By Emmanuel T. Erediano
Variety News Staff

NEVER in her wildest dreams did she believe that she herself, of all people, would fall prey to the very people she wants arrested.
Commonwealth Utilities Corp. spokeswoman Pamela Mathis, in an interview yesterday, said that she did not immediately realize that what happened to her right in front of the CUC office in Dandan was the latest copper wire theft.
Mathis said that when she came out of the restaurant after a coffee break and found out, at around 12:30 p.m., that her blue Isuzu Rodeo was missing, she called the CUC executive director’s secretary, Betty Ann Diaz, and asked her to tell the CUC guys to please bring her car back.
Mathis said she believed that some of her co-workers had just played a prank on her.
She said Diaz talked to some of their co-workers and told her that no one had anything to do with the disappearance of her car.
“We sometimes joke around, but we wouldn’t do anything that mean,” Diaz told Mathis.
Mathis said when she realized that it was definitely not a joke, she called 911 and reported the incident.
Minutes later, her car was found abandoned near the intersection leading to the Hawaiian Rock Quarry just behind the airport in Dandan.
The rolls of copper wire that Mathis was supposed to take to the Federal Bureau of Investigation office as evidence were gone.
Her car, parked in the bushes, suffered scratches.
Mathis is also now nursing some scratches on her forehead, chin and neck because, she said, she has a tendency to unconsciously scratch her face when in a stressful situation.
CUC has been the main complainant in most of the copper wire thefts over the past several months.
Mathis said the wire that was stolen on Wednesday was recovered from recently arrested suspects.