The Los Angeles Times from Los Angeles, California • Page 514

B2 SATURDAY, MAY lJ. IWO 1- ,1 Metro Digest Local News in Brief AL MARTINEZ 1 Shorty and the Amazons Fatal Freeway Crash 3rd Suspect Surrenders in Bob's Big Boy Slaying The last of three suspected gang members wanted in the death of a restaurant manager who was shot during a bungled robbery attempt in Playa del Rey surrendered Friday, police said. Oliver Montez, 20, of South-Central Los Angeles, walked into the Pacific Division police station with his attorney, Detective Ross Moen said. Montez faces charges of murder, attempted robbery and assault with a deadly weapon. Montez is the suspected triggerman in the murder of a Bob's Big Boy restaurant night manager, Albert Brodeur, during a robbery attempt April 30.

Two other suspects were arrested previously. rtONGAIlUlSON Los Angeles Times A truck driver was killed when his big rig collided with a car on the westbound Santa Monica Freeway and went off the roadway east of Arlington Avenue about 5:30 a.m. Friday. Both drivers were ejected, and the truck's driver, Miguel Moran-Velazquez, 51, of Los Angeles, died at the scene. The car's driver, who was pinned under a tree, was hospitalized.

State Plans Testing for III Effects of Malathion Officials overseeing the state's Medfly battle quietly have made plans to begin offering tests to people suffering possible ill effects from malathion in hopes of documenting the pesticide's health effects. The $615,000 project, which could begin as early as next week, marks the first time in Southern California's 10-month-old struggle against the Mediterranean fruit fly that health officials have sought to substantiate claims of illness. It is awaiting approval in Sacramento. Under the plan, people in Orange and Los Angeles counties who believe they have experienced breathing problems, allergic reactions or other symptoms because of malathion spraying will contact their local health departments and be referred to a clinic for tests. Cable Firm Names Mayor, Aides in Conspiracy Suit A Los Angeles cable company filed a lawsuit Friday accusing Mayor Tom Bradley and several top aides of unlawfully conspiring to prevent the company from offering cable television service in South-Central Los Angeles.

The suit alleged that the mayor and nine other city officials intentionally violated the 1st Amendment rights of Preferred Communications Inc. to maintain control over cable television in Los Angeles. For more than six years Preferred has fought for the right, recently upheld in U.S. District Court, to break the monopoly on the South Central franchise currently held by Continental Cable Co. "A small clique of city officials is conspiring to prevent Preferred from ever succeeding in breaking the cable monopoly which they created," said attorney Harold Farrow, who filed the suit in Superior Court.

4 Bradley spokesman Bill Chandler responded, "This is simply another in a series of failed attempts by a disgruntled bidder to hold the city and its residents hostage until their private gain is secured." School District's Legal Fees Put at $2 Million The financially strapped Compton school district has spent nearly $2 million in legal fees the last four years, at least double what most other Los Angeles County districts spend, according to a report prepared this week by the district's financial staff. The district's Board of Trustees, facing a budget shortfall.of at least $7 million in the next school year, ordered the report. One law firm, Melanie E. Lomax and Associates of Los Angeles, received almost half the money the district spent on legal expenses, according to the report. She said the district was involved in a large number of lawsuits and has several construction projects under way that required legal work on contracts.

Schools to Seek Funds ifsMalibu Incorporates Should Mallbu become a city, the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District is ready to ask it for money. The school board this week approved a policy calling for Malibu if it votes next month to incorporate to provide financial help to the struggling school district. It is in the city's "vital interest to have an excellent public school system," the policy states. Malibu voters will decide June 5 whether to incorporate and will also elect a five-member City Council. School board members on Monday said they plan to solicit support for the board's policy from the 31 City Council candidates.

The school district last week approved the same policy statement for the city of Santa Monica and appealed to the City Council for $3.1 million to maintain programs and staff for the coming school The most infamous machine in Beverly Hills, Zsa Zsa Gabof's Rolls-Royce, is going on the auction block in Tulsa. this weekend. Auctioneer Gary Bennett said the Cop Slapper herself is not expected to attend. Let's hope he remembers to clean out the glove compartment. Two of the Southland's Big Three races the L.A.

Marathon and the Long Beach Grand Prix have already been held, but there's still the Great Southern California Duck Race. About 20,000 competitors will be dropped into the water near the Santa Monica Pier at 1 p.m. today. The quackers, sponsored for $5 apiece by donors to benefit Chikirens Hospital Los Angeles, will float for shore, with a prize of a trip to Hawaii for the winning owner. The ducks, incidentally, arc plastic.

You didn't think they'd subject live animals to that polluted mess, did you? We mentioned Friday that Caltrans the agency you love to hate had invited drivers to phone in sightings of broken sprinklers flooding the freeways. Caltrans might as well have put up a sign that said, "Kick me." We were standing in line at McDonald's one day, waiting to buy a McSandwich and when my son, apropos to nothing, turned to me and said he wouldn't mind so much being short if we were only rich. It was at a low ebb in our fortunes and I was not savoring the idea that soon I would be eating a McFishburger instead of duck with a peppercorn glaze, but there was nothing I could do about it. There was also nothing I could do about being short, having come from short parents whose genetic coding was passed on to me and mine, thus assuring a continued lineage of angry little people raising hell on the periphery of a tall society. I'm not implying here that we are radically short, if you know what I mean; not like the dancing dwarf on "Twin Peaks" or anything.

We are 5-feet-9, which isn't too bad, but which isn't too good either if you are height conscious, which my son was. He was a teen-ager then and generally angry at everything, not the least of which was his father. Even being seen with me in public was anathema. We ran into some of his friends while shopping one day and he introduced me as his parole officer. Fortunately, he has long since outgrown this aversion to me, but I don't think he ever has forgiven me for being short.

We were looking at some family pictures the other day and I heard him say to his mother, "It's too bad you didn't marry someone like Larry Bird." I mention this because being short has never been a big problem for me until the other day, when I entered the Land of Amazons. It began when I was hustled by a couple of men who said they were out to improve the image of, and find work for, heroically proportioned women. Even in the City of Gimmicks, this sounded like a new one. There are enough organizations in L.A. to embrace every minority from one-legged oboe players to hearing-impaired CPAs from mixed marriages.

But I had never heard of anyone setting out to enhance the fortunes of heroically proportioned women. I wasn't even sure what the term meant until I met Tracy Faucher. She was sitting down when I entered the room and stood when we were introduced. That is, she stood and stood and stood. I thought she would never stop rising, but she finally leveled off at 6-foot-3 and, looking down, said, "Please to meet you." Actually, she leveled off at 6-foot-6, the additional inches having been added by spiked heels.

Tracy was not only tall, but broad-shouldered and big-busted, all of which contributed to an imposing difference between us. I felt like one of the Lilliputians meeting Gulliver. I was just getting used to Tracy when Diana Meier entered. She is 6-foot-5 with heels, and perky. It occurred to me as we met that she might at any moment start cartwheeling around the room, the way perky women are inclined to do sometimes.

When you're short, you've always got to be aware of dreadful possibilities. Diana has an identical twin, by the way, and they're auditioning for the role of television's new Doubjemint Twins. They'd be perfect. Who could refuse a stick of gum from two women who total almost 13 feet in height? We had gathered that particular day at the behest of Builtmore Productions, which is the brainchild of Nersi Navab, a program assistant at UCLA Extension, and Daniel Siever, a real estate broker who once owned a nudist apartment building in downtown L.A. They were in business, the two men explained, to create feature films and videotapes that would promote the beauty of Amazonic women.

Tracy and Diana were present as examples. The men reason that, by promoting these assets, a market would be created and they'd make money collecting brokerage fees by getting jobs for their Amazons in the worlds of film, fashion and female wrestling. Heroically proportioned women, they promise, are the wave of the future. Navab, who is 6-foot-4, is naturally attracted to tall women, which is what brings him to this specialty endeavor. Sievers, who is my height, said he was sexually aroused as a child by a tall baby-sitter who exercised by throwing her legs over his head.

He has loved tall women ever since. Both Tracy and Diana are withholding judgment on Navab and Sievers. They've both suffered small indignities due to their height, and if Builtmore can make them more acceptable, that's all right with them. "I'd be happy," Diana says, "if no one ever again makes a comment like 'How's the weather up or 'Hand mo that piano, will Maybe you can help." That's a pretty tall order on short notice, but I'll try. Boy Fires Into Crowded Schoolyard, Injuring 3 A 16-year-old boy allegedly fired into a crowded East Los Angeles schoolyard Friday to avenge the death of a fellow gang member and slightly injured three students, authorities said.

The youth, whose name was not released because of his age, allegedly fired five shots at rival gang members in the yard at Belvedere Junior High School in the 400 block of North Record Avenue, Sheriff's Deputy Dean Scoville said. Abut 1,000 students were in the schoolyard at the time, he said. Three 15-year-old boys, who were not the intended victims, were slightly injured. The injured youths suffered graze wounds and bruises and were treated by the school nurse. One bullet struck a student's belt buckle, Scoville said.

The suspect was caught nearby by school guards who saw the shooting, Scoville said. The youth was booked on suspicion of attempted murder at the East Los Angeles sheriff's station. Handyman Gets Life in Murders of 2 Women A 38-year-old handyman who pleaded guilty to beating two women to death three years ago in a Rosemead church where he worked was sentenced Friday to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. Rickey Darnell Owens appeared in jail blues in Pasadena Superior Court and remained quiet as Judge Jack B. Tso handed down the sentence for two counts of murder committed in the course of a robbery, said his attorney, Deputy Public Defender Michael Duffey.

Before the sentencing, Duffey read a statement of apology to the victims' families on behalf of Owens. On April 25, Owens admitted killing Harriet Baden, 61, of Temple City, and Ruth Lee Leung, 64, of Los Angeles, whose badly beaten bodies were found Oct. 30, 1987, in the Chinese for Christ Los Angeles Mandarin Church on Del Mar Avenue in Rosemead. Baden was a church bookkeeper, and Leung, a clerk. BRIAN GADBKKY For The Times front of his home In Oakwood.

when it was vacant. The L.A. Board of Public Works will take up recommendations on Monday to designate stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for John Philip Sousa and Little Richard. We don't know about you. but we can't think of one without thinking of the other.

If the chamber holds a joint ceremony, we hope the band remembers to play our favorite, "The Good Golly Miss Molly March." This weekend's "Los Angeles at the Los Angeles" downtown film festival to benefit the L.A. Historic Theatre Foundation includes a showing of "Mildred Pierce," with that immortal line by working womanmother Joan Crawford: "I'm never going back to Glendale." miscelLAny: The Redondo Beach City Council once voted to adopt the Goodyear Blimp as the city's official bird, though the creature's nest is really in Carson. The district also asked for a long-term funding commitment from the city. In the past, Santa Monica has given the district $500,000 a year. Burglary Suspect Seized After 11-Hour Standoff A suspected burglar who barricaded himself inside an appliance store in Hacienda Heights was arrested Friday after an 11-hour standoff with authorities.

The man was taken into custody after Bush to Give Activist 'Point of Light' Award President Bush on Monday will visit the Venice home of Foster Webster to present the 72 -year-old janitor and war veteran with a "Point of Light" award. Webster is being honored for helping organize a grass-roots group to help clean up crime-ridden streets in the Oakwood area of Venice. The Oakwood Beautification Committee was formed about a year ago at the behest of the Los Angeles Police Department as part of an all-out effort to attack crime in the area and improve police community relations. A march in Oakwood last month called "Taking Back The Streets" drew about 300 people. Bush also is expected to unveil signs that will be posted in the area warning drug dealers and their customers that their license plate numbers are being recorded and reported to police.

Only in L. Two of the expected 20,000 competitors in Its offices began receiving so many complaints Friday that a representative asked us to publish one central number 213 -620-3077 so the rest of the agency could go about its work. list like old times. candidate Eileen Anderson, who has her eyes on the gubernatorial office this year, picketed KCBS Channel 2 Friday after she learned that she would not be today's he fell off a roof shortly past noon, Sheriff's Deputy Pat Hunter said. The man was taken to Queen of the Valley Hospital in West Covina.

His condition was not immediately known. The standoff began about 12:30 a.m. when deputies got a call from an employee of the appliance store, who reported hearing noises inside the store, Hunter said. Deputies spotted one man on the roof of the store inside the Bixby Hacienda Plaza, 17010 Colima Hoad, and a sheriff's helicopter spotted a second suspect. Both were arrested, but deputies learned that a third suspect was still inside.

Presidential honoree Foster Webster In A. By Steve Harvey JAVjrcn MKNOOZA KorThe Times Great Southern California Duck Race. allowed in Sunday's televised debate with the other hopefuls. Anderson, you may recall, danced in a bikini on the corner of Main and Temple streets every weekday afternoon for 15 years to protest what she claimed was mistreatment by Secret Service agents in 1972. She finally quit when the city turned down her request to be allowed to use Mayor Tom Bradley's parking place II 1.