For the College Class of 2005, It’s Money in the Bank

--Oral Brown has come a long way since the days when she picked cotton as an 8-year-old in Batesville, Miss., and she wants to show poor Oakland kindergartners that they have a way out of poverty too. Now 43, Brown owns Nationwide Realty in Oakland and says she will deposit $10,000 a year for 12 years into an account that will pay for the college education of the entire kindergarten class of 27 at Brookfield Elementary School. “If the money is sitting in the bank, what good is it doing there, except paying off some . . . taxes? I’d rather give it to someone where it can do some good,” she says. About 50% of the children’s parents are on welfare. Brown and her husband, Joseph, reared three daughters after moving to San Francisco. She also worked at night and attended college, eventually getting a degree from the University of San Francisco.

--Amerasian Khuc Thua Si, 18, cried with his American stepmother, Velda Crotty, as they met for the first time at San Francisco International Airport. Vietnam veteran Joe Crotty, 62, of Redding, Calif., had lost track of his son when the Communists took control of Vietnam in 1975. Velda Crotty eventually located him through letters. “Thank you. Thank you very much,” Si said as his stepmother gave him a bouquet of roses with a flag in the middle. The freckled Si had worked in Da Nang making nails for $35 a month, and lived with his mother, who had been Crotty’s housekeeper.

--Lia Belli said she wants to end her 16-year marriage to famed attorney Melvin Belli. She alleges that he beat her, briefly choked their 15-year-old daughter and falsely accused her of having affairs with several celebrities. Lia Belli, 39, said she will seek a court order barring Belli from the $6-million mansion she owns and is changing her will. Lia Belli had told police Tuesday that an intruder had fired two shots at her in her bedroom, although she emphasized that she did not think her husband was involved. Contacted by the San Francisco Examiner in Moscow, Melvin Belli asked whether anyone had been hit and then asked: “Are the dogs OK?” “He called the press all the way from Moscow, and he hasn’t called home,” Lia Belli said. “And he asks about the dogs!”