DUCK RACE: After a month’s delay, the...

DUCK RACE: After a month’s delay, the Ventura County Symphony finally has its ducks in a row. . . . Its rubber duck race sets sail Saturday. The plan: unleash 5,000 or so yellow rubber ducks on a canal near the Santa Clara River. Sponsors have adopted 4,500 ducks at five bucks apiece. And the lucky duck to finish first brings the winner a new car. . . . At first, the event ran afoul of the law. Now everything’s ducky and the notoriety has attracted more donors. As the symphony’s Cassandra Petrovich says: “Nothing gets you more notice than being accused of criminal activity.”

LEGAL THRILLER: In the early 1980s, Nancy Taylor Rosenberg was a probation officer in Ventura County. She probed the backgrounds of convicted felons and recommended sentences. The memory of one convicted rapist, Leonard Chester, still haunts her today. . . . “This guy had these long eyelashes and pretty face,” she said. “It was hard for me to believe he was guilty of these horrible crimes.” Rosenberg built her third novel, “First Offense,” partly around a fictional character based on Chester. She signs copies of the book Saturday at the Ventura Bookstore.

GRAFFITI BUSTER: Who you gonna call . . . when taggers deface your neighborhood? Erwin Dreger is one of a growing band of citizen crime-fighters who’ve become a vandal’s nightmare (B4). . . . When he drives around Simi Valley, Dreger breaks for graffiti. He slips into coveralls and blots out spray-painted marks with a paint roller. “For me,” he said, “it’s not enough to wait for somebody else to come along and get rid of it.”

MARATHON MAN: Twenty-two miles across the sea, Santa Catalina is waiting . . . for Jim McConica. For a decade, the Ventura car dealer held the record for swimming the channel in 8 hours, 27 minutes. But his record fell last fall to another marathon swimmer. Since then, McConica has prepared to take the plunge again (C8). . . . At 43, he races daily against the clock. “I had to do it again,” he said, “before I was too old.”