In True Grit, the teenage protagonist, on the trail of her father’s killer, would bluff people who tried to block her with the impending wrath of lawyer J. Noble Daggett. Eventually, a U.S. Marshal says, “Lawyer Daggett again!” and the Texas Ranger he’s with responds that she draws him the same way some folks draw their guns. For Sue Higman, it wasn’t a fictional lawyer but Pearl Chase’s spirit that was invoked at every public hearing, civic gathering, or private conversation. Once, when Sue approached the lectern to testify on the need to preserve a quiet Santa Barbara landmark, a councilmember was overheard whispering, “Here comes Pearl Chase again.”
Sue, who was a “Pearl’s Girl,” had been mentored in persistence by the civic leader when it came to stopping big projects. And preserving the Mesa’s Wilcox Property became Sue’s last big battle. It probably never occurred to Chase, who died in 1979 at the age of 90, that Wilcox would need “saving.” The Mesa was one of the later city neighborhoods to build out. When Chase was young, going up and down Carrillo Hill to get there was one slow slog by horse and buggy, and it was home to small farms, commercial nurseries, and mini-ranches. Wilcox had been a nursery, which explains its paved driveway from Cliff Drive, stone remnants, and rich array of trees and foliage planted by former owners. It hadn’t been virgin landscape for a hundred years.
By the 1980s, community priorities were changing. Outer State Street and La Cumbre Plaza had been developed, their Los Angeles–like traffic congestion angering and alarming residents. Developers sometimes seemed a step ahead of the city. At East Beach, an L.A. developer “converted” Kingswood Village into El Escorial’s suites-hotel, evicting the city’s community development director in the process.
