SLO County Detective | JT Camp

SLO COUNTY DETECTIVE’S 25-YEAR CAREER MARKED BY EFFORTS AGAINST HUMAN TRAFFICKING

Major Crime Fighter

by Camille DeVaul

In January, San Luis Obispo County District Attorney Dan Dow honored Senior Investigator JT Camp for over 25 years with the county. Through his quarter of a century in law enforcement, JT has worked with the SLO Probation Department, the Sheriff’s Office and played a key role in developing the county’s Human Trafficking Task Force.

JT began his career in law enforcement in 1996 with the County’s probation department. He was focused on the Southern part of SLO County, working with the juvenile hall. Then in 2000, JT started his career with the sheriff’s department, still based in the south county, including areas like Oceano. During those first few years with the department, JT was your typical patrol officer, but he soon worked his way into the Bureau of Investigations, working the major crimes division.

“I do think that anyone that is in the law enforcement business is really in it for noble reasons,” said JT. “I think at the heart of it that the vast majority of the people that get into law enforcement do want to serve their community and do want to help people.”

When you ask JT which case stands out to him most throughout his career, he can’t pick one. Instead, it was the entire year of 2010 that stood out to him. That year started and ended with brutal homicides, with several others in between—one of the busiest years the county has seen.

He has seen a lot through his career. If he could give the public advice based on those years, he says, “Common sense goes a long way in terms of knowing that there is good and bad out there; being aware of your surroundings.”

Then in 2012, JT was hired on as an investigator with the District Attorney’s office, where he remains today. But JT hasn’t left the Sheriff’s Office entirely. Instead, he is assigned to the sheriff’s Special Operations Unit, meaning JT is loaned to the Sheriff’s Office for major crimes.

Today most people associate JT with the county’s Human Trafficking Task Force. His first big human trafficking case came in 2014. It took investigators two years, start to finish, to close the case—and it brought some hefty sentences for the criminals.

Oscar Higueros Jr., a former Cayucos firefighter, was sentenced to 182 years in prison in 2016. Richard Scott Brooks of San Francisco was sentenced to over 60 years—both for terrible human trafficking crimes.

It was that case that inspired the county to launch the Human Trafficking Task Force in 2018. The new task force consisted of one investigator from the sheriff’s department and one more from the district attorney’s office, JT.

JT says prior to the task force being created, the county had a mostly reactive approach to human trafficking. This is the first proactive approach to solving human trafficking in SLO County and is internally funded.

“I think we knew certainly human trafficking was present on the Central Coast,” JT says of what he has learned since launching the task force. “I think what we learned was the extent to how much there was much greater.”

San Luis Obispo County District Attorney Dan Dow honored JT Camp for his 25 years of service.. Contributed photo

of work and those sort of cases can be all-consuming.”

The task force focuses on disrupting the county’s trafficking market. JT explains that human trafficking markets vary depending on their location. In SLO County, the market is primarily based online and within social media. JT and his team focus on a holistic approach to tackling the industry by educating the community and businesses like hotels who are most likely to witness it.

“There is a huge gap. People either didn’t know what to look for, or they misidentified it or maybe didn’t know what to do with it. So we put an emphasis on wrapping people’s heads around ‘yeah, it is here’ and what it actually looks like. Not so much what TV says it looks like,” commented JT.

He notes that many people see human trafficking through the lens of films like “Taken” or “Pretty Woman.” While he says kidnappings are entirely possible, human trafficking in SLO County is most likely to happen over the internet and through methods like grooming.

But no matter how difficult his job can be, JT would do it all over again if he had the chance: “Sometimes I feel that way [choose another career] but overall the reward for speaking up for those who don’t have a voice, advocating for victims trying to do the right thing and help others, the pay off on that part of it has been so much better than even the bad days—if I could do it all over again, would I do it all over again? I would say absolutely yes.”

He continues, “It can be a hard job, and it can be a depressing thing where you only see the worst in most situations, but at the heart of it, I think it is a noble calling, and we need people to keep stepping up that are willing to serve their community and willing to help people where they can and really to go and advocate for the people who don’t have voices.”

For more information on the San Luis Obispo County Human Trafficking Task Force, visit:

Being in law enforcement within divisions like major crimes and human trafficking is no easy task. JT says, “You have to get good at compartmentalizing but then also having some sort of healthy outlets—the important part is trying to maintain that healthy balance because that sort

slocounty.ca.gov/Departments/District-Attorney/Victim-Witness-Assistance-Center/ Human-Trafficking.aspx

COACHES ADAM BASCH AND NANCY STEINMAUS

San Luis Obispo Boys Cross Country Team Wins State Title

by Will Jones

In November 2021, for only the second time in school history, the San Luis Obispo High School Cross Country Team won the State Championship, Division II, at Woodward Park in Clovis. The team then went on to win the Nike Cross Regionals, a first in school history.

Junior Milo Skapinsky led the team, followed closely by senior captain Lewis Westwood. Senior Luke Holland, juniors Quinn White, and Luke Reiss, and sophomore Weston Greenelsh provided valuable points throughout the year, with all of the runners improving their times as the year progressed.

PrepCalTrack named San Luis Obispo the Team of the Year, and writer Rich Gonzales marveled at the team’s come-from-behind ability in every important race, including the State Finals and the Nike Cross Regionals. “There are no superstars here, just a balanced lineup where every athlete chips in and is instrumental in contributing to the team’s championship success.” The architects of the team’s success are Co-Head Coaches Adam Basch and Nancy Steinmaus.

Adam, 42, grew up in Sylvania, Ohio, in what he described as “a fairly typical suburban setting, playing youth sports, having a paper route, raking grass, shoveling snow as the seasons progressed.” He started running cross country in middle school. In high school, “We had a powerhouse high school program coached by Ross Dye, an Ohio Hall of Fame coach.”

Following high school, Adam went to Beloit College in Wisconsin and played intramural sports while studying philosophy and creative writing, and then to Ohio University to earn a teaching credential. He started teaching special education at a high school in Southeastern Ohio, 2005-2007. While there, he helped out with the cross country team. Adam met his wife, Jenni, in graduate school, and they married in 2005.

They moved to San Luis Obispo when Jenni was accepted at Cal Poly for graduate school, drawn by warmer weather, a different culture, and the quality of the Counseling Psych program. Adam started teaching special education at SLOHS in October of 2007 when a position unexpectedly became available. Jenni is currently

In 2021, San Luis Obispo High cross country won the State Championship for the first time in history. Contributed photos writing and publishing a variety of non-fiction and fiction works. She is also a paid speaker for special needs groups. Their son Rowan was born in 2008, and their daughter, Skye, in 2010.

Adam started coaching cross country in 2008 under legendary head coach Steve Boaz. “I was his assistant until 2017, learning his program along the way. I took over as head coach in 2018 when he

retired. From Steve, I learned the importance of having a plan for every kid, from their first day of freshman year until they graduated. He had a plan for the whole year, including the track season and summer. It was a monolithic system. He was extremely fair with kids always had time for them individually. He kept times for every athlete in every race in order to track their progress.”

Nancy, 58, grew up in Carmichael, California, and graduated from San Juan del Campo High School. She started running in seventh grade, continued in high school, and ran varsity cross country and track at UC Davis for four years, a three-time All American. Nancy coached JV cross country at Davis while in graduate school.

After Davis, Nancy taught and coached full time at Mira Costa College, at first coaching women’s cross country and track and eventually also coaching the men’s teams. During ten years at Mira Costa, she raced as a professional duathlete (running and cycling) all over the world. She retired as a pro in 1999 but continued to compete for a long time.

Nancy teaches kinesiology at Cuesta College, and her husband, Scott, is the head of the Crop Science and Horticulture department at Cal Poly. They have two daughters, Tasha, 18, and Alexi, 20, who runs cross country for Chico State and qualified for Nationals in 2021.

For two seasons, 2017-19, Nancy was the assistant cross country coach at SLOHS, but she and Adam have been co-head coaches for both the girls’ and the boys’ cross country teams the last two seasons. “Adam was a big proponent, and it works really well. We work great as a team. Having two genders coaching the program, each working with both programs, provides a different kind of role modeling and dynamic. Adam has years of experience with the program. I have an exercise physiology background. It’s been helpful in refining a successful training program that has worked for many years.”

Adam said building a championship team, “goes all the way back to Steve’s teams and traditions. Each group educates the next group about the right way to train, from the superstars to the solid middle pack runners. Everyone contributes. When alumni are in town, they train with the team. It’s a culture of high expectations, of getting to State even when we were in the insanely competitive Southern Section up until 2018.”

The 2019 team was very good, but, according to Adam, they didn’t have their best day at the State meet, finishing out of the top ten. Then COVID disrupted everything. Track season lasted two meets. “In the summer, team meetings were on Zoom to coach them on getting in their runs on their own. There were no races in the fall of 2020, but there were dual meets in February of 2021. For the record, the boys did win the league championship for the 2020 season, which was actually the spring of 2021.”

Nancy agreed with Adam. “There were no stars on this team, but they were all really good runners. I told them when they were getting their awards at State that they were ‘all in all season and went all out when it mattered.’ We practiced different skills in different races, funneling the season toward the championships. They were able to take on laser beam focus when it mattered most. It showed at the State meet. At the end of the first mile, we were in 12th place, 5th after the 2nd mile and 1st at the end.”

The 2021 track season went well, with regular meets and a league championship, but no State meet. “Then we were back on a regular summer of cross country training and a fall competitive season. We knew we had a good team. Four of our runners broke ten minutes in the 3200 in track, and they had a good summer of training. They won everything locally and finished 9th in the Championship race at the Clovis Invitational, although we were the first Division II team to finish.”

Favored to win the Central Section Championship, the team finished second. “They ran really well, several of them having their best times, but Sanger had a great day and beat us. It was a devastating loss, but it worked out in the long run. It helped us stay hungry for State, almost the best thing that could have happened.”

Back at Woodward Park in Clovis for the State Championship, the top five runners passed 100 opponents in the last mile to win the championship by seven points. “It was like being at the top of the mountain. California is so competitive. And the way they did it was perfect teamwork. In the last mile, Milo moved up 23 places, Luke 18, Lewis 9, Quinn 7, and Weston 43.”

Adam remains humble about the experience. “I don’t have the pedigree that some of the other coaches have, but I feel like Nancy, and I earned us some credibility. We don’t have to spend as much energy convincing athletes that what we’re saying is right. Winning is great, but developing the kids is most rewarding, and doing it for the school. To meet the new group, get them fired up and take it as far as we can go.”

I asked Adam why a student should choose cross country. “Everybody competes. You get a lot of freedom. Running is natural to us. As children, our bodies want to run. There can be a rediscovery of that, a joy when you’re out there running through space.”

Nancy added, “In cross country, all can succeed. Improving is the hallmark no matter where you start or finish. It helps to develop a person, not just focus on a win and loss record. It also helps to develop a healthy lifestyle, not just for the sport but for life.”

With five of the top seven runners returning for the 2022 season, there are high hopes for another trip to State finals, where, who knows, maybe “all in and all out” will bring home another title. 

BEHIND THE IRON CURTAIN:

A Journey from Socialist Republic of Romania to America

by Camille Devaul

Dora Cary was five years old when she realized something wrong with her country. That same day, her father told her about America and its promise of freedom. Today, Dora owns a successful quilting shop in Downtown Paso Robles on Railroad Street. She has a beautiful family and lives a happy life. But growing up in Timisoara, Romania, Dora’s life was not always so full of color and freedom.

(Top) Dora and her friend serving in the military during college. (Right) Dora waiting for her red bandana of the communist children to become a “pioneer.” (Left) Dora’s grandmother who lost the family land and home at the start of the communist takeover. Contributed Photos THE RISE OF SOCIALIST REPUBLIC OF ROMANIA (RSR)

From the 1940s to the early 1990s, Romania was the Socialist Republic of Romania (RSR)—a Marxist-Leninist one-party communist state. According to Dora, it took only 10 percent of the country’s population to take over and start their decades-long regime.

Dora’s father was only two years old when the new socialist regime took over in 1946. For decades, the country, like most of Europe at the time, struggled to fight communist and socialist regimes. In 1903, Dora’s great-great-grandparents left their three children to find work in America. After seven years, they were able to come back home to Romania, buy land and build a beautiful home.

It may have taken decades, but eventually, the new RSR regime took everything Dora’s family had worked so hard to get. It didn’t happen overnight, and it wasn’t everything at once.

Dora says the first thing the new RSR regime confiscated was gold. At the time, Romanian women wore their family value on a gold coin necklace. Romanians held their wealth in these gold coins and land. Both were among the first to be taken from the people. Next, they took the people’s guns and animals.

Without their horses, Dora’s grandparents could no longer farm their land, causing them to lose their land. Along with farmland being taken from the Romanian people, the new government (RSR) took control of all the factories.

“That was the beginning of the end because no one takes of a business better than the owner,” said Dora.

She also notes that people in agriculture felt the harmful effects of the RSR before those living in the city. But in an effort to gain control of the entire country of Romania, the RSR began pitting social classes against each other. The RSR deemed everyone wealthy as evil, and intellects were people who thought for themselves—also not allowed in the new regime. Along with intellects and the wealthy, anyone with aristocratic ties was condemned. Dora’s mother’s side had some aristocratic ties, which the family did everything

Soon, everything was centralized by the RSR government. Factories produced one “brand” of everything. Everyone, except the elite, received the same of everything—no matter how little they had, it was the same.

THE PEAK OF MISERY

When Dora was five years old, her kindergarten teachers told her class to bring a toy to school the next day. At the time, the government deemed toys were non-essential and hard to come by. Dora and her sister had one doll to play with at home. So that was the doll they brought to class.

Dora’s teacher let the students play with their toys during class. But soon, the fun was over. Dora recounts what her teacher told them, “Well kids, nothing that you own belongs to you. Everything belongs to the State. So everybody put your toys here [in the box], and we will decide who plays with what toys and when.”

“By five [years old], we knew that you don’t go against the State,” adds Dora.

That day, Dora’s father picked her and her sister up from school, tears still in their eyes from losing the only toy they had. He sat the girls down at home, furious. But that was the day he told Dora about America, “He told us about America. He was talking about America like the Promise Land. And that was when I realized that something is wrong in the Country and America is the hope.”

Dora’s father knew about America through his one lifeline to the outside world—a wire tied to a radiator, picking up static of two radio stations, Radio Free Europe and Voice of America.

In school, Dora was taught what she would later understand was propaganda. She was told Americans ate rats on the subways and were killed in their driveways. Even at home, their news and tv were censored, always showing programs with their dictator.

After school, Dora’s father would ask his daughters what they learned at school. He would then take the time to tell his girls the truth, “I loved that he was such a hands-on parent where he made sure what we learned was accurate. And how he knew was just through that line that the radio was throwing to us. it was a survival line.”

On the weekends, if factories or farms were behind on their work, the students would be sent to make up work. Once, Dora recalls working on an apple farm one weekend. The apple her family would see in the store wasn’t much larger than an apricot. But these apples at the farm

The RSR told the Romanians their education would be free. However, Dora and her classmates would have to take tough exams (first in eighth grade) to move forward with their education. So, in the end, not everyone had the same education rights.

When Dora was in second grade, the students were given a red bandana of the communist children and became a “pioneer.” Later on, it was mandatory for students to become a part of the communist youth organization and later a member of the communist party.

Dora became an American citizen in 2008.

Dora explains, “Even though Romania was a socialist country, the party was communist, and the aim was to transform the country into a fully communist one.”

Sometimes, Dora and her classmates would think about running to another country. Although other communist territories surrounded them, a known path through Yugoslavia would take them to freedom. During Dora’s high school years, two boys from her class took that chance—and didn’t make it.

The boys were brought back to Dora’s school, battered and unrecognizable. They were never seen or heard from again, and that cured Dora of ever thinking she could run from her country.

When she was 19 years old, Dora was arrested for singing Christmas carols in another city with friends. There was no law against singing carols in her own city, but they didn’t know that here it was illegal. So Dora and her friends spent Christmas Eve in jail.

“That’s how we grew up, this constant heavyweight behind your head that anything you can do, you can get in trouble,” said Dora. “But you THE FALL OF SOCIALISM

By the 1980s, Dora says, her country reached its peak misery. There was no food to be found in the grocery stores. The young and healthy became malnourished and weak. And the people were over it.

“People were reaching their point of no more. There is a point in everybody where you cannot take it anymore, and your life does not matter anymore. You are going to take those shackles off.”

The Romanian Revolution against the RSR started in Dora’s city of Timisoara on December 15, 1989.

In Dora’s city, internal police went to arrest a Priest. While walking home, Dora saw around 40 people gathered at the Priest’s home protesting. By that night, there were hundreds of people in the streets. Dora described it as a vibration in the air, a vibration of hope that something was happening. People marched through the streets banging pipes on poles yelling, “Down with communism!”

Dora joined another protest the following day in the plaza. That afternoon, police began to shoot into the crowd, but their protests started a ripple effect followed by the rest of Romania. By the end of their revolution, thousands of people were killed.

By the end of December, the RSR, which ruled over Romania for over 40 years, had fallen.

Dora and her family were able to start their lives and make their own choices, which was entirely new to them. Dora went on to get a degree in mechanical engineering and later studied marketing and design in a free economy. In the late 90s, she met an American man who later became her husband, and in 2001, they moved to the United States.

Growing up in such a controlling dictatorship, Dora had to learn how to live in freedom. She says she never wanted to talk about her old life in Romania, she didn’t think anyone would believe her, but in recent years she changed her mind. She began to tell her daughter her stories and, over time, began to tell others too.

Dora now successfully runs her quilt shop in Downtown Paso Robles, Orange Dot Quilts— the name inspired by her life in Romania, “We would all watch the sunset, and I learned to love orange. It was exactly the opposite of our gray lives.” 