ESTEEMED EDUCATOR: As teacher Alfredo Perez lay...

ESTEEMED EDUCATOR: As teacher Alfredo Perez lay in a coma Friday, the victim of random gunfire at his Los Angeles school (B12), friends and family in Ventura County prayed for his recovery. . . . Perez grew up in El Rio, outside Oxnard. George Perez (no relation) remembers the change in his friend after he went away to college. . . . “He was always a funny guy, always clowning around,” said George Perez, a Rio school board member. “But when he graduated from college, he became a completely different person, serious about education. It’s something he felt was important.”

DEATH CASES: William Bonin, one of 436 inmates on California’s Death Row, was the third to be executed since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976 (A1). . . . Of the nine Death Row inmates from Ventura County, none are even close to finishing their appeals, says Pete Kossoris of the district attorney’s major crimes unit: “We’re at least two or three years away from anyone being executed.”

PLANK PLACE: When 423 feet of the Ventura Pier collapsed under storm-tossed waves last year, more than a fishing spot was lost. The 1,302 planks washed away in the Dec. 13 storm had been “sold” to raise funds to renovate the pier. . . . Edna Mills’ family had bought 16, including those on the first three rows of the pier. Now she hopes that the City Council will decide to rebuild the structure to its original length when it considers the issue Monday (B1).

LOOKING GOOD: Baby boomers are not only aging, they’re sagging and wrinkling. Which is good news for plastic surgeons, who expect to do more face lifts and liposuction as the boomers age (D1). . . . Sharon Marshall, an office manager for a Ventura plastic surgeon, agrees that liposuction is big now. “But face lifts and eye lifts are going to become the in thing to do,” she says. “When you’re 50, you’ll want an eyelid lift.” . . . Meanwhile, though, breast augmentation is still the most popular procedure in her office, followed by liposuction, eye lifts and face lifts.