People and Events

Danny Mata, 30, of Highland Park was in serious condition late Friday, but that was better than the first report.

The California Highway Patrol said Mata was riding his motorcycle without a helmet when he crashed on the transition road from the northbound Corona Expressway to the westbound San Bernardino Freeway about 5:30 a.m.

CHP spokesman Monty Keifer said Mata managed to crawl up an embankment, where he was found by an unidentified nurse on her way to work. She stopped, concluded that he was dead and covered him.

Paramedics arrived and soon discovered that he was not dead. They took him to Pomona Valley Community Hospital with head injuries.

Keifer said he didn’t know who the nurse is or where she works.

If you were thinking of bidding on the Oscar that was retrieved from a Santa Monica pawn shop and advertised for sale by Hollywood memorabilia dealer Malcolm Willits, forget it.

Robert Herts has changed his mind and has decided to keep it.

Herts, now in the industrial real estate development business, received the statuette because his former company distributed what the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences called the best animated cartoon of 1961--”Erzatz,” produced in Yugoslavia.

“We asked for a duplicate and they gave it to us,” he says. (Although such duplicates are not handed out these days, an Academy spokesman says, “It was done in unusual circumstances in the past.”)

Herts said last week that he didn’t care that much about the trophy, but on Friday he declared: “I’ve had second thoughts. It’s one shot in a lifetime. I really did have an attachment to it.”

The reversal was not prompted by any threat of legal action by the Academy, Herts said. “I just changed my mind 180 degrees. Now I’ll be happy and they’ll be happy.”

Patricia Seaton Lawford, the last wife of Peter Lawford, says she was not given any money by the National Enquirer to remove the actor’s ashes from a Westwood crypt and scatter them at sea.

The Enquirer, she insisted Friday, simply paid for the limousine and the boat. For that, she said, she gave the publication the exclusive right to take pictures.

Iain Calder, editor and president of the publication, confirmed her version and said a wrong impression may have been given by the way his earlier words were reported. Calder said he had remarked that the Enquirer has done a number of things “ on “ Mrs. Lawford in the past, not “ with “ her.

For a while there, Sgt. Rich Martinez of the LAPD’s Southeast Division burglary unit figured he was in terrific shape. He and his wife picked the same numbers on a couple of Lotto tickets and discovered they were right on five out of six in the Wednesday night draw.

They missed on the bonus number, but, hey . . .

Someone called him and said the pool was over $600,000. By Thursday morning, he was unreachable at the station house because he was out on a case. A fellow detective said, “We don’t know if he’s ever coming back.”

He did, however.

It turned out that 226 people statewide hit five numbers without the bonus, splitting a pool of $670,542--a little less than $3,000 apiece.

“Well,” Martinez said Friday, “We’ve got $6,000 more than we had yesterday, anyway.”

There was a lively luncheon at the Hollywood Roosevelt Friday, when 18 guests more than 100 years old were honored by the American Centenarian Committee. The oldest was Alfred Waters, 109, who was born in New Iberia, La., and now lives in the Los Angeles area.

Rafael Cordero, of the committee, said one of the honorees wanted to dance, but things never went that far. “Nobody got drunk,” he reported.

Which may be how they got to be more than 100 years old.