Out of the Frying Pan

Raynard DeLeon's week began with splendid luck and cunning. He and five fellow inmates of the San Diego County jail squeezed through a ventilator shaft and out an unlocked door. But from there, DeLeon went one way, and his luck and cunning skittered off in another.

Three days after the escape, a woman paying a $35 fine in a San Diego traffic court found she was short of cash. She asked the deputy marshal to call for her companion. Out went the cry: "Paging Raynard DeLeon, paging Raynard DeLeon . . ." DeLeon, an auto thief, was cocky enough to come when called, but he too was broke. He said he would return as soon as he could raise the money.

Meanwhile, the obliging deputy marshal, Gary Mahaffey, 27, thought DeLeon's name sounded familiar. A police team at the courthouse was alerted, and when DeLeon returned (in a stolen car) three hours later, they had their man. His girlfriend, impatient, had already gone home without him. Smart move: he had been unable to scrounge up the money anyway.

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