By Ernesto Londoño
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, July 21, 2006; B03

Call it the white van curse.

This week, Montgomery County police found themselves looking for a suspicious man in a white van who had reportedly been spotted lurking around kids outside swimming pools in Rockville and Potomac.

A white van lookout also haunted the county during the October 2002 sniper shootings and derailed the investigation for several days.

Montgomery police said yesterday that the Rockville pool creep seems to be an urban legend.

It appears to have started after a man in a white van stopped a 13-year-old girl in the parking lot of a Potomac swimming pool.

"Miss, I think you left your lights on," the man reportedly said, according to police, who tracked down the teenager yesterday. The man then drove away.

On July 13, a man who had somehow heard a garbled account of that exchange called police to say that a man in a white van had followed him and his 6-year-old son.

That prompted a series of e-mails and urgent messages exchanged on Internet mailing lists.

"Please be advised that a man in a white panel van approached one of our 13-year-old girls this morning as she walked to practice," someone wrote in one of the unsigned e-mails. "The man tried unsuccessfully to engage the girl in conversation. She wisely ignored the man."

The writer provided a detailed description of the man.

"The driver of the van in both cases was a white male, about 50 years old. He had light brown hair with a receding hairline. He was disheveled looking, wearing a white t-shirt. The van was old and looked like a van that a painter would drive."

Police said they think the e-mails were generated out of legitimate concern but were based on faulty information. They encouraged parents to remind their children not to talk to strangers and to call police about suspicious situations in Rockville and Potomac at 240-773-6070.