<i> Snapshots of life in the Golden State.</i> : Prison Escape Earns an ‘F’--and It Stands for Frisco

Anthony Scott Bailey and Eric Neil Fischbeck should have paid attention in class. Spelling class. Geography class.

With only four months left on their burglary sentences at a minimum-security prison in Utah, they slithered under a fence and lit out for San Francisco. That was the first mistake. “Anybody who escapes with that little time left,” says Utah corrections spokesman Jack Ford, “can’t be very smart.”

Mistake No. 2: sleeping on the UC Berkeley campus--something ordinarily done only by students sitting upright in classroom chairs. When UC police officers asked them where they were from, each man said, “I’m from Frisco.”

Frisco! It’s a wonder that a bolt of lightning from the Golden Gate Bridge didn’t smite the pair of them. No true San Franciscan would use that despised word, and the police knew it.

What schools did you go to? they pressed. The men fumbled that one. What are your names? When one spelled his surname two different ways, the jig was up. And now they are back in Utah, where it may be 15 years before they get another look at . . . Frisco.

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Land ho! In California, the phrase “governor’s mansion” is metaphorical. The old governor’s mansion in downtown Sacramento is a historic Victorian wedding cake occupied only by $2-a-tour visitors. The suburban mansion donated by Ronald Reagan’s friends was sold off after Jerry Brown preferred an apartment.

But here’s a bargain that could satisfy Gov. Pete Wilson’s presidential aspirations, keep him at home and give the governor of California an official residence:

For $8.5 million--a fraction of the cost of a presidential campaign--California could buy a 22-room Hillsborough replica of the White House, Oval Office included, built by renowned architect Julia Morgan 65 years ago. It comes with a rose garden for stationary campaigning, and cherry trees for cutting down and then confessing to.

And under the heading “life is cheap; it’s the accessories that’ll kill you,” San Francisco may decide not to spend the $1 to buy the 81-year-old Mission Armory. The $1 is the easy part; it could cost $26 million more to restore the long-abandoned building into usable shape. As a city landmark, it can’t be torn down.

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Bill who? On his 24th visit to California, President Clinton played No. 2 to his own No. 1. At the Labor Day dedication of the new Cal State Monterey Bay campus on the grounds of old Ft. Ord, it was former local congressman Leon Panetta, now Clinton’s chief of staff, who was the favorite son and star turn.

Elderly ladies who shook Clinton’s hand eagerly bussed Panetta’s cheek. “The President makes all the decisions about the future of the country,” Panetta joked, “but I get to choose what crowds I introduce him to.”

Taking a page from his hero JFK, who introduced himself in Paris as the man who accompanied Jacqueline Kennedy to France, Clinton told a story about visiting Rome with Panetta, where Romans asked one another, “Who’s that guy up there with Leon Panetta?”

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Who Takes the SAT?

California’s diversity shows up in the array of college-bound seniors who take the Scholastic Assessment Test, which was renamed last year. Here is a breakdown by ethnicity of the California students who took the 1995 test, compared to the nation.

California:

White: 45%

Asian American*: 22%

Latino: 19%

African American: 7%

Native American**: 1%

Other: 5%

Nation:

White: 69%

Asian American*: 8%

Latino: 8%

African American: 11%

Native American**: 1%

Other: 3%

* Includes Pacific islanders

* Includes Alaskan natives

Source: College Board, San Jose

Researched by TRACY THOMAS / Los Angeles Times

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Fat city: Even in the desert, where toxic and illegal dumping runs the gamut from arsenic to zinc, this was novel: two pounds of human fat scraps liposuctioned from thighs and tummies and rumps, dumped into a trash bin behind a hamburger restaurant.

Dana Point medical assistant Stuart Ebert faces a felony charge of illegal medical waste disposal; prosecutors allege that a former nurse saw a man haul a trash bag with medical waste markings and throw it in the garbage bin behind the Palm Desert burger place. The license plate number she noted led to Ebert; the dumping led to the discovery of 30 pounds of medical paraphernalia, including bloody gauze, and the slices of fatty tissue.

As they say, garbage in, garbage out.

EXIT LINE

“In order to keep the focus on Polly Klaas, it is the sincere request of Polly’s family that the upcoming murder trial be referred to henceforth as the Polly Klaas Murder Trial.”

--Marc Klaas, father of the 12-year-old Petaluma girl whose abduction and murder roused concern and outrage across the nation.

California Dateline appears every other Friday.