TV Tip Helps a Stork in a Hurry

When a group of onlookers made no move to help, a college student came to the rescue, using a “TV knowledge” of childbirth to help a woman give birth to a baby girl on a San Francisco sidewalk. “They just stood there. It was like she was being shunned,” said Patrick Combs, 21, a student at San Francisco State University, of the crowd’s reaction to the woman lying on the sidewalk. After calling an ambulance, Combs coached the woman through the delivery. “I just kept telling myself you can have babies anywhere. Anywhere,” he said. Then the baby’s head appeared. “It was so purple, I didn’t know what it was,” said Combs, who said he had only seen deliveries on television. An ambulance arrived 40 minutes after Combs stopped to help, and the mother and daughter, who were not identified, were taken to San Francisco General Hospital.

--While one infant was drawing her first breaths in San Francisco, another was being readied to go home for the first time since his birth eight months ago. Paul Holc, who became the world’s youngest heart transplant recipient last Oct. 16, was to be released from Loma Linda University Medical Center today to be taken by his parents, Gordon and Alice Holc, to their home near Vancouver, British Columbia. Paul received the heart of a brain-dead Canadian girl in the operation.

--It was his last day as White House chief of staff, and Howard H. Baker Jr. was leaving with no regrets. But he did admit to harboring a measure of ambition to be President one day. “I’d love to be President,” Baker told United Press International. “I wouldn’t be a politician if I didn’t aspire to that, and I sure am a politician.” Baker gave up his own fledgling campaign for the 1988 GOP presidential nomination 18 months ago to go to the White House’s rescue as the Iran-Contra scandal mushroomed, succeeding Donald T. Regan.

--The Friar’s Club in New York has elected its first female members, and among the pioneer group will be the wife of the club’s top officer, Frank Sinatra. Joining Barbara Sinatra as honorary members are Lucille Ball, Carol Burnett, Eydie Gorme, Barbra Streisand, Elizabeth Taylor, Dinah Shore, Phyllis Diller and Martha Raye. Liza Minnelli, who had applied for regular membership, was also approved. The 84-year-old club’s decision to admit women followed a U.S. Supreme Court ruling upholding a New York City law that prohibits private clubs from banning women. The California Friar’s Club, which is in Beverly Hills, voted to admit women last year.