TITLE HOPES: To the list of young...

TITLE HOPES: To the list of young athletes from Northridge who have bounced back in fine form after January’s earthquake, add Meilen Tu’s name. The tennis-playing Tu, 16, is one step away from winning a U.S. Open girls’ division title. . . . Tu defeated Kim de Weille of the Netherlands, 7-5, 6-4, in a semifinal match Saturday at Flushing Meadow, N.Y., and will face Martina Hingis of Switzerland today.

SOUL SEARCHING: Joseph (JoJo) Sanchez has a dream: establishing 10,000 churches and 10,000 youth academies to win people to Christianity. . . . Right now, Sanchez has a celebrity of sorts at his youth camp in the Antelope Valley. Daniel Ramos, better known as the ubiquitous tagger Chaka, is at Sanchez’s Youth Academy U.S.A. trying to learn to use his artistic skills for a higher calling (B1).

CRICKET: Football isn’t your fancy, and baseball’s still on strike. What’s a Valley sports fan to do? Watch cricket (above), of course. Each Saturday and Sunday, Woodley Park in Van Nuys is the site of matches between teams in the Southern California Cricket Assn. And it doesn’t cost a bloody dime. . . . David Heaney, an Australian native, says, “The players are more involved than they would be in baseball.”

SCHWAB’S, THE SEQUEL: We all know about Schwab’s, the famous drugstore where legend says actress Lana Turner was discovered. . . . That landmark closed its doors on Sunset Boulevard in 1983, but one of its original proprietors, Leon Schwab, has given his blessing to his grandsons to open a new Schwab’s in Encino (B1).

A DAD REMEMBERED: Lori Retig believes her father, Dennie Plese of Valencia, would be alive today if only he’d had a chance to speak to the gunman who ambushed him last week during his rounds as an armored car guard (B1). . . . “If this guy had said to my dad, ‘Give me the money, man,’ my dad would’ve said, ‘Do you want my watch, too?’ My dad easily would have done something quick-witted,” says Retig.