0:02

Mickey Dora was a born con man.

0:05

He could talk his way into anything and

0:07

out of almost everything. His

0:10

alleged scams ranged from petty

0:12

and kind of ridiculous, like renting out

0:14

surfboards that didn't belong to him, too

0:17

blatantly criminal, credit

0:19

card fraud, fake plane tickets,

0:22

stolen ski equipment, stolen

0:24

antiques, stolen passports.

0:27

Eventually, his schemes would land him

0:29

in federal prison. You

0:32

associated with him at your own risk.

0:35

Denny Auberg has a story about this, the

0:37

kind of thing that would happen on a typical day

0:40

hanging out with Mickey

0:43

in the early seventies, Denny was invited

0:45

to Kawai by a Hawaiian surfer named Joey

0:47

Cabell. At the time, Mickey

0:49

was also in Hawaii. Cabell told

0:52

Denny he'd liked to see Mickey too, So

0:54

I called that Mickey and told him Joey

0:56

inviired you to come, and he came right over.

0:59

He shut up. It was amazing. Cabell,

1:01

who was in peak physical shape, proposed

1:04

they hiked to a beach to spend the night. It

1:06

was an eleven mile hike and not

1:09

an easy one. So I'm trudging

1:11

along with Mickey Dora on this really

1:13

tough hike, you know for us, and we're like city

1:15

slickers. Dora had these

1:18

leather boots on, really the wrong

1:20

equipment, you know, and I was kind

1:22

of feeling a little sick myself, and

1:24

it got dark on us, and we're going through these canyons

1:27

and pushing branches away. Mickey

1:29

was tortured. Finally

1:33

they arrived at the beach. They were

1:35

exhausted, and Denny was starting

1:37

to feel really bad. He passed

1:39

out in some cave, you know. He woke up in

1:42

the morning and Mickey

1:44

could see that I was a little sick, so

1:47

he is mine started working like, I

1:49

can't hike back. I gotta figure something

1:51

out. He saw this helicopter go

1:53

by, you know, and it

1:55

was they had a tourist, so Mickey

1:58

had an idea. Mickey

2:00

slipped away and went down to the shore line

2:02

where he gathered up some rocks and used them

2:04

to write S O S in

2:06

big letters. The next day, I

2:08

know, the helicopter lands on this pad down

2:11

the beach and Mickey goes up and talks to the guy.

2:14

I don't know what he was saying, but apparently he was telling

2:16

the guy that my friends dining on the beach, right,

2:19

we need to help. And the guy

2:21

said, I can't come back right now, but you know,

2:23

so did I take these people? And

2:26

right before dark, this guy came back and

2:30

Mickey says, come on, that that's it. Let's go.

2:33

Okay, start start doing

2:35

the fifty yard dash towards this helicopter

2:39

down the beach and Mickey says, slow down. You got

2:41

to act a little sicker, you know. We

2:45

walk up to the helicopter pilot and he kind

2:47

of looks at me and I was trying to act sticker and he opens

2:49

the door. He let me in

2:51

to the helicopter and Mickey

2:54

starts to get in behind him, and the guy goes, oh, no,

2:56

it's not you. It's just a sick guy, you know. You

2:58

know, no, Mike out this little bottle.

3:00

He said, having an asthma attack.

3:03

I can't breathe you know, mine Peter

3:05

bleeding, I can't walk. You know, you

3:08

just started crying the guy. You could

3:10

tell the guy wasn't buying it, but he let him in, so

3:13

we got lifted off the pad.

3:15

It was the most beautiful, majestic thing,

3:17

I mean, the celebrated mountains, his colors

3:19

you know, and running this little bubble

3:21

up in the sky. And Mickey turns, he says,

3:23

our magic carpet. Right when

3:30

the helicopter landed in town, there were

3:32

news reporters and cameras everywhere.

3:36

They thought somewhere they were bringing the dead guy. You know, we

3:39

land and all these people kind of crowded around me,

3:42

you know. And as soon as I get out

3:44

and they go, where's the sick guy?

3:48

Oh that was me? And they're all disappointed,

3:50

you know, and they leave. Mickey

3:52

was disappeared. He's nowhere. I'm around. He

3:55

disappeared on I mean, he left me holding the bag.

3:58

So he pulled this whole thing off, and

4:01

I went through and got checked out. I did have some

4:03

little dysentery thing. The cops

4:05

had gone looking for Mickey and they found

4:07

him trying to rent a car at the airport, and they dragged

4:10

him back, you know, and they were trying to

4:12

interview the guy, and he's showing him all these fake

4:14

ideas, and one said Chapin,

4:16

the other one said Dora, And who are

4:19

you are you chaping our Dora? And he's

4:21

laughing, I'm Chapin Dora, you

4:23

know. And I

4:26

don't know how it happened, but he got out of the whole thing,

4:28

and I was the fall guy.

4:33

To Mickey Dora, the highest value

4:35

was freedom, and that to

4:37

him meant doing whatever served him

4:40

best in any situation. For

4:43

Mickey, freedom took priority over

4:45

any other moral or ethical consideration,

4:48

and he would do or say almost

4:50

anything to get what he wanted. In

4:54

nineteen seventy four, Mickey left Malibu

4:56

and set out on an adventure that took

4:59

him all over the world searching

5:01

for the perfect empty wave. He

5:04

didn't have the money to travel like this, but

5:06

he did it anyway, using blank

5:09

airline tickets that he filled out for whatever

5:11

destination he wanted. Mickey

5:13

had a whole bunch from a woman who worked

5:16

at the Pan American office. This

5:18

is Linda Kai, Mickey's girlfriend,

5:20

an accomplice for much of the nineteen

5:22

seventies. You could actually

5:24

write your own tickets back in those days.

5:27

They were paper tickets written on and all you

5:29

needed to know was the mileage, and

5:32

he had all the paraphernalia

5:36

to work it out. Now.

5:38

I don't know who the girl was to give him

5:40

the stuff. He must have made a sweet you

5:42

know, but you're flying

5:45

on these sort of forged.

5:47

Everything was fake. They

5:50

shopped and dined and stayed in nice

5:52

hotels, all of it, according

5:54

to Linda on forged credit cards,

5:57

and all while being tracked from surfs

6:00

Spot to surf Spot by baffled

6:02

agents of the FBI and Interpol.

6:05

Back in the day, credit cards were

6:07

plastic, of course, but they didn't

6:10

have the strips on the backs

6:12

like they do now. In the manuscript, they had numbers

6:14

and dates. I was assigned to

6:17

take a little razor blade and change

6:19

some numbers, and

6:21

we did and make it good

6:24

for another month. Mickey

6:26

had a way of justifying all this theft

6:29

and deception. Mickey

6:31

described it once as he

6:33

says, I'm not a criminal. He

6:36

says, I don't commit crimes. He

6:38

says, I'm an outlaw, he says,

6:40

and there's a difference. Did you buy

6:42

it? Yes? I

6:45

still do. One

6:49

of the great accomplishments that Mickey set out

6:51

and probably was successful at, was

6:55

never working a day in his life. That

6:57

was his real goal, and he accomplished

6:59

it. I don't know if he ever actually

7:01

had a job. Jim

7:04

Kempton used to be the editor of Surfer magazine,

7:06

and these days he runs the California

7:08

Surf Museum. He knew Mickey

7:11

pretty well in the seventies when they were both

7:13

living in a surftown in the south of France.

7:16

In fact, Mickey crashed at his place

7:18

a lot, used his shower and his kitchen.

7:21

One day, Jim noticed his passport

7:23

was missing, and then sitting

7:26

on the beach, you know, maybe two weeks later,

7:28

I see the South African guy looks

7:31

sort of like me, and there's

7:33

my passport. Make you solder to him? I'm

7:35

sure he did. I don't have. I mean, how would

7:37

you ever prove that right unless you arrested

7:40

them both, which I was not going to do in

7:42

any event, Did you ever

7:44

say anything to Mickey about it? In

7:47

the surf world, it was almost currency

7:50

to be scammed by Mickey. You'd

7:52

come away from the experience with a story to

7:55

dine out on for years. Mickey's

7:58

appeal was not in spite of his criminality,

8:00

but because of it. There's

8:04

a lot of people who love the

8:06

outlaw, who love getting away with it is

8:09

something that for many people is a great satisfaction

8:12

to them to see people be able to accomplish

8:15

that, and Mickey for a long time

8:18

was able to do that without payment. We

8:21

tend to idolize our outlaws.

8:24

Jesse James, pretty Boy Floyd. You

8:26

know, you hear those stories about them, you'd

8:28

think that those guys were somehow

8:31

like heroic. They're a sociopathic

8:33

killers, every one of them, you know, that

8:36

murdered people in cold blood, and yet did they

8:38

give to the poor. Yeah, they

8:40

did, mostly though, to say, to

8:42

make sure that they didn't tell the cops where they

8:45

were. We definitely

8:49

idolize our outlaws. That's

8:51

just something that is I think baked into

8:53

the American psyche, and it's

8:56

very prominent in surf culture. Very

8:59

few nice guys are as

9:01

idolized as the bad boys

9:03

are, and as Mickey Dora the

9:06

most idolized of the bad boys,

9:08

he's not on the most idolized the bad boy. He's also

9:10

the most bad guys of the bad guys. The

9:15

darkest parts of Mickey Dora, though, don't

9:17

have anything to do with his hustles and his cons

9:20

or even with the more serious fraud for

9:22

which he eventually served time. The

9:25

darkest parts of Mickey have to do with his

9:27

soul and the attitudes he harbored

9:30

there of exclusion, racism,

9:32

and xenophobia. A pattern

9:35

of hate that maps onto the white, white

9:37

world of mainland surfing, where

9:39

he was Malibu superstar in his

9:41

sunglasses with his cheshire cat smile,

9:45

showing all the little sociopaths

9:47

how it was done.