Following the Sound of Tom-Toms to the Lair of a Star

He starred in the movie “Rain Man.” He’s one of Hollywood’s hottest young sex symbols. And what would you do if you heard he was living in South County?

Right. So I put aside more trivial concerns and headed straight for Laguna Hills’ Nellie Gail Ranch, where everybody says Tom Cruise and his actress wife, Mimi Rogers, have moved in. The word is spreading through this enclave of million-dollar homes faster than a brush fire.

OK, well, no one has actually seen him, not like in person or anything, but their friends have, or their friend’s friends have. Or at least that’s what they say. Could all these people be wrong?

So off I went, in search of the truth.

First in my path was the mail carrier, quite a stroke of luck. For me, that is.

“Oh, he definitely lives here,” the carrier says, nodding a vigorous yes. “Only his name is not Tom Cruise. His real name is, like, really long. It was in People magazine.”

So that explains it. I hadn’t noticed any decorative “Casa Cruise” signs or anything like that hanging over any doorways. This might be tough.

“He gets his mail delivered under the other name,” the carrier allows. “I’ve talked to another carrier who had a certified letter for him and Tom Cruise came to the door and signed it.”

The carrier I was talking to, however, had not seen Tom personally . And, no, the exact street address was not readily available. To the carrier or myself.

And, besides, I’m not the first person to flag down this employee of the U.S. Postal Service to ask directions to Tom’s place. It happens all the time.

Just the other day, Nellie Gail resident Anita Goodman recalls, someone was asking her if she had run into Tom Cruise. No, she had not.

“But I think I’d be more star-struck if it were Cher,” she says, pausing for a moment atop Dostoevski, her 4-year-old star dressage horse, not far from the local stables.

But what had I heard, she wants to know.

That’s what they all want to know, of course. Everyone from respectable businessmen to fabulously wealthy homeowners to checkers at the local supermarket are trading on information about Tom and Mimi--mostly Tom.

“He’s definitely one of my favorite actors,” says Tia Pariambada at nearby Mail Boxes Etc. “I have a friend who lives in Nellie Gail and she knows where the house is.” Pariambada doesn’t happen to know herself.

“Some friends of mine saw him at church at St. Timothy’s over on Crown Valley,” says Paul Snyder, manager of the Video City closest to Nellie Gail where, for what it’s worth, Tom Cruise’s “Cocktail” has overtaken “Top Gun” in rentals. “Rain Man,” Tom’s latest biggie, wasn’t mentioned.

“My friends didn’t talk to him, but they’re sure it was him,” Snyder says. “People were crowding around him and everything.”

But how can he be sure it was really Tom?

“My friends don’t lie,” he says, a tad indignant. “They didn’t talk to him because they didn’t want to bother him.”

Meanwhile, over at St. Timothy’s, a Catholic church with 1,500 parishioners, a spokeswoman who declines to give her name says the word on Tom is that he’s been spotted at Mass and that he lives in Nellie Gail. Neither he nor Mimi are on the membership roster, however. Not that that really mans anything.

“One of the gals said that their kid went to school with someone who lives down the block from him,” says one Mission Viejo woman, who, because she is a respectable married woman with children, begged for anonymity.

“One night, we had our little sewing group and I walked in and one of the gals said, ‘You ready to go?’ And next thing I know we’re all piling into one of the vans--there were like 12 of us--and we drove past what was supposed to be his house,” she says.

“It was a Mediterranean-style house, gated, and there was a white limo in the driveway. But there was this teen-ager, a Japanese boy, shooting baskets in the driveway, so we were saying, ‘Who could that be?’ Later, I heard a rumor that there was a Japanese exchange student staying with him.”

This woman also confides that, not being able to stand it, she herself queried personnel at Von’s Pavilions, just across the freeway from Nellie Gail in Mission Viejo, where Tom and Mimi have reportedly been spotted in the aisles.

“I just wanted to set my heart to rest,” she says. “But when I asked the checker, ‘Have you seen Tom Cruise shopping in here?’ she just burst out laughing. I guess if I was a sex symbol I wouldn’t do my own grocery shopping either. . . . But they did say they saw Mimi in there.”

Well, I’m sorry to say, I couldn’t get them to fess up to any such thing at Pavilions. Checker Kathy Oltmanns did add, however, that customers have told her they’ve spotted Tom riding his horse on El Toro Road and cruising in his red Ferrari or whatever it’s supposed to be.

“I’ve heard that he comes in here to shop Friday and Saturday nights, late at night,” she says. “I haven’t seen him myself. If I did, I’d probably be on the red line calling to see if it’s really him, but I wouldn’t make a fool of myself.”

Checker Cindy Young recalls the night not long ago when a stretch limo pulled up in front of the store.

“Everybody says, ‘Oh, they’re here!’ We really had the customers rolling.”

It wasn’t them, she adds.

Nellie Gail resident Mark Monin offers the theory, popular among the locals, that Tom is temporarily staying with his aunt while awaiting completion of an even more fabulous house on the other, more southern side of Nellie Gail.

“We’ve had young girls driving by, wondering where he lives,” Monin says. “We had some exchange students come from Spain, and they heard about it and wanted to see where he lives. My wife thinks she knows where the house is.

“I’m in real estate, so I’d love them to be here,” he adds. “Don Sutton just moved out.”

So that was Day One. A bit inconclusive. And Tom’s people in Los Angeles still hadn’t gotten back to me.

But the next morning, I make a call to the Laguna Hills post office and get yet another mail carrier on the line.

“Yeah, I get his mail sometimes,” he says. “But all I know is there’s a big black dog that lives there. That’s what I’m worried about.”

OK, so this guy has not seen Tom Cruise personally either. But he did see a big black dog. How much more proof do you need?