God Told Me To Do It

A San Mateo woman is getting messages from God and painting them in five-foot-tall letters on the roof of her house.The city wants her to stop doing it. Her neighbors want her to stop doing it. But Estrella Benavides says she can't do that."If the city wants to put me in jail, what can I do?" she said. "I am God's servant." "I am going to keep going, because it is all I can do," she said. "God chose me to be His servant. There is such a thing as freedom of speech.'' Anyway, she said, the size of the roof letters are not particularly large. "The signs at Costco are a lot bigger than the ones on my roof," she said.


Ms. Benavides said she first began receiving messages from God through a statue at her church. Now, she said, she gets the special messages when she reads the Bible. Sometimes she broadcasts the messages from a loudspeaker mounted on the roof of her car.

The messages are a barely intelligible garble involving cloning, abuse, rape, the Mafia, Castro, Hitler, the Constitution, hurricane Katrina, Watergate and President Bush. Ms. Benavides, a 48-year-old woman who lives alone in her yellow house on Cottage Grove Avenue, began painting the giant messages about a year ago, about the time her husband moved out and she lost custody of her son. Last month, she had two large pins inserted through her lips, to keep her from eating as part of a religious fast. God told her to do that, too.

Not long ago, the city of San Mateo posted a sign of its own on Benavides' front door, informing her that her signs violated city rules. The city said her signs are too big, too numerous and cannot be on the roof. It scheduled a hearing before the Community Improvement Commission for January 17. If Benavides loses, she could be fined up to $10,000 a day and lose her home.