Raucous Protesters Target Family

Mitchell Lardner didn't pay much attention to an April 8 company memo alerting him and other employees of Sumitomo Corp. of America that they could be the targets of "home protests" from animal rights activists who believe the firm has ties to animal research.

This won't affect him, Lardner reasoned. He's just a mid-level manager, and he believed it when his company said it had no such links.

But two weeks later Lardner woke up to find that vandals had spray painted "Puppy Killer," and "You Can't Hide" on the walls of his historic Monrovia house, the former residence of novelist Upton Sinclair. Later that night a dozen masked protesters with bullhorns marched out front, yelling, "Mitchell Lardner kills 500 puppies a day!"

On Sunday night, about 25 protesters marched through Lardner's neighborhood, but stayed a block away, and then walked through Old Town Monrovia shouting his address and carrying pictures of a bleeding dog. The Sunday evening protest is part of what they said is a long-term campaign against Lardner.

"It's been weeks of anxiety and absolute fear," said Lardner, whose wife and two small children have been propelled into what they call a surreal existence, saying they feel like virtual hostages in their home. They are under the watch of 24-hour security guards, live behind draped and papered windows, and are protected by a host of security devices.

"I couldn't even make this up," said Kathleen Lardner. "When I try and explain this to people I sound like a nut. It's so bizarre."

Her husband adds, "As a target for animal rights activists, I'm absolutely the wrong person."

But the activists believe otherwise. They said that, denials or not, there is at least a tangential tie between animal research and Lardner's employer, through a tangle of corporate entities in the United States and Japan.

And, they say, that's reason enough to make Lardner -- whose California-based job is to find investors for high-tech start-ups -- a valuable target in their campaign. They picked Lardner because he has just the right combination of attention-grabbing requisites, said Emmeline Pankhurst, 25, a member of the Coalition to Help Animals Through Resistance and Mobilization, the group she said is behind the protests.