People and Events

“I’m tenacious,” the Coyote Lady admitted. “I never give up.”

It’s been a long time coming for tough, diminutive Lila Brooks, founder-director of California Wildlife Defenders, but on Wednesday, she struck a blow for the coyotes--who might not think so.

The Los Angeles City Council’s Police, Fire and Public Safety Committee unanimously approved a ban on the feeding of coyotes and other wild animals. Full council passage is expected.

For five years, Brooks has been nudging for such an ordinance, finally persuading Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky to sponsor it. She got the county supervisors to pass a similar ban for unincorporated areas in 1981. Pasadena, South Pasadena, Glendale, Burbank and Claremont have also recognized that they were overmatched and have surrendered to her iron will.

Brooks argues that feeding coyotes and other wild creatures makes them unafraid to come into populated neighborhoods to be poisoned or “caught in those cruel traps and lose their lives.”

Coyotes, she said, “don’t belong in backyards. They belong up in the hills to perform their natural function. They keep down the rats.”

Although he now says he supports the ordinance as a complement to the city’s program of warning citizens not to lure coyotes into urban areas, Animal Regulation chief Robert I. Rush has opposed it in the past. He has contended that it would force feeders to do it on the sly. People, he said, “won’t turn in a neighbor for feeding wildlife if it’s going to result in a criminal rap.”

“Like hell they won’t,” Brooks responded.

Santa Claus also knuckled under Wednesday, but he said the fight won’t be over until he drives away “those Scrooges” from Glendale City Hall who invoked zoning laws to kill the Christmas spirit.

Robert George, 64, long-time White House Santa, signed an agreement not to keep his house on Alameda Street aglitter year-around with 52,000 Christmas lights, 10,000 ornaments, nearly 100 Christmas trees, a 14-foot Styrofoam reindeer and a roofload of phony snow.

Under the pact, his winter wonderland will be restricted to the period between Nov. 26 and Jan. 5. Nor will he be able to admit groups of disabled, terminally ill and just plain poor children any old time. He will be limited, he said, to “two terminally ill children a month.”

George said he plans to run for the Glendale City Council “because of what they have tried to do to me and to the spirit of Christmas for all those underprivileged children and all the people all over the world.”

City Hall, he insisted, “needs a cleaning and Santa Claus is going to have to do it.”

George answered his telephone, “37 days.”

He didn’t say to what.

It was expected to be pretty exciting for the kids at the private Sheenway School in Watts on Wednesday when 11-year-old Yvonne Krawiec of Hacienda Heights, world chess champ for children 12 and under, dropped around to explain the game.

With a new computer donated by a manufacturer, Sheenway Executive Director Dolores Blunt hopes to organize a computer pen pal network with schools all over the county. Her students and those in such exotic places as South Gate could link up for computer chess games and eventually hold face-to-face tournaments.

Young Ms. Krawiec, who learned chess from her father and won her title last summer in Puerto Rico, told Sheenway students she practices an hour a day.

“It’s fun,” she said, “and I like to get to go places to play. I’ve been to 22 states.”

Blunt asked if there were any questions.

A 6-year-old boy was the only one to raise his hand. “Yes,” he said. “Can I use the bathroom?”

That’s not their man, says Pacific Bell of the person who has been calling homes at odd hours, claiming to be a Pac Bell employee investigating telephone credit card fraud.

According to the company, some customers in the 213, 805 and 916 code areas have already been victimized, willingly telling the caller their card numbers.

The numbers, Pac Bell says, are being sold to people who use them to make long-distance calls billed to . . . guess who.

Just Monday, a company spokeswoman noted, 180 long-distance calls were charged to a Sacramento subscriber who had given his number to the unknown con man just three hours earlier.

Wait until the bill gets there.