New $5,000 Seal Beach Statue Shares Name of ‘Slick’ With City Worker

“I’m really flattered,” said Steven Sockett, 43, after a $5,000 bronze seal statue on the new Seal Beach pier was dedicated and named after him.

It and he are called “Slick.”

“I got that nickname a number of years ago because I was able to crawl through an 18-inch water pipe,” said the 5-foot, 8-inch Sockett, who feels that even at his current 170 pounds “I can still crawl through that pipe.” He is the city’s waste water supervisor.

Seal Beach City Manager Allen Parker had another version.

“One of his functions years ago was to clean out some sumps and it got slippery down there,” noted Parker.

But why honor Sockett? Parker said besides being a 17-year city veteran, Sockett volunteered to stand guard all night while the statue was resting in still-wet cement. “We were worried someone might steal it,” he said.

The three-foot-tall bronze seal has actually been in place since May, but city officials stalled the dedication to await a plaque that contains the names of all those who donated $100 or more to restore the pier that was destroyed by storms in 1983.

The Save Our Pier group raised $130,000 for the work.

The father is a clown, the mother is one of the eight immortals of the Ming Dynasty, a daughter is Madonna with child, one son is on a buffalo hunt, another is at the Gaucho Cross Corral and the third son is an Egyptian in the Shrine of Isis.

And despite their unusual adventures, for dinner they pack a sack lunch and eat it in their car.

The Chalfant family of Santa Ana--father Larry, mother Soledad, daughter Shelly and sons David, Andy and Christopher--are all cast members at the Pageant of the Masters living picture festival in Laguna Beach.

In real life Chalfant is a Marine gunnery sergeant.

Bob Roubian, 59, of Newport Beach, says his new record “Who Hears the Fishes When they Cry?” is selling pretty good.

He expected sales would only reach about 40 a year, but he’s already peddled 400 records at $1 each. That’s not bad considering he only sells them at his fish restaurant.

Roubian, a one-time singer who opted for the restaurant business, composed, arranged and sang the song that sends a message of the dangers of ocean pollution. He said he once had a national hit record in 1968 called “The Popcorn Song.” “The only time I write a song is when it’s busting to come out,” said the owner of the Crab Cooker. “Now that people are dumping waste and fouling up the ocean I had to say something about the reason fish cry.”

Yolanda Hernandez of Anaheim is one of those every-30,000th-visitor-to-Disneyland to win a new car, but because she’s only 14, she can’t drive the Chevrolet. “I think I’m going to sell it and put the money in the bank,” she said, “and buy a Volkswagen convertible when I’m 16.”

Santa Ana feed and pet store operator Jim Dillon wrote to say he stocks a new and more effective rat killer called Rat-A-Rest (RAR), but suggested it should be called R.I.P.

Acknowledgments--Marine Maj. Roderick M. Kippen, an Irvine resident who won a similar award in 1977, was chosen literary winner by the Freedoms Foundation of Valley Forge, Pa., for writing “Citizenship: My Rights and Responsibilities” . . . Ed Furtak of Santa Ana named chief of staff of the Washington office of U.S. Sen. John Glenn (D-Ohio), a 1984 presidential candidate.