The unidentified white van slowly and stealthily pulled up outside the million-dollar-plus homes under the cover of darkness, grainy surveillance footage showed.
The thief or thieves parked on the street at such an angle that they were hidden from neighbors’ doorbell surveillance cameras. Then they went to work.
It was only in the morning’s light that victims realized what was stolen.
For the second time over a three-year period, someone had chopped off and carted away the waxy, 2- to 4-foot-long serrated leaves from picturesque agave plants lining homes in east Torrance.
Homeowners and residents are baffled by the attacks upon their beautiful — but otherwise seemingly useless — plants.
“Why on Earth would anybody steal these leaves?” Torrance homeowner Steven Maier, 72, asked. “A couple of years ago, another neighbor warned me about this agave, and I joked that I wasn’t ‘going to be protecting this with a gun or anything.’ And then one day, ‘poof,’ it’s gone.”
Maier, a retired doctor, said he arose that Sunday, Nov. 9, to grab his newspaper, only to find he’d been hacked.
His roughly 8-foot-tall, 7-foot-wide, 150-pound century plant had all but a few of its 35 spear-like leaves sliced off. The robust green plant was the centerpiece of a garden that includes smaller, greener Elephant’s Trunk agaves, spiny South African bitter aloe, and the Madagascan Aloe imalotensis.
Maier said the agave held sentimental value. He purchased it as a 15-gallon potted plant from a now-shuttered Ojai nursery in 2008. This is the second time his beloved arid succulent has been butchered, with the first incident taking place in 2022.
“It was a special plant to me,” Maier said, “and for someone who has been gardening for close to 40 years, it’s very sad for this thing to happen.”
He noted, however, that the plant only cost him “a few bucks” at the time — and he couldn’t fathom what the “value of leaves” could be.
Agave theft happens with some frequency.
Full plants were nabbed outside homes throughout Crestview, an upscale Beverly Hills-adjacent community, in 2022. Yards from San Diego to Arizona and even the famed Huntington botanical gardens in San Marino have all been victimized by theft.
In the case of Crestview, the thefts were believed to be motivated by the harvesting of the piña — the plant’s hearty, pineapple-like center that can weigh 100 or more pounds and is used for tequila and mezcal. The other agave and succulent thefts were linked to suspected resale efforts.
What makes Torrance unique is that none of the plants was outright stolen, though they were left “nearly unrecognizable,” according to resident Gayle Moore.
The 75-year-old owns a 113-year-old corner Craftsman home once filmed for a TV episode of the teen supernatural cult classic “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.”
As happened with Maier, Moore’s 7-foot-tall blue agave was slashed in 2022 and then again around 4 a.m. on Nov. 9.
“Last time, they cut closer to the trunk, and I wasn’t sure if the leaves would grow back,” Moore said. “This time, the guy left 4 to 5 inches from the trunk.”
Her plant, which previously resembled a mighty Greek phalanx in formation, was disfigured into a pincushion with a few jutting needles.
Moore said her agave is about 10 years old, and its roughly 25 leaves were hacked to three in 2022 and now six in November.
Moore said the early-morning hacker “has a pattern” in which he finds mature plants, cuts them, and then allows them to grow back again — prime for pruning.
“The plant was beautifully spread out,” Moore said. “It was gorgeous.”
Torrance seems a perfect mark for an ambitious agave pruner.
A dozen foxtail agaves line the businesses adjacent to Torrance High School, while another dozen Elephant’s Trunk agaves are across the way at the First United Methodist Church.
The surrounding streets could be mistaken for a botanical garden with yucca plants, cabbage trees and flat-flowered aloe all around.
Yet, those plants aren’t as coveted as the agaves, particularly the blue agave, the lone species used in tequila production.
Beyond the piña, however, opinions among botanical experts differ on the value of the leaves and their usage.
Staff members at the California Botanic Garden in Claremont don’t believe the leaves are of any use in alcohol production. They believe the cutting may be the work of a conscientious gardener, trimming away leaves that are blocking sidewalk access.
“It is not too unusual to prune such a plant in this way — partly for safety (though you can also just cut the tips of the leaves off),” said Lucinda McDade, the garden’s executive director, in an email. “It is sometimes referred to as ‘pineappling’ for obvious reasons.”
Terry Huang, the director of living collections at the South Coast Botanic Garden on the Palos Verdes Peninsula, said she had heard of a similar hacking but had “no idea” of the value of the leaves.
She said she wouldn’t classify the cutting as “necessarily good nor destructive” for the plant.
“Though unfortunate and not the most pleasant to look at, this likely won’t hurt the plants since they look quite healthy,” she said in an email. “There are enough leaves left for the plant to continue to grow.”
The large, broad leaves — or pencas — of blue agaves, century plants and similar species have value, according to UC Davis professor Samuel Sandoval Solis, a water resource specialist.
“There’s this Western vision of agave fields where they’re only used for tequila,” Solis said. “Traditionally, the plants and their leaves have been used for many centuries for other purposes.”
Solis said the leaves are generally utilized in cooking, clothing and animal feed, the latter particularly for goats.
Solis said fibers are scrapped from large, mature leaves and then dried, cleaned and eventually converted into products such as ropes and belts.
He suspects, however, that the leaves from the plants in the moderately wealthy suburb are being harvested for use in cooking barbacoa, a traditional Mexican dish of slow-cooked, chile-infused goat, beef or lamb, generally.
The barbacoa meat can be enjoyed in a variety of ways, though most commonly in tacos.
Often the meats are wrapped in agave leaves and cooked in underground ovens, though some pitmasters substitute banana leaves.
“What I’m thinking is that you have people here who love barbacoa or at least want to sell [the leaves] to those making it,” Solis said.
Solis said the good news for the plant owners is that leaves generally grow back and that the cutting performed by the unknown individuals isn’t too far off what actual pruning looks like.
“For people unfamiliar with these plants, it might look like mischief,” he said. “But I don’t think it’s a bad thing, and it actually shows the many things agave can be used for.”
So far, the Torrance residents haven’t formulated how they’ll proceed.
Moore said another resident chased a man driving a white van from the area in the overnight hours.
A couple of residents have shared surveillance video that shows a van pulling up near homes with agave, but there isn’t footage of the cutting.
Moore said she initially was going to file a police report but decided against it, saying she didn’t want to make her home “a further target.”
Randy Klinenberg, 67, had an unsettling experience just as he joined the neighborhood three years ago, moving into a Spanish-style colonial that is designated a city historical landmark and is home to four giant blue agaves.
In 2023, the week before Thanksgiving, the semiretired film producer and consultant returned from a wedding in Temecula to find that three of the plants had been clipped on consecutive mornings between 1 and 2 a.m.
“They hacked 1½ the first night and then left,” Klinenberg said. “Then they came back and hacked another 1½. I was freaked out because it was really unexpected.”
Klinenberg said the police told him then that there was nothing they could do without a license plate or further evidence.
Multiple inquiries sent to the Torrance Police Department regarding hacked agaves did not receive a response.
“I was originally going to have those first three plants removed because they looked so disturbing, but my gardener assured me that they would grow back,” Klinenberg said. “It took a couple of years, but they did grow back.”
Klinenberg also said he was hit again in the predawn hours on Nov. 8, this time with only one mature agave being hacked.
He said a resident posted a photo of a license plate on the social media app Nextdoor, but it’s unclear if any further action was taken.
Since then, he’s kept the lights on around his home and has been surveilling nearby activity on his Ring doorbell camera.
“It’s a shame you can’t have anything nice,” he said.
Maier, however, has had enough.
He asked a neighbor to help him uproot the “jewel” of his garden onto the curb.
The piña continues to sit on the sidewalk, unclaimed.
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