One for the Road : Taxi Company Rescues Man’s Free Drive-Home Service by Donating Use of Cab

He’s an experienced barhopper.

So Charles Plunkett didn’t stagger when authorities told him he could no longer drive his own car between taverns in the San Gabriel Valley.

He’s taking a taxi.

A cab company has decided to come to the rescue of his innovative campaign to give free rides home to inebriated bar patrons.

Plunkett’s one-man Persons Intoxicated Transport Services--called PITS for short--was ordered shut down three months ago when the Public Utilities Commission discovered he did not have a state permit and special insurance to carry passengers in his 1974 Ford.

But his PITS project will be revived starting Friday night when the Checker Cab Co. gives Plunkett free use of a taxi to drive on his rounds between pubs in Azusa, Alhambra, San Gabriel, Arcadia, Monrovia and his hometown of Duarte.

The cab company said keeping Plunkett on the road keeps drunks off.

Cabs are regulated by cities and are exempt from PUC regulations, said taxi company manager Rick Ward.

“It’s a fully licensed and insured taxi that will double as the PITS-mobile,” Ward said, slapping a magnetic “Party Safely” sign next to a huge “PITS” emblem on Plunkett’s new cab. “It would have been a tragedy if a technicality put Charles out of work.”

Plunkett, 39, is a security guard at the Huntington Library during the day. He said he started his free nightly service for tavern patrons in 1989 after becoming dismayed at the number of drunk drivers on San Gabriel Valley streets.

Since then, he has given rides to more than 225 people such as Duarte electrician Bob Roe, who has ridden twice.

“I won’t drive myself if I’ve been out celebrating,” said Roe, who was taking a break from a game of darts at Duarte’s Catamaran bar. “My livelihood depends on me having a driver’s license.”

PITS came to a screeching halt when the PUC ruled that Plunkett was required to have a $500 permit and insurance that could cost up to $10,000 a year. That’s too expensive, said Plunkett, who receives only occasional $5 gas money donations from grateful passengers.

According to Ward, PITS and the PUC are on the same side. “Both want to protect the public,” he said.

Ward said Plunkett’s free rides will not compete with the cab company’s business. He said there are no strings attached to the cab donation, worth about $30,000.

The taxi company’s help is not the only offer that Plunkett has received since PITS’ plight was detailed in a Times story in April.

State Sen. Bill Leonard (R-Big Bear), author of the drunk-driving law that lowered the blood-alcohol threshold level from .10 to .08, has taken steps to win PITS a nonprofit organization exemption from the PUC.

“We’ve requested a legal opinion from the commission and gotten paperwork for him to fill out,” Janice Molnar, an aide to Leonard, said Wednesday. “The PUC has given other exemptions in the past.”

Checker marketing agent Tommy Ross said the cab company plans to aggressively promote Plunkett’s service in bars in the San Gabriel Valley. Later, the firm hopes to recruit volunteer drivers and expand PITS to the San Fernando Valley, he said.

“Finding somebody like Charles will be the problem,” Ross said. “This man’s one of a kind.”

Plunkett said the use of the free cab and the company’s radio dispatching system surprised him.

“Normally, taxi companies look at this sort of thing as competition,” Plunkett said.

Not so, said Checker dispatcher Clarence Socks.

“Sooner or later we catch the drunks,” Socks said, explaining that many cab drivers have been involved in collisions with intoxicated drivers.

“If we don’t give them a ride home from the bar, we give them a ride home from the hospital or from the jail.

“Or we give their relatives rides to the cemetery.”