People and Events

A Beverly Hills lawyer is paying his $28,000 child-support bill with his 1972 Rolls-Royce.

Michael Lyons, 35, was arrested a week ago after failing to appear in court, district attorney’s officials said. So the county took the car, valued at $35,000, and will sell it to pay off the debt. Lyons said he was unable to pay the $1,500-a-month child support because he had been out of work until last month.

“At one point, I had a lot of money, and she (the mother, Marilyn Cole) thinks I still do,” he said.

Misery loves company, but the nine adults and two children on their way to visit relatives in the downtown county jail, didn’t expect to be imprisoned. The visitors and a deputy were stuck between the fourth and fifth floors in the jail elevator for a half hour Wednesday night, before firefighters rescued them.

Sheriff’s Deputy Robert Norris saw red--and it led to the arrest of an alleged bank robber. The law officer was patrolling Pacific Coast Highway in Lomita on Wednesday when he saw Bryan Maurice Roger, 42, crossing the street, enveloped in an unusual cloud of red smoke.

Roger, who also had red spatters on his face, hands and arms, disappeared into a parking lot. When Norris caught up with him, Roger was carrying a white T-shirt and $2,800 in bills, which were also covered with the red stuff, deputies said.

A dye packet, which bank tellers had slipped into the money, detonated with “perfect timing” just as Roger crossed the road, deputies said. Roger “just stood there and looked at me like a kid caught with his hand stuck in a cookie jar,” Norris said.

Roger was booked on federal charges of suspicion of bank robbery.

When President Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev signed their arms treaty this week, Laney Pace watched on TV. And she thought it was a good time to celebrate by breaking open her old bottle of fine Russian perfume.

The 70-year-old retired Los Angeles cafeteria manager said she received the bottle from friends when they returned from the Soviet Union in the 1950s. At the time she collected perfume and stashed it away.

She doesn’t know much about her keepsake. The perfume has not evaporated, and the black bottle with leather trim still carries the inscription, in English, “product of Russia.” Even more puzzling to Pace than how much the bottle might be worth as a collector’s item, if anything, is how to open the bottle. There is no cork, stopper or seals. “I’m really curious,” Pace said. Considering all the questions raised, the fragrance is aptly named: Enigma.

“I’m going to keep it forever,” said Narciso Rodarte, referring to the gold and red T-shirts he and 57 other kindergarten students at Ann Street School received to remind them that they will be part of the high school graduation “Class of 2000”--if they stay in school.

Noting that student dropout rates are shockingly high, Principal Ann Elder explained, “Research shows that what happens to kids at 4, 5 and 6, whether positive or negative, is hard to undo. So we are trying to make school a very positive experience and reinforce the idea that they should graduate.” The “Class of 2000” T-shirts were a gift of the school’s enrichment sponsor, the Department of Water and Power.

Narciso, who participated in the ceremony, vowed to graduate so that he could become a dentist when he grows up. “It’s a good job. They take off teeth that are hurting and then they grow in again,” he said.