People and Events

Nearly 50 alleged cocaine customers were busted by Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies who posed as pushers at a Lennox house and on a Lynwood street corner after residents in both areas complained that the drug business was brisk.

Not all the suspects could read too well, apparently.

As the sting operation was winding down at the house, a sheriff’s deputy standing outside was approached by two men who said they wanted to buy some coke. Either they didn’t notice or didn’t believe what was printed across the back of the deputy’s green nylon jacket:

SHERIFF.

His cap, according to Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department Information Deputy Richard Dinsmore, bore the word NARCOTICS and the letters LASD.

Dinsmore said the two were arrested for soliciting the sale of cocaine.

There is no surcease, it seems, in the love-gone-sour battle between Playboy magazine publisher Hugh Hefner and his former live-in, Carrie Leigh.

Leigh and her attorney, Marvin Mitchelson, on Thursday sued Hefner for slander. They claim he accused them of criminal acts when he held a press conference on the unpleasant business earlier this month.

Leigh, 24, earlier filed a $35-million palimony suit against the 61-year-old publisher, contending that he reneged on promises to marry her, buy her a house in Malibu and give her children.

Hefner filed a cross-complaint, accusing Leigh of going back on her own promise to be faithful. At that time, according to the latest suit filed by Leigh and Mitchelson, he falsely charged them with engaging in “a criminal conspiracy” and in “a criminal misuse of the judicial process.”

Leigh and Mitchelson want $16 million each for that one.

As reported here a couple of weeks ago, Glendale police Officer Robert Masucci finally met the father of Air Force Capt. Martin Massucci. The name of the captain, who vanished in Vietnam, was on the name on the missing-in-action bracelet that Robert Masucci bought when he was 14 years old.

Masucci, now 30, was so struck by the similarity of their names that he stayed in touch with the father, Arthur Massucci, of Royal Oak, Mich., over the last 16 years and had dinner with him when the older man came here to visit friends.

Among those who noticed the item about the meeting were two other Southern Californians who bought--and still have--MIA bracelets bearing the name of Capt. Martin Massucci.

One of them was John Bozzi, who works for the state as an outreach programmer for disabled veterans. He lives in Alta Loma--only a few miles from the home of Glendale policeman Masucci.

He immediately called Masucci. “I just wanted to tell him that he was not the only one out there with Martin’s bracelet,” Bozzi said Thursday.

The other Massucci bracelet holder is Colin Brown, a Brentwood nursing home operator.

“I don’t know if he (Capt. Massucci) is still alive,” Brown said. “But it’s interesting the bracelets are still around.”

Bozzi said: “I hope and pray he’s still alive, but you’ve got to be a little realistic. I would have to say the chances are running out.”

Students of Lampton Elementary School in Norwalk have been picked to help promote the second annual Great American Roach-Off, but they haven’t heard about it yet. They’ll get the details at an assembly right after Easter.

Then they will be told that they--like students at any other school--can either hunt for the biggest cockroach in the United States or raise it. An exterminator and a couple of entomologists from UC Riverside will be at the assembly, said Nancy Robinson, science reading resource teacher at the school, “to tell them how to feed a cockroach.”

When submitted, however, all entries must be dead and must not be stretched, squished or smashed.

The nationwide competition is supposed to make people more aware of the things and how to get rid of them. Irvine-based Western Exterminator Co. is sponsoring the regionals for California and Arizona. The regional winners will be eligible for national competition, for which another anti-roach outfit is putting up more of the prize money.

“Our school is very much into animals,” Robinson said. “We have chickens and ducks and little spiders in cages and toads in our science lab. So I think the students will accept it well. The teachers, I’m not sure about.”

The national winner of last year’s first annual Roach-Off was found by a middle school student in Hollywood, Fla. It was 2-inches long.