The Fire of Rings Lights Up O.C.

When 18-year-old Evita LaVoie of Banning was picked to carry the Olympic flame through the streets of Laguna Beach, she wasn’t sure she was worthy.

“Compared to some of these other runners like the Marines, I thought, ‘I didn’t do anything to support our country,’ ” said LaVoie, a three-sport athlete at Banning High who nearly died in a car crash 10 years ago. After brain surgery, LaVoie had to teach herself to eat and walk again.

“I figured I was just ordinary,” she said.

But LaVoie admitted she didn’t feel very ordinary Tuesday morning as she jogged up Pacific Coast Highway by Aliso Beach Park with dozens of classmates and hundreds of sleepy-eyed Laguna Beach residents cheering her every step.

“I was so nervous. I kept thinking I was going to drop [the torch]. It was so heavy.”

LaVoie was one of the runners who helped carry the Olympic flame along the Orange County coastline Tuesday on its journey to Salt Lake City. By trip’s end, 11,500 people will have passed the torch since it was ignited Nov. 19 in Olympia, Greece. Torch-carrying runners will cover about 20% of the 1,167 miles through California. Vehicles will handle the rest of the journey.

From Orange County, a police-escorted truck convoy transported the flaming caldron to Olvera Street in Los Angeles, where runner Jason Murry was waiting.

Murry, 20, of South-Central Los Angeles, paused on the La Placita bandstand before a crowd of 2,000 as Mayor James Hahn and other city leaders reflected on the Olympic Games of 1932 and 1984 hosted by Los Angeles.

“Take a moment to stop and salute the Olympic flame and say how proud you are the Olympics are in the United States,” Hahn said.

Hundreds of torchbearers carried the flame through Los Angeles, igniting the enthusiasm of the thousands who cheered them along city streets. The runners were a mix of Southern Californians: relatives of those who died on Sept. 11, movie stars, former Olympians and everyday people nominated by their friends.

The spectators were a mix of those there both to honor individuals and to salute the Olympic spirit.

“When are we ever going to see this again!” said set decorator Kristen Gassner, 32, of Eagle Rock. She and Shannon McGinnis, a 44-year-old movie prop worker from Echo Park, jumped up and down and shrieked like teenagers as the torch approached.

They were in downtown Los Angeles, near Broadway and 8th Street, yelling for runner R. Doyle Campbell--a man they’d never met.

Campbell, a Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department special-operations chief, is a cancer survivor who underwent a liver transplant 17 years ago. Since then, he has worked to bring attention to the need for organ donors.

In Chinatown, torchbearer Gary Conlin covered his stretch in a wheelchair as more than 100 of his friends lined Broadway, waving signs and flags.

“I wanted to get up out of my chair and really run when I saw them!” said the 41-year-old Lou Gehrig’s disease patient from Fullerton. “It was really exciting being a part of history.”

At the Coliseum, Mayra Torres, who has run two marathons and is training for her third, didn’t even break a sweat while carrying the torch up to the stadium’s rooftop Olympic flame, previously ignited by storied Olympian Rafer Johnson to start the 1984 games.

“I felt really proud to be doing something that so many athletes had done,” said the 18-year-old senior from San Fernando High School. Mayra is part of Students Run Los Angeles, a nonprofit group that trains students for the Los Angeles Marathon to give them a sense of achievement.

In Orange County, the first torchbearer Tuesday was 47-year-old Eileen Delaney of Fallbrook, who took off at 7 a.m. from a car dealership in San Juan Capistrano, a few miles south of the city’s historic mission. Monday’s relay--the first leg of the California journey--had ended at nightfall in downtown San Diego with Lance Armstrong, three-time Tour de France champion and cancer survivor, carrying the torch.

Delaney was nominated by her daughter, Heather, for her community volunteer work and round-the-clock assistance during Heather’s difficult pregnancy. Delaney said she didn’t do much to prepare for her big moment.

“My training routine was pushing myself away from the table,” she said.

Her running routine was also a little strange.

“We walked, we ran, we skipped. We did a little bit of everything.”

On its way through Newport Beach, the torch was carried by former Olympic gold medal decathlete Bruce Jenner, Lance Bass of N’Sync and Tom Frost of Rancho Santa Margarita.

Frost’s 22-year-old daughter, Lisa, died when her hijacked plane crashed into the World Trade Center on Sept. 11. Melanie Frost has seen her husband compete in about 30 marathons, but none of those 26.2-mile runs compared to Tuesday’s 0.2-mile jog up Newport Boulevard.

“It’s such a different time,” his wife said. “Tom ran this for Lisa. The stress of this is more emotional than physical. He was very emotional, completely overwhelmed by all of it.”

Frost said the most emotional moment was on the bus that torch carriers rode together to the points where they would pick up the relay. Each participant took a moment to explain why they had been nominated to run. Frost said he told his story last.

“I had everyone in tears, including myself. I had to stop myself several times,” he said. “That bus ride took a lot out of me.”

*

Times staff writer Sandra Murillo contributed to this report.