He used discarded materials from these construction sites to build labyrinthine clubhouses in the backyard of his family's San Fernando home. Before he even hit adolescence, Alfred started skipping school to help his father pour concrete at shopping malls. Alfred was forever disassembling Sony Walkmans or clock radios so he could fill his favorite junk drawer with circuit boards, which thrilled him with their intricacy.Īnaya idolized his father, Gabriel, a hardworking cement mason who had emigrated from Mexico. I didn't realize it needed to be plugged in to go." His mother was upset but hardly surprised to discover her ruined vacuum, for she knew all about her youngest son's rabid curiosity. "I was so young, I thought the motor would work all by itself even after I took it out. "I took it apart because I wanted to find the motor inside," he recalls. When he was 8 years old, Alfred Anaya destroyed his mother's vacuum cleaner in the pursuit of knowledge. A pair of hydraulic cylinders open the hatch for the secret compartment, which is located in the void where the passenger-side airbag should be. Given those circumstances, Anaya assumed that he was immune from legal trouble in connection with his meticulous creations. The fact was that he hadn't seen any drugs, and there had been no discussion of how Maldanado had earned his small fortune. He hadn't totally forgiven Maldanado for failing to warn him about the money jammed in the trap, but he figured that he was still adhering to the letter of the law. Maldanado wanted an electronic trap like the F-150’s, and he offered to leave a cash deposit so Anaya could buy the necessary hydraulics.Īnaya, who was deeply in debt to numerous creditors, decided to accept the job. The Honda truck already had one, but it was the work of a rank amateur-just a crude hole sawed into the base of the trunk. He even offered to improve the compartment by adding another switch-the one that reclined the driver's seat-to the unlocking sequence.Ī grateful Maldanado then asked Anaya if he could install a trap in the Ridgeline too. Once all of the money had been moved to the Ridgeline, Anaya, now feeling calmer, agreed to fix the F-150’s trap for $1,500-a third of what he had originally charged to install it. He heard the hydraulics whirr to life, but the seat stayed firmly in place. The 37-year-old Anaya, a boyishly handsome man whose neck and arms are covered with tattoos of dice and Japanese art, tested the switches that controlled the truck's trap. A friend of his, who introduced himself as Cesar, followed right behind in a black Honda Ridgeline truck. Esteban assured him that he needn't worry.Įsteban drove the F-150 to Anaya's modest ranch-style house and parked by the back porch. "There's nothing in there I shouldn't know about, is there?" he asked. Anaya thus thought it wise to deviate from his standard no-questions-asked policy before agreeing to honor his warranty. The maximum penalty is three years in prison. But the activity runs afoul of California law if an installer knows for certain that his compartment will be used to transport drugs. There is nothing intrinsically illegal about building traps, which are commonly used to hide everything from pricey jewelry to legal handguns. He pleaded with Anaya to take a look.Īnaya was unsettled by this request, for he had suspicions about the nature of Esteban's work. The only way to make the seat slide forward and reveal its secret was by pressing and holding four switches simultaneously: two for the power door locks and two for the windows.Įsteban said the seat was no longer responding to the switch combination and that no amount of jiggling could make it budge. This particular compartment was located behind the truck's backseat, which Anaya had rigged with a set of hydraulic cylinders linked to the vehicle's electrical system. Over the years, these secret stash spots-or traps, as they're known in automotive slang-have become a popular luxury item among the wealthy and shady alike. But in late January 2009, a man whom Anaya knew only as Esteban called for help with a more exotic product: a hidden compartment that Anaya had installed in his Ford F-150 pickup truck. Though his stereo installation business, Valley Custom Audio Fanatics, was just a one-man operation based out of his San Fernando, California, home, he offered all of his clients a lifetime warranty: If there was ever any problem with his handiwork, he would fix it for the cost of parts alone-no questions asked.Īnaya's customers typically took advantage of this deal when their fiendishly loud subwoofers blew out or their fiberglass speaker boxes developed hairline cracks. Alfred Anaya took pride in his generous service guarantee.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |