KID CHECK: How old was your child...

KID CHECK: How old was your child when you let her stop riding in a child safety seat in the car? Did you say 3? . . . . Wrong. The law is: Small children must ride in a safety seat through the age of 4, unless they are over 40 pounds. . . . To make sure you’re buckled up right, the cities of Los Alamitos and Seal Beach are setting up a checkpoint--between 10:30 a.m. and 3:30 p.m. today--to make sure your small ones are safe. It will be near Seal Beach Boulevard and Saint Cloud Drive in Seal Beach.

REMEMBER DEC. 10! Santa Ana Postmaster Rosemarie Fernandez is giving fair warning: Dec. 10 is the last day your packages can be mailed standard rate and still guaranteed to arrive to other U.S. cities in time for Christmas. If you mail after that, she says, you’re better off paying the “priority mail” rate to ensure a Christmas arrival. . . . And please , she asks: “No twine or cord. They tend to catch and bind in mail-processing equipment.”

REAL “ER”: You think the medical staff on that new TV hit “ER” has it rough, Theresa Ann Cesiro lives with emergencies every day. If you’re faced with such a crisis, you’d be lucky to get her. . . . The Fountain Valley Regional Hospital veteran has been named the county’s 1994 “Emergency Nurse of the Year.” Sums up her supervisor, Greg Cassady: “I wish I could clone her.” . . . . An honored Cesiro says of her work: “There is almost never a dull moment. But there is a down side; sometimes modern medicine is simply not enough.”

CROSSING ALL LINES: Grand prize winner of the local Red Cross chapter’s annual AIDS poster contest: Mike Sheehan, a Cypress College advertising student. The artwork he created was a collage of many faces of different races and the suggestion: “AIDS is an equal opportunity killer.” . . . . Sheehan entered the contest to make a point. But for his winning efforts, he picked up a new color television.