Mystery in Capitol Park: Who Passed the Pouch to Dud Perkins?

Kimberly A. (Reed) Edwards

First appeared in Ft. Sutter Motorcycle Club newsletter Aug-Sept, 2020.

The year was 1915 and Sacramento was hosting the National Motorcycle Convention. As 8,000 delegates mingled at the downtown Traveler’s Hotel, a coast-to-coast transcontinental motorcycle relay zoomed toward Sacramento. This carefully planned effort, months in the making, aimed to prove the potential of two-wheelers in military service. A tight schedule, starting on the East Coast, would call for 117 riders, three to a shift. Every 90 miles, a fresh trio would pick up the rotation, following the sun by day and continuing the westward momentum at night over five days.

The Transcontinental Dispatch Relay held in July, 1915

The riding teams consisted of a lead rider and two back-ups in case the lead bike broke down. Traveling with the team was a leather pouch, passed from lead to lead as each stint ended and a new one began, flying uninterrupted across meadows, valleys and mountains. Tucked in the pouch: a letter from U.S. President Wilson to officials of the Panama–Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco. Every leg of the route was appointed a coordinator. Sacramento’s E.O. Putzman of Putzman-Hoffman Sporting Goods on 10th Street was appointed to manage the team in this area. Putzman in 1915 was handling Excelsior and may have still had DeLuxe.

E.O. Putzman (r.) of Putzman-Hoffman Sporting Goods served as

coordinator of the relay team expected in Sacramento.

Assigned to ride from Colfax to Sacramento was 17 year-old Sacramentan Emil Fabian. A prolific rider, he once showed up at an event with a Pope, an Indian and a Jefferson. Riding each bike in a different race, he grabbed a First and two Seconds at the same event. He had joined the Pope team for a short Midwest tour. Now back in Sacramento, he planned to participate in the cross-country relay. But when the riders ran 23 hours late, Fabian backed out to prepare for an upcoming race. J. Tarbell of San Francisco was announced as his replacement.

Sacramento star Emil Fabian was scheduled to deliver the pouch to Sacramento, but

because the relay ran late, he stayed back to prepare for a race.

On the afternoon of the expected arrival in Sacramento, a crowd gathered at Capitol Park. San Francisco’s Dudley Perkins, the designated recipient of the arriving pouch, waited with two back-up riders. As the speeding team headed towards Sacramento, the lead cycle blew a tire, calling on a back-up rider to take over the lead.

Meanwhile, local boy Leo McCarthy, having participated in an earlier segment of the relay, battled mountainous terrain on a Harley to return to Sacramento in time to compete in an upcoming race. After traveling 400 miles day and night, he arrived too late to be accepted into the event.

But this didn’t deter the relay nor the leather pouch. Maneuvering some 90 minutes out of Colfax, the team came down the foothills with Sacramento in view. As they neared the city, fire whistles blew. Traffic ordinances were suspended. Members of the Capital City Motorcycle Club mounted their bikes to scour the streets for hazards.

As the lead rider burst into Sacramento at 12th Street at 40 mph, he crossed to 13th before an audience of 200 people waving and cheering on M Street. There he cut through Capitol Park to hand the pouch to Perkins to continue into the next leg of the route. In a flash, Perkins tore out 13th to P, headed westward.

The pouch exchange in Capitol Park was caught on camera, with the rider handing over the pouch identified as H. Heft.

(newspaper photo taken in Capitol Park)

“…Carried across the continent by motorcycle riders, at Sacramento, H. Heft, Colfax to

Sacramento rider…has just tossed the packet to Dudley Perkins, who carried the message from Sacramento to Tracy.” Also pictured, John L. Donovan, Federation of American Motorcyclists.

H. Heft? No H. Heft appears in records of the local motorcycle community at that time. Yet a review of track events lists an S.F. Heft as a local contestant in numerous races. He was, in fact, a state amateur champ. Initials were often wrong in early newspapers, so it’s possible the photographer mixed up H. and S.F.

S. F., or Schubert Ferdinand Heft, was born in 1897. His father from Switzerland served as a symphony director. Schubert would have been eighteen at the time of the relay. He worked as an auto mechanic in a Sacramento garage. Later, he served in the Army as an “engineer” in France. His wife was named Nellie and his daughter Mildred. After WWI, he opened his own downtown garage. But there the trail ends. Heft disappeared, until a record surfaced that he died in 1925. Deceased at age 28 after winning races and serving in war. His daughter Mildred was five.

(boy in Army uniform)

Born in 1897, Schubert Ferdinand Heft would

have been 18 at the time of the cross-country run.

Official WWI Army photo; Source: Ancestry.com

What happened to Heft? An Oakland Tribune headline tells us: “3 dead, 1 dying from bad liquor at Sacramento. Woman and two men are poison booze victims.” Schubert Heft and a nurse were among the poisoned. According to the article, so bad was the poisoning that one of the victims fell down the stairs. The coroner suspected canned heat and denatured alcohol, which what not surprising, since these were the days of Prohibition.

Curiously, 13 years after this poisoning event, a Mildred Heft – Schubert’s daughter’s name - signed in at a Sacramento Cyclettes’ Open House, attended by many motorcyclists of Heft’s generation.

Was S.F. Heft the hero cheered as he rode into Sacramento on that July day in 1915? He raced motorcycles, worked as a mechanic, and would have known Putzman, who coordinated the local leg of the trip. Why does it matter? Because Heft, like so many others, is lost to history, eclipsed by those who scored big runs or garnered media attention. This doesn’t mean that he played less of a role in Sacramento motorcycling history. It’s probable that he played a part in helping the military to see the value of cycles in dispatch service. More likely than not, he handed over a U.S. president’s letter in Capitol Park.