People and Events

After a six-year relationship, said a Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals investigator, Guadalupe Rodriguez and her boyfriend were breaking up. She was moving out of their Los Angeles apartment. Acquaintances said she complained that he loved her less than he loved his yellow-cheeked Amazon parrot, Ringo.

Before she left, according to Los Angeles SPCA Humane Officer Tiana Turner, the 25-year-old woman put Ringo into a baking dish and slid it into the oven, which she turned on to 450 degrees.

The boyfriend, whom Turner declined to identify, returned and found the bird baked to death. It had managed to escape from the covered dish and had scratched up the inside of the oven in its desperate effort to escape. It still clung upside down to the rack.

The boyfriend caught up with Rodriguez. They fought. She called police and he was arrested on suspicion of assault and battery.

Released on bail, he telephoned the SPCA. Turner showed up to investigate. Although the boyfriend declined to prosecute, Rodriguez was arrested Thursday night on suspicion of cruelty to animals, a felony. She was jailed at Sybil Brand Institute.

“We’ve been finding a lot of cases like this lately,” Turner said, “somebody out to hurt the other person and taking it out on an animal.”

Former cab driver Abraham Balmazyam may not collect his fare, but at least the man he accuses of conning him into a ride to Austin, Tex., is finally in custody.

Marshal Fink, 25, was arrested in Austin Thursday night, said Travis County prosecutor Ken Oden, and is being held on suspicion of giving Balmazyam a bum $1,000 check to drive him from Los Angeles International Airport to the Texas capital last May.

Balmazyam, 23, apparently fell for Fink’s “big shot” line, said Oden, who suggested that the cabbie is not alone in that respect. Fink is being investigated, he said, in such other alleged scams as promoting a mythical $50-a-plate dinner to benefit the homeless. Ronald Reagan, no less, was to be a guest.

Balmazyam immediately quit his cab job and now drives a truck.

Things are now set for a party to help Louis Michael Tamale settle the lawsuit over his refusal to allow disabled Sandy Oseas, 47, to take her 65-pound poodle, Landmark, into his Encino restaurant. Oseas, Landmark and a lot of their friends are invited.

Next Saturday’s affair at the Spastic Children’s Foundation in Sylmar is expected to be attended by more than 100, including blind and disabled adults and children as well as their guide dogs.

Oseas, of West Hills, sued Tamale because Landmark was not allowed to enter Mr. Tamale’s Gourmet Mexican Delicatessen during an Encino Chamber of Commerce meeting last June. Her argument that Landmark was a licensed service dog and she is a spinal injury victim did not dissuade him.

Attorney Gloria Allred, known for taking up such causes, eventually did.

Tamale closed down his restaurant last September and now provides tamales to various delis.

It was not just a whim that prompted Assistant Police Chief Robert Vernon to suggest that Los Angeles cops might learn something in the way of courtesy from the Nordstrom department store chain.

Vernon said his wife shops at the Glendale Galleria and “happens to be particularly pleased with the salespeople she deals with at Nordstrom. . . . There’s a certain attitude they seem to have.”

Vernon, who told a City Council committee that he has sent several LAPD officers over to see the store folks about their training methods, made it clear that he does not depend entirely on his wife for department improvement ideas.

“She called my attention to it,” he said, “but I’ve heard it from so many people. They’re obviously doing something right.”

Of course “the customer is always right” may not always apply in a street scuffle.

It was a long wait for Long Beach police fingerprint technician Al Rivera, but he finally got his man. After an 89-year-old Long Beach resident was murdered during a residential burglary in 1981, a single thumb print was found on a doorjamb.

For six years, Rivera had a photo of the print on his desk, along with several others. “It was just the nature of the crime,” he says in explaining why he kept it. “It was the only one . . . at the crime scene and the print itself was very clear.”

He says he virtually memorized the thumb print’s patterns and characteristics. Then, early last year, he suddenly saw it again in the prints of Reginald Wimberly, 33, arrested for trying to use a stolen credit card in a Long Beach store. An excited Rivera let out a yell.

Last week, Wimberly was sentenced to 40 years to life in prison.