Tourist Knows What’s in a Name

--”Sorry, you have a wrong number. Sorry, you have a wrong. . . .” And on and on it went. Sri Lanka called to offer gifts; French businessmen requested meetings. But Ronald K. Ragen turned them all down. “They wanted the other guy,” said the Oregon lawyer, who just happens to be staying this week at the same hotel as the President. “It happens all the time.” Ragen, vacationing with his family, is staying at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in midtown Manhattan. President Reagan, in New York to address the U.N. General Assembly and meet with foreign leaders, has a suite in the adjacent Waldorf Towers. The Presidential Suite. “When we arrived, they sent us to the tower by mistake,” Ragen said. “They ushered us back quickly.” But the hotel switchboard has not been as successful as security men in discerning the difference between the lawyer from Portland and the chief executive from Washington. Ragen’s phone has been ringing off the hook. And it’s happened before. The Barclay Hotel once gave Ronald Ragen a fancy suite, thinking he was Ronald Reagan. “They let us keep the suite when they found out, which was very nice,” he said. This time, Ragen has kept busy turning away people with foreign accents making offers for Reagan. As far as anyone knows, the President has not had to field any of the lawyer’s calls.

--Walter Polovchak registered with the Selective Service System at a Chicago post office. The youth, who triggered a long court battle by refusing to return to the Soviet Union with his parents, became a U.S. citizen on Oct. 8, five days after his 18th birthday. He said he would serve in the military if necessary, but “right now, I have to think about continuing my education.”

--Liver transplant recipient Jamie Fiske says she doesn’t like it in the hospital. But her father, who in 1982 made an emotional, televised plea for a liver donor to save her life, is happy to check her into the University of Minnesota Hospitals in Minneapolis for annual tests on her transplanted organ. “She does everything a 3- or 4-year-old should be doing,” Charles Fiske said as Jamie danced and demonstrated karate kicks.

--Iceland’s female president, Vigdis Finnbogadottir, joined tens of thousands of women employees and housewives who walked off the job in Reykjavik, in a mass 24-hour protest against male privilege on the island skirting the Arctic Circle. Women make up more than half of Iceland’s population of 240,000 and 80% of them go to work. They generally earn 40% less than men, although they are entitled to equal pay for the same job. They own only 10% of the island’s property and are virtually excluded from top jobs.