People and Events

What James Barnett wanted when he walked into the Los Angeles Police Department’s Southeast Station about 1:30 a.m. was the return of his driver’s license. Police were a little surprised.

Barnett, who said he is a Hunkpapa Teton Sioux Indian known as Hiawatha Sheariwakenkawa II, showed them documents to back up his claim that he is 108 years old.

He is also a custodian at Dodger Stadium.

According to Sgt. Daniel Witman, Barnett said he had been stopped earlier that night for a possible traffic violation on Florence Avenue, not far from his Huntington Park home. Although he was not cited, he complained that the officer forgot to give him back his license.

Witman said officers at the station accompanied Barnett to his car and found the license inside. There was no record of his having been stopped.

The state Department of Motor Vehicles confirmed that Barnett has a license showing his date of birth to be July 26, 1880.

According to Witman, Barnett said he has several higher-education degrees--including a medical degree--and has worked as an engineer. Indeed, Barnett has told others that he is a retired surgeon and that his father was a chief.

The Dodgers couldn’t say for sure about all of that, although a publicity staff member said Barnett is, indeed, 108 and “works pretty hard.” With the team on the road, she said, he is off until Sept. 7.

When 68-year-old Anne Gordon of Hawthorne called her daughter Thursday morning, she had some exciting news: “I won $2.1 million on the lottery! I got four out of six numbers!” She said she had called the California Lottery and listened to the tape half a dozen times.

Kaye Brooks of Westchester was dubious. “Mom,” she said, “I don’t think that’s right, but let me call for you.”

Brooks called the 976 number and listened. She was stunned to hear “. . . two million one hundred thousand dollars for matching four numbers.”

While the presumed big winner was busy promising new cars to her grandchildren, her husband went to the market where the ticket was bought, spreading the word.

He was told the ticket was worth only $59.

Brooks called lottery headquarters in Sacramento, learning the real story: Those who had picked four numbers would share a pool totaling $2.1 million.

But that wasn’t quite the way it sounded on the tape, which Brooks recorded and played as proof.

“I’m really angry,” Gordon said. “My mother is in such a depressed state of mind. She was crying. I don’t know what to do about it.”

Lottery spokesman Bob Taylor had not listened to the tape but said there were 36,388 ticket holders who picked four numbers each. And who each got $59.

El Segundo City Councilman Jim Clutter plans to sit down today with the city manager and the city recreation and parks director to talk about his proposal to spell out in flowers his message to airline pilots coming out of Los Angeles International Airport:

Turn at the Coastline, Stupid.

Well, perhaps he has been persuaded not to be so blunt, but he still wants to remind pilots (and inform their passengers) that--under airport policy--planes are supposed to get out over the ocean before making their turns.

Initially, Clutter’s idea was to post a big sign on a strip of city-owned land along Imperial Highway, but that violates an anti-billboard law. Hence: Say it with flowers.

The issue, Clutter says, has come down to the cost of maintaining such a garden, which he would like to put on a nearby hillside. Flowers die and have to be replanted. “It doesn’t have to be blooming plants,” Clutter says. “It could be some kind of ground cover in different shades of green, so the words would be visible.”

He maintains that what angers El Segundoans the most “is this thing of airplanes turning too early and flying over their homes, waking them up or bothering TV reception. There is a whole series of early morning takeoffs.”

Christmas decorations go up earlier every year, it seems. But snow at Hollywood and Vine on Thursday? When the weather felt like high noon in New Caledonia?

The Hollywood Chamber of Commerce hauled a truckload of it (or reasonable facsimile) from the Pickwick Ice Skating Rink in Burbank and dumped it on the sidewalk to call attention to a preview of the new decorations it plans to put up come yuletide.

The old decorations weren’t put up last year because officials thought they might be knocked loose by wind and injure a pedestrian.

Or, perhaps worse yet, shatter a Hollywood Boulevard shop window.

The new baubles cost $230,000 and will be up in time for the Hollywood Christmas Parade on Nov. 27.

Sooner than you think.