On Aug. 31, 1986, Bill Richardson stood in the Huntington Beach lifeguard headquarters building, gripped a 9mm handgun and braced for the worst.
Rioters were surrounding the building, and a few were already inside. Looters seemed ready to destroy a place the lifeguard captain considered a second home.
Outside, police cars were being overturned and set on fire. And the mob was shaking other cars, chanting “One more, one more.” Glass bottles were being thrown; blood was flowing.
Officers temporarily retreated from that stretch of beach near downtown. They advised the lifeguards to do the same.
But that day, 30 years ago this week, Richardson loaded a gun he’d used only in training.
Then he came face to face with the rioters.
“They met someone crazier than they were,” Richardson recalled recently.
Now 72 and the chaplain for the Huntington Beach Marine Safety Department, Richardson doesn’t recall being afraid during the biggest riot in the long history of riots near Huntington Beach Pier.
He remembers a different emotion.
“I was pissed.”
BIG HAIR, SMALL BIKINIS
It was the mid-1980s and MTV was still playing music.
Neon was big. So was everybody’s hair. For women, Ocean Pacific ruled the beach with high-on-the-hip, skimpy bikinis.
For anyone who wanted to party hard, Huntington Beach was the place to be.
The Op Pro surf contest was a big deal, too. About 100,000 people turned out to watch the event in 1986.
Ian Cairns, a former pro surfer, ran the contest back then, as well as the series of contests leading up to the event in Huntington Beach. He said the crowds grew bigger that summer. And the parties got rowdier.
“They were bad guys,” Cairns recalled recently. “Like, rock-and-roll crazy, you know.”
What sparked the riot remains a point of debate. Some say women and girls in the crowd removed their bathing suit tops, around 2 p.m., and the mostly male crowd reacted.
Others say some men were aggressors, attacking some women.
Whatever the cause, witnesses agree that the mob soon was out of control.
Cairns remembers standing on scaffolding built over the crowd, watching surfers in the contest out in the water. But as the unrest began, he looked behind him and saw black smoke billowing skyward.
“It just erupted,” Cairns said. “The … massive crowd was burning police cars and tearing doors off” them, Cairns added. “It was gnarly. It was mayhem.”
Meanwhile, the surf contest wasn’t done.
Surfers Mark Occhilupo and Glen Winton were in the water, finalists competing in the best of three heats. After two heats, Occhilupo should have taken the win, but with the unrest growing, Cairns called both surfers to the scaffold to ask them for a favor.
“We have to protect the crowd in the bleachers, the surfers,” he told them. “What do you think about going back in the water?”
Cairns then declared a tie and directed the surfers back into the water for a third heat. He was hoping to buy some time and gambling that by the time the contest formally ended, the rioting would be over.
It wasn’t.
A SINGLE SHOT
Mike Baumgartner, now Marine Safety Division chief in Huntington Beach, was just 18 that day, but he was already a lifeguard. He watched the rioting in disbelief from another spot, Tower Zero, on the pier.
He saw a mob of about 1,000 people surround the lifeguard headquarters building, where Richardson remained inside, alone.
Baumgartner called Richardson. He told him the doors on the north end of the building had been lifted and people were looting, taking away rescue boards used for lifesaving.
“It was a sense of sadness, more than anything,” Baumgartner said recently.
Nobody in the mob knew that a parking attendant had brought the day’s receipts – about $10,000 in cash – and placed them on a counter in the lifeguard building.
The violence grew. Some rioters used metal rod railings to beat others. Several police cars were tipped over and set ablaze, as was a Jeep used by the lifeguards. Somebody pushed an ATV into a fire, and a police explorer van was burned to a crisp.
Rioters threw flares into the lifeguard headquarters, trying to burn it down.
Police, hoping to tame the crowd, called in a helicopter and asked it to be lowered toward the mob. They hoped the wind from the chopper would kick up enough sand to break up the melee. Instead, rioters were enraged, and they threw bottles at the hovering copter.
Richardson walked down to the headquarters garage, where he said he found about 50 people pulling off cabinets, jumping on the cab of a truck and breaking windows.
“I’m the chaplain now, so I can’t say exactly what I yelled at them,” Richardson said.
“I told them to get the ‘blank’ out of here.”
They didn’t respond. Instead, two men started toward him. Richardson raised his 9mm pistol and fired a shot toward the ceiling.
The noise drove away the two men – and the mob.
“Everyone ran,” he said. “It was like someone started the 100-meter dash.”
Minutes later, police from around Orange County showed up in riot gear.
Richardson noted that a video from that day – a video now used for police training – shows a man who chucked a bottle at a police officer.
“The man filed a complaint, that he was arrested and beaten for no reason,” Richardson said.
“Except, we got you on tape, dude.”
At least 12 people were injured in the hourlong riot, including five police officers. About 50 people eventually were arrested, though only 13 during the melee.
A retired highway patrol officer snapped photos of people as they exited the lifeguard building with their loot and offered to send them the photos. All he needed was their address, and after he developed the film he’d send them a copy, he told them.
Many fell for it.
“They (thought they’d) be holding it like a trophy,” Richardson said with a chuckle.
Instead, the photographer took his film to the Huntington Beach police, complete with names and addresses of the looters.
FLASH FORWARD
The date, Aug. 31, 1986, remains historically significant for two events: a midair collision over Cerritos in which 83 people died in the air or on the ground, and the Op Pro riot.
The crash changed the way air traffic is monitored in Southern California.
The riot – the biggest but not the last melee connected to a surf contest in Huntington Beach – shaped the city in ways that still resonate.
The contest was moved from Labor Day to early August. And, these days, it’s got new sponsorship and is known as the U.S. Open of Surfing. It remains a key driver of tourist revenue for the city.
But the city bans bikini contests and alcohol as part of the surf contest. It also won’t allow free music concerts in conjunction with the surf contests.
Three years ago, a smaller riot broke out in the downtown area after the end of the U.S. Open of Surfing. Several businesses reported broken windows, and portable toilets were tipped into the street. Police wore riot gear as they tamed the crowds.
There was a fear the surf contest had again swelled into an out-of-control event.
Since then, police presence has been increased during the contests, and cameras are used to track the action on the beach and downtown. Event organizers have added a family-friendly vibe, too, offering cartoon movie nights and arts and crafts geared toward youth. Last year was the most mellow event in years, with fewer arrests and citations.
Richardson, who started as a lifeguard in 1962, retired eight years after the ’86 riot. He says the incident isn’t his favorite topic, but he knows it’s part of the city’s history.
“That event had been great for the community. It helped pay a lot of bills, and it still does,” Richardson said.
“I think the lessons learned were the value we got out of it,” he added. “That’s part of the advantage and disadvantage of having something like that happening in your community – you learn from it.”
Baumgartner said he never wants to see a repeat.
“A lot of the people weren’t from here,” he said. “They went home at the end of the day. (But) the city still is fighting that reputation and image as the place where the riot happened.”
Contact the writer: lconnelly@ocregister.com
