Abandonment

EVEN now, Charlene De La Rosa recalls how pretty the model homes were. She remembers the well-dressed and conscientious sales staff, the professional-looking office. Rancho Las Flores was to be a 550-home, 135-acre development offering homes in the mid-$100,000s to mid-$200,000s in the growing Riverside County city of Coachella. In April 2004, De La Rosa, a court services assistant, put a $2,500 deposit on a $219,000 five-bedroom, four-bathroom home planned for the development's second phase.

I am still boiling over Carina Chocano's review of "August Rush" ["Holiday Treacle Heavy in 'August,' " Nov. 21]. She dismissed the tale of redemption of a foster child as "a saccharine holiday pill." I can trump her cynicism, because what happened to the foster child, Evan, happened to me. I persevered. I survived. I succeeded. And I saw myself in this movie. The filmmakers were able to capture the central characteristics that are dominant in the lives of foster children throughout this country.

Lawmakers gave preliminary approval to a new 30-day age limit for children who can be legally abandoned under the state's safe-haven law. The restriction is designed to stop parents and guardians from using the law to relinquish older children. The state's safe-haven law is the only one in the country without an age limit and has led to the abandonment of 34 children -- none of them infants -- since July.

Los Angeles police, continuing to investigate why a man apparently abandoned a baby girl at a Mid-City hospital, said Monday that "his involvement is still being considered for criminal prosecution." Police said the 6-month-old girl was reunited with her mother after her grandparents saw a televised news report and called police. The mother apparently left the baby with her biological father for a weekend visit, police said. Half an hour later, the baby was brought to the Olympia Medical Center by a man who was not her father.

As electricity gets slowly switched back on and drinkable water starts to flow again, the city is turning to another herculean labor -- the removal and scrapping of more than 200,000 waterlogged and abandoned cars. The corroding cars are strewn about the city, on freeway medians, side roads and parking lots. They are stranded in front of homes and apartments, and in some areas, the middle of the street. So far, the city has towed about 1,600 of them.

If Dennis Zine had his way, the trash bin near USC where the body of an abandoned infant was discovered last week would have been plastered with a big, bright sticker explaining where to safely drop off an unwanted newborn. Zine, a Los Angeles city councilman, sponsored a September 2004 motion calling for such stickers on all dumpsters in the city. But the sanitation bureau pointed out how difficult and expensive that would be, given the 150,000 trash bins in the city of Los Angeles.

Long gone are the soldiers who kept guard at this former Army facility, searching the skies for Soviet planes that might soar in from the Pacific to bomb the city. Their weather-battered guard shack off a gravelly road in the steep hills behind Encino now has rusted window frames and a hole in one wall. But the radar tower still stands tall, overlooking the San Fernando Valley to the north and the central city to the southeast.

Carjackers robbed an 86-year-old man at gunpoint Thursday morning and drove him to a remote area of the desert where they abandoned him. Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies did not release the victim's name but said he was not injured. About 10 a.m., the victim was stopped at a red light at Avenue I and Sierra Highway while driving his 1992 Ford Tempo. A man opened the driver's door and pointed a pistol, demanding that the driver move to the passenger side and unlock that door.