John Abbot Gardiner, 70, a poet, actor, teacher and raconteur extraordinaire, died Oct. 24, felled by undiagnosed heart disease.
Gardiner, a teacher at the gifted student’s program at UC Irvine, was on his way from his home in Laguna Beach to teach a Shakespeare class on the morning he died. The long-time resident was at work on his 13th collection of poems.
Gardiner was an early cast member of the renowned South Coast Repertory Theatre in Costa Mesa. He lived in New York for several years where he pursued his acting career. Gardiner loved acting in Shakespeare’s plays. He appreciated the complexity of the language and could recite passages and speeches from numerous plays from memory.
He read at numerous venues throughout Southern California and was invited to read his poems in Prague, St. Petersburg, Rio de Janeiro and especially treasured the invitation to read in Ireland, home of the Gardiner clan.
Journalist and entrepreneur Stu Saffer, founder of the Stu News Laguna website and Laguna Beach Independent weekly newspaper, died Saturday, May 20, after a surgical procedure. He had battled a progressive lung disease for several years and was 74.
Saffer sunk roots in Laguna Beach by coaching Little League and serving as league commissioner in the ‘90s. In 1998, Saffer bought the weekly Coastline from Jerry Ledbetter with the help of a silent partner. In 2002, he sold the paper to the Los Angeles Times, which renamed the publication Coastline Pilot.
The following year Saffer started the Independent, which became the town’s dominant paper. He lost its control in 2009 when local investor Mallory McCamant sold the publication to Firebrand Media. The following year he started the online site Stu News Laguna, later sharing ownership with Shaena Stabler, who handled advertising and marketing.
In 2016, the pair started a sister site, partnering with Tom and Lana Johnson on Stu News Newport.
“Stu loved Laguna more than anyone I’ve ever met,” said former Indy reporter Jennifer Erickson. “To him Laguna was, and is, a small town with a big heart unlike any other. Laguna was his family. To me, perhaps to many, he was Mr. Laguna.”
Over 30 years as a personal injury attorney, Lloyd Charton, of Dana Point, won several high-profile cases, representing doctors accused of negligence, landslide victims, kin in wrongful deaths and homeless people. He served on the county grand jury, hosted a radio talk show about the law and was interviewed in articles for national publications and broadcasts.
Locally, though, Charton was better known as a longtime supporter and two decade president of No Square Theater, in Laguna Beach, where his daughter performed.
Charton also showed an entrepreneurial bent, transforming eight oceanfront Laguna cottages into The Retreat, which city records show he purchased for $4.6 million in 2010. And Charton started Lux Adventures, dedicated to providing a world-class luxury experience for trekking the outdoors and conquering the world’s highest peaks. Its destinations included Mt. Shasta and Machu Picchu in Peru. Charton also guided horseback and overnight hiking and camping expeditions locally and took weekly day hikes scaling Mt. Baldy, San Jacinto and San Gorgonio.
Early in the year, Lloyd Charton ascended 16,067-foot Mt. Vinson on the glacial ice of Antarctica. With that feat, Charton conquered five of the Seven Summits, the highest mountains on each of the globe’s seven continents and a holy grail among high-altitude mountaineers.
In March, Charton and climbing partner Trevor Anthes, of Irvine, returned to familiar terrain, the majestic 10,000-foot slopes of Baldy, the highest peak in the San Gabriel Mountains. Charton had made the ascent 158 times before. About a quarter mile from the ski area and 1,400 feet below the summit elevation, Charton fell 300 feet from the narrow Devil’s Backbone Trail to his death. He was 69.
