Stolen puppy brings to life a photo dropped at robbery scene

Sometimes the criminal life can be so hectic. Take the fellow involved in a home invasion robbery in L.A. He was apparently in such a rush to fill his pockets with loot that he dropped a photo of a woman at the scene.

The case might have died there except, oddly enough, the intruders also took a puppy. The victim offered a reward for the dog on his MySpace page and guess what? A woman called to say she had found the animal and would be glad to turn it over for the reward. A meeting was arranged, secretly attended by officers.

By now you’ve guessed that the woman who showed up was the one in the dropped photo. She eventually confessed and implicated the others, reported the Thin Blue Line, a police publication.

And the puppy? It was recovered and given a new name -- Felon.

Cheeseburger to go

A reader with the sign-on dcsjeeep spotted it on the 5 Freeway (see photo). Someone held the onions, which must have come as a relief to the other drivers.

Unclear on the Concept

In Watsonville, E. Z. Smith spotted a prohibition that didn’t go with the name of the street (see photo).

Who lost Irvine?

The other day The Times reported a drive by some folks in Needles to secede from California. Meanwhile, right under our noses, Andrew Rutkin noticed that an Orange County vizier, excuse me, supervisor, formed a new nation out of his district (see photo).

Overtaken by events

Peter Mathews, an unsuccessful congressional candidate in Long Beach, had wanted to dramatize the high price of gasoline in one of his campaign fliers. Little did he know that by the time election day rolled around, people would look at the snapshot he included (see photo) and feel, not anger, but nostalgia for the good old days of pre-$4-a-gallon fuel.

Attention, shoppers!

I’m still hearing from folks who are irritated by supermarket baggers who are under orders to ask all customers except Olympic-athlete types whether they need help carrying their groceries out to the car.

Reader Stuart aired another gripe -- market employees in the shopping aisles who are apparently told to greet all customers and ask how their day has been.

“One day I . . . said that I was so happy you asked,” Stuart said. “I told him a story about how my wife was leaving me, I needed more surgery (my fourth), I was just laid off from work, my car was stolen, my dog had died -- so forth and so on. I held on to the employee to prevent him from leaving no matter how hard he tried. No other employee asked me how I was doing.”

miscelLAny

Oh, the perils of spell check. Jennifer Hronek relayed an e-mail from a sales rep who informed Hronek that her company did not accept credit cards. The rep closed with the stunning words, “Sorry for the incontinence.”

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Steve Harvey can be reached at (800) LATIMES, Ext. 77083, by fax at (213) 237-4712, by mail at Metro, L.A. Times, 202 W. 1st St., L.A. 90012, and by e-mail at steve.harvey@latimes.com