You can say a lot about Mark Dornan: son of a legendary Orange County Republican politician, close relative to a Wizard of Oz actor, onetime candidate for Congress, respected high-school teacher, perennial pain in Dana Rohrabacher's rear. Now add to the list: great dad. At the 2007 Garden Grove Strawberry Festival, Dornan discovered a man surreptitiously taking pictures of his 5-year-old daughter as she climbed out of a toy wagon. He confronted the 53-year-old man, who tried to erase the images from his camera as he ran away. Dornan caught the guy, knocked him to the ground, wrestled away the camera and the man's Colt .45 handgun, and held him down until police arrived. The cameraman turned out to be an off-duty veteran Los Angeles Police Department officer. Some folks quickly speculated that Dornan—never known for indecision or loss for words—had overreacted. But the evidence Dornan recovered led to numerous child-pornography and child-annoyance charges, as well as an upcoming trial. “I wasn't going to stand there and do nothing,” Dornan told the Weekly. “Not me. That's my daughter!” Excellent.
