Finding Short Parking Helper Proves to Be Tall Order

--The city of Concord, N.H., has a 20th-Century personnel problem. It can’t find an elf. The city began a pre-Christmas advertising campaign to persuade downtown shoppers to use a new parking garage, and officials wanted someone in an elf suit to show motorists how to use the garage’s computerized parking meter. They offered $5.50 an hour for a 40-hour week through Christmas Eve. But, City Manager James Smith said, Concord’s three parking enforcement officers refused to wear the suit. The state Office of Employment Security thought it had a candidate, but the elf suit, a man’s size small, did not match his 6-foot frame, said Diane Flint, Concord’s community development administrator. She said the city has called theater companies and posted notices on college bulletin boards. Still no elf.

--Joseph J. Silvano Jr., a Newton, Mass., insurance broker, was in big trouble. He was heading to a federal court in Boston to plead guilty to income tax evasion, an infraction that carried a penalty of up to 10 years in jail. Even worse, Silvano, 51, who suffers from severe claustrophobia, had to squeeze into an elevator with 12 other people to get to the courtroom. “Whenever I’m on an elevator, if I’m going to the 15th floor, say, I get off at the seventh and take a breather because of my fear,” he said. But the elevator got stuck between the seventh and eighth floors--and remained there for two hours. Silvano--breathing hard, bathed in sweat and with his shirt open--finally staggered into the 15th-floor courtroom of District Judge Walter Jay Skinner. After getting the facts, Skinner angrily observed that defendants “are not supposed to be punished before they go to court,” and said he would make the two hours in the elevator be Silvano’s sentence.

--Former Beatles drummer Ringo Starr has accepted a seven-figure payment to help drum up business by endorsing an Upstate New York wine cooler. Officials at the Canadaigua Wine Co. said Starr “fits the image of the product: he’s classic with a dry and humorous sense that matches the dry, clear, happy taste of our new cooler.”

--The National Council of Women of the United States has presented its 1986 Women of Conscience Awards to Sharon Christa McAuliffe, the teacher who died in the Challenger explosion; Anne Morrow Lindbergh, writer and widow of Charles A. Lindbergh; Daisy George, U.N. representative of the National Assn. of Negro Business and Professional Women, and Mildred Leet, head of the Trickle-Up Program, which provides aid to African countries.