People and Events

It’s not clear where Robert Schoedl and Pooh Bear are at the moment. Somewhere in Mexico, probably. At least that was the plan when the two of them took off a few weeks ago on a trip around the world.

(Pooh Bear is not a bear, but an Anatolian shepherd dog of Turkish extraction.)

The big question is how their transportation is holding up. The former Long Beach resident spent three years constructing a sturdy four-wheel-drive vehicle, “only to realize that it is too valuable, too desirable and therefore too dangerous to travel in.”

So Schoedl, 25, stripped down a Japanese motor scooter, added spare tires, parts and tools and equipped it with a sidecar for Pooh Bear. He then painted it “a putrid color” to deter “interest and theft.”

If the machine “is willing to go around the world, so are we,” Schoedl said before he left. “It it breaks down irrefixably (sic), we’re hoofin’ it. Simple as that.”

Schoedl said he plans to visit Central and South America, Africa, Europe, the Mideast, Mongolia, the Soviet Union, Australia, Japan and whatever else gets in the way.

Klaus Schoedl of Anaheim said his son “is a very smart kid” who graduated from high school in Long Beach at age 15. As for the dog: “He’s extremely protective.”

But, the father added, Robert “just doesn’t know how long that scooter is going to hold out.”

It has yet to be decided who will get the JESUS SAVES sign that for years glowed in the night to mark the Church of the Open Door in downtown Los Angeles.

After a long battle over whether the structure should be declared a historical landmark, the big sign came down last month so that a wrecking ball could make way for a 27-story office building. It was hauled away to a storage lot next to the Pasadena Freeway, where it has drawn the interest of several other churches.

The Church of the Open Door, having sold the property to a developer and moved to Glendora, doesn’t have anyplace to mount it. Needless to say, it would dominate the Glendora skyline.

“It is our intention to decide who will get the sign sometime in the future,” says Rick Stephens, Los Angeles division president for Koll Co., the developer erecting the new building. He will say only that “several people have spoken to us.”

Los Angeles City Council members, who may have noticed published stories on the subject, were doing pretty well recently. They managed to field a quorum for a 10 a.m. meeting start several times. On Wednesday, however, they fell back into an old habit and got a late start.

Whether because of that or simply because they got tied up on the Community Redevelopment Agency budget, the meeting dragged into the afternoon.

Which meant cancellation of a rules committee session to review council rules in an effort to decide how to get council meetings started on time.

Anyone who knows anything about the Kansas City area, of course, is aware that the suburb of Kearney is in Missouri. Not in Kansas, as was falsely reported here Wednesday. So if you’re looking for the Jesse James Farm and Visitor Center . . .

Hattie Sidney of Long Beach has her eighth grandchild.

Marquez LeArtis Reed, the son of Marty and Marcia Reed, was born 8-8-88 at 8:18 a.m. in Long Beach. He weighed 8 pounds and 5 ounces.

It was not lost on Sidney that the daughter of Fergie and Prince Andrew was born 8-8-88 at 8:18 p.m.

“The princess and the pauper,” Sidney said.

The Hamburger Home Alumnae Group is looking for photographs, memorabilia and anecdotes about former residents of Hamburger Home.

An estimated 4,000 young Jewish working women lived at one time or another in the home between 1926 and 1966, when it became a shelter for troubled teen-age girls. It is now the Aviva Center at 7357 Hollywood Blvd. with two other facilities in Van Nuys.

The alums hope to have a roomful of nostalgia in the Hollywood Boulevard home to, in the words of volunteer coordinator Joyce Sepkowitz, “serve as a source of encouragement and pride to our present residents. . . . “