HOT LINE: As the O.J. Simpson tip...

HOT LINE: As the O.J. Simpson tip line rings off the hook in Los Angeles, fund-raisers for Thousand Oaks’ new Civic Arts Plaza are experiencing a caller deluge of their own (B4). . . . Chief fund-raiser Stephen Woodworth reports installation of two new phone lines to handle a flood of donor calls. . . . “It’s been phenomenal, the amount of interest and activity,” he said. For $50, a donor’s name is inscribed on a theater brick. For $1,000, a theater seat will bear the donor’s name. About 3,000 bricks and 485 seats have been sold. The money underwrites theater operations.

HEMLOCK: A retired Santa Paula dentist whose terminally ill wife committed suicide last fall is reviving the Ventura County branch of the National Hemlock Society. . . . At least 50 local members--most of them elderly widows--have said they will attend the society’s first local meeting in two years on Sunday, said Edward A. Silverman. . . . “Most of them have lost their spouses,” he said, “and having lived through the ordeal of watching them die, are now concerned about the dignity of life and how to end it.” One goal is to change a state law that bans assisted suicide, he said.

HOOPSTER: Bewigged Magic Johnson graduated 480 youngsters from his basketball camp at Cal Lutheran. But his message wasn’t just hoops. Campers also learned to play life by the rules by going to school and avoiding the AIDS virus that ended Magic’s career. Of his involvement with kids, Johnson said: “I’ve always done it because I’ve always cared.”

HOMEOWNERS: Ventura homeowners are mad as heck, and they’re not going to take it anymore (B1). . . . “The City Council of Ventura has just passed an increase in water and sanitation rates, and the worst is yet to come,” declares Marv Rochetti, chairman of a new coalition of 15 groups representing condo owners citywide. . . . After a formal organizational meeting in August, Rochetti plans an assault on every new fiscal affront from City Hall. “We are now players in the political scene.”