Below is the front page of the 'Night Final' edition of the Santa Monica Evening Outlook for Saturday August 31, 1974.
My travelling partner and I had left Covina located about 35 miles away inland, earlier that morning to begin hitch-hiking to our then new home in Northern California located about 20 miles south of the Oregon border.

My surfer friend John picked up my partner and I, my partner's dog and all our gear there in his 1954 Ford pick up at about 6:30 AM there at the place we both then lived at in Covina, which was the street I grew up on in fact and he then drove us to the Azusa Ave. of the west bound on ramp of the Interstate 10 Freeway, where my partner and I hitched rides all the way to Santa Monica, where we then took California Highway 1 north to Ventura County.

My traveling partner and I had both heard reports of the highway sniper from one or more or drivers who gave us rides and heard about the news over the car radio earlier on that last day of August '74, and they in turn mentioned it to us there in passing coversation as we drove on down the road. and

Rides were few in coming that on the first day of our trip as we had backpacks, sleepings, a large suitcase and my partner's German Shepard that made for a pretty full load and we only made it as far as Santa Maria by about 9:00 PM on the night of August 31, 1974.