The Honolulu Advertiser from Honolulu, Hawaii • 15

The Honolulu Advertiser Thursday, January 2, 1997 Island Life Editor: 1 Wanda Adams, 525-8034 IS mm ImLJi ISLAND PEOPLE LI. HIM, tiff fit -ic rV-'v" 1 i i ism fr hi -z 1 Jr. I I ,1, I --) i She's the one who handles TheBus complaints and some compliments By Will Hoover Advertiser Staff Writer Lana Algoso occupies a singular position in Honolulu. As senior customer service clerk for TheBus, she is the main conduit between the company and the 260,000 passengers who use the Oahu transit system each day. In other words, she's the person who gets the complaint calls.

Hundreds every week. Thousands every year. What's more, she swears she loves it. "As long as I'm meeting people, I'm OK," she says with such believability that it's not easy to doubt her. "I love people." "Lana's a natural," claims her boss, Bill Haig.

"If it involves dealing with people, she just has these great natural skills. The day I walked in the door here, 472 years ago, the very first thing I saw was her smile." "Lana has personality," adds assistant supervisor for transportation George Balino, who points out he has seniority over Algoso because he started with the company a few" weeks before she did 22 years ago. "She's a well-liked person here. There's one or two who don't like her but I beat 'em up already!" Officially, Algoso's job description is to take complaint calls and file corresponding reports Lana Algoso senior customer service clerk for TheBus BACKGROUND: The oldest of seven, she was born into an Air Force family in Tachikawa, Japan, on June 20, 1956. -Though she's lived all over the country, she spent most of her life in Ewa Beach.

Algoso has two daughters, Deanna, 18, and Elizabeth, 14. EDUCATION: James Campbell High School, 1974. PASSIONS: Collecting angels and Oriental dolls. Loves dancing, movies and reading non-fiction and romance novels. PETS: Honey Girl, Boi Boi (both pit bulls) and Zippy (a chihuahua).

"I'm a dog person. We've had dogs for as long as I can remember." (Her mother had a dog-grooming business.) ftf James SorensenNBC Laura Harring and Hawk Cheyne are lovers and former police partners in the new daytime drama "Sunset Beach." It begins Monday on NBC. Entering the daytime dramatics NBC takes a chance with 'Sunset Beach' series Mike Hnghes gGannett News Service In the sensual world of soap operas, there are temptations and dangers. For characters, the temptations involve moflesh or finances. The dangers include death, dementia and evil twins.

For networks, the temptation involves a steady profit stream. The danger involves well, the fact that soaps have been on a ''downward spiral. Now someone will try again. On Monday, nl NBC launches "Sunset Beach." To NBC, this is a big-buck way to grab a larger chunk of the soap world. It has a prime-time producer (Aaron Spelling), some prime-time names (Lesley-Anne Down, Barton, Leigh Taylor-Young, Sam Behrens and Kathleen Noone), plus all the t'Usual photogenic newcomers (including one from Hawaii, Kelly Hu).

W- it also has lush California locations. Down plays Olivia Richards. Her husband, "Gregory (Behrens) is a wealthy and slippery lawyer. By comparison, she's Well, NBC puts it this way: "If Gregory's n'biood is blue, Olivia's is red hot." (This is, you may recall, a soap opera.) That means she schemes amid luxury. "They found this beautiful house, to film as "-our house," Down says.

"Then when we got to; the studio, I loved (the interior) they'd hi created." Ul This is the temptation networks face: Prime-time soaps including Spelling's "Melrose Place," "Beverly Hills, 90210" and Jm 'Savannah" are doing fine. Networks oi could revive other day-parts by using the Rsame combination of lush settings and familiar stars. Perhaps, but there are other problems. For instance: With fewer people at home during the day, soap ratings have been falling. Some shows (including NBC's "Days of Our have dipped mildly; some particularly ABC's "General have dropped sharply.

Fox had set plans for a late-night soap opera that would use all the prime-time techniques including a lush New Orleans setting. It was going to open at about the See Beach, Page C5 'Ssnsst Beach' WHCNWHERE: Premiering at 10 a.m. Monday on KHNL Channel 13 (Channel 8 on Oceanic cable). Gregory YamamotcVThe Honolulu Advertiser ABOVE: If there's anything Lana Algoso likes more than taking complaint calls, it's leading kids on TheBus tours. Here, she talks about bus safety procedures to a group of preschoolers before loading them up for an exciting transit journey.

LEFT: Algoso, senior customer service clerk for TheBus at her desk, where each day she takes complaint calls by the dozens. Temperamentally suited for the position, Algoso says, "As long as I'm meeting people, I'm OK." David ScullThe Honolulu Advertiser which supervisors investigate. However, she also leads the popular kids' bus tours, heads up special public relations projects, conducts customer service orientation classes for new bus drivers and coordinates activities for the 45-member bus choir, The Transit Singers. All this is in addition to her various public service activities, her hobbies and her duties as mom to two teenage daughters one of whom is a beauty pageant queen (Hawaii's Miss Junior Tropical Queen). But even that isn't enough people-meeting to suit Algoso.

So, three months ago, she took on a second job working part-time nights in the fragrance section at Liberty House department store. "I just wanted to do something different," said Algoso, 40. "So, I went down and they hired me just like that because of my background in customer service." And although she rarely gets complaints in the fragrance section, it's doubtful there's a perfume gripe she couldn't handle. Her professional background in handling customers began in 1974, two weeks after she graduated from high school. On the advice of a transit official who information.

We do have some people who call frequently. We recognize their voices. Some know me. They'll say, 'Hi, "Basically, my task is to listen to what people have to say." She admits she does get calls from people so angry she just sits there and lets them blow off steam. There are those who call upset about a bus driver who promptly transfer their wrath to her.

If they scream obscenities, she'll simply hang up. There is a limit, she says. "Ninety-eight percent of the people simply want someone to listen to their problem, which is usually legitimate," she said. "They need an explanation. They want to know somebody is going to try and take care of it.

"My job is to help them." Nothing to it if you love people. bumped into her one day at the doctor's office and sensed her people aptitude, Algoso tried out for a job at TheBus' customer service department and was hired immediately. One of her first assignments was to help open TheBus' information booth at Ala Moana Center. "I loved that booth!" said Algoso, who worked at the Ala Moana location for 10 years. "I would meet people from all over the world and they'd send me Christmas cards and come back to the booth to visit each time they were here." For the past eight years, she's been fielding complaints.

"We don't get just complaints," she said in defense of her callers. "I get complaints, commendations, suggestions and tl'H. 16 Enemy-killers do not scatter daisy petals. Flower-scatterers most generally don't make good murderers, Any theatrical director will tell you: It's too broad an emotional range. Myth: A man for all seasons sVc And yet Modern Woman (me and my Some time ago, the talk among the women in the Island Life department turned to actor Liam Neeson apropos of his starring role in the film "Michael Collins" and a rather 'delicious cover picture of him in "Entertainment Weekly." It was a good thing none of the men friends and our little sisters and perhaps even our daughters) believe that that man is out there.

Then when we find a strong one, we're frustrated because he's emotionally unavailable and prone to stone-scary anger. We find one who brings flowers and goes to John Gray workshops, and somehow he just doesn't make us feel safe enough, somehow he feels a little well soft. This is not fair. It's also not sensible. clothed.

Whereupon he scatters the daisy petals over her face, shoulders and hair. She rouses languorously. They kiss passionately. Fade to black. My mother and I sigh and sit back in our theater seats.

Great expectations And then it hits me: That's the problem. That's it right there. The problem between men and women. We women expect a man to be able to do that: kill the enemy dead with a minimum of emotional involvement, then come home and transform himself into the tenderest, most sensitive of lovers. (And men, by the way, expect us to be able to look like Rob Roy's wife even if we've borne him several children in a peat-smoked stone hut without running water.) And you know what? It doesn't work that way.

movie begins with Rob Roy chasing after some bad guys. Rob Roy, of course, is played by Neeson in muddy kilts that flash around his strong, bare legs (I'm drooling again, aren't They have stolen his sheep and he kills them. And not from a distance with a nice, clean bow and arrow, either. The aftermath Afterward, he heads for home and we're treated to a scene wherein Rob Roy washes away the blood of his latest escapade with a quick swim in what must be a freezing Scottish loch. (All Scottish lochs are freezing.) On his way into his humble cottage, Our Hero stops to strip the petals from a dozen or so unlikely daisies.

Indoors, he creeps into bed where his wife the only Scottish woman in the entire film who doesn't look as though she's been rolled in mud and pickled lies sleeping, all unawares and only half- WANDA A. ADAMS who work with us happened to be in the 3l. room at the time. Drooling did occur. about the sword fight that ends the film because he said it was the most realistic he'd ever seen.

Both fighters looked as though they might die of exhaustion from flailing about with the monstrously heavy swords of the day. The scene was too much for me; I had to hide my eyes. But there was one thing about this story that I saw very clearly. The But talk of Neeson put me in mind of another of his recent films, "Rob Roy," the revelation I took away from it. "Rob Roy" was a disturbingly sanguine and scatological retelling of pthe story of a mythical Scottish hero a good man turned outlaw, provoked by English oppressors.

Film critic Roger Ebert was wild But it makes a darned good movie. Wanda Adams is The Advertiser's Island Life Editor; her column, Overheard, appears each Wednesday on the Coffee Break page..