After Motoring 100,000 Miles Down Memory Lane, It’s Time for a Last Spin

Ralph Hanson, 65, will take a symbolic final ride down Main Street U.S.A. at Disneyland Saturday morning as he retires after driving turn-of-the-century vehicles for 26 years at the theme park.

The Brea resident and retired junior high school science teacher calls himself “an ordinary guy” and figures that he has driven more than 100,000 miles down Main Street in his part-time job.

Hanson said some of his passengers included Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, Hubert Humphrey, George Wallace and Walt Disney. “Someone once said I’m one of the most photographed people in the park,” Hanson said.

Jessica Rene’Horton, 10-month-old daughter of Dawn Rene’Horton of Laguna Hills, was named grand national photogenic queen of the Miss American Starlet pageant held recently in Palm Springs. She won a $500 savings bond, a 5-foot-high trophy and a crown.

Don T. Cimarusti of Garden Grove, active in gang and drug suppression as a campus supervisory liaison worker in the Fullerton Union High School District, has been named the district’s Classified Employee of the Year.

Cimarusti is a member of the district’s community intervention team that plans, organizes and implements various substance abuse presentation strategies.

He also serves as a liaison between schools and the Fullerton Police Department and county probation officers.

Placentia resident Leland Riker, 18, an El Dorado High School graduate, has been awarded a full scholarship by the Houston School of Ballet and is attending the school until June. He has danced with a number of local civic ballet productions and companies in Milwaukee and Oakland as well as in two movies.

Viola Krahn, 87, a resident at Laguna Hills Leisure World, received two Royal Porcelain Copenhagen Medals at the Masters Games for seniors in Aarhus, Denmark. She was the only one to compete in her category: divers 80 and over. But to win the medals she had to make five dives. She plans to compete in the Masters Games in Minneapolis in 1993.

La Palma artist Diana Magrann, who last year won first prize in the Elvis Presley International Art Contest in the Graceland Exhibit Hall in Memphis, repeated this year for her color reproduction of the Guitar Man album.

She also won a second place for a color collage of Presley portraits. Her drawing of Graceland mansion took third place and two of her near life-size acrylic paintings of Presley were exhibited in the hall.

Huntington Beach resident Bill Applebee was presented an outstanding citizen award for his attempt to rescue children trapped in a fire in June at a Huntington Beach day-care center. Two children perished in the blaze which destroyed the center.

Applebee, a Huntington Beach Water District employee, saw the blaze while at work and after having neighbors soak him down with a water hose, attempted on four occasions to rescue the children but was turned back each time by the intense fire.

The Outstanding Citizen Award is given by Villa Nova restaurant in Newport Beach and president Jim Dale said: “By trying to save the children Bill put their safety above his own. Bill is the ideal outstanding citizen.”

The Orange County chapter of the Building Owners & Managers Assn. netted $18,000 in its recent Anchors Aweigh fund-raiser for the building fund of the Orange County Exchange Club Center for Prevention of Child Abuse.

The South Coast Literacy Council graduated 14 new volunteer tutors after 14 hours of instruction at Dana Niguel Library in Laguna Niguel. They will teach basic English reading and writing.

The tutors are John C. Baker and Beverly J. Schneider, Irvine; Eve A. Conner and Christine Perrotey, Dana Point; Carol G. Edwards, Mary B. Allen and Peg Gambert, Laguna Beach; Becci L. Kincaid, San Clemente; Joan Maguire and Gale P. Manire, Laguna Niguel; Jane B. Rech and Dorothy M. Rothwell, Mission Viejo; Susan M. Savage, Corona del Mar, and Peggie A. Thomas, South Laguna.

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