Patterson created the mosaic as a gift to the city — or at least that was how he understood it. The city of Encinitas understood it differently. Because the installation had been made without authorization on public infrastructure, the city classified the artwork as graffiti. Patterson came forward to accept responsibility, was fined $500, and was ordered to pay approximately $6,000 toward the cost of its removal. The mosaic was taken down in 90 minutes. The city allowed Patterson to keep it.

The local Catholic priest, rather than objecting to the image, was fond of it and asked whether a local church could display the piece. The response in the broader community was more divided: some members of the Catholic and Latino communities objected to what they saw as an irreverent treatment of the Virgen de Guadalupe, while others felt it honored their Mexican heritage by placing a sacred image in the context of Southern California's defining outdoor culture.

After its removal, the Surfing Madonna traveled. For a period it was displayed on an exterior wall at Cafe Ipe, next to the surf shop Surfy Surfy, in the Leucadia neighborhood of Encinitas — north of the original rail bridge location. Eventually it came off that wall as well.

The mosaic is now back in permanent public view at Surfing Madonna Park, at the corner of Highway 101 and Encinitas Boulevard — directly across the street from the rail bridge where it was first installed. The corner has been named for the artwork. The image that was declared graffiti in 2011 now has a park named after it, in the same city that fined the artist $500 for creating it.

The cultural response to the Surfing Madonna became the seed of something unexpected. In 2013, Patterson and Nichols founded the Surfing Madonna Oceans Project, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit built on the goodwill the mosaic had generated. Since then, the organization has donated nearly $600,000 to local ocean, beach, park, and humanitarian programs.

The scope of that giving is broad: oceanography scholarships, marine mammal rescue equipment, student grants for ocean-focused projects, a Surf Camp for Special Needs Children. The Project donated $20,000 toward a Solana Beach skatepark and $70,000 to Pacific View, a former elementary school being converted into an arts and ecology center in Encinitas. It donated floating beach wheelchairs and mobility mats so that physically disabled people can access the water at Moonlight Beach. The 2014 'Save the Ocean' 5K/10K and 10-mile beach run raised $100,000 for the community.

The Surfing Madonna arrived as an unauthorized act and became a civic institution. That trajectory — from fine to park, from graffiti to foundation — says something about the particular culture of Encinitas, a beach city that takes its creative eccentricity seriously and tends to absorb provocations rather than suppress them.

The mosaic itself is a synthesis of two California identities that don't always coexist so visibly: the Virgen de Guadalupe, central to Mexican Catholic devotion and present throughout San Diego County's Latino communities, and the surf culture of the North County coast. Patterson's image holds both without explaining either. It stands at Highway 101 and Encinitas Boulevard, across from where a construction worker's disguise and two hours of unauthorized labor briefly changed the character of a rail bridge — and, eventually, the character of a corner.