Ousted official bounced from unpaid job

HUNTINGTON BEACH, Calif., Jan. 14 (UPI) -- An official ousted from his job in Bell, Calif., in a scandal has lost a volunteer job at a surfing museum, where a docent said he "won't be coming back ever."

Robert Rizzo was apparently volunteering at the International Surfing Museum in Huntington Beach to fulfill a community service requirement in a drunken driving case, the Los Angeles Times reported Thursday.

Rizzo was forced out of his position as city administrator of Bell, a small city outside Los Angeles, when a Times story last year revealed city officials were being paid six- and seven-figure annual salaries. Rizzo, who was criminally charged in September, was being paid almost $800,000.

The surfing museum apparently decided it could do without Rizzo when the Times ran a column about his position there, accompanied by a photo that showed him sitting in a folding chair in front of a surfing mural wearing dark glasses and a shade hat. Rizzo's volunteer job was to watch the parking lot and make sure only museum-goers used it.

"The focus of the museum is the surfing community and making sure that any of the volunteers that we allow to come in here and do their time don't have a negative impact and he did," said Kitty Willis, a museum docent. "So he's not here and won't be coming back ever."