Rex Heflin

Orange County, Calif. Worker spots UFO and takes four pictures

Rex E. Heflin was a friendly guy but not known as a joker. He worked hard, loved his job and did it well, said his co-workers. If he told you something was true, you would take his word for it.

On August 3, 1965 at approx. 12:30 p.m. Heflin stopped his work van near the intersection of Myford Road and Walnut Avenue, near the city of Santa Ana. The 38-year-old kept a Polaroid camera in his vehicle to help document conditions, part of his duty. Heflin was a highway maintenance engineer for the Orange County road department -- and a portion of his job was keeping road signs visible.

Driving about half a mile outside the perimeter of El Toro Marine Base, his van faced north and he noticed branches of a tree obscuring a railroad-crossing sign. Rex stopped to take a picture and report it to his supervisor on his van radio as he routinely did. He experienced radio failure and was unable to make contact.

Still sitting in his van, he planned to take a picture of the sign (with his Model 101 Polaroid & ASA 3000 film) when he saw a flash of motion on the periphery of his left eye. A silvery craft flew slowly from left to right across Myford Road, Rex said. Appearing about one-eighth of a mile away and approx. 150 feet altitude it seemed to hover, then cross his line of vision as Heflin photographed it through the car windshield. Moving toward the east, the craft tipped and revealed a dark underside. "This is when I saw a rotating beam of light emitting from the center of the UFO on the bottom side," Rex Heflin stated. He took four Polaroid pictures.

Heflin assumed it was an experimental aircraft from El Toro, he said. He judged its size by comparing it to the 20ft. wide traffic lanes over which it flew. On September 18, 1965, Rex signed a statement that the information he supplied was a true.

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