Week in Review : MAJOR EVENTS, IMAGES AND PEOPLE IN ORANGE COUNTY NEWS. : NEWSMAKERS

It took the sponsorship of the First Christian Church in Orange, the Interfaith Peace Ministry of Orange County and the Society for Cultural Relations between the Soviet Union and the United States, but their efforts brought to Orange Anatoly Sokolov, the 41-year-old minister of a Baptist church in a suburb of Moscow.

About 300 people came to the First Christian Church to hear him speak.

“I was flying more than 20 hours to come to your country to proclaim the Gospel and pray together with you. It is worth to fly so much,” Sokolov said in a thick accent.

“Our two great countries have so many barriers--the hours, the water, the language--but when I come personally to your church, I feel at home,” he said.

Responded Claudia Highbaugh, a black woman who is the church’s associate minister: “Here we are in Orange County, the bastion of what some would call conservatism, and you have a black woman minister preaching after a Soviet Baptist minister. . . . This morning we celebrate the unity of faith.”

When they found Baby Doe in the trash bin on a cold night in Orange, he was at most 4 hours old.

His temperature had fallen below what hospital thermometers could read--somewhere in the mid-80s--and his heart was beating at about a third the normal rate. Under such circumstances, paramedics are instructed not to try to do anything, just to “scoop and run” to the nearest neonatal intensive care unit.

Four days later came good news. A doctor at Childrens Hospital of Orange County declared Baby Doe’s condition to be “pretty good. He won’t be in here that long.” County child care officials said their phones “have been ringing off the hook with people who want to take (Baby Doe) in as a foster child or adopt him.”

The bad news: Baby Doe is just one of “many who are brought in here,” said Bill Steiner, director of Orangewood Children’s Home, the county’s emergency shelter. A 16-month-old boy had been abandoned the same day Baby Doe was.

“Let’s hope this tragic situation isn’t going to recur in the near future,” Steiner said.

Could tough-talking Rep. Robert K. Dornan (R-Garden Grove) be in trouble this election year?

Could be, says Steve Teichner, whose Santa Ana polling firm surveyed Dornan’s 38th Congressional District for KABC-TV. “I label this a contested seat,” he said.

Teichner’s poll of 405 Republican and Democratic voters showed that 36% would vote for Dornan and only 26% would vote for one of the two Democrats opposing him. But a whopping 38% did not know how they would vote. Those figures, Teichner said, clearly show Dornan is vulnerable.

Dornan disagreed. He said his showing was 8% weaker at this stage of the campaign when he first ran two years ago, yet he eventually ousted incumbent Democrat Jerry Patterson with 55% of the vote. Dornan said he thinks he’ll win reelection by the same margin.

The poll also showed that Democrats who had a preference (48% did not) favored Assemblyman Richard Robinson (D-Garden Grove) over Superior Court Judge David O. Carter, 33% to 19%, as their candidate in the race.