People and Events
About 60 creditors who are owed an estimated $7 million by the purported former mistress of the ever-popular Ferdinand Marcos and by her husband probably are going to get about 10 cents on the dollar, figures bankruptcy trustee James Stang.
Several small contractors hired by Dovie Beams and Sergio de Villagran complain of severe financial problems as a result of being stiffed on their fees in the couple’s effort to turn a 7-acre Pasadena estate into another Hearst’s Castle.
The contractors who did lavish landscaping, put in a half-million-dollar pool and other little necessities say they were told money was no object.
Both De Villagrans have been sentenced to federal prison for bank fraud.
Stang says the couple initially owed about $23 million, but that was reduced by the sale of 19 homes Mrs. De Villagran owned in Beverly Hills. Selling them wasn’t that easy, he concedes, because she tried to hold her own auction of the properties at the Beverly Wilshire in May, 1986, and “apparently it was total chaos. . . . It left a bad taste in the mouths of the real estate community.”
The contractors and other creditors will have a chance to vote on his plan for divvying up what’s left after a Feb. 11 bankruptcy court hearing.
Downey Police Chief Pete Stone thinks he has hit upon a nifty idea for lowering the decibel level at loud parties: Charge the celebrants at least $50 each time the cops have to return within a 12-hour period.
No charge for the first call.
Stone says his officers get hundreds of such complaints a year and suggested that the proposed ordinance could apply in some domestic disputes.
The chief came up with his rate schedule after calculating the cost of officers’ time and the use of equipment, which probably does not include an all-out SWAT team response. He told the Downey City Council that the fees could be enforced through a collection agency or through small claims court.
Nevertheless, the council members Tuesday night postponed consideration of the proposal until they can hear more about whether it would be worth it.
One more note about Loekie:
Trans World Airlines officials say Dutch composer Leo Koewe will be compensated as much as $1,250 for “damaged baggage” in the death of his pet dog, who escaped from a travel kennel at the St. Louis airport and was run over by a car.
It was not yet known how much Koewe, who caught public attention when he began a fast outside the TWA terminal here, intends to claim. “We’ll certainly work with him on it,” TWA spokesman Robert Blattner said.
Meanwhile, the 50-year-old musician from The Hague said he would bury Loekie in his sister’s garden near Dallas.
Marine biologist Dennis Kelly’s plans for a bottlenose count along the local coast got something of a push at a Marina del Rey press conference when the publishers of the Southern California NYNEX Boaters Directory pitched in $500 and said they will tell boaters how to recognize that particular variety of dolphin and where to report sightings.
Although Kelly’s census is to be made from shore by volunteers with binoculars and telescopes, he was pleased with the help. It has, he said, caused him to be “a little more ambitious.”
Hence, for two hours on March 19, he hopes to have volunteers roughly a mile apart from the Mexican border to Point Conception “so that we can find out how many dolphins there are, how many groups there are, where they are and how many babies are in each group.”
The survey is being organized with the help of such folks as Toni Gudish and the Dolphin Data Base in the South Bay area. Prospective dolphin spotters can also reach marine biology professor Kelly at Orange Coast College in Costa Mesa.
Volunteers “don’t have to be scientists,” he stressed. “We just want eyes all along the coast.”
A principal goal of the effort, said Kelly, is to study the effects of ocean pollution on bottlenose dolphins in the hope of preventing a recurrence of last summer’s wave of bottlenose deaths along the East Coast.
Confirming what you read at the supermarket checkout stand, actor Bruce Willis’ publicity man said Wednesday the portrayer of the flip detective on “Moonlighting” and his wife, actress Demi Moore, are expecting a child this fall.
That will be about a year after his co-star, Cybill Shepherd, gave birth to twins.
