EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR DIANNE HARDISTY WRITES: Faye Shearer is a retired restaurant worker who spends a lot of her days in a world of hurt. Injured on the job, she  has degenerative disc disease and pinched nerves in her back.

Last December, Shearer thought her prayers were answered when she pulled into a parking lot behind the former federal courthouse on Truxtun Avenue and found an empty handicap parking spot. Shearer was headed to an evening performance of “The Nutcracker” at nearby Rabobank Arena.

Shearer thought she was parking in a public lot. Empty employee parking stalls, the locked office building and a scattering of government vehicles reinforced the impression. Shearer  hung her disabled parking decal on her rearview mirror, locked her car and began her painful trek to the arena.

“When I came back to my car at 10 p.m., it was gone,” Shearer wrote to The Californian last week. “I didn’t know if it was stolen or towed.

“Without a phone, I finally managed to find a ride home. Around midnight the Sheriff’s Office called to tell me the car had been towed and where it was located. I can’t tell you the aggravation this has caused me trying to get to the bottom of why this happened.
And I never did. 

“It cost me $226.50 to get my car the next day. There were three other ladies in the car (parked in the handicap spot) next to me who were left out in the cold, also. Sounds to me like someone has a good deal going here. This not only smells, it stinks.”

You might be wondering why it took Shearer months to complain to The Californian. Actually, she howled right away.

But her original letter was so long that it was returned and she was asked to condense it to 250 words. It took her three tries and several weeks to condense it. When I called her last week, she was still hopping mad. And it didn’t help when I told her I would not print her letter because it contained  errors. As an alternative, I agreed to find out what happened.

The two office buildings at 800 and 900 Truxtun Ave. are privately  owned, as are their north side parking lots. The 900 building is relatively new and houses offices and the Tailgaters restaurant. A big “900” is painted on its parking lot side. Its lot is filled with signs warning parking is for building customers only. Others will be towed.

The 800 building, formerly the federal courthouse, has no address displayed on its parking lot side. The only marked “tow-away” areas are in front of loading docks. The 800 building looks like a government building.  A reasonable person would conclude the lot was in back of a public building. That is what I told the building’s owner when I called Tom Carosella.

Like most other property owners around Rabobank Arena, Carosella is inundated by event-goers and complains the city poorly planned for arena parking. Surrounding private property owners are left with a mess.

Carosella explained Shearer was not entitled to park in his private lot. But he was surprised she was towed. He said towing usually only happens when a car is blocking a loading dock. He  agreed to add warning signs and paint the address on the building’s lot side.

Another mistake Shearer made was to assume her state-issued disabled placard entitled her to park in any  universally designated “handicap” spot. It took two days and several calls to Sacramento to learn the parking privilege only applies when a driver is entitled to park in a private lot.

Just the same, a reasonable woman — and when I told Shearer what I had discovered, she was reasonable, but still angry — would have concluded as Shearer had: Wow! What good fortune. I found a handicapped parking spot close to Rabobank Arena.