St. Louis Post-Dispatch from St. Louis, Missouri • Page 3

st louismondav 3 A Moru, Apr. 14,1 86 SILDUIS POST-OISPATCH Ralston To Boost Security After LaSalle Park Attack Sr By Kathryn Rogers Of Post-Dispatch Staff Ralston Purina Co. will help pay to increase security in the LaSalle Park area in the wake of a shooting over the weekend on Julia Street, a spokesman says. Fred Perabo, director of community relations for Ralston-Purina. said Sunday that representatives of the company probably would meet soon with members of the LaSalle Park Neighborhood Association to discuss security measures.

Ralston-Purina has spearheaded development in LaSalle Park, which is on the near South Side, between Tucker Boulevard and Seventh Street At about noon Saturday, two men forced their way into the townhouse apartment of Mary M. Brown, 25, in the 1000 block of Julia and attacked her. Brown was in satisfactory condition at a hospital Sunday with gunshot wounds in the chest, abdomen and thigh. tacked after she went downstairs to the first floor to answer the doorbell. One of the men had a gun.

and the attackers forced her upstairs to the third floor, where they started tearing at ber clothes. When she resisted, one of the men shot her. Police said witnesses had seen two men running toward the Darst-Webbe housing complex, which is about a block away, after the shooting. Police said Brown had viewed two suspects at the hospital Saturday but that the men were not the assailants. Brown moved to St.

Louis from Kansas City about nine months ago, according to her boss, Ray Ayres of Hoffmeister Mortuaries. Ayres said that Brown was a funeral director and usually worked with families on pre-need funeral arrangements. Ayres described Brown as a very pleasant woman with "a pleasing personality she would help people. This was a shock to all of us. We were all very upset" Police are searching for the assailants.

Perabo said that Ralston-Purina had helped pay for security patrols in LaSalle Park last year after a rash of burglaries. He said that at that time, the neighborhood association bad hired a security company to protect the area. "I think that was a temporary thing, but we'll certainly be glad to assist again in any way we can," Per-'abosaid. Several neighbors said Saturday and Sunday that they were worried about safety because of the shooting. "I'm concerned right now," said Dan Tuberty, 25.

who lives downstairs from Brown. "It's so weird that it happened at that time of day." Tuberty said Brown had moved into the apartment building shortly after he did about seven months ago. Brown occupies the top two stories of the three-story building. Police said Brown had been at if" Robbers Target Pizza PS 0 By E.S. Evans Of tha Post-Dispatch Staff Delivering pizza may be among the most robbery-prone jobs in town, say police in St.

Louis and St. Louis County. Since the pizza-delivery business began expanding rapidly about a year ago, one or two holdups of delivery-men have occurred each month in the city and county. Most have been considered relatively minor crimes small amounts taken by mostly unarmed robbers. Critical injuries have been rare.

But two recent cases one driver was beaten and another fought off a would-be robber suggest that a risky situation may be getting rougher, police said. "The job is probably less dangerous than (being a) late-night gas station attendant or quick-shop clerk, in terms of injuries," said Detective Jack Plummer of the county police. "But it's certainly more vulnerable." Detective Willie McCuIler of the city police said drivers who deliver pizza had "three things going against them: They are young. They are out on the street And they carry money, though not much." And many of the drivers are sent out on bogus orders placed by robbers, the officers said. On March 30, a driver for a Domino's Pizza was beaten unconscious in Robertson.

The Domino's chain specializes in home-delivered pizza. On April 4, another driver thwarted a robber at the Darst-Webbe housing complex on the city's Near South Side. Randy Gardner, the victim in Robertson, says he used to sometimes take a baseball bat when he went to rough neighborhoods. But he left it home the night he was attacked. Prospective buyers and curious observers in the entrance hall of the Otto R.

Erker house. Opulence Dazzles Auction Crowd By Bill Smith Of tha Post-Dispatch Staff The open house was billed simply as a preview of the contents of No. 1 Portland Place. But It was more than that. For those who walked on the Persian rugs, touched the brown marble top of the Louis XV dining table and stood at the foot of the winding brass and marble staircase on Sunday, the experience was a glimpse into a lifestyle most could only imagine.

"This," said one middle-aged man, "is gourmet fare." Said Bob Gwin of Clayton, "You'd drive by these houses and they'd all be hidden behind trees and walls, and you never dreamed about what might be in them. "But this, this really should be a public museum." For three decades, the house at No. 1 Portland Place in the city's Central West End was the home of Otto R. Erker, a prominent lawyer in St. Louis.

After Erker's death last year, his family decided to sell the house and his almost legendary collection of art and antiques that he had spent much of his life gathering. Deliverers Wayne CrosslinPost-Dispatch pizza parlor in Bridgeton. works for a Domino's at 1613 South Ninth Street. Ron Hinks, a spokesman for Domino's Pizza Inc. at its home offices in Ann Arbor, said the nationwide operation had about one robbery in every 400,000 deliveries.

No special steps have been taken to stop the holdups here, Hinks said. Elsewhere, the company in some instances has used former police officers to pose as delivery drivers in decoy attempts. Pantera's another large pizza-delivery business here, advertises that its drivers carry no more than $20. Gary Hurst a vice president of the company in St Louis, said the policy was its main precaution and is strictly enforced. BOVDS CLAIR WEST COUNTY Si tV 1L Gary BohnPost-Dispatch room of the house.

It will be one of the few times in Selkirk's recent history that it has conducted an estate auction at the estate. Ted and Sandy Graves, who recently moved to St. Louis from Memphis, said they were amazed by the home. "I never expected this kind of opulence in St. Louis," Sandy Graves said.

Amid the crystal chandeliers, the thronelike high-backed chairs and the delicate porcelain, there were two signs of special note. The first, in a downstairs bathroom, was written on a piece of paper and attached to the wall next to a toilet with a cane seat. "To flush, pull handle up for three seconds, then push back down til water stops," the sign reads. And in the music room there is a message in gold leaf against the back of the fireplace. "Ye House is Keepit Inn Ye Hollow of Hys Hand." Jim Minor of St.

Louis described the house as a relic of another day. "When you think back 75 years, for those who had money, this is certainly the Way they would have shown it," he said. engineering at the University of Missouri at Columbia, Matteucci maintained a 4.0 average. But be said he still enjoyed an active social life. "People will attest they will swear up and down that I couldn't keep a 4.0 point with what I did," he said.

"I did the normal college things, but I still managed because I didn't concentrate on the grade point I concentrated on learning the material and found that the grades just followed." Matteucci is now in a bio-engineering program in Atlanta run by Emory University and the University of Georgia Institute of Technology. He will earn both a medical degree and a Ph.D. in the six-year program. One former fair winner who strayed a bit from the beaten path is Mary Tecklenburg, formerly of Kirk-wood and now of College Station, Texas. Tecklenburg, 25, said that after winning in the honors division of the fair in 10th and 11th grades, she thought she'd try something different her senior year.

"There was a school musical, and I like music and I like dancing. I just knew I would never get another chance to do that in my life," she said. "I think it was the right decision. It was better for me to do something fun." Tecklenburg went on to earn a bachelor's degree in chemistry from St Louis University and a master's in the same subject from Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis And now she is working on a Ph.D. at Texas University in of course chemistry.

The fair will run through April 22 at the park, 550 Weidman Road in west St Louis County. It is open to the public from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Wednesday; 9 a.m. to 7 p.m.

Thursday; 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday, April 21; and 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. Tuesday, April 22.

4 C-7 More than 2,000 people had viewed the house and the contents by Sunday afternoon. The Items will be auctioned tonight and Tuesday evening. Bruce Selkirk, owner of Selkirk Galleries, Is conducting the auction. He described Erker as a "dear friend who enjoyed the quest of purchasing an item more than he enjoyed owning it." He was a "shrewd buyer," Selkirk said, "a product of the '30s who would not throw money around freely." Yet he was a collector who enjoyed his collection and the joy it brought to others, he said. A longtime friend was Joe Sparks, president of Sparks Livestock Cos.

Inc. He said he had been inside the house often while Erker was alive. "I came here for luncheons, dinners, charitable events, small cocktail parties with 50 people." Sparks said some of the Miss Universe contestants vere entertained at the home in 1983. He said he intended to bid on some of the pieces. "These are treasures that a man has collected over 40 years," Sparks said.

"These are items that are seldom offered anywhere." The auction will be held in the ball on the women's varsity basketball team at the same time isn't easy, she somehow manages to make it sound like fun. "It takes a lot of effort but you don't have to devote your life to it There's time to do other things," she said. She notes that she plays on an intramural Softball team and goes to movies, parties and out on dates. Braun's winning project in the 1983 Science Fair was a study of the effect of electricity on the regenerative properties of the flatworm. The research project helped her win a $2,000 scholarship from Monsanto and a scholarship from Washington University.

But Braun said participating in the fair meant more to her than simply the financial rewards. "I think it was really helpful because it gave me a little taste of what science really is, instead of just reading about it in a book," she said. Braun seems to typify the achievements that can be expected of those few students from the metropolitan area who win top honors in the ence Fair. Paul Matteucci, 23, who now lives in Georgia, is another example. Matteucci, originally from Town and Country, won a four-year scholarship to the University of Missouri in 1982 with his project, which studied micro-organisms in snow samples from different environments.

As an undergraduate in chemical Corrections Richard Ronald Young, 17, of De Soto, was seriously injured in an automobile accident Saturday afternoon on Highway 21 near the Big River bridge in Jefferson County. Young was incorrectly identified in Sunday's editions. No Grinds, These Science Fair Winners Assault victim Randy Gardner Five men assaulted Gardner, 18, while he was looking for a phony address in the 300 block of Summit Avenue. The men got $13 and two pizzas after knocking him out. Gardner said he had worked for the Domino's at 4204 Bonfils Drive in Bridgeton since August and would return to the job.

Larry Bennett, the would-be victim on April 4, thwarted a robbery on the street in the 1500 block of Park Avenue by knocking the robber down with his car door. But he had not been so lucky several weeks earlier, when he was robbed on a downtown delivery after the robber displayed a knife. "We usually go to the (housing) projects in teams," said Bennett who DOWNTOWN NORTHWCSTt ST, Wl at By Deborah Peterson Of the Post-Dispatch Staff Deborah Braun leaps to great heights to dispel the image of the budding scientist as an academic grind. In fact, she jumped so high in 1983 that she won the MonsantoPost-Dispatch Greater St. Louis Science Fair and was named to the Missouri all-state basketball team.

"Yeah, it was a great year," Braun, 20, of Affton, reminisced recently as she prepared to talk to students in the honors division of this year's fair. The fair starts today at Queeny Park's Greensfelder Recreation Center. While Braun says that being a junior in the pre-medical program at Washington University and playing Ldttery Numbers Illinois Lottery Daily Game Sunday's winning 281 Pick-Four game Sunday's winning number 6489 Saturday's Lotto game Winning 8-11-16-21-24-40 Four players picked the six winning numbers in Saturday's Lotto dewing and will split the grand prize of about $5 million. Each will get about $1.15 million, payable in annual installments over the next 20 yeajs. In addition, 1,352 players matched five of the six numbers and will collect second prizes of $656.50.

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