KEITH LUMMIS - PROHIBITION AGENT

Keith Lummis, said to be the last surviving Prohibition agent in San
Francisco, died April 22 of heart failure in his San Francisco home.

Mr. Lummis, 97, was also a mounted Border Patrol agent in the 1920s, riding
along the Mexican border, and a U.S. Secret Service agent in the 1940s,
searching for counterfeiters.

A native of Los Angeles and the son of legendary Los Angeles newspaper
editor and promoter Charles Lummis, Mr. Lummis attended military school in
Mississippi and worked as a merchant sailor.

As a government agent in San Francisco during Prohibition, which lasted
from 1920 to 1933, Mr. Lummis was on a constant lookout for bootleggers,
smugglers and speakeasies. Frequently he would stake out markets, watching
for buyers of large amounts of sugar, and stealthily follow the suspects to
their stills.

In a 1992 memoir, Mr. Lummis wrote that he had "worked out all the tricks"
for spotting lawbreakers.

"We went from the little spots in the city that ran up huge water bills and
smelled up the streets to the alcohol plants in the country using as much
as a boxcar of sugar a day and a truckload of five-gallon cans."

His favorite time to make a raid, he wrote, was "after midnight, when the
trucks were coming in and the place was loaded with alcohol and defendants."

In the 1950s and 1960s, Mr. Lummis was the manager of the Sierra Club Lodge
near Donner Pass. He was an accomplished skier and woodworker.

Mr. Lummis is survived by four children, Jim Lummis of Novato, Suzanne
Lummis of Los Angeles, Doug Lummis of Okinawa, Japan, and Charlotte Stuart
of El Cerrito. His wife, Hazel, died in 1998.

A private memorial service will be held on May 11 in San Francisco.