Life Continues, a Bit on Edge, at State’s Landmarks

It used to be that Daralyn Christensen’s mother would call her once a week, just to make sure that everything was OK. Now she calls every day.

“She called me first thing this morning,” Christensen said. “She left a voicemail about 9 a.m. Then she sent me an e-mail--’Haven’t heard from you.’ ”

Any parent could understand. Christensen works in downtown San Francisco, on the 10th floor of the Transamerica tower, one of the most familiar buildings in the country. It’s also one of the buildings people talk about when they speculate about where terrorists might strike next.

But like many who spend their days at high-profile workplaces in California, Christensen is maintaining her cool. An executive assistant for Banc of America Securities, she said she is wary but not terrified, even after airstrikes on Afghanistan raised fears of another terrorist attack on the United States.

“I have to go on with my day-to-day life,” she said.

You could hear a lot of that Monday in California, from Disneyland to Los Angeles City Hall to the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant to the Golden Gate Bridge and beyond. Yes, terrorists probably will strike again. No, there’s not much the average person can do about it. And, yes, life must go on.

More guards, concrete barriers and other signs of heightened security reassured people even as the precautions served as a reminder of the threat. Manuel Abascal, an attorney who works at the 73-story Library Tower in downtown Los Angeles--the state’s tallest building--took comfort in the odds. He said he’d heard on the radio that Americans are more likely to be hit by a drunk driver than killed in a terrorist attack--”probably 100 times more likely.”

That, in its perverse way, helped. “I think some attacks are likely going to happen, but I think it’s important that we move on and get on with the work of the country,” he said.

No one knows when and how terrorists might strike next.

Jeffrey Jones, 26, is a parade performer at Disney’s California Adventure; he has appeared in the Eureka Parade and the Main Street Electrical Parade, and he could feel the change after Sept. 11.

“At first, it was kind of tense being there,” he said. “Who knows if Disneyland would be a target?”

But employees seem to be relaxing, he said, even after the U.S.-led attacks on Afghanistan.

“They’ve got security copters flying around, and it seems they are doing everything they can to make it as safe as possible,” Jones said. “At the hotels, I heard they were checking the trunks of cars.”

Jones, who lives not far from the two Disney parks in Anaheim, said employees have been trained in how to evacuate. “They’ve got good plans set up in case anything happens,” he said. “I feel safe there.”

Suzanne Gilbert feels reasonably safe too, considering that she lives across a boulevard from the chain-link fence and barbed wire surrounding the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the San Francisco Bay Area. Perhaps no one lives closer to the weapons research facility.

“I’m at ground zero,” said Gilbert, a mother of two. Her home has American flags along the front walk and a large one hanging above the three-car garage. “You would not be human not to have concerns, but I will not lose sleep over it.”

She and her husband, Alameda County Deputy Fire Chief Sheldon Gilbert, have lived across from the lab entrance for two years. She said it gave her a little pause at first, especially when a false air raid alarm went off one night.

Gilbert said she is not worried, although she considers the lab a potential terrorist target. “I’m sure it’s crossed the terrorists’ little minds,” she said.

Aaron Caruthers calls his workplace in Sacramento a “fortress,” otherwise known as the state Capitol. A policy aide to state Sen. Liz Figueroa (D-Fremont), he works just above the spot where an 80,000-pound 18-wheeler driven by an angry trucker smashed into the building earlier this year, causing major damage on the first floor but none to Caruthers’ office.

“That said to me, we’re physically in a safe building,” he said Monday, as he worked in relative solitude in a Capitol deserted for the Columbus Day holiday.

Don Parker feels much the same about his job repairing and operating elevators in Los Angeles’ City Hall. On a day when anxiety roiled the world, Parker found a moment of peaceful solitude standing in the building’s empty rotunda and staring up with appreciation at the elaborate mosaics that decorate the walls and ceiling.

Parker pretty much had the building to himself; City Hall was closed for Columbus Day.

Outside the landmark, however, there were signs of a nation at war.

Large concrete barricades blocked streets around the Civic Center, and armed officers kept away all but the construction workers putting finishing touches on the historic municipal structure’s $300-million renovation.

Parker, 38, said he was not worried about being in a building that at least the police have judged a potential target. “They have us barricaded in pretty well,” Parker said.

The elevator repairman’s wife is not so calm. She knows he is working much of the day in the elevator shaft in a potential target. So she calls him several times a day to brief him on the latest war news and to ask how things are at City Hall.

“She is a little nervous. She is wondering if anything is going to happen. If anything happens, it’s going to happen this week,” Parker said.

There is anxiety out there. Plenty of people feel it, some more than others.

David Whitestine, a chef who works at a restaurant across from the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant near San Luis Obispo, said his nerves are slightly rattled. Highway Patrol cars are parked out front, and offshore, Coast Guard boats cruise back and forth.

“But the way I see it, if it happens it will be over before we even know it,” he said. Nuclear scientists say an attack on the power plant, operated by Pacific Gas & Electric Co., would not yield the kind of mushroom-cloud apocalypse that Whitestine imagines, but the thought does offer bitter comfort.

Steven Poster, a director of photography now finishing work on the upcoming Drew Barrymore film “Donnie Darko” and on the “Stuart Little 2” sequel at Sony Pictures in Culver City, said Hollywood seems distracted by reported threats against movie studios and the news of war.

Poster said every office he visited Monday had a TV set on airing the latest developments from Afghanistan. Although he knows he’ll be OK, he remains nervous, especially about traveling.

“Intellectually, I know I’m going to be fine. Emotionally, it’s a different story,” Poster said.

John Zarolli, a tugboat captain at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, admits he was disturbed by TV reports that oil tankers could be targets.

“I think just hearing it stated out loud--ports are at high risk for attack--made it real,” he said. “And my wife was in tears. . . . I felt pretty bad about that.”

But Zarolli is ultimately a pragmatist. “You just gotta keep your eyes open,” he said. “That’s all you can do.”

If one place symbolizes California to the world, it would be the Golden Gate Bridge. It is a point not lost on the people who work there, who can’t help but think the bridge could fall victim to a terrorist strike.

“We all think about it--that the Golden Gate Bridge, like the Statue of Liberty, could be a target,” said Dennis “Rocky” Dellarocca, the painting supervisor at the bridge. “But we’ve got to go to work. We’ve got to take care of the bridge.”

And so, on Monday, Dellarocca, 47, marveled at the beauty of San Francisco Bay and brushed aside any fear that his world-famous workplace could become a target of terrorism.

“It’s work as usual,” said Dellarocca, who is bearded and wore jeans, a work shirt and a navy blue Golden Gate Bridge cap.

The bridge was closed to pedestrians and cyclists for several days after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, and security has tightened significantly. Guards in carts crossed its span regularly Monday, and a California Highway Patrol car was parked at one end.

Dellarocca roamed up and down the bridge as usual to supervise crews in the breezy sunshine. Camera-toting tourists strolled across its span, boats passed underneath, and jets left behind trails over the ocean.

The painting supervisor has worked on Bay Area bridges for 27 years, climbing hundreds of feet up their towers to paint them. It is a risky job, and one that he loves.

He and his crews keep their eyes open for anything suspicious--an unattended package, for example--but otherwise work feels normal, he said.

“I don’t feel any less safe here than in any other public place,” said Dellarocca, the father of two young children. “I don’t feel any different. We enjoy this world-famous icon. We take a lot of pride in it.”

Southern California’s Universal CityWalk is another icon on high alert. Cars are now routinely searched as they enter the parking lot, and bomb-sniffing dogs patrol the grounds. Michael Pierce, who works a sidewalk sales cart, said he wasn’t going to dwell on his own risk. It would seem churlish, he said, given what American soldiers are facing.

“We’ve got guys out there putting their lives on the line,” he said. “The least we can do is come in the morning and do our jobs.”

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Times staff writers Maura Dolan in San Francisco, James Bates, Patrick McGreevey, Massie Ritsch and Nancy Wride in Los Angeles, John Johnson in Avila Beach, Tim Reiterman in Livermore, Nancy Vogel in Sacramento and Evan Halper in Anaheim contributed to this report.