The State - News from May 23, 1986

More than a dozen people said they saw a UFO racing across the pre-dawn sky north of San Francisco. A California Highway Patrol officer, who declined to be named, and radio station KTOB news director Arlette Cohen were among those who reported seeing the strange craft with blinking lights between Petaluma and Sonoma. Earlier, there were reports of Ping-Pong-ball-sized, multicolored UFOs crowding radar screens in Sao Paulo, Brazil. The government scrambled jet fighters, and two pilots said they saw the objects flying nearby. Cohen said the object in Northern California “hovered almost stock-still” for a few seconds. “An unidentified object, described as a large orange ‘X’ with white lights in the front, was seen traveling at a high rate of speed eastbound from Petaluma,” CHP spokesman Bill McChristian said, relaying a report from the officer and several callers. Bay Area air traffic controllers said they could not explain the sighting, saying radar screens detected nothing.