Favored flier no longer

OLYMPIA – As Tim Erwin allegedly saw it, former state senators never retire. They just fly, fly away.

State prosecutors on Thursday charged former Sen. Erwin with theft, saying from 2003 to 2005, he illegally claimed government discounts on 36 Alaska Airlines flights. The problem: Erwin, a one-term Bothell Republican, left office in 1994.

“He had an old, dog-eared, I’m-a-state-senator business card,” said Assistant Attorney General Scott Marlow. “Somebody finally questioned it, and the jig was up.”

On Aug. 17, 2005, according to legal documents, as Erwin was disembarking from a plane, the airline tried to present him with a bill for $14,367 in improper discounts. Erwin, the document says, at first denied it was him, then “attempted to speak in what appeared to be a foreign language and continued walking away.” He later agreed to repay the airline.

In a phone interview, Erwin heatedly denied scamming the airline, characterizing things as a billing dispute. He said he simply asked the ticket agent for the “V code.”

“It wasn’t like I said I was a senator,” he said. “I knew they had different codes.”

Only once, he said, did he show the business card. Asked why he sought a discount long after he left government, he declined comment.

“I’m not going to say anything more about that,” he said. “…They weren’t enforcing, weren’t asking for ID.”

He said he’s made five of the scheduled 18 payments.

As for denying his identity and feigning a foreign tongue, he said, “That’s totally ludicrous. That did not happen at all. … I don’t look anything like a foreigner anyway.”

Erwin now lives in California, where he works for the University of La Verne as the senior director of major gifts.