HELP US KIDS: Officials at UC Irvine...

HELP US KIDS: Officials at UC Irvine know how to tug the heartstrings--and your purse strings. They use students to solicit contributions. The totals are in for fiscal 1992-93: more than $900,000 raised through students working the phones. Catherine Diaz, a senior psychology student, raised more than $100,000 on her own. . . . “We only call alumnae and parents,” she says. “Most people are really nice. They know what we’re doing is important.”

TRUE TO THINE OWN: After the spending frenzy of the ‘80s, many debt-ridden Americans are learning the benefits of frugality in the ‘90s (E1). Mary Hunt, the Garden Grove publisher of the Cheapskate Monthly newsletter, advises people in debt to think of themselves first: “I tell them that 10% of everything they make is theirs to keep--off the top--before anyone else.” She says it has a great uplifting effect, and an added benefit: “You’re going to start becoming compulsive about saving.”

COMING HOME: Oceanside author Victor Villasenor, whose “Rain of Gold” novel was acclaimed as a Latino “Roots,” will be honored this week in Santa Ana, his parents’ hometown. . . . He’ll speak at all five city high schools during the week, plus Chapman University Monday night. He’ll also be honored by the city with a Villasenor Family Day, a community celebration at the downtown Civic Center. . . . But his first stop Monday morning is at Our Lady of Guadalupe Church in Santa Ana, where his parents married in 1929.

WALK ON BY: Annoyed by its gang-infested reputation, Santa Ana officials point to some of its bright spots. Here’s one: It’s a pretty safe place to cross the street. . . . The city ranked the lowest nationwide for cities its size in a new American Automobile Assn. study of pedestrian injuries. Most cities its size had almost double Santa Ana’s pedestrian fatality rate. Reason for success: its safety program, which targets school children.