Perhaps
not. It’s the dirty little secret of an idyllic sun-drenched islet out
in San Diego Bay. Coronado in the late 1960s was an easygoing beach
town, ‘where everyone who was hip on the island knew everybody on the
island who was hip’.
Lou
Villar (pictured above) was a young, handsome and charming Spanish
teacher at Coronado High, who was known as the cool bohemian teacher
amongst students, driving into the parking lot with his red corvette and
RayBan shades. He also coached swimming, basketball and water polo at
Coronado High, which enrolled a lot kids from strict military families
in the navy.
By
1969, on the eve of Woodstock, where Lou had once been a counsellor for
anti-drug projects at the high school, he now became the teacher with
whom it was rumoured you could try your first joint. He brought
turntables to class and played records by The Doors, whose frontman Jim
Morrison was a native of Coronado. The same year he quit teaching, took
up surfing, traded in his corvette for a VW van and was no longer part
of ‘the establishment’.
That
same summer, marijuana was in such high demand in the United States that
the country experienced its first great supply shortage. Just a few
miles south of Coronado was Tijuana. With a bit of creativity, a few
surf-loving stoners began to see an opportunity…
“No one else besides the people who lived it has ever heard this story,” Lou Villar told writer Joshuah Bearman when he agreed to meet with him at a pizza joint, decades later in 2013.
“Arranging the first meeting had
been complicated, requiring the kind of cloak-and-dagger planning that
Lou knew from the days of the Coronado Company”, recalls Bearman. “I
showed up at the restaurant, waited, and was finally approached by Lou
after I ‘checked out.’ He was spry, fit, and still sharp as he jumped
into a story that hadn’t been told in thirty years.”
It all started out with Lance
Weber, from the Coronado High class of ’62, surfing 25 pounds of pot
down the beach from Tijuana into America.
He washed up on the U.S. side,
on a beach with no name, no facilities, not even a parking lot—a perfect
terminus for illegal night swims. He did it again, and again. It was
dangerous, being in the water at night with only the blinking
radio-tower lights for guidance, but it was worth it: Each delivery
netted five grand.
Lance had joined the navy after graduating high school but after his
service as an engineer on a submarine, he ended up back on the beaches
of Coronado again, hanging out, tricking out cars and getting stoned.
But Lance had the nerve that was needed to start what would soon become
an empire. He was known as “The Wizard”, for figuring out how to smuggle
in the best and most potent pot on earth.
At first, Lance recruited a band of
fellow misfits from Coronado High, including strong members of the swim
team, Paul Acree and Ed Otero. After surfing down the beach at night
(with the added risk of sharks), they switched to rubber boats that
Lance had used in the navy and increased their load to 100 pounds of
marijuana. The money was good, very good for a bunch of recently
graduated high school geeks who had trouble getting girls. But they had
one problem. Their guy in Tijuana, ‘Joe the Mexican’, didn’t speak
English. That’s where their high school Spanish teacher Lou Villar came
into the picture and took the whole operation to another level.
Photo courtesy of Atavist
Since quitting teaching, Villar hadn’t done much with himself. He was painting houses for a living and dabbling in beachside buddhism in his spare time, meditating and denouncing materialism.
Lou was in dungarees, standing on a ladder with paintbrush in hand, when Lance rolled up on his low-rider bike.
“You speak Spanish, right?”
“Sí,” Lou said. “Naturalmente.” It was a rhetorical question.
“Then come down here,” Lance said. “I got an idea.”
“I don’t have time,” Lou said. “I have to finish painting this house.”
“I’ll make it worth your time,” Lance said. He would pay Lou fifty bucks, he explained, to go with him to Tijuana for dinner.
That night, Lou ended up negotiating a better deal for a bigger load
with ‘Joe the Mexican’. Lance offered Lou a cut of the next shipment and
Lou, having made the easiest $50 in a long while that day, was in.By 1972, they were making runs once a week. They organised their ‘scams’ at barbecues, meticulously planning while grilling steaks together on the beach.
It would be over in five minutes, the most exciting five minutes they’d ever experienced: everyone holding their breath until the van was on the road, knowing as they drove away that they each had just made twice their parents’ annual salary.
They graduated from the rubber boats to a 40-foot cabin cruiser captained by Lance within a year. Still not even out of their early twenties, the Coronado High gang were pocketing $50,000 to a quarter of a million dollars on the regular.
Lance Weber, top right, and friends from Coronado pose with the Coronado Company’s DUKW amphibious landing craft. (Photo: Courtesy of Gary Kidd via Atavist)
Of course as with any drug story, the DEA has to enter the story at some point. And because everybody knew everybody in Coronado, soon enough a local police officer heard through the rumour mill about some kids and a former teacher doing pot runs up the coast, and tipped off the DEA.
The agency’s first lead was a boat named the Lee Max II, belonging to Lance Weber, who had been busted on one of his early runs in 1971 and had a criminal record.
There were reports of the Lee Max II on the water at 3 a.m., and Dunne doubted they were out fishing … One night after a gig in Carlsbad, [Lou and Lance] planned to meet at a coffee shop near Oceanside Harbor after the beach crew unloaded the shipment. Lou was sitting in his booth with a fork in a slice of cherry pie when he looked up and saw Lance drive past in his truck, pulling the Lee Max II on its trailer, two squad cars in tow. The cops tore the boat apart, right in front of the coffee shop, but found nothing. Lance relished his little victory—and then walked in to meet Lou. “Don’t even talk to me,” Lou said, jumping up to leave. “Just keep walking.”
Photo via Atavist
This was around the time their infamous name, “The Coronado Company”, began to stick. Everyone on the island knew what was going on. But the added heat only encouraged Lou Villar to tighten things up and get business savvy. He went from buddhist on the beach to drug smuggling business visionary. The high school hobbies of the company became crucial to the operation. One guy, Al Sweeney, was brought in to do their fake IDs because he was always the kid who was good with photography and printing in school. He had also enjoyed messing around with ham-radios and ended up created a secure radio system with military-grade crystals for the company to communicate on protected channels.
While more locals and friends from Coronado High were recruited to the the company, certain others had to go. Early recruit of Lance Weber, Paul Acree, had developed a bad cocaine and heroin habit since striking it rich with the company. He was a risk and was promptly voted out. Ed Otero, the youngest of the group was warned for flashing around too much cash in public and living ‘too big’.
Full steam ahead, the Coronado Company began working with Roberto Beltrán, also known as “The Don”/ also known as one of the biggest drug dealers in the world. The company’s new ‘General Manager’ (Coronado High class of ’67), Dave Strather and his old high school teacher Lou Valler went to meet him.
Dave and Lou were surprised to see that the Don looked like a maharishi, or maybe a bum: scraggly hair, jeans, unshaven. When they walked in, he didn’t get up. It was a weird scene, standing at the foot of the bed, unsure of what to do. Dave thought they were dead. Especially when Lou decided to take a pillow and lay down on the bed, right next to Beltrán. Dave silently said a prayer.
Company members pose on top of a shipment of marijuana. (Photo: Courtesy of Gary Kidd)
The crew later successfully delivered 15 tons of marijuana right up to U.S shores.As the convoy pulled away from the beach, they drove right past a highway patrol cruiser on the shoulder with lights flashing. Fuzzy [company driver/ mechanic] smiled as they passed; the officer was writing some poor bastard a speeding ticket while a truck packed with thousands of pounds of pot sailed by at 60 miles an hour.
At this point, it’s safe to say the Coronado Company was the biggest marijuana smuggling operation on the West Coast and the oldest among them, their old Spanish teacher, was only 34 years old. Hippies turned Kingpins, they crossed oceans, smuggling from Southeast Asia to Lebanon. But the Coronado Company made the unlikeliest of gangsters. There was no violence or guns involved (except for the ones they saw on the pick-ups) and Lou made most of his business deals on tennis courts in the Palm Springs. The goal of all of it was to live the good life, pure and simple(ish).
Lou Villar’s house at the Palmetto Dunes Oceanfront Resort in Hilton Head, South Carolina. (Photo: Courtesy of Lou Villar)
Lou had long since traded his VW bus for a Ferrari. In the trunk,
he carried a valise full of “fun tickets,” $100 bills to satisfy any
whim. He and Ed and Bob bought palatial homes, acquired a taste for
antiques. Bob and Ed, who had climbed Machu Picchu together, added
Mesoamerican touches to their Asian aesthetic. Lou’s tastes ran toward
the eclectic; among other things, he had bought a carved opium bed from
China. He would jet to Paris on the Concorde and spend the weekend
buying $5,000 worth of shoes. He spent $15,000 on a fake passport under
the name Peter Grant, bought a Mercedes as James Benson, shopped at
Wilkes Bashford as Richard Malone. This was the name Lou was known by in
La Costa and in Lake Tahoe, where the Company liked to vacation. One
day, Lou surprised Kerrie [former girlfriend] with tickets to Jamaica,
where they lived for a month on a remote lagoon, disconnected from
everything, just snorkeling and reading. Back in Coronado, Paul Acree, the guy they kicked out of the company for his uncontrollable drug habit was now snitching to the DEA. As the indictments started coming down on the company, soon enough, members began turning against each other. Lance, the originator of it all, became a confidential informant of the DEA. He became somewhat of a favourite with the agents, who had for so long been following and chasing his impressive empire, that they considered ‘light years ahead of everyone else’. Many years later, when Lance moved back to Coronado and got married, he invited the DEA agents to his wedding. For his wedding present, they gave him pair of handcuffs with the engraving, “Congratulations on Your Life Sentence!”
DEA special agent James Conklin, left, who was said to be “married” to the Coronado Company case. (Photo: Courtesy of James Conklin)
Lou was by himself, heading for Bob’s house. It was a beautiful
day, and Lou had just had lunch with the girls at home. He was feeling
good, thinking about the pot in his basement and how much it was worth.
When he saw that he was being tailed, he turned down the radio. He
changed course, but the car followed. After a half-dozen turns, Lou
found himself in a cul-de-sac. The cops didn’t even need to flash the
lights.
“Keep your hands on the wheel,”
Lou heard. Before the feds got a chance to yank him from the
leather-lined interior, Lou recalls, one of the agents had pulled his
.45 and stuck it in Lou’s mouth. The agent’s hand was shaking, as if he
was overwhelmed by finally seeing the man he and his colleagues had been
chasing for years. “You will never forget this day,” the agent said.
“And your life will never be the same.” Lou knew he was right.
Lou Villar (Photo: Courtesy of Lou Villar)
If you think this sounds like it
should be made into a movie, you’re right. In fact, George Clooney has
just bought the rights to Joshuah Bearman’s article, based on the story
given by Lou Vellar in that pizza joint, and several other members of
the Coronado Company. Oh, and Joshuah Bearman is the same guy who wrote
the article that was turned into the screenplay for a little film you
might have seen called, Argo, which Clooney also produced.
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