These were the old days

Paul Weeks, retired public info guy for RAND in Santa Monica and ex-LA Mirror reporter, recalls when he was sent to the Valley to do a feature story on a guy just out of prison. Chick Galloway said he was the last man sentenced to hang at San Quentin, but ended up doing 34 years. Instead of writing the story, Weeks got him hired as a 57-year-old copyboy, and they both moved to the Times when the Mirror folded. It's in a column Weeks writes in the Stockton Record. Based on the year, I don't think Galloway actually was the last to get the gallows, but he came close enough. Here's a story I wrote on hanging and the gas chamber that for some reason gets lots of hits at my other site.