And in broad daylight. I would have driven fifty miles to get a glimpse of that totem pole. As it turns out I didn’t have to, Jim lived less than five miles away from me. So on the way home from Fred Meyer’s I popped on by.
“Why would anyone want to steal a totem pole?” I asked Jim Ploegman the wood carver.
Every advance in the direction of talking about the totem thief would be stalled. Who was this guy? I had to know. Especially standing next to the totem. It was still in the process of being restored, but it was amazing and huge. Imagine a trunk of a huge cedar tree.
“Can we touch it?” I asked referring to the totem laying belly up on stilts.
Jim nodded.
Amelia, Baby Ty and I felt the smooth fin of a whale painstakingly carved into the thick cedar tree over thirty years ago. Jim began describing the colors he would use to breathe life back to the pole again.
“Who steals a totem pole?” I tried again, still trying to process such a galling theft. “Can you tell me his name?” I asked looking at Jim. He wore a mauve-colored beret (think Leonardo da Vinci) with an eagle feather poking out the side.
A look of disappointment descended across his face the way older people do when younger people just don’t get what’s important in life.
“You don’t want to write about this guy.” Jim said as if speaking of the thief was tantamount to conjuring the likes of Voldemort.
Jim waved us over and commenced a tour of his studio. Amelia was snapping shots with the digital camera as Jim described and pointed to a lifetime of treasures: Art, books, wood carving tools, a collection of antique ice skates dangled from the ceiling.
All the while I’m ashamed to admit…I was like a hunting dog follows the whiff of prey or in this case a good story. I felt myself becoming possessed by Bob Woodward, from the movie, All the Presidents Men, investigating the corruption of the century.
When I got home I contacted the Seattle Prosecutor. Why didn’t the police prosecute the totem thief? I cruised the internet and made a timeline on the wall to fill in the missing pieces about Chief Big Balls. Obviously that’s not his real name. He’s not a chief at all—he’s a seventy-year-old, white guy who goes around stealing totem poles. But for the sake of the story that’s what we’ll call him. The truth is Chief Big Ball is rich and apparently sue happy and successful at buying his way out of criminal prosecution.
Chief Big Balls whet his appetite with our towns totem pole (although there wasn’t enough evidence to charge Balls with the theft of the Henry Moses totem) and then according to police reports decided to steal West Seattle’s iconic 18-foot totem carved depictions of a beaver, raven, orca and spread-wing thunderbird for his new garage. According to documents he has a million dollar house in West Seattle and has recently built a country, waterfront estate in Black Diamond.
The iconic West Seattle Totem Pole was installed and dedicated in 1976. At the top, the 18-foot pole has a large bird with a wingspan of 12-feet. The pole overlooked Puget Sound and downtown Seattle. Robin Young, a Northwest Native American was commissioned to carve the pole by the West Seattle Rotarians in 1976 the Mayor named the pole after the Rotarians mission which is ironic, Service Above Self.
Had the landmark pole not been found it is estimated it would have cost $75,000 to replace it.
After a Rotary member discovered the pole was missing, he grew suspicious and asked his father to call the towing company and see where they’d taken it.
Apparently Chief Big Balls wanted the crane operator to put the totem pole in the garage but the boom was too high.
When police came to question Chief Big Balls he claimed to know nothing about the missing totem pole. But according to his neighbor he’d been bragging about putting a totem in the two-story stairwell of his garage/shop for months
The police also interviewed Chief Big Ball’s contractor who was aware that Big Ball’s had been trying to acquire a large Totem Pole with wings with the intent of putting in his garage.
In the end Chief Big Balls was not charged with the crime of stealing either totem. But instead paid over $20,000 in a plea agreement, and the money went toward the restoration of the West Seattle pole.
After a week of research I was exhausted. Besides, being an investigative reporter in Renton isn’t nearly as much fun as being a writer mom. Exposing villainy is stressful.
Jim was right.
I didn’t want to write about another rich guy with a Herculean sense of entitlement. The world was already full of too many of those stories.
A snapshot on my “conspiracy theory” board brought me back to reality. It was of Jim wearing Native American armor he’d fashioned out of soft leather and wooden plaits. Amelia posed alongside him brandishing the jawbone of an ox.
That day with Jim was one my seven-year-old daughter Amelia and I will never forget.
As for the Henry Moses honoring pole? It’s slated for rededication on May 7th in the Fred Meyer parking lot by the Seattle’s Best Coffee.
