I’ve spent the morning talking to the heads of various limousine services in the D.C. area. They had all read the Post article about Christopher Baker and Shirlington Limousine, but no one seemed to know the guy well — or they didn’t want to talk about him.
“I only knew him vaguely,” Cliff Powell of Mahogany Limo told me. “He’s in big trouble now, isn’t he?”
Paul Rodberg, the current president of the Washington Metropolitan Limousine Association said Baker was not a member of his group; the previous president, Reggie Tymus, who started his term in 2001, said the same.
“I knew he had financial troubles,” said Rodberg, who’s also president of Reliable Limousine. Other than that, he said, “I don’t know anything about it.”
Richard Kane, president of D.C.’s largest limo company, International Limo, said he never competed with Baker for business. He would have applied for the Homeland Security contract, Kane said, but it was restricted to companies located in specially-targeted “HUBZones.” International isn’t located in a HUBZone — although one starts across the street from his office, said Kane.
“I don’t think many people interacted with him because he was doing his own thing,” Kane said. And, he insisted, Baker’s hijinks, if true, are “not indicative of my industry.”
A number of owners told me that I shouldn’t talk to company heads, I should talk to the drivers. They’re the ones who know what goes on — and they’re the ones who will talk. They tend to hang out in front of hotels, waiting for their clients. Maybe I’ll drop in on a couple hotels this afternoon and see if anyone wants to tell me anything.
