Ageda Camargo was sitting in her shady frontyard, wondering aloud if jail is as bad as it sounds.
"I'm thinking of writing Martha Stewart to ask what it's like," said the soft-spoken 83-year-old. "Do they put you in a cell? I wouldn't want to be in a cell."
These weren't idle worries.
Camargo, a grandmother of six, has run afoul of La Quinta's code enforcement in a big way, big enough to put her behind bars.
The city near Palm Springs insists that one of her three bedrooms is really an illegally converted garage. She insists it's just a bedroom.
"What right do they have to call this a garage?" she asked, walking around the room with its cabinets, sink, bathroom and refrigerator. "I never called it a garage. How do they know it's not a bedroom? If this is a garage, then they owe me a bedroom."
For 18 months now, code enforcement officials have been after Camargo to turn the bedroom back into a garage. Insisting that her home is her castle, she has ignored more than a dozen warnings.
Her resistance crumbled last week when a local judge ordered her to comply or face possible jail time.
"It's traumatic. It's like tearing my house down," she said. "I bought this place 30 years ago, and it was always a bedroom. And now they are trying to shove this down my throat."
City building and safety director Tom Hartung said that an illegally converted garage poses health and safety risks but that going to court is a last resort.
"To say we should not enforce the ordinances based on the demographics of the owner of the property is unrealistic," he said. "We can't do that."
Hartung said that in his 25-year career, he's seen only one person jailed over a violation.
"I think we are very fair," he said. "I don't think you will find a more reasonable department."
Camargo grew up on a family farm in nearby Thermal. In 1977, she moved to Avenida Montezuma in La Quinta, attracted by the isolation and soaring views of the nearby Santa Rosa Mountains.
"I was crazy about those mountains," she said, relaxing under a vine-covered pergola in her frontyard. "There were no neighbors then, nothing but sand dunes. I loved it."
Her troubles began when a code enforcement officer spotted a light shining from her garage into the street, a code violation. He noticed her trash cans in front of the house (another violation) and weeds poking through the concrete (yet another one).
