Nevada fostered hero of ‘Argo’

If “Argo” wins the Oscar for Best Picture on Sunday, part of the credit must go to the Nevada roots of Tony Mendez, the CIA agent who pulled off the rescue of six Americans from Iran in 1980.

Did you know Mendez is a Nevada boy?

Born in Eureka in 1940, he spent his early days in Caliente, and in his memoir, “The Master of Disguise,” he makes references to how his Caliente days influenced his 25-year career in the Central Intelligence Agency.

The book was published in 1999, long before actor-director Ben Affleck had designs on making a movie about saving the lives of six Americans during the Iranian hostage crisis. The outrageous scheme was to pretend the six Americans in hiding were Canadian movie makers scouting a location.

The movie is a compelling mix of fact and fiction, and Mendez’s book about his own evolution is a compelling read.

Mendez’s father was a copper miner who died in a mining accident when he was 23, just before Mendez turned 3. The widow and four children moved into his grandmother’s home in Eureka.

“Mom went to work as the editor of the county newspaper, the Eureka Sentinel,” Mendez wrote. She remarried and the family left Eureka in 1947, moving to Sparks where his stepfather worked in a quarry.

For months, they lived in a tent. They had no toilet, and their running water was the Truckee River. Mendez said those tough times prepared him for more austere conditions in CIA assignments.

He began to draw. Who knew he would grow up to become an expert forger of government documents?

In 1948, they moved to the railroad town of Caliente, where today’s population barely passes 1,100 people. Beans and Wonder Bread were staples for the family of eight, and he and his brother, John, learned to shoot and fry rabbits.

The enterprising brothers collected bat guano from nearby caves to sell as fertilizer. Mendez wrote other boys wanted to discover the site of the lucrative bat caves. “I learned my first lessons in surveillance evasion by leading them into dead-end box canyons well away from our precious bat caves, then climbing out unseen through hidden, narrow chimneys.”

His life of deception continued as a Las Vegas Sun paperboy. He and John asked for extra copies. After delivering the morning papers, they would sell the extras to customers in bars and the Cherry Hill brothel.

“We turned over our regular pay to Mom; anything we made selling the extras was movie money for all the kids in the family,” he wrote. Even then he was fascinated by how movie makers created disguises.

“The paper route provided another crucial skill that served me well in my later profession: the ability to deceive with plausible denial,” Mendez wrote.

When stuck with unsold papers, the brothers would meet the morning train from Salt Lake City to Las Vegas, which stopped briefly in Caliente. They would sell the day-old papers to unsuspecting buyers who didn’t realize they were buying old news. But to be safe, the brothers tucked a few of that day’s papers in the stack. One day a gambler noticed he was buying the previous day’s paper and grabbed Mendez. The boy apologized, gave him the correct paper and moved on.

“Chalk up another lesson that later served me well: Keep your options open; always have a fallback when you’re working in hostile territory,” he wrote.

The family left Nevada when Mendez was 14, and he now lives in Maryland. But in his memoir, Mendez referred to Caliente and how he had dreamed of “the wider world of daring exploits.”

It doesn’t require an Oscar to make Tony Mendez’s daring exploits a success story Nevadans can take pride in. He already has won that prize in the real world.

Jane Ann Morrison’s column appears Monday, Thursday and Saturday. Email her at Jane@reviewjournal.com or call her at (702) 383-0275. She also blogs at lvrj.com/blogs/Morrison