Chatsworth Ca

As a bugler played taps outside the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels on Thursday, LAPD Officer Laura Gerritsen stood up and saluted the flag-draped casket of her life partner, Officer Spree DeSha. Gerritsen was in uniform, and the action seemed fitting to honor a woman who was remembered in a nearly three-hour funeral ceremony as a model police officer. DeSha, 35, a seven-year veteran of the Los Angeles Police Department, was among 25 people killed and 135 injured Sept.

For more than 13 hours, Pastor Tony Amatangelo had prayed and watched over his friend and fellow minister as he lay in a county hospital after being pulled from the wreckage of Metrolink 111. Paul Long died, and four hours later, physically and emotionally spent, Amatangelo returned to his Moorpark home. Sunday service was coming. What would he say? The pastor felt chances were slim that the sermon he had written for the service would be relevant after the crash. Then he remembered.

Engineer Robert M. Sanchez pulled Metrolink 111 out of the Chatsworth station and was rolling north at 54 mph. About a mile later, he entered a restricted speed zone and throttled down to 42 mph. Just ahead, on his right side, was a red light. It was a warning to stop so that an oncoming Union Pacific freight train could move off the main track and onto a siding.

Coasting out of Chatsworth at 4:22 p.m., Doyle Souser had caught an early train home from work to cook his family a nice tri-tip for dinner. Charles Peck had just wrapped up an interview for a job he hoped would land him in Southern California so he could marry his fiancee. Aida Magdaleno, a farmworker's daughter studying at Cal State Northridge, was on her way home to attend her nephew's baptism. They didn't know one another.

Thursday's earthquake did little more than topple a few household items and startle people in the Los Angeles area from their slumber. After five years of relative quiet, it was a reminder of life in earthquake country. The magnitude 4.6 temblor was the first quake with a magnitude of 4.0 or greater in Los Angeles County in about five years, according to Caltech seismologist Nick Scheckel. "It's been pretty quiet," Scheckel said. The temblor struck just before 1 a.m.

Virginia Watson first traveled to Chatsworth as a teenager, making the drive with friends and family nearly 70 years ago from her home in Highland Park to a cabin in what was then a far-flung community of ranches and orange groves. Sixty-eight years later, Watson is so closely identified with the community she adopted as her own that locals view her as its matriarch -- and head historian. "She is Ms. Chatsworth," said Andre van der Valk, a co-president of the Chatsworth Historical Society.

Washington Mutual Inc. on Wednesday told 1,000 employees who work at a call center in Chatsworth that it would move their jobs to Texas and Costa Rica to cut costs. The positions will be phased out starting in two months, with some employees offered work at a new Washington Mutual center in San Antonio -- where most of the jobs are being moved -- and others given job-search assistance, the Seattle-based thrift said.

Margaret Cagle doesn't believe it's possible for people to \o7really\f7 hate math -- if only they would give it a chance. Cagle, also known as Peg, has spent 12 years at Chatsworth's Lawrence Middle School exposing algebra and geometry students to "this beautiful, vast world that you can't help but love," once you get to know it.

The little transit line that could is about to get bigger. The Orange Line, the busway between North Hollywood and Woodland Hills that has broken ridership projections since it opened last fall, will be extended six miles to Chatsworth under a plan approved Thursday by the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority board. The Orange Line carries about 20,000 people a day -- three times more than transit officials expected.

Los Angeles police arrested a 32-year-old man for allegedly beating a Chatsworth mini-mart cashier to death with a baseball bat early Friday, 12 years after he was convicted of stabbing another store clerk 25 times. The suspect's father said Frank E. Kaatz, who has battled depression, alcohol and drugs since his teens, went berserk about 1:45 a.m., smashing windows and furniture at his parents' home before challenging his father, Frank P.