Dark Day for Dr. Neon : ‘They said, “You’re fat and famous--and we’re hungry,” It wasn’t a random act of kindness.’ Dr. Neon : Longtime Laguna Fixture Says Robbers Cited His Celebrity as Their Motive

LAGUNA BEACH —  This time, Dr. Neon’s flash may have drawn the wrong attention.

The colorful Laguna Beach neon artist--who drives a 1969 ambulance bearing his moniker and once outfitted a sports car with mock machine guns--says his local celebrity status drew a group of shotgun-wielding men who bound and blindfolded him for three hours Tuesday night while they robbed his home and motorcycle-supply business.

“They said, ‘You’re fat and famous--and we’re hungry,’ ” said Dr. Neon, 41, a longtime local fixture whose real name is Alexander Evans. “It wasn’t a random act of kindness.”

Police said four or five robbers made off with more than $50,000 in goods, including sound equipment, antiques and a prized, fire-engine red Mercedes convertible. But they left behind the familiar ambulance--and Evans’ “rocket bus,” a customized, purple and black transit bus trimmed inside with neon lights.

“There’s no doubt it occurred--it’s just why it occurred,” said Detective Jason Kravetz. “He was definitely singled out.” Kravetz appealed to the public for help in finding the brown-topped Mercedes, whose California license plate is 3HGE551.

Evans said he was in bed watching a television documentary about 10 p.m. when two men in black clothing and ski masks burst through a sliding door and poked a shotgun into his face. “They told me if I moved, they’d kill me,” he said. The men bound him at the wrists and ankles, then blindfolded and gagged him as they were joined by two or three other men he could not see.

“They taped me up. They trussed me up like a pig,” Evans said, bearing bruises and cuts on his wrists and ankles.

A neon artist now better known for his custom motorcycle gear, Evans is a familiar figure around Laguna Beach and among Orange County’s biker set. His own neon-trimmed riding helmet looks like something out of “The Rocketeer,” and Evans uses the converted tour bus to haul his stylized Harley-Davidson motorcycles to trade shows.

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The walls of his cluttered shop bear newspapers clippings chronicling Evans’ knack for the eccentric, including the time in 1991 when he mounted mock machine guns on the back of a Triumph convertible and equipped it with sound equipment that blared taped gunfire and screams.

But this time, he said, the attention was unwelcome.

Evans described the intruders as men aged 18 to 24, dressed in black shorts and shirts and wearing black boots and red-trimmed black ski masks.

As he lay bound on his bed with his Lhasa apso named Harley nearby, Evans said he listened to the men carrying out his belongings, which ranged from keyboard equipment to custom-made, silver cowboy boots, size 13. He said the men repeatedly demanded cash and threatened to shoot him, but he told them his home business--a mail-order supplier of neon automotive ornaments and motorcycle accessories--operated on checks.

Evans said the intruders were polite and “professional,” offering to bring him drinks of water and taking only the most valuable items from the adjoining shop and sound studio.

“It was four guys on a shopping spree--like they were on a TV show,” he said.

At several points, Evans said, one of the men told him he had been targeted because he was well-known and presumed rich. Evans said he was able to free himself as the robbers were leaving and surprised one of them with a machete from his closet. The man fled, he said.

Evans, who said he has soured on California because of its motorcycle helmet law and politics, said the robbery has scared him into planning to leave the secluded Laguna Canyon cabin that last year narrowly escaped the wildfire.

“I came here because I didn’t want to live in the crime-ridden city and now it’s chased me out of here,” he said. “I’m out of here.”