This Spring Break Is No Vacation

--Fifteen students at Stanford University will not remember spring break 1988 as a time of fun in the sun and outrageous partying. They will remember it as a time when they gained a better insight into the homeless of America. In a program organized by Thomas McBride, associate dean of the Stanford Law School, the students spent a week in late March serving meals in Menlo Park and San Francisco, cooking and cleaning at a shelter in Santa Clara County and helping to build a greenhouse at a farm near Hollister. Jon Abernathy, a freshman, said he met many people who simply had the misfortune to lose a job. He said he was struck by how “normal” people can fall from penthouse to pavement--in an instant. “You can fall so quickly,” he said. Melissa Pashigian, a junior and project coordinator, said the homeless often “cheat the system” in trying to get their lives back together. The students said that when social workers learn that homeless people are saving money from welfare allotments--for a rental deposit, for instance--those savings are deducted from future payments. “The system doesn’t let you die,” James Rucker, a freshman, said, “but it keeps you at a certain (low) level.”

--To French pop musician Rene Bricka, the Atlantic Ocean has become his stage. Since Friday, Bricka, 39, has been “walking” from Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Spain--in the Canary Islands--to the Caribbean island of Guadeloupe--3,750 miles. At last count, he’s covered about 45 miles on his two 15-foot polyester skis. He also uses an oar to propel himself and is towing a rubber dinghy for sleeping and for stowing his fishing gear, clothes and radio. The well-known one-man band is trying to show that man can survive at sea by using his own resources. Bricka, who figures he will end his odyssey in about 10 weeks, expects to live on fish and rainwater. “He has had a lot of wind and a lot of currents, so far,” Marie-Rose Regnier, his girlfriend, said Sunday.

--David Scott, 25, of Montreal is pondering an offer he may not be able to refuse. Scott, an Elvis Presley look-alike, has been offered a “six-figure sum” to sell his Presley Army uniform. The Presley estate gave it to him in honor of his portrayal of the King in a 1981 docudrama entitled “This Is Elvis.” Now, Fred Polansky, owner of the Ribbies, a Montreal chicken-and-ribs restaurant, wants to use the uniform to promote his business. “There’s only one in the world,” Polansky said. Scott said his decision is all the more difficult because the uniform has a sentimental value. He’s also considering an offer from a museum in Memphis, Tenn.