Richard Quigley is a foul-mouthed, eccentric, independent, cynical and boastful thinker. A skinny man with long gray hair and a Gandalf beard, Quigley thinks the term “should”—when applied to others—is the ugliest word in the English language (as in, you should do this. Could try is Quigley’s favorite alternative). In the last decade, Quigley has run for sheriff of Santa Cruz County and for Congress on the libertarian ticket. He lost both times.
By the time this article is published, there is a good chance that Richard Quigley will be dead.
But since being diagnosed with stage-four terminal lymphoma in August 2005, Quigley has been preoccupied with a death other than his own: the demise of the California motorcycle helmet law. He has dedicated the last 14 years of his life to fighting the law, in courts and on roads all over California, and he feels the game is almost up. Quigley points to an epidemic of underhanded totalitarianism, and believes he has one small antidote: enough facts and loopholes to take down the state’s current helmet statute. In June 2006 Quigley convinced Watsonville superior court Judge Michael Barton to dismiss his 11 pending helmet tickets as “unconstitutional, unenforceable, and thereby void.” The judge ruled that Quigley’s tickets were correctable violations. The California Highway Patrol (CHP) responded by placing a writ of mandate on CHP vs. Santa Cruz Superior Court—essentially shelving the case until it could be challenged further.
“We do not believe that the helmet violation ticket is a correctable offense,” said Oakland Deputy Attorney General Karen Huster, who is representing the CHP in the case.
“There has been a stay on the order, and we are appealing the decision,” she said.
But in the fourteen months since Barton’s ruling, an appeal has yet to be filed through the San Jose 6th District Court of Appeals, despite the deputy attorney’s claim. Meanwhile, Santa Cruz police officers have continued to ticket riders without helmets, and CHP officials refuse to comment on the case.
“Until [the case is] resolved in court, our hands are tied,” said Tom Marshall, spokesman for the CHP at the Sacramento state office of media relations. “We’ve all been instructed not to talk until the litigation is over,” he said.
“Keeping the case in litigation is a stall tactic,” Quigley said. “They know I’m croaking, they want to keep the law in the books at all costs. Why are they doing this?”
Once enough people understand the dubiousness and inherent tyranny of the law (A City on a Hill Press investigative report on the California motorcycle helmet law will be available next issue), Quigley speculates it will be abolished. And when that happens, in Quigley’s prediction, the other 19 states’ helmet laws will follow suit. If that occurs, all American motorcyclists for the first time since 1967 will be able to choose whether or not they want to wear a helmet— thereby granting the dying wish of an aging outlaw street fighter who is almost certain he won’t live to see it.
“Richard is unique and irreplaceable because he managed over time to come up with a combination of facts showing the weakness and inequities in the law and it’s enforcement,” said Mike Osborn, Quigley’s acting administrator. “His legacy, the facts, will outlast him.”
The original diagnosis gave Richard Quigley five months to live. For two years he has grappled with the worsening lymphoma, ignored his deteriorating health, converted the pain into anger—and channeled that anger into fighting the state helmet law. He admits that his fixation with the fight has given his life new meaning. Although every day this summer he spent slumped atop a hospital bed under Hospice care in his house deep in the pastoral hills of Aptos, California – with heavy doses of morphine sometimes restricting him from extended conversation – Quigley still steadily drags from a Saratoga 120, his cigarette of choice, and he still enjoys talking helmets.
Quigley often punctuates sentences with a hard-boiled eye: he’ll top off a long tirade on how the added weight of a helmet doesn’t conform to the body’s natural defense system with “don’t tell me helmets save lives.” He follows the gruff, put-up-your-dukes statement with a cold, Clint Eastwood stare. He lets his cigarette burn between two fingers for an uncomfortably long moment, while his eyes drain the remaining oxygen out of the room. It’s a mid-conversational wild card that Quigley keeps under his sleeve. It’s difficult to watch and even harder to look away, at least until you’ve gotten to know the guy.
After several conversations with Richard Quigley, it becomes obvious that he has knotted the helmet battle into his existential core. Over the last decade, before the cancer, Quigley converted numerous ticket fines into untold hours of community service, which he spent at the law library, reading up on statutes. He made himself an expert on the motorcycle helmet law, and then studied up on a select handful of other California laws that he had never bothered to obey. The countless documents of helmet research stored on his home computer find significance when woven into the man’s unique autobiography. The story of Richard Quigley is an equal and opposite reactionary tale, an individual’s transformation from corporate suit to rugged biker. Nobody would guess it by looking at him, but Quigley lived out an entire lifetime – before the beard, and before the fight – as a complacent citizen in middle-class America.
Throughout his 40s, Quigley worked as a marketing sales director in Silicon Valley, and then at a Dodge dealership in Capitola. He owned and rode a motorcycle, but outlaw biker was far from a term of self-appraisal. “I was living the straight life, signed up on the tax roll,” he said.
Quigley was not only disinterested in social activism, he scorned it. As a father in suburban California in the 1980s, he found it easy to write off the overflow 1960s activism as “Communist propaganda” and “kook radicalism.” But this indifferent shut-up-and-pay-your-taxes attitude ended for the 41-year-old one sunny day in 1985.
Quigley was driving to Capitola Village in an old truck with an expired registration when he noticed flashing police lights in his side mirror. Once he pulled over, an argument ensued between Quigley and the Capitola officer, who Quigley described as “rude and aggressive”; so aggressive, in fact, that within minutes the cop allegedly slammed Quigley into the side of his own truck. Quigley was taken aback, never having been a victim of any kind of brutality from an authority figure. “After being written a ticket,” he said, “I made a promise to the officer that he would learn to keep his hands to himself.”
Growing up in a small mining town in Arizona, a “Wild-West” kind of upbringing, Quigley was raised by his father and mother, a JC Penny’s salesman and a Safeway grocery checker, to believe that making and keeping promises was the highest social value. Quigley prides himself on “a handful of promises,” and, he maintains, had never broken a single one. This time, however, the pledge wasn’t so easy to keep. Quigley filed a series of written complaints with various supervisors at the internal affairs office within the Capitola police department. “And I get this letter back saying ‘your complaint has been found to be unfounded.’ Well, I was there. My complaint was founded!”
Shocked by the written reply, Quigley was forced to do some soul-searching. The officer who had grabbed him had not been reprimanded. It appeared Quigley was losing.
Quigley spoke with then-Police Chief Donald Braunton, who agreed to investigate. Several months later, Quigley was horrified to hear Braunton’s findings: that he had attacked the officer, causing the cop to push back in self-defense.
“I got up from my seat and stumbled back, reaching for the doorknob,” Quigley recalls. “My sense of what the world was about and how things operated was rapidly crumbling before my eyes. I needed to get out of there.
“I was scared shitless.”
But he didn’t give up, taking his case to the Capitola City Council chambers, where he remembers “being laughed out of their meeting.” In the next few months, Quigley found himself staring at the ceiling on many nights, pondering his broken promise. It was now nearly a year after the original confrontation, a year since making his promise. Having exhausted all other resources, Quigley filed a lawsuit against the officer for using excessive force on citation number 65466.
“Isn’t it interesting that I still have that number memorized?” Quigley asks. “I’ve never forgotten any detail of that entire event.”
At the trial, a judge ruled in Quigley’s favor, but awarded him only $1 in restitution. Feeling cheated and frustrated by the ruling, Quigley gestured a long index finger toward the officer in the courtroom.
“I said, ‘don’t you believe it, I am not a D-ticket ride at Disneyland. If you ever lay a hand on me again, on that day, in that place, one of us is going to die.’”
He remembers then pointing at the judge, saying, “and you have no idea what you started today.’”
Quigley also didn’t have any idea what had been started. After the trial he moved out of the county, into a more rural area to spend some time alone and examine his life. His girlfriend left him. If there were ever a great turning point in Quigley’s life, this would be it.
“My head snapped,” he said. Weeks passed. At times he found himself paranoid; often he was depressed. He read Thoreau, Nietzsche, Mark Twain, and the Thomas Jefferson letters, shaping his ideals on the concept of freedom.
“I knew that something would come from that day,” he said.
What came from that day was the United States Freedom Fighters, a loose-knit organization that professed to “watch the watchers.” Quigley founded the group and created its official online handbook, a collection of quotes from famous politicians, writers, activists, and musicians, from Abraham Lincoln to Tom Robbins. There is a small section dedicated to Sandra Loranger, who was jailed in Santa Cruz county for feeding the homeless. On July 6, 1989, Loranger was sentenced to, and served, a 45-day jail term for her insistence on feeding street people, violating a county health code intended to regulate commercial kitchens. Quigley, amongst many others, picketed the decision. While the tale of a dying misfit biker fighting against the highway patrol for his right to ride bareheaded may lack the nobility of feeding the hungry, it illuminates the timeless conflict between the maverick and the forces of majority and authority. Richard Quigley, sitting on his Harley, in his black Terminator jacket and leather chaps, is an outlaw – a term he readily accepts – not a criminal. Criminals hurt people. Outlaws have the fight, a caustic battle for a dimension of freedom that is, in Quigley’s case, in strict violation of common reason.
It is the freedom to choose that Quigley has wrapped himself around, as he demonizes mandatory law. “If the law were suddenly changed to make it illegal to strap on a helmet,” he said, “my obsession would switch and I’d start running just as hard in the other direction.”
While the battle against protective headgear may sound outrageous, it holds enough importance for a handful of motorcyclists – many of whom have no other interest in political activism – to dedicate an ample portion of their lives fighting, in court and out. Since 1992, individuals in Quigley’s camp have lobbied and demonstrated, networked, formed alliances, spent money on research, and attracted as much attention as they could to the issue.
When this story went to press, every major court case concerning the California helmet law has been thrown out. The CHP argues each time that it is up to the arresting officer’s discretion to determine whether a helmet in question has been approved for use by the state, the other side argues that there is no list of state-approved helmet, and every time the courts side with the CHP.
This is the droning pattern that Richard Quigley has fought to break apart for the last decade. At each court appearance for the past three years, Quigley, his body sticklike, shuffles into the Watsonville superior court, with his massive file under his arm, flanked by a handful of biker buddies and his friend Kate Wells, a Watsonville civil rights lawyer who informally sits in to help Quigley with legal terminology, to discuss the current standing of the case. As he speaks, the clerk and bailiff and the judge get a chuckle out of Quigley’s endearing humor – for instance, he’s raised concern that if the court prolongs their final decision much longer, all the progress he’s made will be lost in “those black holes that our friend in the wheelchair is always talking about” – and he laughs along with them. Then it’s down to business: Quigley lays out his recent findings, and the judge says he needs time to look over the new evidence. After a future court date is set, Quigley thanks the court for listening, and, in the months prior to being bedridden, he’d ride away on his hog, sometimes with a helmet on, sometimes not. In chronicling this story for 22 months, this reporter has come to the conclusion that the California helmet law is not likely to change—not until more people stand up in opposition. Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing, it is important to note that the CHP has refused to honor a judge’s ruling, first by refusing to sign off on tickets deemed correctable, next in failing to formally appeal a court order.
“This is for love for my fellow citizens,” Quigley said. “This is great shit, no burden. Will what happens in the end make all the difference?” He paused.
“I have kids,” he finished. “My kids have kids. They’re going to grow up on this planet. If I can get the government to stand back on one of these things, somewhere down the line the kids won’t have to deal with this. This is for my posterity.”
The aging ideologue believes his legacy will grow to awesome peaks if the truth about the helmet law ever sees the light. Quigley’s even dreamed that one-day his $15,000 Harley will stand on display in a museum. It’s a long-shot ambition, perhaps damaged by ego-driven delusions, but the man and his unusual crusade have survived long past the terminal diagnosis.
In the last several months, Quigley’s been receiving checks from old acquaintances and fans of the Freedom Fighter’s website who have aligned with his cause and know about his deepening financial difficulties. The checks have ranged from $20 to $1000, and usually come attached with a note about how Quigley has influenced and benefited the person’s life.
* * *
On a crisp fall day in November 2006, Richard Quigley woke up in less pain than usual. He muscled the strength to walk his tired body out his front door, over to his beloved Harley, and he slowly eased himself down on the seat. It had been a long time since he turned the key. But on this day, Quigley had new findings and a new lawsuit to file against the CHP. The sensible thing would be to just drive down to file the order in his Bronco, or better yet, call somebody for a ride. But today, with his body feeling slightly better than most days, he realized he didn’t have that option. He fired up the bike, and sat peacefully and motionlessly for a moment, basking in the salvational hum of the idling engine. When the time was right, he stomped the shifter down to first gear, pulled back on the throttle, and coasted the nine miles down the dirt road to Highway 1, heading north towards Santa Cruz.
“I passed several cops on my way to Santa Cruz. One was right at the stoplight. He rolled down his window and said ‘where’s your helmet Mr. Quigley?’ ‘I don’t need a damn helmet,’ I said. Then the light changed and the officer just drove off.”
On his way home, Quigley tapped into a force he’s channeled countless times before. A lapse of judgment that Quigley shake his head at and calls stupid and dangerous. A behavior he doesn’t advise to anybody. A thrill that keeps him grinning.
“I guess the excitement of the day flowed through my body, into my arm and right down on the throttle. I went up to 85 – 95 – 100 miles an hour. That’s hell to do on a five-speed Harley, the bike is not designed to go that fast for a long duration of time.”
But he just kept on pushing it. Careening past cars, shocking motorists by balancing on the center divide, splitting lanes and zooming past a bike cop riding in the opposite direction. One hundred miles per hour, the wind blowing through his hair.
