People and Events

Lanky Topanga chimney sweep Jonathan Seutter, 30, struck out from San Francisco City Hall on roller skates Thursday noon, headed for Los Angeles with a trailing support vehicle and a van full of Japanese TV camermen bent on showing what life is like in the United States.

The 6-foot 7-inch, 160-pound Seutter, who wears a tuxedo and top hat when sweeping chimneys, hopes to arrive at Los Angeles City Hall before noon Sunday, thus becoming the first person to skate the 400 or so miles solo.

He said a 14-man team did it in five days in 1980.

His only real worries, he confided before takeoff, are the odors around the stockyards near Hanford, the prospect of tough skating through construction-project gravel scattered along 70 miles of the Interstate 5 freeway and the tough uphill Grapevine south of Bakersfield.

Seutter will be easily recognized along the highway, dressed as he is in red-and-black vest-like jacket, a T-shirt bearing the names of 13 sponsors, black tights and roller skates.

“I’ve skated it before,” he said. “It’s long, real long.”

Ellen Meloeny’s calico cat finally turned up Wednesday. But not before it had managed to put some home-building plans on hold.

Meloeny’s search for Maggie, missing for three days, led her on Tuesday into a vacant lot near her Woodland Hills home. She spotted a few inches of old tombstone jutting out of the ground and bearing the crude inscription, “Mom T.”

Being a history lover, Meloeny was sufficiently fascinated to get down on her hands and knees to dig with a stick. The fact that she was eight months pregnant didn’t make it any easier.

She uncovered more of the tombstone and read, “Born 1811, Died May, 1846. Lay in Peace.”

A neighbor helped her uncover another headstone: “E.K. Cuppe. Born 1811.”

John Parker, director of UCLA’s Regional Archeological Information Center, said the headstones may be those of Anglo settlers who began moving into the San Fernando Mission District with the demise of the mission system in the 1830s.

The historical find, said a Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety official, could raise problems for buyers planning to build a house on the lot.

Debbie Crowley, whose acquisition of the property is in escrow, said she had walked around it at least 100 times without ever seeing any headstones. “I don’t know if I want to build my house over a bunch of graves,” she said.

Los Angeles city animal regulation officers have been doing some deer hunting around the Hollywood Hills--but with the best of intentions.

A doe seen wandering down to a brushy spot near Barham Boulevard and Riverside Drive with a fawn and a yearling has what appears to be a 20-inch-long crossbow bolt protruding from her neck. The officers want to capture her long enough to remove it.

“Our guys got close,” said Department of Animal Regulation spokesman Dyer Huston , “but just as they were attempting to fire the tranquilizer projectile, the yearling jumped and she turned her head. We missed her by about two inches.”

The doe’s dilemma was reported to the city a week ago. Although she seems to be healthy enough at the moment, Huston said, officers are worried about infection and the possibility that she could become entangled in underbrush.

As it turned out, there was no bomb, but security guards at the ARCO refinery in Carson were taking no chances Thursday morning when a 32-year-old man drove onto the grounds of the refinery and reportedly walked around for a while before telling them that his car was filled with explosives.

“The whole thing could go poof,” ARCO safety manager Bob Moschetta quoted the intruder as saying.

The security men called sheriff’s deputies. The sheriff’s bomb squad found no explosives.

The man, identified as Peter Warner, was held for psychological evaluation. ARCO officials said he was not an employee of the company. His motive was unknown.

The first sheriff’s deputy on the scene was named Jay De Boom.

When Mayor Tom Bradley wings to far off places, his City Hall staff is usually only too happy that reporters know of it.

But not this week. The Mayor left for New York and Atlanta Wednesday without a peep, and queries about his whereabouts were met with a curious lack of information.

“I don’t even know where he’s going and what he is doing,” press secretary Fred MacFarlane said when asked Thursday morning.

Later in the day, MacFarlane acknowledged that Bradley was gone in search of political campaign funds. The mayor still owes money from his 1986 race for governor, and is starting to prepare for a reelection campaign in 1989.