The Los Angeles Times from Los Angeles, California • 33

ORANGE COUNTY Local News Letters Cos Angeles Sftraee cctPart Monday, May 18, 1981 Officials Have Health Plan They Want You to Feel Better and Live Longer By JERRY HICKS, Times Staff Writer County health officials are determined to make you live longer, even if they have to sign a contract with you to do it They're starting a new program to encourage people to improve their health and even hope to get the county supervisors to serve as guinea pigs. It's called "Feel Fit." It's a voluntary health plan aimed at reducing risk factors that contribute to chronic diseases. The major causes of premature death in Orange County are heart disease (36 cancer (24 and strokes (8 according to the latest health data. Yet in many cases these deaths could be prevented, said Thomas Prender-gast, director of the county's center for epidemiology and disease control. "We've got to find ways that people can actually get a lot of fun out of taking care of themselves," Prendergast said.

"For some people. Feel Fit may just be the answer." The first batch of volunteers to go through the health plan will be county firemen and people from county executive management If these people improve their health through the program, county nutritionist Susan Radford theorized, then maybe private companies and other groups will pick up the spirit and adopt Feel Fit. People who sign up for Feel Fit will fill out a detailed health hazard appraisal how much they weigh, how much they smoke or drink, how much they exercise, family medical history, job stress, etc. All of this is scientific Please see HEALTH, Page 7 Im! rmi -iiii t- nrniimiMiimiMiiiiiriwiiiwimfil CHRIS COTTER for epidemiology and disease control, do some jogging to keep fit. Health officials plan a new voluntary program called Feel Fit.

Practicing what they preach, Orange County Health Officer L. Rex Ehling, left, and Tom Prendergast, director of the county's center Iranians Noisy but Peaceful During Demonstration in L.A. Boulevard through Westwood and back. The group, which included marchers of all ages, called for restoration of the monarchy in Iran. They carried signs with pictures of the shah and of his son, Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi.

As they marched back toward the Federal Building, the pro-Khomeini group, which appeared to be mostly young college students, arrived and began marching on the north side of Wilshire. Although the two groups held opposing political viewpoints, their rhetoric was very similar. The pro-shah group called for an end to summary executions and torture under the Khomeini regime and for the release of 60,000 political prisoners they claimed were being held in Iranian jails. The pro-Khomeini demonstrators accused the other side of similar atrocities and carried signs that read, "Don't welcome tortures" and "Long live Khomeini." When the anti-Khomeini group, which included two busloads of people from San Diego, dispersed, Please see IRANIANS, Page 6 By JOAN SWEENEY and JOHN The ratio was one law officer to every two demonstrators Sunday in Westwood as Iranian supporters and opponents of the Khomeini regime staged noisy but basically peaceful marches. Fearing that planned rallies at the Federal Building could deteri-ortate into violence as have previous Iranian demonstrations in Los Angeles, police and sheriffs deputies turned out in force.

Two hundred sheriffs deputies, acting as federal agents at the request of the Federal Protection Service, guarded the Federal Building, and 125 Los Angeles Police Department officers patrolled city territory. A total of 650 demonstrators from the two opposing Iranian factions showed up. When it appeared at one point that the two Iranian groups, shouting and cursing at each other from opposite sides of Wilshire might clash, police officers moved in quickly. They pushed the 150 supporters of the Ayatollah Ruhol-lah Khomeini a block down the street to Westwood where the demonstrators staged a sit-in on the sidewalk. Four people were arrested on charges varying from battery on a She Had Nixon's Piece 1 Viet Vet's Nightmare Is Ended Ex-Marine Is Found Dead With Liquor, Pill Bottles Nearby By JOHN KENDALL, Times Staff Writer James Roger Hopkins, the emotionally troubled Vietnam veteran who shot up the lobby of Wads-worth Veterans Hospital in West Los Angeles last March, was found dead Sunday in his Calabasas home.

Hopkins, a 32-year-old former Marine, was discovered lying on his bed, a liquor bottle and an empty pill bottle nearby, sheriff's deputies said. Detectives were working Sunday night to determine if Hopkins' death was an accidental overdose or suicide. Hopkins briefly gained the attention of the media when, dressed in camouflage battle gear, he drove a jeep through glass doors of the hospital, shooed five people from the lobby and fired nine shots into the ceiling and walls with an M-14 rifle. He surrendered without firing at police and complained he was suffering physical effects from exposure to the powerful herbicide Agent Orange used in Vietnam. Two days after the March 14 incident, Hopkins was arraigned before a U.S.

magistrate on a charge of destruction of federal property. Bail was set at $25,000 and at the time of his death Hopkins was free awaiting a July court appearance. Hopkins' wife of 18 months, Suzanne Carey Hopkins, 31, said Sunday she had left her husband alone for two hours in the afternoon to go shopping. When she returned, she found him slumped near the bed unconscious. Mrs.

Hopkins said they had returned Friday from a series of Vietnam Veterans Day appearances in Texas. At one of them on the steps of the state Capitol Hopkins gave a short speech urging his fellow veterans to fight the Veterans Administration for their rights, she said. Immediately after the speech, Hopkins was "very positive," Mrs. Hopkins said. "We were going to get some money together and move to Texas." But, in the last day or two, her husband began to feel "the stress of being back in the city.

He didn't sleep well. His nightmares made him very tired in the morning." Please see VIET, Page 10 MITCHELL, Times Staff Writers police officer to illegal possession of a dagger, but no injuries or major confrontations were reported. The manager of the Federal Building in Westwood has issued a permit for a demonstration there by supporters of the late Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, of Iran, but he revoked the permit early last week, 'They gave us the choice of going home or going to jail. Assistant U.S. Atty.

Eric Dobber-teen said. The organizers said they would go ahead with the rally. The Federal Protection Service, responsible for policing federal land, did not believe it had adequate manpower to control the situation and requested assistance from the Sheriff's Department. Deputies kept the 500 anti-Khomeini demonstrators from going onto federal property. Instead the group marched down the sidewalk on the south side of Wilshire of Great Wall Writer Deputies also reported finding in the home tools they said were designed for cheating slot machines.

Prosecutors said she and members of her family had hit at least seven major slot machine jackpots in Las Vegas casinos. She herself had won 'We could never prove where the ring came from, 'police said. $64,814.30 and a Lincoln Continental automobile, said Deputy Dist. Atty. Chris Kralick.

According to Kralick, Susan Helen Mendez and her boyfriend, Terrance Nikrasch, stole the jewelry from the Dana Point store in 1979. The store owner gave deputies good descriptions of the couple, and when they were broad Unlikely Burglar Awaits Sentence CLIFF OTTO Los Angeles Times Dr. Larry Overman helped synthesize the secretion of frogs as a potential medicine for heart disease. UC1 Duplicates Frog Toxin for Use as Heart Medicine By CATHLEEN DECKER, Times Staff Writer Larry Overman spent the last two years trying to manufacture a poison just like one secreted by a South American frog. Along with graduate assistant Kenneth Bell, Overman, a UC Irvine chemistry professor, recently became the first to synthetically duplicate a secretion from Ecuadorean frogs which, when not in the company of friends, are known as "poison dart frogs." In the wild, the toxin produced by the frogs poisons their predators.

Modified by man, Overman and other scientists believe, the toxin can be a potent treatment for heart ailments. Overman's research is part of a growing scientific movement to develop synthetic chemical compounds to take the place of natural products found in animals. The movement followed a recent push to extract and copy compounds from plants. "That area has been mined pretty well," Overman said. Since many natural products exist only in small quantities, are not readily available or can be gathered only at great expense.

Please see FROGS, Page 7 By STEVE EMMONS, Times Staff On the surface, it appears to be one of hundreds of routine convictions second-degree burglary, grand theft, receiving stolen property. Except that: The burglar and thief is an attractive, 28-year-old woman from fashionable Anaheim Hills. After she stole an estimated $42,000 in jewelry from a Dana Point jewelry store and was caught, she swallowed a 2V6-carat diamond ring in full view of sheriffs deputies. She was closely watched until she yielded the evidence several days later. When deputies searched her home (she was then living in San Juan Capistrano), they reported finding memorabilia stolen from a Richard M.

Nixon exhibit in San Clemente in August, 1977. Among the items was a piece of the Great Wall of China presented to Nixon on his visit there. TONY BARNARD Lot Anfeln Timet Hugo Friedhofer if I TV cast, someone in the Dana Point Harbor Patrol office recognized them as a couple who had recently rented a boat slip. Deputies began watching the boat, and the next day Mendez and Nikrasch got on board and started out of the harbor. After a chase by the Harbor Patrol, the couple were arrested.

But while they were in Harbor Patrol office, Mendez swallowed the diamond ring, Kralick said. Officers traced its course by X-ray for several days. Ironically, Kralick said, the ring, though recovered, was never used as evidence. "We could never prove where the ring came from," he said. The search of the home turned up, besides Nixon's piece of the wall, some presidential key chains, a medallion, a cigarette lighter, cufflinks and a silver compact.

Please see BURGLAR, Page 6 arrested Michael Christopher Zent, 23, of 180 McAuley Place, Laguna Beach, and charged him with felony drunk driving, felony hit-and-run driving and vehicular manslaughter. He was being held in Orange County Jail on $5,000 bail. Officers said the collision occured about 1:30 a.m. in the intersection of Coast Highway and Diamond Street. They said it is a well-lighted intersection with good visibility for oncoming cars, and that other drivers had cautiously gone around the cars that remained in the southbound lanes.

When Kools was run down, two Marines followed the fleeing truck as far as Sunset Drive, then turned back to report the incident, police said. Please see WOMAN, Page 4 Pioneer in Bringing Music to the Movies Film Composer Hugo Friedhofer Dies By BURT A. FOLKART, Times Staff Writer Effort to Do Right Thing Costs Woman, 30, Her Life By STEVE EMMONS, Times Staff Writer Audiences later knew him for his melodies in "The Best Years of Our Lives," (his Oscar-winner in 1947), "The Young Lions," "One-Eyed Jacks" and "Joan of Arc." But to Hollywood insiders his mordant wit was equally famous. He loved to tell of the mogul in charge of one 1932 picture who told Friedhofer that "since this story is set in France, we should hear lots of French horns." Friedhofer acquiesced but managed his own satiric triumph when two lovers in the film, fleeing the French Revolution, approached the cliffs of Dover to the sound of a single English horn. Born May 3, 1902, in San Francisco, Friedhofer is believed to be the only native Californian of all the famed film composers.

He began playing in the huge or Hugo Friedhofer, one of the first composers to bring the ancient art of music to the infant art of sound motion pictures, died early Sunday at St. Vincent's Hospital in Los Angeles. The Academy Award-winning orchestrator was 80 and had been hospitalized after a fall at his Hollywood apartment. Friedhofer came to Hollywood in 1929, two years after sound itself, to orchestrate some of the early film musicals, including "Sunny Side Up" with Janet Gaynor and Charles Farrell. He labored obscurely as the anonymous orchestrator for the songs of others until 1937, when he was hailed for his original scoring for "Marco Polo" with Gary Cooper.

Something in Maurine Kools' character told her to stop when she saw two cars collide on Coast Highway in Laguna Beach early Saturday. According to police, she was concerned that someone might have been hurt. When she discovered that both drivers were all right, she left her name as a witness. And then, police said, someone in a large white pickup truck swerved around the two cars, struck one of them and then rammed Kools, throwing her into uncoming traffic where she has hit again. According to police, the truck kept on going.

Kools, 30, of Laguna Beach, hung on until 2 p.m. Sunday, when she died at Mission Community Hospital in Mission Viejo. By then, police had chestras that accompanied showings of silent films and was assigned to Erich Wolfgang Korngold as orchestrator on "Anthony Adverse," "The Sea Hawk," "The Sea Wolf' and other classic films of the 1930s. He learned from Korngold, Max Steiner and Alfred Newman and spent much of his later years sharing that knowledge with the young composers who came to his apartment to listen to his tapes and study his scorcSi Copies of some of the few themes he recorded, all out of print, sell for as much as $100, and in 1975 the American Film Institute persuaded him to tape-record an oral history of motion picture music. He was credited with total recall, even in his late 70s, and the recording is 24 hours long.

It is available as Please tee FILM, Page 10.