Do you know the way to “Paramount” Dominguez?

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I don’t know how I managed it, but it seemed I was lost long before I got into the car for my first trek to Dominguez High.

As I often do when I’ve not been somewhere before, I tapped the school address into my computer, planning to use my trusty Mapquest method of getting to tonight’s San Gabriel Valley League football game between Gahr and Dominguez.

I looked in my equally trusty Southern Section directory for Dominguez’s address, and right there in black and white, it said the school was in Compton.

After getting some odd directions and a final destination without an actual address after Mapquest said it had found a ‘similar’ address to the one I’d typed in, I didn’t trust the result and called the school for help.

A woman in the office listened patiently to my confusion as I checked the address against what I’d typed and asked for the main intersections of the school.

When I was done, she told me what to do.

‘Use the exact same address,’ she said. ‘But instead of Compton for the city, put Paramount.’

‘Oh,’ I said. ‘OK.’

Wonder why I didn’t think of that?

I’m here now, after a 2 1/2-hour drive in traffic, and with a great deal of gratitude to the woman answering Dominguez’s phones.

She has obviously fielded such calls before.

And now I know that when I want to go to Compton Dominguez, I’ve got to go to Paramount.

- Lauren Peterson