Best Buys In Ojai/Team Deckert – Our daily blog spotlighting the best in Ojai Valley real estate!

September 18, 2026

Quote of the Day

Here is the test to find whether your mission on earth is finished. If you’re alive, it isn’t.

~ Richard Bach

This Day in History

September 18, 1975: Patty Hearst captured by police. Newspaper heiress and wanted fugitive Patty Hearst is captured in a San Francisco apartment and arrested for armed robbery. On February 4, 1974, Patricia Hearst, the 19-year-old daughter of newspaper publisher Randolph Hearst, was kidnapped from her apartment in Berkeley, California, by two men and a woman, all three of whom were armed. Her fiancé, Stephen Weed, was beaten and tied up along with a neighbor who tried to help. Witnesses reported seeing a struggling Hearst being carried away blindfolded, and she was put in the trunk of a car. Neighbors who came out into the street were forced to take cover after the kidnappers fired their guns to cover their escape.

Three days later, the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA), a small U.S. leftist group, announced in a letter to a Berkeley radio station that it was holding Hearst as a “prisoner of war.” Four days later, the SLA demanded that the Hearst family perform a “goodwill gesture” by funding a massive food program for impoverished Californians. SLA negotiations would then begin for the return of Patricia Hearst. Randolph Hearst hesitantly gave away some $2 million worth of food. The SLA then called this inadequate and asked for $4 million more. The Hearst Corporation said it would donate the additional sum if the girl was released unharmed.

In April, however, the situation changed dramatically when Patty Hearst declared, in a tape sent to the authorities, that she was joining the SLA of her own free will. Later that month, a surveillance camera took a photo of her participating in an armed robbery of a San Francisco bank, and she was also spotted during the robbery of a Los Angeles store. On May 17, police raided the SLA’s secret headquarters in Los Angeles, killing six of the group’s nine known members. Among the dead was the SLA’s leader, Donald DeFreeze, an African American ex-convict who called himself General Field Marshal Cinque. Patty Hearst and two other SLA members wanted for the April bank robbery were not on the premises.

Finally, on September 18, 1975, after crisscrossing the country with her captors – or conspirators – for more than a year, Hearst, or “Tania,” as she called herself, was captured in a San Francisco apartment and arrested for armed robbery. Despite her later claim that she had been brainwashed by the SLA, she was convicted on March 20, 1976, and sentenced to seven years in prison. Her prison sentence was commuted by President Jimmy Carter and she was released in February 1979. She later married her bodyguard. In 2001, she received a full pardon from President Bill Clinton.

Ojai Weather

Mostly sunny – High 81 / Low 48

Total precipitation for the season – .04 inches

Lake Casitas water capacity – 95.5%

Friday, September 18, 2026

9:30 a.m.

There are three new listings on the market:

800 Oak Grove Court – $2,495,000

711 Drown Avenue – $1,400,000

1885 Maricopa Highway #17 – $399,000

Pic of the Day

So you say the motorcycle comes *with* the house? Is that set in stone?

Thursday, September 17, 2026

9:45 a.m.

There are no new listings on the market, but a previously expired listing came back on the market:

757 McNell Road – $1,685,000 (this had recently expired on 8/31).

Pic of the Day

“My Momma always said life was like a box of….is it just me, or is it hot out here?”

Tuesday, September 15, 2026

9:45 a.m.

One new listing has come to the market since Friday:

2045 S. Rice Road – $1,639,000

Recently cancelled, withdrawn, or expired listings – back on the market as “new:”

12400 Ojai Santa Paula Road – $3,995,000. (This isn’t new, rather additional acreage was added to the listing that was previously separate.)

Pic of the Day

To sustain its high metabolism, the humminghorse must consume twice its body weight in calories each day.

(I realize this might be a donkey, but “hummingdonkey” didn’t have quite the same ring to it.)

Friday, September 11, 2026

11:15 a.m.

There are four new listings on the market:

479 W. Lomita Avenue – $979,000

601 Foothill Road – $6,200,000

1230 Foothill Road – $2,095,000

(This property was already in escrow when it was listed in the MLS)

Calle Moreno land parcel – $1,200,000

Recently cancelled, withdrawn, or expired listings – back on the market as “new:”

1225 Shippee Lane – $10,900,000 (this had recently been cancelled on 9/8). As of this writing, there are no photos for the current listing. Here’s a link to the old listing that has photos.