BRADYMANIA: It won the nation’s Academic Decathlon...

BRADYMANIA: It won the nation’s Academic Decathlon title, so it’s only logical that Taft High in Woodland Hills has two new star pupils--Greg and Marcia Brady. The campus is the setting for fictional West Dale High in the new “Brady Bunch” film (B2). . . . “I don’t think it’s ever going to die,” said Elizabeth Moran, whose book “Bradymania!” has sold 75,000 copies.

LOCAL HEROES: The Valley has reason to brag. It fields two players in today’s baseball All-Star Game, one more than a lot of major league teams. Local boys getting honors are Rod Beck of Grant High in Van Nuys and Bret Saberhagen of Cleveland High in Reseda. . . . Marty Siegel, a Cleveland coach, says Saberhagen is “doing the same now he did in high school--throw strikes.”

CARS: Detroit may be the Motor City, but the Southland is making quite an impression these days in creating the cars of the future. And that includes the Ford studio in Valencia, which had a major influence on the 1993 Probe. . . . Another big local contribution is the new design (above) of the classic Volkswagen Beetle, put together at a Simi Valley studio. See Valley Business, Page 10.

SCAM: The con game, unfortunately, remains alive and well. This time, it claimed a 72-year-old woman, who lost her life savings in a K mart parking lot in Valencia when a man told her he needed to sell three gold bars to pay for his son’s hospital bills (B1). . . . In 1993, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department reports, 430 acts of fraud were committed in unincorporated county areas and cities patrolled by the department.

ON TRIAL: He was known for helping out troubled high-tech companies. But now it’s his turn to be in trouble. He’s Quentin Thomas Wiles of Sherman Oaks, who has been charged with defrauding investors in a Colorado company by issuing false financial statements. . . . The trial began Monday in Denver. See Valley Business, Page 5.