While Ben looked around for another venue, Pancho moved her plane to an airfield at Baldwin Park, a few miles southeast of Arcadia. Instead of a eucalyptus tree hazard, this one had a big red barn sitting on the path for take-offs.

Pancho and her cousin Dean frequented Ben’s house several times a week to play poker and nag him about allowing Pancho to solo. They let him win at cards, hoping to get in his good graces, but the strategy didn’t work. Increasingly impatient and characteristically over-confident, Pancho took matters into her own hands. She and Dean hooked up with a friend who claimed to have once flown solo. The three of them kidnapped Pancho’s plane, with Dale, the young friend, at the controls and Pancho and Dean squeezed together in the passenger cockpit. Dale managed to take off, narrowly missing the red barn, and fly south to San Diego, but he had great trouble landing. Pancho counted how many passes he made over the field — two, three, six, eight, and still he couldn’t land it. Eventually, they got down in one piece, and Pancho immediately ran over to the resident field instructor asking to solo. He refused. They took off again, in search of a more agreeable instructor. At Santa Ana airport, their next stop, Pancho tried again and again was refused. Now it was dusk, and the weather was turning bad. With Dale at the controls, they set off in the rain to try to find their way to Culver City. The fog rolled in, and they had to fly low to get their bearings. Pancho had never been scared in an airplane before, but she was worried now. They were lost.

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