Miki Dora: Naughty American
APRIL 28, 2008
SAN DIEGO (TNA) – If someone’s got a raw, uncanny talent that’s recognized by the masses, does it give him carte blanche? The ability to be a rebellious, wandering gypsy who makes up his own rules and disregards any and all other agendas?
That would be a “yes,” according to Miki Dora’s way of thinking.
In order to finance his surfing, Miki Dora forged passports, traveler’s checks and bogus credit cards with the help of his girlfriend, Linda Cuy.
The international surf-god inspired and entertained the public by riding the waves with fierce courage and eloquent grace. But when admirers flocked his way, he quickly escaped the unwanted attention and led a globetrotting life in which he did everything possible – including lie, cheat and steal – in order to keep from doing anything but surfing.
Dora was the kind of person who did whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted, however he wanted. The kind of person who would say “Screw you” to a fellow surfer giving him props for the raw talent he showcased in the ocean.
And everyone loved him for it.
“I remember riding this one wave and someone pushing me off my board from behind, screaming, ‘Go home you little creep!’” Jim O’Mahoney, curator of the Santa Barbara Surfing Museum, said in reference to Dora in a 2002 London Times article. “As a little kid, it was like getting yanked from your board by God. It was a badge of honour.”
Part of Dora’s inspiration was his stepfather Gardner Chapin, a talented surfer whose cocky attitude apparently grew on Dora during his adolescence in Southern California during the 1940s.
Dora adopted Chapin’s laissez-faire attitude and ran with it. He surfed, built surfboards and surfed some more. At 18, when he was turned away by the Selective Service because of asthma, Dora was left to decide his life’s path on his own. The ride turned out to be twofold: on the cresting waves that swelled him to stardom, and on an illicit gravy train that would often drop him off at the nearest jail cell.
After the military refused Dora, he decided against enrolling in college and instead headed to the shores of Malibu for schooling. But the beach turned out to be more than his classroom; it was his life. It was there that Dora began to make a reputation for himself as a surfing phenom.
Dora hated sharing the waves with the 'working slobs' who made up his fan base.
It was also the spot where in the mid-1950s he met fellow surfer and lifelong friend Allan Carter. In “Dora Lives” (T. Adler Books), a biography written by C.R. Stecyk II and Drew Kampion, Carter summed up their youth with simplicity: “We enjoyed riding waves and going to parties.”
That combination, however, may have been what landed Dora jail time in 1953. He and his pals were arrested and held in Honolulu after being caught stowing away on a cruise ship to Hawaii. Little did he know at the time, the incident would only mark the beginning of his high-seas misadventures.
Dora realized that although he was talented on the waves, he needed money. But he wasn’t keen on working for a living. He tried his hand at a number of odd jobs – parking attendant, restaurant host, wine deliverer (although he ended up stashing some of the booze in a hole dug behind his home) – and even a career as an insurance underwriter, a job childhood friend Terry Tracey scored him. As expected, the working life didn’t work for either of the surf-bums.
“Miki and I got shit-canned,” Tracey said in Dora’s biography, “him for drawing surfing cartoons of shmoos riding waves, me for having my desk drawers stuffed with Hollywood Park racing forms.”
The ordinary life was definitely not for Dora. He would cheat, scam and steal every chance he wanted – selling tickets to functions that he had received for free, then later sneaking into the event; hitting up day-surfers for lunch money or impounding their surfboards. Carter came to refer to his friend as the “gypsy darling.”
Dora became sort of a surfing beatnik. He’d attend Chet Baker-backed poetry readings and bet horse races with Charles Bukowski. Dora and his crew would hit up Hollywood nightspots and stir up trouble with their bohemian behavior so much that certain establishments would take extra precautions when the clan arrived.
Dora became disgusted with sharing the same beaches with the working man. According to his biography, Dora expressed his discontent with the masses in a 1965 interview with Surfer magazine: “Malibu is summer … summer is ruined. Now you have to share your summer vacation with everybody – I hate to share my time with working slobs.”
As much as Dora despised the people surrounding him at the beaches, he was loved by them. His popularity soared so high that he came out with a limited-edition surfboard named after him (“Da Cat”), was hired to perform in surf movies and was eventually inducted into the International Surfing Hall of Fame.
In 1967, during his final competition in the Malibu Invitational Surf Classic, Dora rode like the legend he was. But, in Dora fashion, he left an otherwise outstanding impression by dropping his shorts while on his board and mooning judges, dignitaries and spectators.
According to “Dora Lives” co-author C.R. Stecyk III, Dora’s idea of the most accomplished surfer of all time was Jack “Murph the Surf” Murphy, the same man who was involved with a jewel heist at the New York City Museum of Natural History in 1964 and later convicted of murder.
Only a man with that kind of mentality would then flee the United States and live from country to country sponging off fans and well-wishers. And that’s exactly what Dora did.
He lived and surfed all around the world – such as France, Indonesia and Madagascar – and did so by writing bad checks wherever and whenever he felt necessary, like the time he paid for $50,000 worth of jewels with a rubber check in Brazil.
“Miki was like a chimpanzee on a motorcycle with a loaded shotgun,” Carter said in Dora’s biography.
The scams continued as Dora hopscotched across the globe, bamboozling people with forged traveler’s checks and passports and bogus credit cards. He even had an assistant for a while – girlfriend Linda Cuy, who played Bonnie to his Clyde.
“We traveled and got into trouble,” she said. “Let’s just say that I was doing a lot of artwork. I was always the one waiting outside the office at Interpol … let me put it that way.”
But all good things had to come to an end, even with Dora. He was arrested in Guethary, France, in 1981 after using a phone booth that was under surveillance for an unrelated investigation. He was locked up in a French prison, and upon his return to the United States was taken into custody by the FBI.
Dora served time after being charged with felony fraud, then eventually made South Africa his home, until he returned to Montecito, Calif., in 2001 while suffering from pancreatic cancer. He died the following year at the age of 67.
Miki Dora was the kind of person you loved to hate and hated to love. He inspired and entertained the masses without even trying – without even wanting to. Despite his potential to become an upright, upstanding citizen and positive role model, he chose the path of the gypsy artist, gallivanting across the globe and living off of his wits – regardless of whether he was breaking the law.
And even though he was sickened by the surf crowds that flocked to him in search of inspiration, he couldn’t but help to leave a legacy. But still, the gypsy surfer didn’t much care for his legendary status, nor the people who supported it: “The world is full of idiots, which is why I don’t live there,” was how Dora put it, according to his biography.
But he did. “Dora lives” was painted on a wall in Malibu after the surfinging legend fled the United States, keeping his presence alive where it was born. And now it’s etched in the Naughty American Hall of Fame.
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