One of the great (albeit infrequent) pleasures of my work is hearing from strangers who have personal connections to the stories I stitch together for a living. Such was the case with Christian Chavez, a Los Angeles City College student who contacted me via Twitter back in April. Christian said he was the grandson of a man named Ricardo Chavez Ortiz, with whom I’m quite familiar: He famously hijacked a Frontier Airlines plane in 1972, and thus earned himself a couple of pages in The Skies Belong to Us.
What was so fascinating about Chavez Ortiz’s crime was the modest nature of his demand: In exchange for his hostages, all he wanted was for a Los Angeles radio station to give him access to a live microphone. He used that opportunity to deliver a rambling, clearly improvised address in which he spoke about the economic hardships he’d faced as an immigrant from Mexico, his opposition to the Vietnam War, and his worries about environmental degradation. Once he was done with the 34-minute speech, he politely handed over the unloaded pistol he’d used to seize the plane.
Since Chavez Ortiz wasn’t the main focus of my book, I didn’t put too much effort into finding out what had happened to him after his criminal trial concluded; all I knew is that he was sentenced to a lengthy prison term. Christian told me that his grandfather made it out of federal custody after many years, and that he was working on a piece for his school’s paper about what had happened next.
You can check out Christian’s story here: It’s a deft and moving portrait of a complicated man whose family was forever altered by his rash decision.
Like gas stations in rural Texas after 10 pm, comments are closed.