Other Things Did Happen

In a year dominated during its last months by terror-spawned grief and anger, it can be hard to remember that other moments--warming, chilling and amusing--also moved us.

A man found a fortune in cash on a Los Angeles street and returned it. A young man lost his way in the snowy woods and was found. An urge for a cigarette earned an air passenger a jet fighter-escorted trip back to LAX--and a possible jail term. And a former Castaic high school student who survived a brush with death three years ago lost his life.

First, the cash.

Ascension Franco Gonzales was sitting at a downtown Los Angeles bus stop in August when an armored truck made a turn in front of him, a door swung open and out dropped a clear plastic bag holding $203,000.

It wasn’t a television prank. Gonzales, a minimum-wage restaurant worker, grabbed the bag and hid it, his mind reeling with possibilities. There was a lot to consider, from a financial windfall for his family to a prison term if found out. In the end, he let his conscience cast the deciding vote and turned the money in.

Wrong answer, said many Angelenos in a story that both captured the city’s attention and exposed a heart as torn as Gonzales’.

Some said the Mexican native, who was here without immigration papers, did the right thing. Others thought he should have taken the money and run. Said one Angeleno: “The man’s as crazy as a Betsy bug.”

If so, he’s a Betsy bug with a clear conscience--and a bank account. Gonzales received a $25,000 reward from the AT System armored truck company--enough to lay the foundation for a family home in Tepeapulco, in the Mexican state of Hidalgo. Other than that, his life has returned to its routines.

“It’s like nothing ever happened,” Gonzales says now. “But, you know, from the beginning, I never really wanted all the attention. It’s quiet now, and I’m happy.”

In a year in which Census 2000 results detailed what a polyglot region we have become, a campaign began in Los Angeles and some nearby cities to add the tilde--the squiggle over the N--on signs marking Spanish-named streets, which supporters saw as an overdue act of literal correctness.

In Studio City, for example, Dona Alicia Place became Dona Alicia Place.

And in Diamond Bar, Ano Nuevo Drive sometime next spring will become Ano Nuevo Drive, shifting in translation from New Anus to New Year and, presumably, from the butt of jokes to anonymity.

In Fresno, a communications breakdown led federal Interior Department officials to name a former Superfund cleanup site a national historic landmark, bestowing a laurel on a place where a laurel tree might not even grow.

Then they took the honor away, deciding that although the Fresno Municipal Sanitary Landfill, with its history of technical innovations, might merit a spot in the annals of dumps, it doesn’t make the cut as a historic landmark.

Javid Naghani got his 15 minutes of fame, and up to 10 years in prison, after he was convicted of interfering with a flight crew that caught him smoking on a plane bound from Los Angeles to Toronto 16 days after the Sept. 11 attacks.

It didn’t help matters that the Iran native then threatened to kill Americans, terrifying the crew and drawing an Air Force fighter jet escort back to LAX, according to testimony at his trial this month. Sentencing is set for March 4.

Before the attacks forced a national redefinition of words like “hero” and “strength,” there was Nolan LeMar of Castaic, for whom they still apply.

LeMar was severely burned in 1998 in a freak science lab accident at Hart High School in Newhall. A star baseball player, he became an inspiration to his teammates by fighting to regain his health and his form. As a freshman last year at College of the Canyons, the center fielder made a regional all-star team, and this year as co-captain was his team’s second-leading hitter, with dreams of playing professional baseball.

On April 9 a suspected drunk driver crossed a Santa Clarita median and hit a vehicle driven by LeMar, killing him. Michael Glover, 44, of Saugus pleaded no contest Dec. 7 to manslaughter and drunk driving and faces up to five years in state prison when he is sentenced Feb. 5.

Tragedy also befell Raymond Zimmerman, 55, a big Orange County man with a heart to match, whose generosity of spirit cost him his health, and for now his independence.

In June, Zimmerman bent over to help a man collapsed on a Stanton sidewalk. The man, drunk, punched Zimmerman, who fell over and smashed his head on the sidewalk, police said. Zimmerman, who was living in a Garden Grove motel at the time, was hospitalized with brain injuries and recently was admitted to a long-term care facility.

The person whom he sought to help, Jeffrey Davis, 34, was charged with assault and faces a maximum 25-year sentence under the state’s three-strikes law because of 1993 convictions for armed robbery and attempted extortion with a gun. He faces a pretrial hearing in January.

Another good Samaritan, though, turned the tables on his attacker in September. Elio Bongon, a 65-year-old janitor from Fontana, stopped in West Covina to offer a lift and $10 for gas to a man and woman stranded by an empty tank.

When the gasless man tried to rob Bongon with a pellet gun, Bongon wrestled it away--after being shot in the shoulder--and began beating his assailant with it, authorities said. The alleged robber, identified as Anthony Salinas, 19, of Azusa was changed with carjacking and second-degree robbery.

Mountain biker Jeremy Galton, 23, needed help to find his way to safety.

In January, the La Canada Flintridge man went riding with his older brother in Big Tujunga Canyon, and they became separated in a thick fog. The brother made it out, but it was two days before a volunteer searcher spotted a track in the dirt that helped direct a helicopter search that found Galton on a cliff 60 feet above Fox Creek, shivering but uninjured.

In West Hollywood, the crimes were against trees.

City officials staged a news conference in August on the storied Sunset Strip to point out that some trees were much shorter than others and looked like broccoli heads after all the florets had been nibbled off. City officials also pointed out that the truncated trees just happened to be in front of billboards, which advertisers rent for up to $70,000 per month.

Billboard companies denied that they were involved.

Exposure became an issue for Cal State Fullerton officials this year too, when cross-country runner Leilani Rios threatened to sue if she was not allowed to rejoin her team after being dropped because her part-time job as a nightclub stripper was deemed a violation of the school’s athletic code of conduct.

University officials relented when lawyers told them exotic dancing is constitutionally protected, but Rios was ruled ineligible on academic grounds. Eyebrows were further raised when it was learned that word of Rios’ job circulated after four members of the Fullerton men’s baseball team spotted her on a boys’ night out. None of the men were disciplined by the school, leading some to wonder about a double standard.

And finally, there was Leisure World, now part of the new city of Laguna Woods. The huge retirement community cropped up in the news twice near year’s end, once when a homeowners group considered banning wind chimes--the issue is unresolved--and again when preservationists decided to move the world.

Since they opened in the 1960s, the marque of Leisure World complexes has been a massive metal-and-fiberglass globe. The Laguna Woods version is perched on a weed-covered lot near the San Diego Freeway within the neighboring city of Laguna Hills. It was destined for the scrap heap after city officials decided that it had overstayed its welcome.

Preservationists rode to the rescue and hope to dismantle the 32-foot-wide sphere in the coming weeks, then move it to a spot in Laguna Woods, near Leisure World’s golf course.

It will be there, in the dawning days of the new year, that the world will be remade.