Girl’s Cool Moment Earns Hot Publicity

A cool-headed moment has made a Lomita schoolgirl--and the 4-year-old whose life she saved--hot properties on the television talk show circuit.

Adrienne Costanzo, 12, performed the Heimlich maneuver on Chelsea Segal, 4, during a gathering of family and friends in San Pedro in September, dislodging a piece of meat from the child’s throat.

Since then, the girls have been courted by the media in Hollywood and points beyond.

Over the Thanksgiving weekend, the girls were flown to Chicago for an appearance on the Oprah Winfrey television show, for a segment about family medical emergencies. The show will be aired Wednesday, a Winfrey spokeswoman said.

Last week, the two also taped part of a pilot for another television show, “Kids Still Say the Darnedest Things.” They will be included in a segment on “kid heroes,” according to producer Mark Phillips. Although no air date for the pilot has been set, Phillips hopes it will be broadcast by spring.

Adrienne, a seventh-grader at Fleming Junior High School in Lomita, has been honored by the Lomita City Council and has won free airline tickets to fly anywhere in the United States from a local radio station, which named her “Citizen of the Week.” She’s pondering a junket to Hawaii.

According to their mothers, it’s all heady stuff for the two girls, who have been as close as sisters since Chelsea’s birth.

“They feel like little movie stars,” said Robin Segal, Chelsea’s mother. “But at the same time they realize how important the procedure is and how many people don’t know it.”

An aspiring dancer, Adrienne said her schoolwork hasn’t suffered, and in fact she was named Fleming’s student of the month for October. Fleming Assistant Principal Constance Rupert said Adrienne was selected because she has maintained good grades despite missing several days because of illness.

“She’s just an all-around good kid, and she’s doing a good job,” Rupert said.

Although duly impressed by her brush with fame, other benefits of public exposure have been more rewarding, Adrienne said.

“What’s funny about all this is other things,” Adrienne said. “Like, before all this happened, I was kind of shy to get up and talk in front of my class. But since, like, I had to do a book report and it came so easy. I didn’t get embarrassed; I didn’t get butterflies.”

Few of her Fleming classmates know about her television exploits, Adrienne said, and she prefers to keep it that way.

“I’m not going to brag or anything,” she said.