Known assailant of Fresno’s ‘biggest Boy Scout’ on San Joaquin River must face charges | Opinion

Five times during his life, the first in 1964 when he was 14 years old and the last about a decade ago, Richard Sloan has been shot at while visiting the San Joaquin River.

But until recently, despite the countless hours Sloan spends monitoring its banks, Fresno’s most active and long-standing river volunteer had never been physically harmed.

Sloan’s run of good luck ended June 25 when the 73-year-old was assaulted, not by a homeless person as has been his wife’s long fear, but by a dirt bike rider illegally motoring around the river bottom and bluffs below Palm and Nees avenues.

“I warn him about acting like Deputy Dawg out there,” said Laurie Sloan, referring to the 1960s cartoon character. “He said, ‘Hey, you’re not supposed to be out here’ to the wrong angry kid and it ruined his summer.”

(For the record, Richard Sloan said he told the dirt bike rider, “I’d like to talk to you” and the motorcyclist replied, “I’m going to kill you.” But his wife’s point still stands.)

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Thanks to Sloan’s quick finger on his Nikon, before he got run over and dragged, repeatedly punched in the head and broke his hand, nose, glasses and camera, he managed to snap five photographs of the assailant and posted them online. Internet sleuths took over, enlarging the images to reveal the bike’s registration number and a distinctive tattoo on the rider’s arm to help produce a positive ID.

That information was passed along to Fresno police. Detectives have since interviewed the suspect and submitted a completed case file to the Fresno County District Attorney’s Office, according to department spokesman Lt. Bill Dooley.

District Attorney Lisa Smittcamp & Co. better not place the file at the bottom of a tall stack on an empty desk. This unprovoked assault on Fresno’s most dedicated volunteer river steward mustn’t go unpunished.

“Richard being attacked isn’t just an attack on one person. He’s like the biggest Boy Scout in Fresno. How can you not defend him?” said City Councilmember Mike Karbassi, who chairs the San Joaquin River Conservancy governing board.

“It’s very upsetting, and I feel a personal responsibility there. That should never happen to him.”

When Sloan was a kid, he would ride his bike to the river from his parents house near Shaw and Blackstone with plywood strapped to the handlebars so he and his buddies could build a tree fort in a massive oak.

Today, Sloan drives his white 4Runner with a blue emblem on the driver’s door that reads Fresno Canoe and Kayak Club. It’s the second organization founded by the retired Army and ROTC logistics specialist dedicated to the environmental stewardship and enjoyment of the San Joaquin River. (The first was RiverTree Volunteers, which remains active.)

Over the decades, Sloan and his dedicated volunteers have removed 8,000 tires illegally dumped in the river, collected innumerable bags of litter and returned hundreds of shopping carts. They’ve also planted and maintained native trees and shrubs at several properties.

Monitoring the river almost daily

Sloan wakes up every day at 3 a.m. and is out the door by 5:15 headed for the river. He is typically accompanied by Lily, a Chow-husky mix who looks more like a German shepherd. Together they visit different locations along the river looking for trash and environmental damage. Over the years he has reported all manner of illegal activity, everything from shooting to arson to poaching to stolen jet skis stashed on an island.

Sloan interacts with many of the unhoused people camped along the river and often cleans up the messes they leave behind. He warns them when their camps are at risk of flooding by rising water levels. He leaves them canned goods, bottled water and blankets and buys them over-the-counter medicine when they are sick.

“He has a good heart,” said Laurie Sloan, Richard’s wife of 49½ years.

When Sloan posted about the assault on Facebook, his many friends and admirers were outraged. Some of them pooled their money together and purchased him a new, fancier Nikon camera with an even more powerful optical telephoto lens.

The soft-spoken Sloan told me he was “overwhelmed” by the response from the local community of river enthusiasts and stewards.

“I hadn’t realized that many people paid attention and cared that much about the river and what we are doing out there,” he said, modestly.

Sloan typically spends much of his time on the river paddling a kayak. But with two fractures in his right hand, that’s out of the question for another six to eight weeks. Nor can he use that hand to carry anything heavy or perform most of his usual tasks.

Unsurprisingly, he’s not taking it well.

“He’s kind of at loose ends when he can’t go out and paddle,” Laurie Sloan said. “He loves to paddle. He had all these plans for the summer and it’s all squelched. Makes me mad.”

Makes me mad, too. Angry enough to demand justice for Fresno’s most dedicated river volunteer.

If the Fresno DA’s office has any imagination, Sloan’s assailant, in addition to having his dirt bike confiscated, will be charged with community service. And I can think of the perfect service project: eradicating motorcycle tire tracks from the river bottom.

That way, he can apologize to Sloan in person while he repairs the environmental damage he caused.