Smith: End of the road for Peggy Sue's All-American Cruise

After 12 years of the summer car show and cruise through downtown Santa Rosa, health issues are forcing the pair responsible for the popular event to shut it down.|

NO MORE PEGGY SUE’S: You know how many gorgeous classic cars shone at the big rec park on Santa Rosa’s West Third Street for last summer’s charitable car show by Peggy and Rich Williams?

There were 1,002. Legions of car lovers came to see them and partake in the chili contest and other attractions of Peggy Sue’s All-American Cruise.

“We had people from Montana!” Peggy said.

After 12 fabulous years of the car show and the cruise through downtown, it pains Peggy and Rich to say there won’t be a 13th. Rich, who’s 64, hasn’t felt well for some time and he learned days ago he has stage 4 lymphoma.

This spring or summer, people who want to thank him and Peggy and raise some money for medical expenses will put on a smaller car show. An online appeal for donations will go up soon at Gofundme.com.

Peggy said she and Rich had great fun, and they’re so proud of what they and many car-show partners did.

“We’re tough,” she added. “We’re fighters, that’s what we do.”

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As great as Danny Glover is, I’m not sure I’d rush to see his new independent film, “Supremacy,” a race-charged hostage thriller based on true events.

Those events occurred in the rural gap between Santa Rosa and Sebastopol 20 years ago this March. It was a terrible night for Sonoma County.

About 11:30 p.m., Deputy Sheriff Frank Trejo spotted a man and woman sitting in a pickup outside a bar and a closed saddle shop on Highway 12, just west of Llano Road.

The woman was an inmate groupie and the guy was Robert Scully, a career criminal and Aryan Brotherhood gangster paroled from Pelican Bay State Prison just five days earlier. He grasped a shotgun. In a flash, Deputy Trejo was dead.

Scully and Brenda Kay Moore fled and forced their way into the nearby home of Frank Cooper and his family. Hours later the pair surrendered to officers massed outside.

Scully was tried and sentenced to death, Moore to 14 years in prison.

Family, friends and former colleagues of Frank Trejo, at 58 “the old man” of the Sheriff’s Office, will likely gather to honor him on March 29 at the spot where he died. I’d imagine few will care to see “Supremacy.”

It stars Joe Anderson as a parolee named Tully and Glover as an African-American ex-con whose home is invaded by the white supremacist and his girlfriend.

There are some accuracies in the movie. For one, the Coopers, who were taken hostage, are African-American and Scully is an avowed racist.

But any of us who intend to see “Supremacy” might keep in mind it’s fiction based on fact. And the facts and memories of what happened near Sebastopol that night in 1995 could make this a tough film to watch.

Chris Smith is at 707-521-5211 and chris.smith@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @CJSPD

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