Columnist John Katsilometes: Motorists flock to free fuel

Monday, April 3, 2000 | 8:40 a.m.

Elizabeth Siquian wants to pump (clap) you up!

Siquian and her husband, Juan, co-own the Chevron gas station and convenience store on the corner of Charleston and Rancho. During a dizzying two-hour period Friday morning Siquian gave away gas.

Lots of gas. Twenty-five hundred gallons, costing about $4,500, to more than 200 cars with needles nudging against "E." Twelve-hundred vehicles waited in line (including some dimwit on a motorcycle who waited all night for four gallons), clogging lanes on four city streets. The motorcade of mooches stretched up Rancho to Oakey, then wound around to Martin Luther King Boulevard and almost made a complete circle back to Charleston.

"I don't know about this," an edgy Siquian said as the fateful 6 a.m. starting time approached. "I'm literally letting eight pumps run for two hours, nonstop."

So why did she do it? To bask in the rewarding joy of giving. And to gain some free stuff of her own, including a $1,000 check, a pair of front-row tickets to the Ricky Martin show at Mandalay Bay and (most important) to entice business-pumping publicity.

April Fuels Day (OK, March 31) was the brainstorm of co-sponsor KLUC 98.5-FM, which broadcast the free gas morning from 6-8 a.m. The station's ebullient "Morning Zoo" personalities, Chet Buchanan, Phil "Dangerboy" Maiorano and Amy "I Don't Give Out My Real Last Name Because It's Listed" Sweet, tracked the shenanigans live from the station's parking lot.

If nothing else it was a revealing study in human behavior. Gas-thirsty motorists began hovering around the station a full two days before the assigned 6 a.m. starting time. By 7 p.m. Thursday Siquian was shooing early birds from her parking lot. At 11 p.m. roughly 100 cars were populating a vacant lot next door, and filling spaces at the Lit'l Scholar Academy day-care center across the street.

At each stop the authorities said, "Be gone, fuel fiends!"

The throng finally dispersed into a nearby residential area and awaited the green flag. The collective mood of the assembled opportunists was poignantly summed up by a grizzled man wearing a New York Yankees cap who pulled out of the stall pounding his door shouting, "Twenty-five gallons! Twenty-five gallons!"

That was a record, incidentally.

Most of the vehicles were older, quasi-classic gas guzzlers. A couple of late-'70s Trans Ams and at least one early-'70s El Camino pulled through. Sport utility vehicles were plentiful; a 1998 Chevrolet Tahoe owned by Dano Vargas took in 23 1/2 gallons at $1.81 per gallon in his 25-gallon tank.

"I'm on fumes," Vargas said, referring (I think) to his vehicle. "I took in about $44. It was worth the wait."

The feeling was universal, even for Siquian, who went without sleep for at least 24 hours in preparation for the gasfest. As KLUC representatives presented her with her $1,000, Siquian said, "I'm so happy to help people. I've heard so many sad stories," and broke down in tears.

She was purely exhausted. Or, in the spirit of the moment, gassed.