People and Events

This time mercurial actor Sean Penn was firmly on the side of law and order. He made a citizen’s arrest of a man who allegedly rammed the gate of his Malibu estate. The fact that a couple of Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies were standing by didn’t hurt his chances for a successful collar.

Deputy Bill Wehner of the Sheriff’s Information Bureau said Steven Stillbower, 32, of Anaheim crashed through the closed gate Thursday morning, then got out of his truck and ran around the grounds before driving to the nearby home of his sister.

While Malibu deputies were taking a report from Penn, the sister telephoned the station to report that Stillbower had shown up. “He always comes to my house when he’s done something wrong,” she reportedly said.

The deputies drove Penn to the sister’s house, where he identified Stillbower as his unwelcome visitor and placed him under arrest. Under state law, explained Wehner, an arrest for a misdemeanor generally must be made by a person who has witnessed it.

Stillbower was booked on suspicion of trespassing.

The politicians are diving into the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel pool in an effort to rescue David Hockney’s underwater artwork.

County health officers gave the hotel until March 15 to erase Hockney’s mural--which has been described as “a school of swimming parentheses”--because state law says a pool’s bottom and sides must be plain white so that a swimmer in trouble is instantly visible.

At the urging of City Councilman Michael Woo, who represents Hollywood, state Assembly Speaker Pro Tem Mike Roos (D-Los Angeles) is introducing legislation that would permit paintings or decorative designs to remain on the bottom or walls of a very select category of public pools--those worth more than $1 million and those with decorations found by the California Arts Council to have “artistic significance.”

Hollywood Roosevelt publicist Jan Walner said the pool has been appraised at $1 million by “a gallery owner who is familiar with David’s work.”

The California Arts Council has not yet given its blessing and can’t before its next meeting Jan. 29, says Matthew Kennedy, executive assistant to the director.

How many other pools might meet Roos’ terms? Kennedy didn’t know, but he said there probably are some.

Regarding another Hollywood pool--the one in the YMCA--longtime swimming teacher Virginia Hunt Newman has been told she can no longer use the facility to instruct a 13-year-old boy with cerebral palsy.

Reason: the 66-year-old Newman has filed an age discrimination suit against the Y for firing her as a swimming teacher in 1985. Despite that, she continued to take young Brendan Koskoff to the Hollywood Y because, she says, it has the area’s only indoor pool with warm water.

Hollywood Y Executive Director Norris Lineweaver responds that even after Newman filed her suit and made print with it, he allowed her to instruct the boy there because “my main concern was Brendan’s welfare.” However, he says, he withdrew permission after “our attorney kind of raised his eyebrow.”

Lineweaver adds: “We still welcome Brendan and his family to our pool. The YMCA welcomes any opportunity to serve handicapped children and their families. It’s just that with pending litigation . . .”

Stephen Ambrose, the author of “Nixon: The Education of a Politician 1913-1962,” is coming to Whittier College as a visiting Nixon Scholar, the first since the endowed chair was named in 1972 to lecture on the subject of Nixon.

Italian-born Rick Cadelli says he has been an actor, a car salesman, a museum guard and a couple of other things. But for the last 12 years he has been a Southern California Rapid Transit District driver, and on Thursday he won first place in the RTD Riders’ Choice Awards.

Cadelli, who drives the Wilshire line, got 111 votes in the popularity contest, thus topping winners in 11 other RTD areas. Ballots were handed out to 60,000 riders, of whom about 1,300 actually voted.

Cadelli, who refuses to tell how old he is, said bus driving is “not exactly what I want, but my philosophy is to be happy and God knows what happens next.” His riders love that kind of stuff.

His prizes included a basketball autographed by the Los Angeles Clippers and a pair of season tickets to Clipper home games.