Susie Mumpfield and Sheree Wilkins begin their day around 4 a.m. Awakening in the $37-a-night room they share at the Best Value Inn on East Main Street, they dress and head over to the county courthouse a few blocks away. They don't want to be late.
Michael Jackson will be there in four hours.
Mumpfield and Wilkins want to be the first people to arrive each day for Jackson's trial. They believe that standing vigil outside the courthouse, bearing witness to all who approach, is the least they can do "for Michael."
Mumpfield quit her job in Los Angeles and moved up here a few weeks ago. She met Wilkins, who is from Inglewood, and they moved into the Best Value together. They both found work on the night shift at Long's drugstore near the motel. They sleep a few hours each night, and then spend their days outside the courthouse.
For Michael.
"We have to fight these lies," says Mumpfield. "We know the truth. I'll be here to the last day when Michael is vindicated."
It could be a long wait. Jackson is accused of 10 felonies stemming from the alleged molestation of a then-13-year-old boy at the entertainer's Neverland Ranch in 2003. He has vehemently denied the charges. Opening arguments are scheduled to begin tomorrow in a trial that could last six months.
Mumpfield is 23. She possesses a lively face, the lithe body of a hip-hop dancer (which she once was), and the righteous fire of a crusader. Today she's wearing fashionably torn jeans, an armband with an "MJ" logo set into some kind of crest, and a Care Bears ski cap pulled tight around her ears. Braided hair extensions tumble from beneath her cap. They are the color of lime Kool-Aid.
Wilkins is 33, rounder and more conservatively dressed but no less committed to Michael. After 13 years teaching young children, she quit her job and moved to this isolated town in January. She, too, says she'll be here no matter how long it takes.
Still loyal after all these years
Jackson may be long past the peak of his global popularity, but the Mumpfields and Wilkinses of the planet have not abandoned him. Any time he appears in court, they gather -- usually just a few dozen, occasionally more -- as almost prayerful sentinels on Cook Street outside the Spanish-tiled courthouse. They shout encouragement upon his arrival and departure, jabber with each other, and buttonhole members of the media (who usually try to avoid them). They outnumber, and tend to keep their distance from, the advocates of child-abuse prevention who also sometimes appear.
The faithful wear T-shirts reading "Free Michael" and carry signs of support (one says "Make Love Your Weapon to Overcome Any Evil," with a picture of a cartoon Jackson beneath a bubble reading "Beat it!!"). Sometimes they even dance. On a quiet Sunday afternoon recently, B.J. Hickman, an 18-year-old from Tennessee who rode a Greyhound bus for five days to be here, set up his boombox in front of the courthouse and mimicked some of Jackson's famous moves. Cars whizzed by and honked at the solitary figure on the sidewalk.
Most of the fans are like Wilkins and Mumpfield, young and female. But they're a rainbow, too: black, white, Hispanic, Asian American. A number of Europeans and a few Japanese cycle in and out as well, lending a kind of mini-Olympic Village vibe to the courthouse scene.
They are all, of course, of one mind: Michael (always "Michael," never "Jackson" or "Mr. Jackson" or "M.J.") is innocent of the charges lodged against him. Michael would never harm a child. Michael spreads joy. Michael is all about . . . love.
They don't really know Jackson (though a few say they've been to Neverland Ranch) but they feel they do. Mumpfield hasn't actually talked to him (although they once made eye contact, she reports), but she believes she can sense Michael's moods and feel his personal rhythms, just as a mother knows her baby or a twin knows a sibling. "I could tell he was coming down with something," she says on the morning Jackson checked himself into a local hospital complaining of flu-like symptoms. "We know his energy level. We know the way he walks, the way he moves, the way he smells . . ."
They say they're giving back to an entertainer who has given much to them. Mumpfield was 3 when she heard her first Michael song, and she's been hooked ever since. She and others say he's misunderstood, put upon, his good nature betrayed by the mean-spirited, the unscrupulous, the wicked.
They seem to understand what this feels like, too.
"I liked his music, and then I found out about his life," says Manuela Becker, who has traveled to Santa Maria from Munich. "As a person, he is very different from most people. He cares for others. That is not normal. As a person and an artist, he is unique. He is very warmhearted and kind."
'It is our life'
On the day Jackson went to the hospital, Becker, 29, took her vigil from the courthouse to the parking lot of Marian Medical Center. She's sitting on a curbstone as an intermittent rain falls. She is dark-eyed and wary, and flanked by two younger compatriots, Birgit Mueller, 23, and Sandra Burkhard, 24, both students at the University of Munich. With the coastal chill creeping in, Becker has draped herself in the Bavarian flag she waves outside the trial. On it, she has written "Munich is here for you." Her mood seems to mirror the weather.
This is Becker's fifth trip to California. She comes to lend her support each time there's another major event in Jackson's legal saga, or whenever the faithful, who communicate in Jackson chat rooms on the Internet, agree to rally to his side. She estimates that her Jackson-related travels have cost her $6,500. She's not wealthy (she works as a receptionist in Munich) but she's not complaining, either.
"Many people think this is not normal," she says. "But it is our life, and this is what we have decided for ourselves. You have to do what you believe."
Her friends nod vigorously.
It's hard to argue with that kind of faith. In the case of the Jackson faithful, it's hard even to argue with facts. Nonbelievers who do are quickly outgunned. Jackson's most loyal fans are terrifyingly well-versed in the details of this case, as in everything Michael (this, too, is largely due to the Internet). They can tell you about the accuser and his family, about people, dates, and apparent inconsistencies in the prosecution's version of events. They know all about the 1993 civil suit that was dropped after Jackson reportedly paid millions of dollars to the family of the teenage complainant ("Yah, it was a bunch of garbage," says Becker). They're like the most committed Kennedy assassination conspiracy buffs: Every skeptical comment or question is rebutted with a surprising new fact, and sometimes a new and plausible counter-theory.
Another sign outside the courthouse tells this story: "Innocent! (We've done the research, we know the facts)."
The German women, for example, think Jackson can't get a fair trial. And how would they know such a thing? This question invites an animated discussion of the nuances of California's legal system and the alleged biases of Judge Rodney S. Melville and prosecutor Tom Sneddon.
"It is stupid," concludes Becker. "He is not guilty at all."
"It is a lynching," adds Burkhard.
'This is painful'
Mueller, who has been reluctant to speak because she is uncertain of her command of English, finally pipes up with an astonishingly detailed discourse on the demographics of northern Santa Barbara County. Noting that African Americans make up just 2 percent of Santa Barbara County, she concludes that any jury will start with a bias against Jackson (the only African American picked for the jury last week is an alternate). "I don't trust juries," she says.
As such comments imply, there's a deep well of loathing and resentment underlying Michael's Army. They resent the prosecution. They resent the news media. They resent the very idea of this trial. Even if he is found innocent, they believe the trial will have done psychic and physical damage to their Michael.
"This is stressful," Wilkins says. "This is painful. This is heart-wrenching. He's an entertainer! He doesn't keep those hours. And he's called to be in court every morning at 8:30? It's sickening."
Mumpfield says she feels his pain, and she means it almost literally. Her stomach hurts from all the stress, she says.
Sure enough, while standing on the sidewalk outside the hospital later that day, she faints. News people rush to her side and summon medical personnel. Michael is too far away to see the commotion, but his younger brother Randy stops to comfort her on his way from visiting Michael.
Mumpfield turns out to be okay. After being checked by doctors, and after some food and rest, she is ready again. Ready to stand up for justice. For Michael.
"They did this to Malcolm X and Martin Luther King," she says. "They're trying to do this to Michael. This is the way they bring him down. They don't want him to be powerful."
That's right, says Wilkins, her comrade-in-Jackson.
"My grandparents told me about slavery," Wilkins says. "My parents told me about civil rights. Someday, I'm going to tell my children that I stood up against something that was unjust, too."