Snapshots of life in the Golden State : UFO Support Group Finds Solace in Close Encounters

Perhaps California should be called the Support Group State.

In the past decade, organizations have sprung up to provide aid and comfort to former hostages, artists with creative blocks, portly people with insatiable appetites, single women with married lovers, step-parents, herpes sufferers, children of alcoholics and parents of homicide victims.

But none is arguably more unusual than the San Fernando Valley-based support group known as Close Encounter Research Organization. CERO, says director Yvonne Smith, is limited to people who believe they have been abducted by UFOs.

“We have about 20 members in the group and it’s growing all the time,” said Smith, a hypnotherapist. “It’s just like any other support group--it’s for people who feel a need to come and talk about their feelings, to vent their frustrations and anger.”

Smith claims that most participants have seen bright lights when driving down a highway and were “taken aboard a craft or in some other room and being examined . . . by humanoids.”

The monthly support group sessions, Smith emphasized, “are for abductees only. If I opened it up to the public, you could imagine who we’d get.”

Top Campaign Violation Fines

Recently, Gov. Pete Wilson and his 1990 gubernatorial campaign operatives were fined $100,000 by the state Fair Political Practices Commission for failure to properly report $7.4 million in expenditures and contributions. A separate case against Dianne Feinstein for allegedly misreporting $8.4 million in campaign funds in the same 1990 race is pending. Here are the top six penalties assessed by the commission:

1. William Bryan, Sacramento County supervisor, 1988: $290,000. Campaign reporting violations in the mid-1980s, including conflicts of interest and failure to disclose income.

2. Kenneth Orduna, L.A. City Council candidate, 1991: $187,500. Money-laundering violations and improper reporting for 1987 campaign.

3. James T. Hawthorne, state Transportation Commission member, 1991: $165,000. Conflict of interest violations for voting on transportation contracts despite owning an earth-moving equipment franchise.

4. Louis Laramore, Riverside County developer, 1991: $138,000. Money-laundering violations to benefit a Riverside supervisorial candidate.

5. Californians Against Unfair Tax Increases/Phillip Morris, 1992: $125,000. Campaign reporting violations regarding 1988’s Proposition 9, a tobacco tax increase.

6. Pete Wilson, governor, 1992: $100,000. Failure to properly report campaign expenditures and failure to disclose late contributions on time during his 1990 gubernatorial campaign.

Source: Fair Political Practices Commission, Sacramento

Compiled by Times researcher Tracy Thomas

*

Seasoned to taste: When reform-minded water utility officials from across California held a two-day seminar in Los Angeles, they leavened the somewhat dry festivities with a water-tasting contest.

Munching crackers and nuts, the 300 participants at the Public Officials for Water and Environmental Reform Conference sampled six varieties of water for clarity, aroma, bouquet and texture.

The winner in overall drinkability: H2O from a well in the San Gabriel Valley, an area where contaminated ground water has been placed on the federal Superfund project list.

Water from two sources used by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power could do no better than third--tied with a potion put forth by the Santa Barbara desalination plant.

Lest anyone think that the winning sample was tasty because of unhealthful flavor-enhancing pollutants, DWP Commissioner Dorothy Greenze, a conference organizer, explained that the San Gabriel water was taken from a city of Azusa well--located well above the contaminated ground water table.

*

C-notes: The last time we checked in at the Kelly homestead in Riverside, an aging rock star better known for a hundred-plus decibels of sound than for a thousand points of light was in the front yard of the bizarrely painted house, peddling an assortment of music memorabilia to save homeowner Patrick Kelly from foreclosure.

And the ploy, it appears, worked--at least temporarily.

Singer Alice Cooper has handed over a $13,000 check to a mortgage company on behalf of Kelly, who, out of fiscal frustration, painted his house with a bevy of rock ‘n’ roll slogans including the words “Alice Cooper” across a 50-foot back-yard fence.

The funds, raised mostly at the yard sale, will save Kelly, an out-of-work musician, from being booted until at least the end of this month.

Cooper, who billed his effort “Rock to the Rescue,” says he hopes other bands will expand on the cause and aid their fans who are in dire straits.

*

Starting young: Bryce Henderson is only 20 years old, but already he is acting like a seasoned politician. Chosen as the youngest member of the state’s 54-person Electoral College delegation, the Crestline resident managed to vote against his own beliefs.

“I would prefer the Electoral College be abolished,” Henderson said after casting his ballot for Bill Clinton in Sacramento last week. “Personally, I think it’s a little outdated.”

Henderson, a student at Riverside Community College, says that future presidents should be elected strictly by popular vote. “In today’s age, the voter has the information at his hands or can get it to come up with a decision on his own,” he said.

Henderson, who plans to run for a school board seat in Riverside County next year, was selected for the Electoral College by Don Rusk, the unsuccessful 1992 Democratic congressional candidate for the 40th District. Henderson served as Rusk’s campaign manager.

EXIT LINE

“The California developer’s prayer: Please, God, give me one more boom and I promise not to blow all the money this time.”

--Edward F. Del Becarro of Grubb & Ellis, as quoted in California Business.

California Dateline appears every other Monday.