Father defends woman named in '98 Vail fires

'She's not even a vegetarian,' says dad in timber industry

Joe Garner, Rocky Mountain News

Published December 16, 2005 at midnight

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SWEET HOME, Ore. - Federal authorities have the wrong woman in custody, says the father of an alleged eco-terrorist identified as a suspect in the 1998 fire bombings on Vail Mountain.

The woman, Chelsea Gerlach, 28, of Portland, was named a suspect in the $12 million Vail arson case Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Eugene, Ore., during a hearing to set bail on two federal eco-terrorism charges against her in her home state stemming from a 1999 fire at a meatpacking plant.

She remains in the Lane County Jail while a grand jury meets this week. She has not been charged with any crimes related to the torching of the original Two Elk Restaurant and other structures at Vail.

"She's not even a vegetarian. That's the weirdest thing about accusing her of arson for animal rights," said her father, Harry Gerlach, 54, who lives in the small timber town of Sweet Home, which his daughter occasionally visited.

But Gerlach sees even more irony in his daughter's arrest because he works in the timber industry, one of the targets of the Earth Liberation Front and Animal Liberation Front.

"She lives in Portland, and we have our lives here," he said.

Gerlach said his family "has been kept in the dark by the legal system" since his daughter was arrested Dec. 7. They were not even allowed to speak to her at the bail hearing, he said.

"We have the utmost confidence that the federal courts will vindicate Chelsea," he said, partly reading from a statement and partly speaking spontaneously. "We just don't think Chelsea is capable of this kind of stuff."

Gerlach said he hoped his working-class family's lack of legal sophistication "will not be a disservice to Chelsea in her time of need."

Townspeople said that tree-huggers have no place in Sweet Home, a once-booming timber town.

"No one here likes these demonstrators," said Blair Smith, 79, a native of Sweet Home. He said his hometown was thriving before the listing of the spotted owl as an endangered species and the implementation of other environmental policies that crippled the timber industry.

"Shutting down the woods broke this town, and a lot of other Oregon towns like us," Smith said.

The Earth Liberation Front, a radical environmental group, issued a "communique" three days after the seven synchronized fires on Vail Mountain, saying it was protesting the ski operator's corporate growth and defending "the last, best lynx habitat in the state."

The ELF and Animal Liberation Front, a group with a similar agenda, claimed responsibility for many of the fire bombings and arsons for which Gerlach and five others were arrested in a nationwide sweep.

Gerlach, whom the FBI identified as "Country Girl" in the arrest warrant related to the Oregon fires, graduated from high school in Eugene, about 50 miles and a world apart from Sweet Home.

Eugene is to Oregon as Boulder is to Colorado, said Bob Rice, 73, the third generation of his family to operate a timber company.

"The key to whatever happened to her may be that she went to high school where the University of Oregon is," Rice said. "To some of us common people, they have all kinds of problems in Eugene, from demonstrators to gays and hippies."

Hostility toward environmentalists has eased in the past decade, with Sweet Home growing to about 8,500 residents, City Manager Craig Martin said.

But, he said, the town has become largely a center for recreation and retirement, and a bedroom community for commuters who work in larger communities in the Willamette Valley.

"We no longer have spotted owls in nooses hanging in trees around town, like we did," he said.

Craig Weinerman, Gerlach's public defender, said that assistant U.S. Attorney Kirk Engdahl "threw everything at her but the kitchen sink," but has yet to charge his client with the Vail arson or four others in the Northwest that he laid at her feet.

Weinerman said Engdahl, who did not respond to messages requesting an interview, had simply declared "a litany of accusations" against Gerlach, who has denied any involvement in the crimes.

Sweet Home, Ore.

• Population   8,016

• Male    49%

• Female    51%

• White    94%

• Hispanic   3%

• Black    0.2%

• American Indian and Alaska Native   1.7%

• Asian    0.6%

• Median household income   $31,000