Case files bulge with the bureaucratic legacy of Sam Menlo's life as a landlord: code violations, thousands of them, at rental units beset with everything from vermin and mold to wretched plumbing.
With a real-estate empire spanning Los Angeles, Riverside, San Bernardino and Orange counties, Menlo has a 30-year track record of skirmishes with city and state agencies, capped last fall with a sentence to live for a time in his own filthy Anaheim complex.
Now 73, in failing health and with a possible jail sentence hanging over his head, Menlo is spending millions of dollars to fix up several of his apartment properties, including the decrepit Ridgewood Gardens in Anaheim, where he was forced to stay briefly last year.
City inspectors report that Menlo's renovations are nearly complete. Bureaucrats and neighbors who have battled Menlo for years are watching his progress with interest and more than a little skepticism.
They wonder: Is Sam Menlo finally cleaning up his act?
Michael Burke first met Menlo four years ago.
A four-alarm blaze at Ridgewood Gardens had left 17 families homeless and revealed wretched conditions.
Inspectors found the place crawling with cockroaches and rats. Vagrants had taken up residence in abandoned apartments littered with hypodermic needles.
Some units were so moldy that mushrooms sprouted from the ceiling. The city cited Menlo with 112 building-code violations and charged him with 34 criminal counts of violating city codes.
Menlo pleaded no contest to three counts and was given probation--and an order to fix things fast.
Burke, a deputy city attorney, was in charge of seeing the fix-up through to conclusion. He eventually would become the public official to pursue Menlo the most vigorously.
In that first meeting, Menlo impressed Burke by coming to his office full of apologies and armed with a multipaged "Menlo Plan of Action" that detailed reforms from trimming trees to scrubbing hallways with detergent.
"He convinces you that he is going to take charge," Burke said. It seemed a simple administrative matter, easily resolved.
As weeks dragged on with no detergent, no tree trimmers, Burke dug into the Anaheim files on Menlo. He found old city letters demanding change. He found other Menlo plans of action dating to the 1980s.
Burke heard about similar problems with Menlo and his Century Quality Management in Fullerton and Los Angeles. Then, a city attorney in Pico Rivera gave Burke a bit of professional advice that changed his outlook on the case.
