Reclusive "mystery person" wins school board election

Casshew

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Forget provisional ballots in Ohio and hanging chads in Florida. The Orange Unified School District has its own election woe: It can't find the winner of Tuesday's board election.

Public records point to the fact that Steve Rocco really does exist.

He's a registered voter. He owns a home in Santa Ana. And he filed paperwork in July to run for the school board.

"He is not a figment of your imagination," said Christina Avila, a campaign disclosure filing officer at the Orange County registrar of voters and apparently one of the few people who can confirm his existence, because he handed his papers over to her. "He's a real man."

After that, the details start getting sketchy.

He is registered to vote, though he declined to state a party. Neighbors who have lived next door to him for years say they've seen the 53-year-old man only occasionally, when he takes out the trash from the home he shares with his parents. On the ballot, he listed his occupation as teacher and writer, though proof of either is elusive.

Neither the district nor the registrar has a phone number on file for him, and nobody answered the door at his home.

Somehow, though, without mounting a real campaign, filing a candidate's statement or showing up at a community forum, he managed to upset his formidable opponent, Phil Martinez.

Meet Mr. Martinez: father of three kids in the district, a county park ranger, president of a local PTA, endorsed by the teachers union. Not to mention the fact that he spent more than $6,000 trying to get elected.

His goals were succinctly laid out in the county voter guide. Among them: "provide a quality education for all students, work closely with our educators and parents and bring fiscal solutions to our school budget crisis."

"It's out of my hands," Martinez said of Tuesday's election results. "What they voted for is what they got: the mystery person. I think everybody is just scratching their heads."

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Wait a minute :waitasec: :waitasec: this is TOO bizarre. It borders on creepy. Please post any updates here as I surely want to follow this one.
Thanks--
Karen
 
I ran across this thread from 2004 and decided to look into whatever happened with this mystery school board trustee.

Some background on Steve Rocco :

A major piece of the Rocco puzzle comes from Rocco himself. Eight years ago, Rocco gave me a copy of his 1992 autobiography, ROCCO Behind the Orange Curtain. . .
ROCCO lays out the conspiracy he believes led to his shoplifting conviction and subsequent loss of work as a substitute teacher and telephone operator. The conspiracy, Rocco alleges, involved Kodak Film Co., Albertsons Supermarket and SmokeCraft Sausage. Among other things, the book claims that the son of a high-ranking Albertsons executive is the "largest drug dealer in the West" and that the company is complicit in murder.
http://www.ocweekly.com/2004-11-11/news/the-rocco-horror-picture-show/

During his four-year stint on the school board, Rocco refused to vote on anything to do with education and used his time during meetings to accuse fellow board members of being part of the Partnership, which he claimed tried to have him assassinated on numerous occasions . . .

Fast-forward almost two years to the morning of March 18, 2009, when I find myself standing in the Orange County Superior Courthouse, called as a defense witness by Rocco, whom the district attorney’s office has charged with stealing a bottle of Heinz ketchup from a Chapman University cafeteria on Sept. 27, 2008.

.
http://www.ocweekly.com/2009-04-02/news/steve-rocco-case/

SANTA ANA - A jury has convicted Steve Rocco, the former Orange School District trustee, of stealing a half-full bottle of ketchup from a Chapman University cafeteria.
http://www.ocregister.com/news/orange-142596-rocco-instead.html

Widipedia article on Steve Rocco: [ame]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Rocco_%28politician%29[/ame]
 

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