Earlier this month, I wrote about the problems a former astronaut was having with NASA. Astronauts aren’t the only ones NASA targets; sometimes they go after little old ladies:
When NASA agents swooped into a Lake Elsinore, California, Denny’s earlier this year, authorities said they seized a purported “moon rock” from a woman who had been trying to sell it for $1.7 million.
What they didn’t mention -- the woman was a 4-foot-11, 74-year-old grandmother who, along with her now-deceased husband, had worked at North American Rockwell, a NASA contractor during the early years of the space program.
An elaborate mission to recover a moon rock led NASA agents to the restaurant. At the end of the sting operation, agents were left holding a speck of lunar dust smaller than a grain of rice and a 74-year-old suspect who was terrified by the swarm of armed officials.
NASA investigators and local agents who swooped into the restaurant hailed their operation as a victory – a cautionary tale for anyone trying to sell national treasure. No charges have been filed, NASA isn’t talking and the case appears stalled.
The target, Joann Davis, a grandmother who says she was trying to raise money for her sick son, asserts the lunar material was rightfully hers, having been given to her space-engineer husband by Neil Armstrong in the 1970s.
The strange case centers on a speck of authenticated moon rock encased in an acrylic dome that appears to be a paperweight. For years, NASA has gone after anyone selling lunar material gathered on the Apollo missions because it is considered government property, so cannot be sold for profit.
Still, NASA has given hundreds of lunar samples to nations, states and high-profile individuals but, they say, only on the understanding they remain government property. NASA’s inspector general works to arrest anyone trying to sell them.
The case was triggered by Davis herself, according to a search warrant affidavit written by Norman Conley, an agent for the inspector general.
She emailed a NASA contractor May 10 trying to find a buyer for the rock, as well as a nickel-sized piece of the heat shield that protected the Apollo 11 space capsule as it returned to earth from the first successful manned mission to the moon in 1969.
Davis offered to sell the sample for $1.7 million. She said she wanted to leave her three children an inheritance and take care of her sick son.
NASA investigators then arranged the sting, where Conley met with Davis and her current husband at the Denny’s at Lake Elsinore in Riverside County, California.
Soon after settling into a booth, Davis said, she pulled out the moon sample and about half a dozen sheriff’s deputies and NASA investigators rushed into the eatery.
When officers in flack vests took a hold of her, the 4-foot-11 woman said she was so scared she lost control of her bladder and was taken outside to a parking lot, where she was questioned and detained for about two hours.
“They grabbed me and pulled me out of the booth,” Davis claimed. “I had very, very deep bruises on my left side.”
Davis was eventually allowed home, without the moon rock, and was never booked into a police station or charged.
The affidavit states authorities believed Davis was in possession of stolen government property but so far they have not publicly revealed any proof.
“This (is) abhorrent behavior by the federal government to steal something from a retiree that was given to her,” said Davis’s attorney, Peter Schlueter, who is planning legal action.
About 2,200 samples of lunar rocks, core samples, pebbles, sand and dust — weighing about 840 pounds — were brought to Earth by NASA’s Apollo lunar landing missions from 1969 to 1972. A recent count showed 10 states and more than 90 countries could not account for their shares of the gray rocks.
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