POET’S CORNER: Anne Youngdale got a letter...

POET’S CORNER: Anne Youngdale got a letter the other day from Los Angeles County prosecutors. The 66-year-old Oak View woman wasn’t in trouble. Seems her prose about the O. J. Simpson case caught the eye of the law in L. A. . . . Youngdale, a recent inductee to the International Society of Poets, sent Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti and prosecutor Marcia Clark a poem that she wrote memorializing the victims in the case. . . . “They thanked me for my poem,” Youngdale said, “they thanked me for my support and they said all they wanted was for fairness and justice to prevail.”

NATURE’S HELPERS: The idea came to Paul Starbard three years ago: The environment’s in trouble. Kids are in trouble. Someone had to make a commitment and, he reasoned, “it might as well be me. . . .” So he created the CREW (Concerned Resource and Environmental Workers), an Ojai-based nonprofit project that puts city kids to work helping Mother Nature (E1). The CREW has been busy this summer grooming trails that snake through the mountains above Ojai. . . . Next up? Maybe a national CREW. “Our whole country’s full of kids who need attention,” Starbard said.

PITCHING IN: Lena Simitzi knows when she started volunteering at the Ventura County Fair. She just doesn’t know when she’ll stop. . . . Simitzi, 84, of Ventura, has volunteered at the fair for 51 years (B1), longer than any living soul. . . . She began by judging buttons and rose to head the home arts division. . . . Though still active, she has scaled back her activity. “There comes a time when you have to give it up and let someone else take over,” she said.

ILLEGAL PROCEDURE: The state’s leading high school pass receiver will spend the next six months in jail instead of on a football field after being sentenced for shooting at his girlfriend’s home (B1). . . . Former Newbury Park football star Leodes Van Buren lost his University of Colorado scholarship after his arrest. As his attorney says: “It certainly disrupts his ability to go on with his education and his football career.”