Local News in Brief

Computers, presumably, are no mystery to Raphael Cordero either. The 36-year-old former programmer who says he once was known as “Computer Whiz Kid to the Stars,” heads the Burbank-based American Centenarian Committee, a nonprofit organization to help people 100 or older “interface with the community.”

By that, Cordero said, he means to get them outside the convalescent hospitals once in a while and let them be part of the real world again through the Adopt a Centenarian Program.

“Most of our centenarians have outlived their immediate family,” Cordero said. “They have not interfaced with children or the general public for years. Some haven’t put on cologne or perfume or received a new robe, new night light or flowers in many, many years.”

A lot of them, he added, “welcome putting on a Walkman for the first time and listening to stereo.”

Cordero and his group are working on a plan to have 102-year-old Percy Washington make talks to sixth-, seventh- and eighth-graders in the Los Angeles city schools to help “create positive attitudes about aging.”

Almost anything, of course, is possible.