People and Events

Cassidy took a trip to City Hall the other day to collect from those who backed him in the recent Walk America for the March of Dimes. He had to take someone along to carry the money.

Cassidy is a three-legged dog.

The city Animal Regulation Department folks insist that he is not just an ordinary three-legged dog. He is regarded as special, particularly at the East Valley Animal Shelter in North Hollywood, where he has been adopted by the staff.

The nonprofit Cassidy Foundation, set up to finance the department’s free spaying and neutering program, was named after him.

Precise statistics about Cassidy are not easy to come by. He is part Australian shepherd and part collie, as near as anybody can tell, and 6 or 7 years old. He arrived at the shelter about three years ago as one of several dogs belonging to a transient who died.

“We knew we would have problems finding a home for him,” said Lt. Robert Pena, who until his recent transfer downtown had been assigned to the East Valley. “So we adopted him ourselves. He is a really sweet dog. He loves everybody.”

Shelter staff members alternate taking Cassidy home on weekends. Pena said he plans to take him down to his new office often and let him sit around.

As for Cassidy’s community work: He has walked in the March of Dimes event three years in a row, said Pena, and probably has raised about $500 for the charity. But he doesn’t walk too far because “he gets tired real easy.”

It looked like a terrific story and Bob Tur was right on top of it. Just overhead, in fact, after hearing a fire dispatcher’s report of “second-alarm riot” at Santa Monica High School Thursday afternoon.

Tur, a free-lance reporter who pilots the KNX radio news helicopter, said he and colleague Dave Ursin--who carries a video camera--got over the scene in a hurry, looking down to see people running in every direction and bodies “lying everywhere.”

Ursin climbed out on the chopper’s skid and was shooting the action as Tur prepared to call the station to do a live report from the sky. First he put in a call to the Santa Monica Fire Department.

He learned quickly that he was looking down at a “multi-casualty drill” involving high school students, Santa Monica City College student nurses and others.

Other false alarms:

A security guard at Occidental Petroleum headquarters in Westwood was understandably edgy when a package arrived for Oxy Chairman Armand Hammer, who has had his name in the papers a time or two in connection with shoreline drilling proposals and business deals with the Soviet Union.

For one thing, there was no return address. For another, it contained a small device of some sort with wires. The police bomb squad was called.

The item turned out to be a component of a coffee maker mailed as a gift by a Texas man appreciative of Hammer’s efforts on behalf of world peace, police said.

The visit to the Downtown Women’s Center by a senior editor for the Japan Economic Journal was unsettling for at least one lady who lives at the Skid Row facility for chronically disabled women.

Hearing the gentleman from Japan and an interpreter chatting in Japanese as they toured the center at 3rd and Los Angeles streets, the woman went to Executive Director Jill Halverson in a panic. “You’re not going to sell the Women’s Center to the Japanese, are you?”

Halverson assured her there are no such plans.

The excitement in El Monte was almost back to its usual intensity Thursday, with only a few visitors still strolling on Kerrwood Street to look at an apartment window where the glow from a night light had created a dimly discernible cross, drawing as many as 1,000 spectators by Tuesday night.

“It’s nothing like it was,” reported El Monte Police Lt. Bill Akeny.

Not, he said, after the residents removed the glass and replaced it.