Wheelchair Bandit Sticks to the Straight and Narrow

In January, 75-year-old William Hart drew national attention when he robbed a San Diego bank of $70--just enough to fill a prescription for heart medicine--and made his getaway in a motorized wheelchair.

Today Hart is a free man, sticking to a deal struck by his attorneys that, if he keeps out of trouble for a year, he can avoid being prosecuted for the crime.

Hart has a lifetime supply of the yellow and maroon capsules he said he needed to survive and turned to crime to get. He has received dozens of letters from across the country and $2,000 in donations. He is even negotiating movie rights to his life story.

“If you push the meekest dog in the world into a corner, he’ll bite you,” Hart said during an interview in his downtown hotel room. “Medi-Cal pushed me into that corner. I told them I was going to rob a bank. I didn’t lie.”

John Berger, Hart’s physician at the time of the robbery, said he gave Hart a month’s supply of Cardizem SR, a drug used to treat congestive heart failure, from manufacturer samples he had received.

After Hart ran out of those pills, Berger tried to explain that Cardizem SR, or sustained-release formula, was basically the same as Hart’s previous medication, or Cardizem in short-acting form. The main difference was that Hart had to take the sustained-release formula only twice a day instead of every few hours.

But to Hart, the difference was like night and day. The sustained-release formula didn’t give him diarrhea and didn’t leave him feeling nauseated.

“I tried it and it worked,” Hart said. “Then he wouldn’t give me any more.”

Hart said he grew desperate and pleaded with Berger, as well as his social worker at the county’s Area Agency on Aging, which handles Hart’s Medi-Cal benefits.

Berger told him it would take 30 days for the paperwork to be processed. Hart felt he couldn’t wait.

He withdrew the last $7 in his bank account and bought three days’ worth of pills. Each pill costs about $1.

“The last two pills I had,” he said, “I knew I had to do something.”

So on Jan. 15, he drove his wheelchair to the headquarters branch of HomeFed Bank, where he keeps his account, and asked the teller for $70, adding that he had a bottle of nitroglycerin in his pocket. The bottle turned out to be heart medication.

He sped out of the bank toward Horton Plaza, trailed by a bank security guard. Police arrested him while a pharmacist was filling his prescription.

“I would not want to do it again,” Hart said when asked if he had any regrets. “But what are you going to do? Lay down somewhere and die?”

Hart has since gotten a new doctor.

“If you ask me and my staff if we missed him,” Berger said, “I’d have to say no. He could be very combative.”

Hart’s story made news across the nation. The bank set up an account for donations to Hart, and the pill manufacturer offered him a lifetime supply, according to Hart’s lawyer, Steve Hubachek.

Hart may even be the subject of an upcoming movie, according to Los Angeles-based entertainment lawyer Charles Sedivy.

“I’m currently negotiating with a writer to do his life story,” Sedivy said. “The writer hopes it would be accepted as a theatrical piece, although it could be for TV.”

Hart never saw a jail cell, not after he was arrested for the robbery, not after his appearance in U.S. District Court two weeks later.

“It was a deferred-prosecution agreement,” said Hubachek, a federal defender. “He cannot violate any laws. If he manages to abide by that condition, then the charges against him will be dismissed without prejudice.”

Hart spends his days visiting friends in the lobby of the Maryland Hotel, where he lives. The hotel has a faded elegance and caters to elderly people on fixed incomes and budget-minded travelers. He shops at the corner grocery store and fries eggs on an electric burner set up in a corner of his room. He shops at secondhand stores, where he buys his shirts for $1 apiece.

“I’m happy to wake up in the morning,” the retired merchant seaman said, his mischievous eyes glittering with enthusiasm. “I’ll be here another 25 years. I’m the most stubborn bastard in the world, let me tell you.”

A housekeeper cleans Hart’s room twice a week and helps him take a bath. His head is shaven so he can “wash his hair and his face at the same time.”

“I won’t have any trouble if people leave me alone,” Hart said of the six months of probation remaining ahead of him. “I don’t cause trouble unless I’m pushed.”

Hart was born in Bogota, Tenn., to a poor family. His mother was half Chinese. He started working as a garage mechanic, but later took up electronics and became a radio operator and technician. He lived in Missouri, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Detroit before beginning a 15-year career as a merchant seaman.

He was married four times, including to two women he met while stationed in Japan, and has two grown children, whom he never sees. In 1965, he started a seven-year assignment in Vietnam, repairing radio equipment in Army helicopters. The closest he came to the fighting was in 1968 when North Vietnamese attacked Saigon, where he was living, he said.

He struggled with alcohol at one point of his life and even entered an expensive rehabilitation program. Eight thousand dollars poorer, he found the most effective therapy was Alcoholics Anonymous. He said he can’t drink any more, but would if he could.

Hart’s adventurous life has also had some clouded moments. One time, while working as a hotel clerk in a city he refused to name, he heard a scream upstairs. He grabbed his shotgun, ran to the room and banged on the door. A woman stumbled out, and said the man inside was trying to rape her. Hart said the man charged him. He fired off a round, but the man slammed the door and the blast hit the doorjamb. As police arrived, the man jumped from the fourth-floor room and killed himself.

According to FBI records, Hart has one criminal conviction, a 1980 case in which he pleaded guilty to brandishing a firearm. Hart said he had just been robbed and was holding a butcher knife when police arrived. An officer beat Hart with a nightstick, claiming that Hart attacked him. Hart said that was a lie. Assault charges were dropped because the officer refused to testify against him.

Hart has lived in Mexico and San Diego for 14 years. Four years ago, after a three-year stay in Guadalajara, he suffered a stroke that paralyzed his right side. Surgery has helped him control facial expressions, but he has lost the use of his right arm and leg and has been confined to a wheelchair.

“I appreciate everything everyone has done for me,” Hart said. “It’s the first time in my life. . . . I had lost all faith in people. This gave me a little more faith.”