The Los Angeles Times from Los Angeles, California • Page 840

NIUY. IMI Mill I')'l B3 is l.l I IMI I'cl iiiimlo. Siinln iiiid Antelope Valleys Valley News Freeways Inching Toward Gridlock, Caltrans Says Traffic: Statistics show the number the '80s from 1 5 more on a section 183 more on the Foothill Freeway. of motorists grew steadily in of the Ventura Freeway to Anyone who drives knows that the past tered an increase of between 2,000 and 5,000 vehicles every year. On freeways in the middle part of the Valley the Hollywood (170), San Diego (405) and Golden State (5) traffic increased methodically throughout the decade, seemingly oblivious to economic recession, stagnation or boom.

On the other hand, the building explosion of the mid- late 1980s shows up in much larger annual increases in vehicles on the Simi Valley and Antelope Valley freeways, which handle a heavy share of commuters from the fast-growing suburbs in the Santa Clarita Valley and Ventura County. Please sec TRAFFIC, Bll The Caltrans figures, compiled at the request of The Times, give average daily traffic counts on 11 segments of freeways in the Valley and adjacent areas. Increases ranged from 16 on a section of the Ventura Freeway to an eye-popping 183 on the Foothill Freeway, In terms of the number of new vehicles per day, differences among freeways were less dramatic, ranging from an increase of 27,000 per day on the Simi Valley Freeway (118) to 57,000 each day on the Antelope Valley Freeway, The traffic mounted steadily, rather than zooming to new heights in any one year or handful of years. Each of the 11 freeway segments regis and the Ventura Freeway (101), already jammed in 1980, is now bogged down 10 hours out of every 24. Those highways that a decade ago permitted motorists an occasional unfettered moment are now approaching gridlock.

"No area escaped. Traffic increased everywhere," said Nick Jones, Caltrans traffic engineer who oversees the traffic counters embedded in concrete at intervals to provide statistical evidence of what motorists already know. "it's the same throughout Southern California," Jones said. "The bad freeways got worse and good freeways, in terms of traffic, started to become bad ones." MylAMLSQUINN I IMI AI I WKIIliK Feeling crowded out there, no matter where, you go or when you go? Can't remember when you could run free on the freeways? If that's what the scat of your pants is tolling you, there will be no surprises in the latest batch of statistics churned out by Callrans' vehicle counters. 4 i Food services coordinator Gina Leita, left photo, herself a former Meet Each Need with Dignity client, tells volunteer Louis Reyes where to store milk.

Above, people wait in line for approval to receive donations. Below, Rosa Valencia makes a selection from a clothes rack. MEND helped 40,000 people last year. decade has been unkind to San Fernando Valley motorists. But the newly, compiled California Department of Transportation figures detail just how mean the streets have become.

Throughout the decade, every freeway in the Valley has been strained by an ever larger horde of motorists, the figures show. Once-bucolic expressways such as the Foothill (210) and Antelope Valley (14) freeways are now carrying heavy loads, Group of Volunteers Patching any government funding. Just five years ago, 200 volunteers served only 7,000 people. And, Hill said; she expects the number of people served to reach 50,000 by the end of this year. The organization will mark its 20th year with a community open house from 1 to 4 p.m.

today at its renovated two-story headquarters, 13460 Van Nuys Pacoima. On display will be the group's huge food storage warehouse, its neatly arranged racks of clothing, its furniture storeroom and its four classrooms. "We want the community to see what we're all about," Hill said. "This is an organization of ordinary citizens who care about the poor. MEND is still very much a grass-roots organization and we want to keep it that way." Volunteers guard covered monuments 1 HICARDODcAIUTANIIA AllBi-losTlmos by volunteers from the Civil Air Patrol.

Each six-foot-tall, 675-pound monument bears a decorative, brushed aluminum medallion and the name of the recipient. The pilots' names wore announced at a $50-a-plate dinner Saturday night. "We kept it secret because wo wanted to build excitement in the community, very much like the Academy Awards," said Nancy Walker, a. spokeswoman for the city. But Ycagor, the legendary combat and test pilot immortalized in Tom Wolfe's book "The Right Stuff," about the chutzpah of those pilots and astronauts, said in an interview last week that test pilots and movie stars are worlds apart.

"That's a hell of a comparison Hollywood movlo stars and us," Ycagor, 67, said. "The tost pilot lives a real life, not a fantasy, Basically, you have to remember, duty enters into it. That's paramount." Yoager in 1947 was the first pilot in the world to break the sound barrier, oven though ho had two broken ribs at the time. Knight, fil, set the world's speed record in 1967 by flying the X-15 at Mach 6, or 4,520 m.p.h., twice as fast as a bullet. Two of the pilots, LeVier, 77, and Please see WALK, BIO vJS'fiWW Close-Knit MEND Marks 20 Years By MAYERENE BARKER riMES STAFF WHITISH Twenty years ago, three families who wanted to help the poor in the northeastern San Fernando Valley started food pantries in their garages.

From those humble beginnings, the fledgling charity the'familics named MEND (Meet Each Need with Dignity) has grown into one of the most active organizations providing for the emergency needs of the northeast Valley's poor. "It's just boomed," said Marianne Haver Hill, the organization's executive director. "There just is really such a desperate need out there." Last year, 400 MEND volunteers distributed food, clothing, furniture and other services to 40,000 people all without Wedding Party Belly-Dances Down the Aisle Nuptials: The bride wears white, but her bridesmaids sport the chic of Araby in a Middle Eastern-thcmed ceremony. Ground-Level Monuments Honor Heroes of the Air Aviation: Five pioneers receive a lasting tribute as the first to be enshrined on Lancaster Boulevard's Aerospace Walk of Honor. Together Lives MEND'S $420,000 annual budget comes from donations by individuals, churches, schools and civic organizations.

Despite its growth over the years, the organization is still run primarily by volunteers. Five full-time and four part-time workers are the organization's only paid staff members. Hill described both board members and volunteers as "middle-class working people not even upper middle-class." "It's very different from the norm," said Ed Rose of Mission Hills, one of the organization's founders who remains active in MEND. "We wanted to make sure at least one person was home whenever there was a need," he said of the group's early days of operating out of garages. His wife, Carolyn, is president of the Please see MEND, B5 CAIIUKUIIAVUZ UsAwWTImra on Lancaster's Aerospace Walk of Honor.

By TRACEY KAPLAN TIMliS STAFF WlilTFK Everyone in the aeronautics community know they had the right stuff, and now the city of Lancaster- has made it official. Chuck Ycagor, Jimmy Doolittle, Scott Crossfield, Tony LeVier and Pete Knight pilots who achieved dizzying heights in the early days of flight testing on Saturday became the first to bo honored on Lancaster's Aerospace Walk of Honor, "They're sure a different breed of cat 1 5 WITH THE RIGHT STUFF: B10 from the rest of us," said George' Root, vice mayor of Lancaster. "They're internationally known for taking phenomenal risks in one-of-a-kind aircraft to learn the planes' limits, and some of them did it right hero in the Antelope Valley." Modeled after the Hollywood Walk of Kamo and celebrity walks elsewhere, the sidewalk' monument display has been shrouded in secrecy for months. Saturday morning, the five granite monu-. ments were installed on Lancaster Boulevard, boxed in black crates and guarded By AMY LOUISE KAZMIN riMiis staff wuirat With a wedding like this, who needs a bachelor party? The bridesmaids wore belly dancers, clad in Hollywood-glitzy versions of traditional Arabic costumes brightly colored brocade caftans, gauzy harem pants and skirts, sashes, revealing Choli lops and chains and belts dripping with coins and semiprecious stones.

With' their hands above their heads, clinking finger cymbals, they languidly danced down the aisle toward the gazebo where, on Saturday, Siegfried Hcep, 31, married Dcnisc Russo, 40. Russo herself is a belly dancer and has been a member of the Van Nuys-based dance group Perfumes of Araby for more than a decade. When she and Hecp decided to marry, she asked him if the wedding could have an Arabian Nights theme. "1 didn't want to do the same thing as everyone else," Russo said after a minister performed a brief wedding ceremony at The Odyssey restaurant In Granada Hills, Hoop, a video engineer who met Russo when she was a student In a video class ho taught at a community college, agreed to the request. Please sec WEDDING, III.