How Future King Charles Escaped A CHP Ticket On I-5, Dated Admiral's Daughter

By Ken Stone, Times of San Diego

May 2, 2023

At 74, King Charles finally gets his crown Saturday at Westminster Abbey, with hundreds of millions watching the British coronation around the world.

At 25, Prince Charles was a communications officer aboard the HMS Jupiter visiting San Diego who nearly got pulled over by the Highway Patrol after cutting off a station wagon on Interstate 5. Few saw that.

That nugget of royal history is one of many told by former San Diego police detective Sgt. Jack Mullen.

The Laguna Woods resident — whose third book “Dear Jerome: Letters from a Cop” was featured in a Times of San Diego interview — told his Prince of Wales tale in a retirement village talk last fall.

Mullen, 88, recounts how he and fellow officer Rufino Yaptangco Jr. were tapped to help Scotland Yard provide security for Charles when he left the ship.

Adopting the style of Jack Webb (as fictional LAPD Detective Joe Friday on the late 1960s show “Dragnet”), Mullen titled his talk “A Drink With a Future King?”

Mullen’s story:

As Sgt. Joe Friday would have said: My name is Mullen. I was working the day watch out of criminal intelligence, when Scotland Yard telephoned. It was March of 1974.

“Provide super low-profile security for the Prince of Wales while he’s in San Diego for two days? Of course we will.”

I picked one of my detectives, Rufino Yaptangco Jr.

Junior and I had done high-profile for three presidents and our governor, had done low-profile for the prime minister of Israel and for Israel’s chief rabbi, Shlomo Goren. We were pretty darn good at both types.

We each drove an undercover car to the quay at the naval station. We met our phone caller, an inspector named (I’m working from memory here) John MacLaughlin at dockside. We waited for Prince Charles to come down the gangplank of HMS Jupiter, where he was doing his duty in the Royal Navy. From then on, Junior would drive one car with me as a passenger; Scotland Yard would drive our second car, with Charles in the passenger seat.

Junior and I shook hands with Scotland Yard, did cop talk.

“What do you call him?,” I asked

“Oh, ‘your highness,’ or ‘Prince Charles,’ or I usually just call him ‘sir,’” said Scotland Yard.

It was late afternoon. MacLaughlin laid out our agenda for the next six hours: some surfing in the blue Pacific, a date with an admiral’s daughter, dinner at Lubach’s restaurant on Harbor Drive.

Looking splendid in his uniform, Prince Charles walked toward us alone. Carried his hanging bag and small suitcase.

We were struck immediately by his cordiality. No airs. A regular guy.

Across San Diego Bay, the City of Coronado and the U.S. Naval Air Station, where an admiral’s cabana had been vacated and reserved for us.

There, Scotland Yard and Prince Charles changed into wetsuits, grabbed the boards that had been laid out on the patio for them, raced across the wide stretch of sand and plunged into the ocean.

There were no other bathers — not by design, just an empty beach on Navy property.

Junior and I sat on the patio under an umbrella, watching them from about 300 feet away. Both men looked practiced, catching the breakers with their boards.

By 1974, Junior and I went back 15 years.

“Not bad is it?” he said. “A left-handed Irish kid from the Bronx and a half-Japanese, half-Hawaiian kid sitting on our duffs watching the Prince of Wales play in the water.”

The small living room in the cabana had standard furniture and a small, rounded bar staffed by a Navy steward wearing a neat, white waiter’s jacket.

When Scotland Yard and Charles came out of the water, they showered and changed into coats and ties. They came into the living room and His Royal Highness rubbed his hands together and announced, “Now, we’ll all have a gin and tonic.”

Yikes! Gin and I had gotten into trouble together when I worked robbery, seven years earlier.

“I’m sorry, sir,” said I. “We are on duty. We can’t drink.”

“Yes,” Charles said, “but you’re on duty working for me. Four drinks, please, steward.”

It was really nice. We never sat, rather stood in a small circle as might four strangers at a cocktail party. The prince was curious about American police work. Junior and I were curious about what it was like to be raised in Buckingham Palace. We each had but a single drink.

From the cabana, we drove to the admiral’s house in Coronado’s residential district. Charles went to the door and we waited next to the car. When he came out, he was not alone. The admiral’s daughter was a polite and lovely young woman and all of a sudden Scotland Yard had two passengers in his car.

At Lubach’s, the prince and his date had a table for two, while Junior, Scotland Yard and I took a table two away. We did not eat. We watched the two of them dine and we saw what looked like serious sweet talk going on.

Then it happened after dinner as the five of us walked toward the cars and Scotland Yard took me aside.

“We have a problem, Jack. He wants to drive.”

“That’s OK,” said I.

“No, it’s not OK,” said Scotland Yard. “He drives like shit.”

“Well, John,” I told him, “it’s my car, but he’s your man. He wants to show off. You call it — either way is fine with me.”

The prince drove.

I told Scotland Yard: “Have him make a left out of the parking lot, one block to Grape Street and left, go three signal lights to the Interstate 5 on-ramp. Coronado is the second off-ramp. It’s easy.”

And it would have been, had Charles not cut off a station wagon on the freeway, causing it to abruptly brake. And that’s the moment Junior and I saw the shiny black and white car with flashing lights approaching rapidly.

Junior held his badge out the driver’s window and waved it. The CHP officer slowed and lowered his passenger window.

Junior hollered out: “The Prince of Wales is driving that car. He drives like shit!”

CHP shook his head and yelled “He sure does!” as he cut his lights and accelerated out of sight.

When we arrived at the admiral’s house, Scotland Yard said Junior and I were no longer needed, thank you very much.

The next day, after a dinner in London, a lone gunman tried to kidnap Charles’ sister, Anne, from her car. Her Scotland Yard detective was shot but survived. Anne’s insistence she would not go with the gunman caused him to flee. He was caught and prosecuted.

Charles got the phone call about the incident while he was with my detectives.

So, now, I ask you:

Did Junior Yaptangco and I have a drink with the future King of England? Or did we have a drink with the father of the future king? Only time will tell.

End of story.

But not end of questions.

Who was the “lovely young woman” Charles shared time with on that San Diego trip? Many royal watchers have expanded on the local lady’s identity — Laura Jo Watkins, one of at least 20 women Charles dated before marrying Lady Diana Spencer in 1981.

Watkins, according to one summary, was a “particular fancy of the Prince of Wales but had no chance of becoming his princess as she is Roman Catholic. The daughter of a U.S. Rear Admiral, she met the heir to the throne in San Diego, when Charles was serving aboard HMS Jupiter. Crucially invited to London to witness his maiden speech in the House of Lords, but the romance fizzled out after a weekend in Deauville. Now she is married, and lives in Brooklyn, New York.”

Mullen responded to queries about his Prince Charles duty.

Times of San Diego: How did you come to tell this story?

Jack Mullen: I live in age-restricted Laguna Woods Village, just off I-5 and El Toro Road. It got started in the mid-1960s as Leisure World or, as the cops called it, Seizure World. There are 12,000 homes — 18,000 residents.

There is a “publishing club” of perhaps forty members. Several of the members, me included, did a “storytelling” gig. Time limit seven minutes. Choose your own subject.

There is a closed-circuit TV channel that goes out to residents. So each storyteller was video’d on a Zoom call from their home. Shown face closeup — no live audience. A club member who knows how to do this stuff later teamed up with the closed-circuit channel and there it was. Whether it was viewed by 2 people or 11,999, I have no idea.

Was SDPD aware of this baby-sitting role in advance?

Yes, the visit was known ahead of time. While I was preparing my story last fall, I went online and read a news article. … Whether Scotland Yard called SDPD two days, three days, a week ahead, I have no recall.

It was easy to keep the security low-profile. Junior and I just got in our two cars, met Scotland Yard at dockside and carried on. We did similar low-profile for Shlomo Goren, Israel’s chief rabbi and, on a separate visit, for Yitzhak Rabin on his first of two tours as prime minister of Israel.

Charles literally walked down the gangplank alone, carrying his gear. No fanfare. I know what the news story said. Party on board, etc. That did not involve SDPD. My detail, criminal intelligence, was committed to Charles for two nights. The second night I was needed on another operation so I assigned junior and another cop. They went to Mr. A’s and had dinner. After that, he was off to, I think, Palm Springs and SDPD was out of the picture.

The line where Junior and I escorted them back to the admiral’s house and were told. “that’s it for tonight. Thank you,” I don’t mean to imply we were dismissed because anything sexual was in the works. Far from it.

Tell us more about your career.

I medically retired in 1979. I was a cop 18 years — all in San Diego. The late, great Pliny Castanian handled the police beat when I came on. Adam Elmer Jansen was chief of police. From 1981 to 1993, I worked in the security department at Atlas Hotels and Sharp Memorial Hospital. (We had an on-duty security office murdered at Atlas and at Sharp during my time there.)

Watch coverage of Queen Elizabeth’s funeral? Thoughts on Charles?

I was in high school when they put the queen’s crown on Elizabeth. I hope Charles puts his long life’s experiences to good use and becomes a good king for the British Empire and for the world. Yep. I watched the coverage.

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