People and Events

Advertising man Bob Rosenberg spent a nervous five hours while a pug dog named Paddington Pug was wandering loose around Culver City.

The flashy collar Paddington Pug wore was a $20,000 diamond-studded necklace.

Rosenberg says Paddington was adorned with the sparkler last Thursday at a photographer’s studio to pose for an advertisement for Morgan & Co., the Westwood Village jewelry store owned by his master, Marcus Rosner. Everyone figured that it was the break Paddington needed to become as famous as Spuds MacKenzie.

But while all the human beings in the room were huddling over the advertising layout, Paddington slipped out an open door and made a break for it.

Rosenberg began calling animal shelters and “all the government agencies.” He says that his blood pressure was “like 160 over 200” and that he lost “about 10 years of life.”

Paddington’s freedom ended abruptly when the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals took him into custody without incident at Overland Avenue and Jefferson Boulevard, three or four blocks away, after a call from an alert citizen. With no I.D., he was booked as a stray.

Remarkably, he still wore the diamond necklace.

“When they called to find out if we had the dog, we asked if the necklace was real,” says Cpl. Marion Barnes, supervisor of the SPCA shelter. “At first they said it wasn’t.”

“Until it was in my hands,” Rosenberg says, “I wasn’t going to tell anybody.”

Streets in the Hunters Hill subdivision in the San Gabriel Valley city of Walnut have such Western names as Sagebrush Lane, Walking Horse Lane, White Horse Drive and Hidden Trail Place.

There also used to be a Tonto Circle.

Until someone pointed out that tonto is a Spanish word for “stupid” or “foolish.”

Now, says City Engineer Ron Kranzer, it will be Quail Ridge Circle.

First-place winner of Tuesday’s fourth annual Braille Institute Chili Cookoff for the blind at the institute’s Los Angeles facility was Vera Collins, an 81-year-old widow and retired office manager.

The Ventura woman is legally blind, but can see a little. She topped more than a dozen other contestants from Braille Institute centers around Southern California. Sighted volunteers were allowed to do no more than locate supplies for the cooks turning out their torrid specialties.

Collins said she doesn’t think her chili is all that hot, although “right now I can’t eat too much of it.” Her winning recipe:

1 lb. ground beef

1 medium onion, chopped

2 cups small red beans

1 can tomato paste

1 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon black pepper

1/8 teaspoon red pepper

1 tablespoon chili powder

1/2 teaspoon garlic powder

Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley arrives in Singapore today to boost foreign trade for Southern California.

Los Angeles County Supervisor Pete Schabarum is with a tour group in Korea--to boost foreign trade for Southern California.

County Chief Administrative Officer Richard B. Dixon also is in the Far East, exploring investments in foreign securities. Aiding him are County Counsel DeWitt Clinton and Treasurer-Tax Collector Sandra R. Tracey.

La Fay Davenport, owner of the Simply Raw Hair Designers salons in the Wilshire District and Panorama City, was distressed Tuesday when she began getting telephone calls from people wanting to know if she was dealing cocaine.

They sprang, she quickly discovered, from news stories about the filing of murder charges against alleged leaders of a drug ring known as the “Simply Raw Crew.”

She has used the name since 1981, Davenport said, drawing upon a bit of black community slang that means--depending upon whom one asks--really terrific, “bad” (in the good sense), natural or pure.

“It was catchy at the time,” Davenport explained.