People and Events

The news may not be bad for all drivers pulled over by police in Long Beach in the coming weeks.

They may simply get the bird--for being nice to others.

Beginning Thursday, Long Beach police will begin a four-week program in which courteous motorists, bicyclists and pedestrians will win vouchers for free Thanksgiving turkeys.

“We’ll be looking for people who do not do all those things that generally get people aggravated,” Cmdr. Charles Parks said.

The giveaway idea was borrowed from a friend on the San Diego Police Department, he said. A similar program has been tried in Los Angeles as well.

Officers will hand out 100 vouchers redeemable at Ralphs or Giant supermarkets for a 14-pound hen turkey.

Of course, nobody ever says anything nice about rush hour traffic, and that presumably includes Barry Lloyd, 24.

Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies say Lloyd, of Santa Ana, reached into the car of Betty Matsudo, 57, of Montebello, and grabbed her purse when she pulled into a Pico Rivera service station shortly after 5 p.m.

Matsudo struggled, but lost the purse to the grabber, who ran. Robert Munoz, 35, heard her screams and took out after him. Another witness, Michael Delgado, 21, called sheriff’s deputies and then sprinted to help Munoz.

Lloyd, say deputies, was having his troubles. He jumped in his car and tried to escape, but bumper-to-bumper traffic congestion trapped him. So did Munoz and Delgado. They held him for deputies.

Persistent is the word for Terri Grieb. Relentless, in fact.

Eight years ago, she began searching for her mother, who had five children--each of whom, Grieb said, had a different father and each of whom had been given up for adoption. Grieb, now 29 and living in Orlando, Fla., managed to trace her mother to Los Angeles, only to learn she died here in 1974.

The death certificate, however, offered Grieb the name of her eldest half-sister, Cathy Natoli, now 36, whom she had never known. She decided to look for her. She tracked Natoli’s former husband in Rhode Island. He didn’t know where his ex-wife was, but told her where to find a good friend.

That led to Cathy Natoli herself, a legal secretary living in Van Nuys. Natoli was already in touch with their half-brother, Douglas Hill, 25, a Los Angeles carpenter.

So after eight years of running classified ads in newspapers, calling people all over the country and checking birth and death records, Terri Grieb has finally met a half-brother and half-sister she had never seen.

“I tell you, she’s a sharp lady,” Natoli said. “Now we’re going to look for the other two.”

They are the third half-sister, Debbie, believed to have been adopted in New York City more than 30 years ago, and a half-brother, whose name and history are totally unknown to them.

“We’ll find ‘em,” Grieb said.

Constituent Thelma Moeller was sitting in the outer office of Rep. Elton Gallegly in Chatsworth on Friday when the Republican congressman’s predecessor, Bobbi Fiedler, arrived for a meeting.

Moeller recognized Fiedler, jumped to her feet and grasped the former congresswoman’s hand eagerly. “Senator!” she exclaimed.

Fiedler, who finished a distant fourth in the 1986 Republican primary for the seat held by Sen. Alan Cranston (D-Calif.), smiled tightly. “Didn’t make it,” she said. “But we tried.”

Along with some of his friends, Sun Valley’s John Simonson, a former journalist who recently finished law school, is offering a free I SENT IT BACK bumper sticker to anyone who wants it.

Simonson says the idea is to make people who return their state tax rebates to the governor or to a state educational fund “feel good about themselves.”

Simonson doesn’t know how many his group will hand out, but “I hope we don’t end up with 500 bumper stickers in the garage.” They cost him and a friend $250.