People and Events

For a while it seemed there was some expensive litter on the front lawn of the Lennox Sheriff’s Station after the bomb squad got through.

The scraps were all that remained of a package brought to the station Thursday afternoon by an unidentified man who said his non-English-speaking tenant had found it three weeks earlier at Los Angeles International Airport.

What he had appeared to be a bundle of cash attached to a small bomb. The landlord explained that he and the tenant wanted to turn in the money, but he just hadn’t had time to bring it in before.

Deputy Valerie Aguilar said officers immediately recognized it as an explosive dye pack, like those that bank tellers enjoy slipping into stacks of money to shower fleeing robbers with red dye. The station was evacuated and the arson-explosives squad was called.

The arson officers took the thing out front and detonated it, sprinkling the area with charred confetti.

It had only been a $1 bill wrapped around some phonies, Aguilar said.

“Damn, you’re right,” said James Keegan, president of the Gordon Co., when reminded Friday that the sign in front of the firm’s uncompleted $41-million, 11-story Ma Maison Sofitel Hotel says it will open in “the spring of 1988.”

Summer, he agreed, is already here. As of last Tuesday.

Originally, the sign promised that the luxury hostelry across from the Beverly Center mall would be “Opening Spring, 1987.”

Then came problems with the neighbors--particularly in adjacent West Hollywood--who objected to the height, to what the structure’s basement parking might do to the water table and to the prospects for worse traffic in an area already knotted up.

The protesters now are appealing the granting of a permit to sell liquor in the hotel’s two dining spots. One of those will be a new version of the famed Ma Maison restaurant, formerly on Melrose Avenue.

“This has been just one fun thing after another,” Keegan said. “I’d better get out there with a paint brush this weekend and change that sign.”

September, he insisted. It’ll be open in September.

Fortunately, Natch has a tattoo, so he’s enjoying a new home in Brentwood.

The 2-year-old Sheltie came close to being history and may, indeed, think he’s in dog heaven. A Brentwood home certainly beats the streets and alleys of Los Angeles’ Westside, where he apparently lived since he found an open door and split from the home of Gloria Glass.

Glass--who only had Natch for a day before losing him--said she searched for him in animal shelters but finally gave up and got herself a new puppy “because I couldn’t live without a dog.” She can’t take him back now that he’s resurfaced because she hasn’t got room for two dogs. “I guess he’s taken a step up anyway,” conceded Glass, who lives in a more modest area of Los Angeles.

Natch’s new life began about three weeks ago when Gillian Lange of the Amanda Foundation, which rescues and finds homes for dogs who have spent their allotted time in city animal shelters and are about to be destroyed, bailed a miserable little dog out of Death Row at the city’s 11th Avenue shelter.

He “was extremely matted and looked awful after wandering around for six months,” she said. Before finding an owner for the animal, Lange turned him over to a veterinarian for neutering and grooming. The vet found TCA 2A6 tattooed on the dog’s belly.

‘Terrific,” Lange thought. ‘Now we’ve altered someone’s prize show dog.’

But she soon traced the identification number to an outfit called Tatoo-a-Pet and its representative, Lisa Goldsmith, a breeder who originally gave the dog to Glass. Goldsmith provided papers to prove that Natch was purebred--hardly a bum, therefore, and clearly suited for some place like Brentwood.

John Delgado is only 1 year old, but he decided to take his mother’s car for a short spin, the California Highway Patrol reports.

He didn’t get far. He backed into his neighbor’s garage door.

CHP officers said John’s mother had put him inside the car outside their home in the La Puente area and had started the engine when she suddenly remembered she had forgotten something.

When she ran into the house, John apparently pulled the automatic transmission lever into reverse and backed down the driveway. The car sideswiped a parked pickup truck and rolled across the street into a driveway, where it smashed into the garage door.

John was unhurt.

“The little rascals will do that,” a CHP officer said, “but normally they’re a little older.”