Alaska's Parking Fairy Flits Into Town -- She Hits The Meters In Tutu And Wings

What do you do when you fly into Seattle for the holidays and get stood up by your friends?

If you're Linny Pacillo, the Alaska Parking Fairy, you don your blue mylar tutu and white nylon wings and start feeding meters.

Pacillo kept untold parking meters around Westlake Mall from expiring yesterday - no doubt sparing some last-minute shoppers the frustration of a ticket. She said she couldn't believe how much parking time costs in Seattle.

"I burned 100 bucks up in three hours," Pacillo said yesterday from her room at the Warwick Hotel in downtown Seattle. She said it made her feel much better and that she's returning tonight to Anchorage, where she owns an espresso stand and runs her mother's gas station.

"It's the holiday season," Pacillo said. "Our motto in Anchorage is `nickel your neighbor.' "

Pacillo said that in Anchorage she dispenses good will from a converted old meter-maid car she bought and painted hot pink. It carries a sign: "You got to stand for something or you'll fall for anything."

She said that as often as once a week she and her sister ride around town and feed meters with cash they collect in a fund at the gas station. The feed-a-meter cause is so popular, Pacillo said, that now people and police officers alike donate cash.

Pacillo said she is not against parking meters per se. What galls her is overzealous enforcement, high fees and fines.

"People need to stand together," she said. Pacillo said she was motivated to action three years ago after a problem in registering a truck she bought resulted in her spending $700 in court.

In theory, Pacillo could get busted.

It's illegal to feed meters in Seattle, said C.A.T. Thole, acting supervisor of the Seattle Police Department's parking enforcement division.

"Each meter has a limited or specific amount of time that you are allowed to park there," Thole said.

Thole said an officer could write a $23 "feeding meter" parking ticket for the car owner.

Chronic do-gooders, like Pacillo, feeding other people's meters can be hit with a citation for obstructing a peace officer, Thole said, since they are preventing a parking enforcement officer from doing their job. Thole said that in the past eight years two people in Seattle have been issued such citations.

Pacillo's $100 gift will go into the large pot of cash the city of Seattle collects each year from meters.

According to the Department of Finance, last year the city collected $8.9 million - or 35.6 million quarters. It collected even more from parking tickets.