People and Events

It took the Queen Mary people no time at all to recognize that they had a possible public relations problem after four or five callers complained about a radio commercial designed to whip up enthusiasm for the stationary Long Beach liner’s Fourth of July activities.

“O say, have you seen fireworks from the Queen?” went the words.

The tune was that of “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

After the first few calls, the commercial was pulled.

“Our purpose was never to offend anyone,” said Rich Kerlin of the Queen’s marketing department.

After three weeks of frustration, Los Angeles homicide Detectives Tim Moss and Morton Duff seemed no nearer to learning the name of the young woman found beaten to death in South-Central Los Angeles.

They had a couple of suspects to question--one of them arrested Thursday night and the other Friday morning--but still could not identify the victim, believed to be an Asian or Latina 18 to 24. “We have checked all over the United States,” Moss said.

The detectives released a drawing resembling the woman in the hope that someone would recognize her.

Previously, they distributed copies of a signature found on an apparent garment district piecework receipt found near the body. As there were Chinese figures on the receipt, the detectives thought the signature might be that of an Asian employer who could identify her.

But, Moss said Friday, publication of the signature brought only two tips--one from someone who thought it might be some sort of shorthand (Moss says it isn’t) and the other from a caller who said he recognized the signature as being that of a man at a certain address.

There was no such address, Moss said. And there was no way to check back with the caller, because whoever talked to him forgot to get his name.

When a delegation from Granada Hills High School appealed this week to the Los Angeles school board for money to support an Air Force ROTC program, 16-year-old Jennifer Beltran prefaced her presentation by giving the board members beribboned boxes of chocolate chip cookies.

Lest it appear that this is part of the current military procurement scandal, it turns out that the cookies resulted from an earlier visit to the board by students from the same school.

At that time, GHHS and Narbonne High School in Harbor City were honored for winning state distinguished high school awards. While Narbonne students told the board about their school’s culinary arts class, the Granada Hills group passed out lapel pins.

That, said GHHS Principal Anne Falotico, prompted one of the board members to ask why they were getting pins instead of something to eat.

Hence: the cookies. Did they help the school get the ROTC money?

“No,” said Falotico. “We went down in flames.”

Strippers Newcomb Hunt, 28, and Delane Balliot, 23, were still managing to totter through their act in a Hollywood sportswear store window Friday, two days and nights after they began their purported effort to set an endurance record for getting down to their skivvies and putting them on again.

One of the organizers said he could not understand how the act in the 7600 block of Melrose Avenue could attract gawkers even at 3 or 4 a.m., including children. “Why aren’t they home in bed?” he wondered.

“It’s funny when we’re introduced,” the assistant general manager of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power says about himself and the utility’s chief financial officer. “We’ve had people ask to see our business cards. It gets a lot of laughs.”

Daniel W. Waters says he and Norman J. Powers attend a lot of the same meetings and travel together frequently, so they have encountered a lot of kidding over the years. And there are a few people who think they are partners who own DWP and named it after themselves.