Seaside homeowners are looking for elusive peace.

Rudy and Terry Canchola readily admit it: When it came to doing renovations at their Seaside home, they didn’t exactly do everything by the book. They didn’t seek out and obtain all the proper permits to build a second-story room over the garage, which they also converted into living space. Some of the walls they built to enclose their corner lot might be a little too high, and some of the setbacks might be a little off. 


It’s beautiful craftsmanship that Rudy and his son, who works in construction, did on the Highland Street home across the street from Highland-Otis Park. They took a post-WWII ranch home typical of the neighborhood and transformed it into a Santa Fe-style adobe, with a handmade, dark-wood door adorning the streetside entrance. Walk through the door and through the porte cochere into an enclosed courtyard (the rescue pitbull frantically wagging its butt at me likes people just fine, they tell me) and you’ll be walking on handmade tiles. An olive tree stands to one side of the patio, and on the other side stands a tree whose expanding roots led to the $3,000 sewer line replacement they still talk about (“If you live in Seaside, don’t plant trees!” Terry tells me).


THEIR KIDS USED TO SLEEP IN A BACK CORNER TO AVOID GETTING SHOT.


It’s also understandable why the Cancholas built the fortress-like wall around their property. Terry points to the spot near the front door where bullets fired from an AK-47 during a street battle between drug dealers hit the house sometime in the ’90s. The neighborhood used to be a drug free-for-all, and a house down the block, Terry says, is active in the trade again. Back then, Terry, Rudy and their kids used to sleep on mattresses on the floor in a back corner of the house to avoid getting shot by random gunfire. 


And then she points to a cross leaning against a wall in the courtyard that marks the spot where 11 years ago in March, a schizophrenic neighbor who stole and crashed one of the Cancholas’ cars and repeatedly menaced and harassed the family died after a struggle with Rudy and his son. Canchola and his son were never charged – one veteran Seaside officer who remembers the case says they were completely within their rights to protect themselves, which they did by pinning the attacker down until police arrived. But the man died of what a forensic pathologist called restraint asphyxiation, and the attacker’s family sued the Cancholas for negligence.


While the Cancholas ultimately won the case in 2007, it cost them thousands of dollars in legal fees.


They fought to keep their family safe, they’ve worked to make their neighborhood a little better. And now they might lose their home because of the permitting issues.


In February 2012, two years after Seaside building and fire department officials first notified the Cancholas that they were in violation of multiple building codes as a result of the construction, the city filed a code enforcement suit in Monterey County Superior Court. The garage conversion alone, the city says, is considered a serious enough issue that the family has been ordered to wall off the second-story addition until an engineer signs off that it’s safe to inhabit. The Cancholas say an independent engineer has signed off on the garage, and that they’re working hard to remedy other issues, but the city is leaving them with no breathing room. (The couple also says they’ve been the butt of jokes made by city inspectors about the death that occurred there.)


On the morning of April 1 (no foolin’), Seaside special counsel William Conners showed up at the Canchola home with two police officers, a fire department inspector, Seaside building official Mark McClain and an independently hired building inspector, Tim Meroney, to conduct what Conners says was a mandatory inspection. Relations between parties have become so fractured that Terry Canchola called Conners a “smug son of a bitch” to his face as the group negotiated who would be allowed to enter. 


“You don’t care about the drug dealer house over there. We have shootings in the afternoon and you don’t care,” Terry Canchola told him. 


A letter that Conners sent warning them of the inspection date says the Cancholas have had ample opportunity to bring the home into compliance, and that after the inspection, the city would probably file a motion for summary judgment, place a lien on the property and ask a judge to order them to vacate the premises until all the required repairs are complete.


“It is probable the court will agree that your building is unsafe at this time,” the letter states.


Why is it, then, that records show the Cancholas, who’ve been to court-ordered mediation over the case, have been told they have until December 2013 to finish all the work on the punch list? 


MARY DUAN is the Weekly’s editor. Reach her at mary@mcweekly.com or follow her at twitter.com/maryrduan.