The Board of Pension Commissioners

DAVID BOW WOO, 45, a Chinatown corporate attorney, is active in Asian-American civic affairs and lives in Silver Lake. Woo, president of the board, was appointed in 1982 on what he said was the recommendation of a former commissioner whom he had helped to win a judgeship. Woo said some pension benefits may go to undeserving officers, but added: “I think we have to have the ability to be wrong in some instances in our own honest judgment.”

SAM DIANNITTO, 54, assistant chief in the Los Angeles Fire Department elected by firefighters to the board in 1972 is the most senior member. Diannitto, of Eagle Rock, has spoken out against judges who grant stress pensions to officers who are in trouble with the department. Of one such case he said: “We may never ever hear from this guy again, but, boy, there are many more of them coming down the pipeline and there are going to have to be some type of drastic steps to prevent it.”

BERT COHEN, 42, government bond broker and executive vice president of Cantor, Fitzgerald & Co., a Beverly Hills investment banking firm, was appointed to the board in 1979. Cohen, a Brentwood Republican, contributed $12,500 to Mayor Tom Bradley’s 1982 campaign for governor. Cohen said he enjoys the investment side of board activities and admits that he occasionally falls asleep while hearing pension cases. Of the rise in stress pensions, Cohen said: “There are a lot of policemen who are real antagonistic to the system because they’ve seen their fellow officers ripping off the system and they don’t like it.”

SHERMAN ANDELSON, 60, president of the Los Angeles accounting firm of Kellogg & Andelson, is the brother of wealthy Democratic Party activist Sheldon Andelson and a resident of the Hollywood Hills. He was appointed to the board last year, after asking Bradley to name him to a commission that deals with investments. Instead, Andelson said he spends up to seven hours a week reading medical reports for pension hearings. In voting, Andelson said: “I feel you cannot second-guess the medicals. How can we sit there and second-guess what the doctor has done?”

DELLENE ARTHUR, 45, of Brentwood, a marketing and sales consultant for Michael R. Arthur & Associates, was appointed last year by Mayor Bradley. A former nurse, Arthur said: “It’s much easier to evaluate whether a guy can really lift a hose than to evaluate an individual’s level of stress, what caused the stress, and whether that constitutes grounds for a pension.”

KEN STAGGS, 45, a sergeant in the Los Angeles Police Department’s Valley Traffic Division and former police union official who was elected by fellow officers to the board in December. An 18-year department veteran and a resident of Toluca Lake, Staggs said of one officer who recently won a stress pension: “He must have gotten rid of all the mirrors in his house . . . I know if I made the statements he made in here . . . I couldn’t look at myself for ever.”

DAVID VELASQUEZ, 35, director of admissions and college counseling at the private Brentwood School and a resident of West Los Angeles, was named to the pension board last year by Bradley. Velasquez said: “I am a basic optimist in human nature so I believe in most (pension) cases, people are not malingering.”