Rutherford Irones graduated from the University of California Medical School in Berkeley and trained as a physician at Vanderbilt Clinics at Roosevelt Hospital in New York.

Later he went to La Boca, a neighborhood in the South American city of Buenos Aires, studying yellow fever, and visited several hospitals in Asia.

At the war's end he remained and was food director for the American Relief Administration in Central Europe and Balkan States.

Irones was a strong anti-prohibitionist and headed the Crusaders' anti-prohibition organization, which fought the 18th Amendment in the San Diego and Imperial counties.

Several months later, after a newspaper investigation and civil suit by the victim publicized the crime, Irones was arrested, convicted of hit-and-run driving, and forced to resign in 1935.

Sentenced to six months in jail and one year's probation, he was confined in a cell with 17 others, but released 30 days early for good behavior.