Son’s White House Stroll Has Mother Back in Harness

--Margaret Brock has gone back to work full time at the desk of a Colorado resort to help pay off legal debts her son has racked up because of an unauthorized stroll he took through the White House last January. “I’m pretty old to be doing this kind of stuff,” Brock, 80, said as she worked at the Glen Isle Resort near Bailey. “But I’d rather work to recoup the finances than ask for help.” Her son, Robert Latta, 45, went to Washington for the Inauguration Day ceremonies and followed the Marine Corps Band into the White House to get a better view. He was arrested. Since then, he has been jailed several times and has had to travel between Washington and Denver for court appearances. He returned to his Denver job of reading water meters, but his modest income could not cover his expenses. “Bob is broke,” his mother said. The total cost of the fiasco was about $8,000, she said. The mother retired four years ago but now is back to answering phones and booking reservations, and she even takes to the piano for the Wednesday night sing-alongs.

--Britain’s Prince Charles will visit Texas early next year to help mark the state’s 150th anniversary. Gov. Mark White said Charles has accepted an invitation to visit Dallas and other Texas cities from Feb. 17 to Feb. 21. In Dallas, the prince will present the Winston Churchill Award to businessman H. Ross Perot.

--Seven former students of transcendental meditation--in a suit filed in Washington--are suing the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi for $9 million, charging that the mystic caused them permanent physical and mental harm while trying to teach them to fly. The plaintiffs, six men and one women named in the suit as John or Jane Doe, say they were disillusioned to discover that “flying in fact constituted hopping with the legs folded in the lotus position.”

--Rock star Bruce Springsteen has donated $25,000 to a Miami food bank to help build a food storage warehouse, an official said. “We talked to Bruce before the concert about problems in our county, and he feels that, when he’s touring in a community, he should give a little back to that community,” Ilene Zweig, a spokeswoman for the Daily Bread Community Food Bank, said. Springsteen, who has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to food drives, veterans’ organizations and unemployment shelters, was in Miami for two sold-out concerts in the Orange Bowl, attracting an estimated 72,000 rock ‘n’ roll fans each night.