People and Events

Eleven years ago, William Schuberth III retired. Then, he got tired. Tired of golf. Tired of fishing. A surfeit of fun is no fun.

On Friday, the 76-year-old Schuberth, who spent his career at an administrator’s desk, climbed into his green Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department jump suit, ready for another day of action.

“We told him there was no need for him to work today,” said Sgt. Ron Williams at the La Crescenta sheriff’s station, where Schuberth was honored Friday for more than 5,000 hours of volunteer work. “He says things have to be done.”

For nearly four years, five days a week, the La Canada man has done things--like running errands for narcotics investigators, including transporting as much as $50,000 in confiscated cash (“I had no idea”) and driving food to rescue teams in the mountains.

As he said at a dinner honoring volunteers, “I’ve done everything but command the station.”

What Schuberth seems to enjoy best, after a sedate career of industrial relations, is the Code-3 fantasy: road-testing every new patrol car as he drives it from the delivery point to the station--light bars, sirens, “the works.”

“I’ve driven every car we’ve got on the lot here in the last three years.”

Schuberth is “delighted” with his avocation. So, he says, is his wife of 53 years. “I stay out of her hair.”

She was one of the biggest box-office draws in history, the darling of Hollywood. She made 35 films and won the hearts of most of her leading men--many of them married. She snuggled unashamedly in the laps of filmdom’s greats such as Lionel Barrymore. She even cuddled up with once and future Presidents--Franklin D. Roosevelt and her co-star, Ronald Reagan.

And today, Shirley Temple turns 60 years old.

An Oscar winner at age 6, Shirley Temple Black--former ambassador to Ghana and vice president of the American Academy of Diplomacy--plans to publish her autobiography, “Child Star,” this fall.

Those old movies, such as “The Little Colonel” and “Curly Top,” in which she is invariably a spunky, dimpled scene stealer, are international ice-breakers, Black says.

Thanks to them, the world is still animal crackers in her borscht: “Just about everyone knows Shirley Temple. They consider me a friend before they meet me. . . . I have friends in some places in many parts of the world even the U.S. government doesn’t have.”

Maybe that’s what they mean by “young at heart.”

The Hyatt Hotel billboard alongside the Santa Ana Freeway in Commerce--the visual fortune cookie with a daily adage for commuters--may have perked them up a little too much Friday.

A typo in 16-inch letters rendered a quote from German poet Goethe as “Life Is The Childhood Of Our Imorality.”

By noon, the hotel’s epigram selector, Cristina Potter, had mended the maxim; Goethe meant “immortality.”

“How embarrassing,” Potter said. “One lady called and said, ‘Do you know about your sign? I thought you meant it as a joke.’ ”

Still, it was a nice segue to today’s aphorism (“if it will fit,” says Potter): “All the things we like to do are illegal, immoral or fattening.”

Monday launches National Secretaries’ Week, and for all those secretaries who receive designer chocolates such as Godiva from their bosses, remember this:

Lady Godiva made her mark riding bareback--to protest unfair taxes.

The National Assn. of Working Women is advising office workers “to say, ‘Thanks very much. I love chocolates, I love flowers, and I’d like to ask you to extend that recognition to the other 364 days a year and give me a raise or improve my working conditions.’ ”

Deborah Meyer, in the group’s Cleveland headquarters, tells clerical workers--who earn on average $14,000 a year--to seize the moment. “There are all kinds of jokes you hear around Secretaries’ Week--’when you’re gone, it’s total chaos,’ which is true. So let’s recognize that, not just with chocolates and lunch, but with promotions and raises. The things other employees like, we like too.”

For its part, the Los Angeles chapter says in its recorded message that it is marking the week with a survey on employee surveillance, to find out “if your boss is bugging you.”