Bad-Luck Stories Abound On Oddly Named Road

By James Hohmann
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, September 1, 2008

In the 8000 block of Good Luck Road, Chessman Peña's parked truck was struck from behind by a speeding motorist. Twice. The second time, two months after the first, the driver fled the scene.

The question must be asked: Just how lucky is Good Luck Road?

Peña, who lives on the street in Lanham, said he'd like to think it is lucky. But after the two crashes and the struggle to collect insurance money, he's not so sure.

"I'd say that was bad luck," the 39-year-old landscaper said.

Good Luckeans, as they might be called, are accustomed to delivery people, visitors and telemarketers asking whether living on the unusually named street brings good fortune. As a group, they are split.

Crime and seemingly freakish accidents make some residents of the seven-mile stretch -- a hilly avenue that winds through Hyattsville, New Carrollton and other Prince George's County communities -- marvel at the irony of the name.

Some say the street is deserving of the name it appears to have inherited from a 19th-century crossroads known on maps of that period simply as Good Luck.

Jacqueline Murray, director of the Good Luck Community Center, has embraced the motif, decking out the facility with images of horseshoes and shamrocks.

"The craziest good things happen on the road," she said. "Things just happen that would never happen."

She always seems to hit the jackpot, she says, when she buys decorations for the center. For the graduation ceremony at the on-site preschool, she found balloons that said "Good Luck Graduate." One parent thought she had them custom-made.

But over the years, the street has become a fixture on the police blotter. Since the beginning of 2006, it has appeared in The Washington Post's weekly crime report all but nine times. Since 2000, there have been 132 car thefts and 123 robberies on Good Luck Road, records show.

And as much as the name evokes laughter, some incidents on the street have been nothing short of tragic, including three homicides.

In April, a 15-year-old sophomore walking home from Parkdale High School was stabbed to death by a suspected gang member in the 6100 block of Good Luck Road.

A year ago last week, Waldir Pedersoli, a 75-year-old with Alzheimer's disease, left his home on Presley Place in Lanham for a walk on a sunny afternoon. He has not come back.

"They had the bloodhounds that tracked him out to Good Luck Road," said his son, John Pedersoli. "Then he just disappeared off the face of the Earth."

In 1986, two 17-year-old girls were killed and a third was critically injured after a truck dumped its load of nearly 14,000 pounds of hot asphalt on top of their car. The dump truck's brakes failed at the top of a hill, and the vehicle was rolling 40 mph backward when it slammed into the car as the girls were driving home from high school.

The curvy two-lane road, a popular commuter route, has blind turns and hidden entrances. The Capital Beltway crosses under it, the Baltimore-Washington Parkway crosses over it and Route 193 intersects it.

The posted speed limit, ranging from 30 to 35 mph, is widely ignored. There were 496 accidents reported on Good Luck Road between 2002 and 2007, according to the county's Department of Public Works and Transportation. Five were fatal, and 15 involved pedestrians.

At least four times in the past year, motorists turning into the parking lot of Lanham Christian School have been hit by drivers trying to pass on the shoulder, according to Pastor Paul Mutchler of Grace Brethren Church.

"At 8 a.m., I'm not sure Jesus could get traffic to slow down," said Mutchler, whose church runs the school.

Susan D. Hubbard, county public works spokeswoman, said the number of accidents on Good Luck Road is "not exceedingly high" for a street of its type. Most accidents are caused by driver or pedestrian error, she said, and agency reviews have found no defects in the road itse lf.

Good Luck Road's eastern half, which dead-ends at Springfield Road, feels more rural than suburban, with a skeet-shooting range and a barbed-wire fence cordoning off NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. One sign at that end of the road marks the entrance to the "Magnetic Test Site" and another indicates that, behind barbed wire and a chain-link fence, is a "Cryo-Cooler Propulsion Test Site."

Farther down the road, in the Lanham area, are several large apartment complexes.

"It's not a bad place," Tonita Shephard, 26, said of the road and the apartment complex where she lives. Although posted signs alert residents to recent thefts, she said: "I don't know about lucky or unlucky. It's all right."

In 1876, with the arrival of the railroad, the crossroads known as Good Luck was overtaken by Glenn Dale, a growing community a short distance away.

"The road preserves the name," said Susan G. Pearl of the county historical society.

Old-timers say they remember when sections of the road still were unpaved. At the Veterans of Foreign Wars post on Good Luck Road, regulars said they used to joke that it was considered good luck if your car survived the ruts, crevices and muddy puddles to make it from one end to the other.

"It's changed a lot," said Larry Penkert, 83, a World War II veteran.

Although the District has a Good Hope Road, the Good Luck name is rare. Only New Jersey, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania have roads by the same name, according to Rand McNally.

Keith Mitchell, 51, of Greenbelt went to high school on Good Luck Road and works on the same road as a network specialist at Doctors Community Hospital. Recently, he was waiting in line to buy lottery tickets at 7-Eleven on, yes, Good Luck Road.

He said he plays Mega Millions, a multistate lottery, each week or so, betting on the same number every time.

One week three years ago, he didn't buy his ticket because he was on vacation in Georgia. The numbers hit, he said, and the jackpot would have given him millions.

"I guess it hasn't been that lucky for me," he said.

Staff researcher Meg Smith contributed to this report.