1980s Portland was 'purgatory,' so Guardian Angels patrolled mean streets, confronted Rajneeshees (2024)

Portland's first team of Guardian Angels receives instructions from national director Lisa Evers Sliwa.

You could call it the Vigilante Decade, a crime-ridden period bookended by the 1974 Everyman-avenger film "Death Wish" and, 10 years later, small-business owner Bernie Goetz shooting four teenagers in the New York subway.

Crime rates across the country have fallen dramatically since those bad old days, but the fear remains -- as does the comforting fantasy about average Americans taking the law into their own hands. (A remake of "Death Wish," starring Bruce Willis, was released in March.)

So it's not a surprise that the Guardian Angels, the highest-profile citizen response to the high-profile lawlessness of the 1970s and '80s, remain very much in business.

Curtis Sliwa (Photos: The Oregonian)

In 1979, Curtis Sliwa, a 24-year-old former night manager at McDonald's, launched the Magnificent 13, an all-volunteer safety patrol that rode New York City's No. 4 train, popularly known as the "Muggers' Express." The original 13 soon grew to hundreds, leading Sliwa to expand the group's ambitions and change its name to the Guardian Angels. Chapters began popping up around the country -- including one in Portland, which debuted in 1982.

The Rose City's Angels have been around ever since, though their activity over the years has ranged from notable (they set up a "watchpost" outside the controversial Wasco County commune Rajneeshpuram in 1984) to non-existent.

The Portland chapter restarted patrols last year after a horrific fatal attack on a MAX train, but the local group's heyday unquestionably was the 1980s. Below is a short photographic history of its early years.

Lisa Evers Sliwa

Sliwa's wife at the time, Lisa Evers, played a key role in the Guardian Angels' phenomenal Reagan-era growth. (The couple was completely committed to the project. They married in front of 400 fellow Angels in 1981 and, instead of a honeymoon, patrolled the No. 4 train together.)

Without Evers, Sliwa said in 1982, "I'd still be running things from a phone booth in the 59th Street subway station."

Daniel Braun, 21, of Lake Oswego, leads a patrol through downtown Portland.

The group became a pop-culture phenomenon, debated in newspaper editorials and name-checked by celebrities.

Sliwa embraced the attention and sought to move the group toward social activism, but Evers believed the Angels should stick to their core mission: patrolling subways and dangerous neighborhoods, making citizens' arrests when necessary. When a supporter asked her during a patrol if she had "heard the song Joe Jackson sings about the Angels," she shook her head, clearly displeased.

"Who's Joe Jackson?" she said after the man walked away. "I don't like that. [People] think if they buy the record we'll get part of the money."

Curtis Sliwa talks with reporters outside Portland City Hall.

Sliwa and Evers came to Portland themselves to organize the local chapter of the Guardian Angels.

"You've got a problem," Sliwa declared at a June 29, 1982, news conference in the city, but he insisted it wasn't as bad as in New York or Detroit, "where it's open warfare in the streets."

"I've seen what hell is," he said, adding that Portland "might be purgatory, but I didn't need an asbestos suit to get in."

During the press event, Sliwa admitted he was baffled by Mayor Frank Ivancie's recently announced "War on Crime." The Oregonian pointed out that the "anti-crime ordinances" the mayor was pushing included "outlawing possession of large knives and making obscene gestures illegal. Both those and others of the proposed ordinances have been called unconstitutional by the city attorney's office. Ivancie is seeking a second opinion from private attorneys."

Guardian Angels recruits begin training with calisthenics at Waterfront Park.

Evers, a black belt in karate, led Portland's initial Angels training program.

"New York is like Vietnam revisited," she told the first class of recruits, mimicking her husband's rap. "Here [in Portland], there's a more peaceful attitude, and the violence is that much scarier."

Local residents, she insisted, had embraced the Angels. "There has been no city where we've had such a red-carpet treatment as in Portland," she said. "Portland is a city that is highly organized, with a lot of neighborhood associations, and a lot of them would like Guardian Angel patrols."

To become an Angel, she told recruits, would mean a month of serious physical conditioning as well as medical and legal training, plus "learning how to work together as a group to apprehend a suspect."

Lisa Campos (seated), Chris Lundell, Lynn Martin and Shannen Wash in 1988. Campos remains involved with the Guardian Angels in Portland.

Evers had come to the Rose City, she said, because the Guardian Angels' approach had to be tailored to each place.

"Versatility is very important in this work," she told a reporter. "We train our people to be appropriate to a situation, and that's different in different cities. In Sacramento we had to deal for the first time with long distances between places. In New York we have high visibility, but in Portland, who knows? In Portland we will have a stronger teaching role, teaching people about self-defense and giving the kids better role models."

Guardian Angels Lou Velasquez and Kelly Gerlach -- along with Angels trainee Howard Miller -- ride past 5408 NE Union Avenue.

In the early 1980s, Portland's Guardian Angels volunteers patrolled nightly from 7 p.m. to about midnight through downtown, Old Town, the Park Blocks and the Portland State campus.

"When enough turn out to form a second patrol," The Oregonian wrote, "the Angels will cover the Couch Park area in Northwest Portland and Goose Hollow." (They also sometimes patrolled NE Martin Luther King Boulevard, then Union Avenue, on bikes.)

"We want to let the punks on the street know that the Angels can turn the corner at any time," 23-year-old patrol leader -- and bank teller -- Nancy Stahl said.

Most Portlanders did appear to support the group. "More power to you!" and "Thank you!" they'd call from their cars as they drove past the Angels in their distinctive red berets and jackets.

Portland Guardian Angels Randy Russell, Tom Sorensen and Russ Sorensen.

Stahl acknowledged, however, that winning over police and local politicians wasn't always easy.

"We just have to prove we're not radicals, not fanatics," she said.

And, of course, troublemakers and/or wiseacres offered criticism.

"My God, it's the Soviet Union!" four late-night downtown denizens called out to a group of Angels in 1983, referring to their berets and jackets.

Others labeled them "narcs" or "the goon squad" and told them, "Go home!"

Guardian Angels member Louis Velasquez (in beret at left) and Steve Michaels try to break up an argument at Pioneer Courthouse Square.

The Portland chapter battled rumors it was "a religious cult, Nazis, an anti-police group or a political group," The Oregonian reported.

The Angels insisted their only objective was public safety.

"We're not concerned about dope-smoking, loud noises, prostitution [or other] victimless crimes," patrol leader Michael Stoops said.

(Stoops became a prominent homeless-rights advocate in the city until allegations of sexual misconduct led him to leave Oregon. He died last year at age 67.)

Curtis Sliwa in Portland

Guardian Angels recruits had to be at least 16 years old and have three references from professionals in the community. The Portland chapter reported that only about one in five wannabe Angels was accepted into the group.

Stoops said the Angels were trained to remain "cool, calm and collected" no matter the provocation.

"If someone pours a can of beer on your head, you say, 'Thank you,' and go on," he said in 1984. "We're peacekeepers on the streets."

Guardian Angels Rebecca Jenkins and Mike Stoops talk with a Portlander during a patrol.

Before each night's work, Portland's Angels patrol leaders would physically search their compatriots for weapons, drugs and alcohol, none of which was allowed. The leaders would then be searched.

They were armed, a reporter pointed out, "only with whistles and youthful idealism."

Some cities worked out official arrangements with the Angels, including providing them with ID cards signed by the police chief. Not so in Portland.

Martin Poster, 23, a deli manager by day, pats down Ron Wilson, 19, before a patrol begins.

Portland police notified local media that the Guardian Angels "are not members of, sponsored by or are they agents of the Bureau of Police."

City Attorney Chris Thomas added: "We do not regard the city of Portland as bearing any responsibility for the Guardian Angels. They're liable for their own conduct. If they get sued, we don't intend to defend them."

Sliwa dismissed the Portland police bureau's attitude, calling it nothing more than professional embarrassment. "Young people patrolling the streets is a slap in the face to their own ability to provide for the public safety," he said.

Guardian Angels founder Curtis Sliwa answers questions at a Portland City Council meeting.

Sliwa returned to Oregon in the fall of 1984 to set up "around-the-clock monitoring" of Rajneeshpuram, the Oregon commune that was doing battle with locals in Wasco County.

The Guardian Angels erected a "watchpost" on a rancher's property, manned continuously in two-person shifts. License-plate numbers would be taken from all vehicles going into or out of Rajneeshpuram, Sliwa said.

Guardian Angels member Russ Sorenson keeps watch on a TriMet bus.

The Guardian Angels were protesting the Rajneeshees' treatment of the hundreds of homeless men and women they had bused into the remote community in an effort to vote commune-members into local political office. When the homeless recruits' usefulness ended, Rajneeshees began driving them away from Rajneeshpuram and abandoning them.

"At first it strikes you as an honorable gesture," Sliwa said of the Rajneeshees taking in street people from around the country. "But now they're dumping them."

Curtis Sliwa being arrested at the Hotel Rajneesh.

On Nov. 3, Sliwa and six other Angels ratcheted up their confrontation with the Rajneeshees. They participated in a Portland homeless-advocacy march, which included carrying a flag-draped coffin "symbolizing the death of William Henry Allen," a transient reportedly left by the Rajneeshees outside Government Camp, where he died of hypothermia.

After the march, Sliwa and the other Angels handcuffed themselves to the front door of Portland's Hotel Rajneesh, where commune recruits and visitors often stayed when flying into or out of the state.

"Feed the homeless, stop the dumping!" they chanted.

The Angels were arrested for trespassing.

As the Angels' influence grew, journalists and others began to take a closer look at the organization. Sliwa eventually would be forced to admit he had staged some New York subway rescues during the Angels' early days, leading the president of that city's transit-police union to declare, "This is the final chapter to his book or an end to his movie."

But it wasn't. All these years later, Sliwa, who survived an assassination attempt in 1992, remains the head of the Guardian Angels.

He and Evers divorced in the mid-1990s. After stints as a professional wrestler and model, Evers is now a TV-news reporter in New York.

Lisa Evers Sliwa

-- Douglas Perry