Self-Described Prostitute In Swaggart Car

INDIO, Calif. - A woman riding with evangelist Jimmy Swaggart when he got three traffic tickets yesterday says she is a prostitute the preacher picked up for sex.

Swaggart was accompanied by Rosemary Garcia of Coachella Valley when he was cited for driving on the wrong side of the road, driving an unregistered vehicle and not wearing a seat belt, said Police Chief Jerry Graves.

Swaggart, who was disgraced in 1988 after his contact with a New Orleans prostitute was revealed, picked her up "for sex, I mean that's why he stopped me. That's what I do, I'm a prostitute," Garcia, 31, she told KNBC-TV in Los Angeles.

"He asked for sex," she said. "He was shaking."

In an interview with KMIR-TV in Palm Springs, she said Swaggart saw a police car behind him and became agitated, swerving his car as he tried to hide pornographic magazines.

In 1988, Swaggart resigned from the Assemblies of God church, the nation's largest Pentecostal denomination, after a fellow preacher released photos of Swaggart with a New Orleans prostitute.

In a tearful confession at the time, Swaggart admitted to an unspecified sin. But he refused to bow to church discipline and resumed his ministry.

Swaggart, 56, driving a 1989 Jaguar, was stopped yesterday morning and passed a field sobriety test, Graves said.

A police statement said the area where Swaggart was stopped was one "in which Indio police targeted vice operations for narcotics and prostitution."

Swaggart is scheduled to appear on the citation Nov. 15 in Indio Municipal Court. Indio is about 120 miles east of downtown Los Angeles.

Swaggart was in California for a series of spiritual services, said his attorney in New Orleans, William Treeby.