Sean Webby
Source: mercurynews.com
Police are preparing for hundreds, perhaps thousands of bikers expected to ride into Oak Hill Memorial Park in San Jose sometime next month to honor the memory of Jeff "Jethro" Pettigrew, the president of the city's Hells Angel chapter who was shot to death in a gun battle at a Sparks casino.
There will be Henchmen, East Side Riders Car Club, Devil Dolls, Top Hatters and more. Alongside them, also paying their respects, will be members of the South Yard Heavy Equipment Crew. That is not a motorcycle club. It is the San Jose Department of Transportation's pavement repair team.
They knew Pettigrew from his day job. To them, he was not the local president of a biker club that law enforcement sees as a violent criminal motorcycle gang. He was as a veteran backhoe operator who paved potholes.
Hans Larsen, director of the city's Department of Transportation, said he was not even aware that Pettigrew was a Hells Angel. Nor did he care. "We have many employees who are motorcycle enthusiasts. What they do in their private lives doesn't concern us as long as it doesn't affect their work,'' Hansen said. "From what I am hearing he was a nice person with a good attitude, very professional in his work and he did it well.''
Funeral arrangements are still being made. And Pettigrew's shooting death on Friday night at John Ascuaga's Nugget Casino, which has law enforcement on high alert for a brewing bloodshed between outlaw motorcycle clubs, is still under investigation.
Law enforcement officials have been tight-lipped about what they think sparked the deadly biker melee during which Pettigrew was fatally shot or even Pettigrew's role as an influential and iconic outlaw club leader. But generally speaking, police are skeptical about outlaw motorcycle club members oft-stated claims that they are merely motorcycle enthusiasts with tattoos and a bad rep.
Pettigrew, however, had a relatively minor criminal record, with the last conviction coming eight years ago, a misdemeanor for carrying a concealed weapon, according to court records.
This week in the South Bay those close to the 51-year-old Pettigrew remembered him simply as Jethro, a cheerful one-legged, redhead. Charismatic, quick with a goofy joke or three, lusty for life, Pettigrew was relaxed on the road even as he pulled the "dragon's tail" of a large motorcycle run. His hands hooked into a big belt buckle on his Wrangler jeans, he was the guy wearing a beat-up Dallas Cowboys hat belting out a Randy Travis tune.
"From Alaska to New York City he was well accepted everywhere he went,'' said a Steve Tausan, a lifelong friend and fellow Hells Angel, sergeant-at-arms for the Santa Cruz chapter. "Everybody knew Jethro. He was calm, cool, collected. One of those guys that can light up a room like a (expletive) Christmas tree.''
Tearfully reminiscing about his old friend this week, Tausan sat in his San Jose bail bonds office flanked by a Victory Vision bike and decorated with photographs of himself -- with football icon Jim Brown, with Hells Angels icon Sonny Barger, with Jethro -- and a sarcastic photographic shrine to the police officers who busted him for the beating death of a man at The Pink Poodle strip club almost 14 years ago. Tausan was acquitted on the charge, but he said that the same stereotyping that he says got him into that trouble dogged Pettigrew as well.
"Jethro was not a choir boy,'' he said of his slain friend. "But it's not against the law to be a Hells Angel.''
Summer Jean Pettigrew, who's name was tattooed on her father's wrist, said he was proud of his club but rarely talked about that side of his life to her. He basically forbid her to ride motorcycles.
"He was always there for me, if I broke up with someone or I lost my job or I had a flat tire or my hair color turned out wrong,'' said Pettigrew, 26. "It wasn't this big scary biker with a Tony Soprano mentality. He took me to my first Britney Spears concert. By himself. Wearing his Hells' Angels stuff. And he knew the songs.''
Pettigrew lost a leg following an accident while riding. He and Tausan were coming back to San Jose from San Francisco about 20 years ago, dodging brutal traffic. Pettigrew went to go around a car, when it made an unexpected turn and caught his right foot in the bumper. His foot shattered. Later an infection set in and Pettigrew's leg was amputated just below the knee. His daughter said he would send his used prosthetics to charities in Mexico
This week, she donated her father's immaculate Road Glide Harley, with its death heads and orange flames the color of his hair when he was younger, to club members so that they could keep it in their San Jose clubhouse as a memorial.
"I don't want my father remembered as a casualty of biker gang violence, he was the HA President, but also so much more,'' she said. "He was my daddy, my rock, my blood."
Contact Sean Webby at 408-920-5003.