Inside Scientology - Janet Reitman [68]
A team of Messengers washed Hubbard's clothes, always by hand, using filtered water and then rinsing the clothes in buckets, sometimes more than a dozen times. "We'd go through this about ten times for every single piece of clothing," said Maureen Bolstad, a Messenger who was charged with cleaning Hubbard's shirts. "Then we'd have to hang them up and hand-press them and dry them with fans. And then the clothes would get sniffed to make sure they didn't smell of anything."
Bolstad, who'd joined Scientology in 1979 as a thirteen-year-old, had been recruited for the Sea Organization with the promise of help in finishing her high school education and paying for college. Instead, she'd been given a Scientology education, which consisted solely of learning how to serve L. Ron Hubbard. "I learned how to hold an ashtray and follow him around. Then I learned how to hold the ashtray and also hold a tape recorder at the same time. " Messengers recorded his every word and then transcribed it later. "I was trained to carry his bag filled with sunscreen and stuff, to look after his every need."
In addition to La Quinta, the church maintained a summer headquarters for Hubbard, known as "S." This was located on the site of a dilapidated resort in Gilman Hot Springs, an outpost thirty-six miles from Palm Springs. Purchased for $2.7 million in cash, the Gilman complex was set on over five hundred acres and featured a faded golf course, a worn motel, and several other ramshackle buildings. No one in the local San Jacinto area knew that L. Ron Hubbard was anywhere in the vicinity, nor that Scientologists had bought the resort. The new owners referred to themselves, variously, as the Scottish Highland Quietude Club, and the Western States Scientific Communications Association. Richard Hoag, a Los Angeles attorney affiliated with the church, claimed to have purchased the resort for a condominium project.
An even more secret hideout, known only as "X," was also purchased in 1978. In March of that year, the La Quinta property was permanently closed down, and Hubbard moved with his staff to "X," a faceless apartment complex fourteen miles from "S," in the tiny town of Hemet. A sleepy agricultural town once surrounded by orange groves but now vanishing under layers of dust, Hemet was as far off the beaten track as Sparks, Nevada. The apartment complex couldn't have been more pedestrian: it was located behind an acupuncture clinic and next to a Pick 'n Save supermarket.
The Commodore's Messengers shuttled back and forth between "X" and "S" in weekly shifts. They typically took a circuitous route and traveled in the middle of the night. "It was real CIA stuff," said Parman, then twenty-five, who found it thrilling: switching locations every week; driving, four people to a car, through the desert to arrive at a secret hideaway known only by an initial; using aliases; and relaying information covertly, by pay phone or by meeting in person to exchange information in supermarkets—a practice known as "cookie drops."
Some Messengers dreaded their weeks in Hemet because Hubbard was often in a black mood. The female Messengers suspected he missed his wife. "Mary Sue was always a calming influence on LRH and when she was around him, he was not as moody," recalled Messenger Julie Holloway.* "However, with her gone to L.A. he had major mood changes." He railed at his staff, exploding into tirades and then sinking into a sulky silence.
Hoping to one day live at "S," Hubbard ordered that a new house be built for him at the Gilman resort, perched on high. He specified that it be "dust-free, defensible," and surrounded by high walls with "openings for gun emplacements," according to one account. On most days, Hubbard went to Gilman to work on his movies and to oversee progress at the house, a rambling Tudor-style home named Bonnie View, with a sweeping view