Community Relations

This is a story about yogurt, but it is also about entrepreneurship, financial and cultural expectations, beating the heat, beating the caloric system and parking. It's a feel-good story about an ambitious 32-year-old Korean woman whose small business has become successful beyond all reasonable expectations. And it's a feel-bad story about a sleepy neighborhood attacked, out of nowhere, by an army of frozen-yogurt fiends.

Last fall, a peaceful West Hollywood neighborhood was disrupted repeatedly by helicopter noise, rattling windows, waking babies and startling dogs at all hours of the day. After months of investigating, residents discovered that the ruckus came not from the usual emergency sources -- Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and the Los Angeles County sheriff's station -- but from at least one private helicopter landing on the roof of the nearby Sofitel hotel....

More than 200 opponents of Oxnard's 2-month-old gang injunction have filed court papers alleging it is being used to harass innocent people and trample civil liberties, while stigmatizing dozens of youths as "urban terrorists." Attorneys for the Colonia Chiques, the gang targeted in the June 1 injunction, will use the declarations filed by community members to make the case that the court-ordered crackdown is too punitive and should be thrown out.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center has agreed to pay $150,000 to a neighborhood group that opposes its planned Museum of Tolerance expansion to avoid going to court in the long-running dispute. Most of the money will cover legal fees incurred by Homeowners Opposed to Museum Expansion, a group of residents who fought plans to extend the museum's hours and replace a Holocaust memorial garden with a multistory reception and banquet space, said Susan Gans, an entertainment attorney who has led the opposition since 2007.

This city in the foothills of the Rockies has scenery more diverse than most Hollywood back lots: A 19th century castle, a Spanish colonial plaza and miles of prairie and mountains. That landscape -- along with New Mexico's generous film incentives -- has lured more than a dozen movie productions here in the last decade. The filming has brought in a surge of money, but it has also brought tension.

Rosalind Gonzales has lived in her Norwalk house 30 years, raising her two now-adult sons there. She told state officials Tuesday that she's not ready to move -- even though her home might have to be demolished to make room for an expanded Santa Ana Freeway. "I don't want to move," the 58-year-old nurse's aide said. "You just can't throw me somewhere else and tell me to start over again. Life is too short." Gonzales was among more than 250 people who attended a public hearing on the proposed $1.

No one wanted to move out of the little apartment building on North Spaulding Avenue. The rents were low, the neighborhood lively. Most days, actor and masseur Johnny Ray strolled up the street with his potbellied pig, Harley. Tibor Reis, 78, tipped his fedora in greeting as he headed, in a suit, to his Orthodox synagogue. Before leaving for work to answer phones, Tami Talebi mapped out macabre movies.

The mansionization battle rustling the leaves of North Barrington Avenue is something new even for Brentwood. It's a dispute not over a 12,000-square-foot neo-Tudor monster or a towering modernist cube, but over a backyard treehouse for an 18-month-old girl. This being Brentwood, of course, the edifice at issue is no ordinary treehouse.

The entertainment industry's relationship with the East Valley will be discussed at tonight's meeting of the Sherman Oaks Homeowners Assn. Michael Klausman, president of the CBS Studio Center in Studio City, and Fred Sands, president of Fred Sands Realtors, are scheduled to speak. CBS, situated just north of Ventura Boulevard near Laurel Canyon Boulevard, has 19 sound stages and currently houses productions that include "Seinfeld" and "Roseanne."

Borders Group Inc. said it has decided to eliminate most of its staff of 330 community relations coordinators. Most of Borders' 336 U.S. bookstores have community relations coordinators who plan and host events, act as liaisons to the community and handle other public relations duties. The company's restructuring plan will phase out most of those jobs and create 72 new area marketing manager positions. The cuts affect about 1% of the bookseller's 30,000 employees.

Last year Dave Wilkinson asked God for guidance. He wanted to know what he could do to better fight abortion. Wilkinson, an evangelical pastor, runs three Ventura County pregnancy clinics that encourage women to choose alternatives to the procedure. He believes the prevalence of abortion is the biggest test Christians face. "It's probably one of the things that American Christians are going to have to stand before God and answer for," Wilkinson said. "He will say, 'You, as Americans, what did you do to fight abortion?

A proposal to build a large medical complex along with hundreds of homes and retail shops at a busy West Los Angeles intersection has touched off heated debate about congestion versus renewal in an already intensively developed area that's facing dozens of other construction projects. Bundy Village & Medical Park would include 385 housing units, many for elderly residents, and more than 500,000 square feet of commercial space on the northwest corner of Bundy Drive and Olympic Boulevard.

The Jewish holiday Tu B'Shevat is a celebration of the bounty of nature, usually commemorated by eating fruit and planting trees. But members of Valley Beth Israel, a Sun Valley Conservative synagogue, added a new tradition Sunday, distributing fruit trees to dozens of families from the surrounding community in a symbol of sharing that they hope will bear fruit for years to come. About 80 families -- enrolled in the Roscoe Canyon Child Care Resource Center, which operates a Head Start program in facilities it leases from the temple -- signed up to receive apple, orange, apricot, peach and nectarine trees, which were donated by Tree- People, a nonprofit environmental group.

The Los Angeles County Fire Department has scrapped a plan to use a fire station in Malibu as a temporary location to house inmate firefighters displaced by the massive Station fire. Faced with opposition from residents, Los Angeles County Fire Chief P. Michael Freeman informed the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors in a letter that his staff would be looking elsewhere. Freeman did not specify why fire officials backed away from the proposal. But Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky said that transforming the fire camp, now a workplace for 30 firefighters and staff, into housing for inmates did not make sense near a residential area.

Nearly four years after the community beat back a proposal to build a 300-unit condo project near the Grove shopping center, complaining it was too dense and would generate too much traffic, the developer has come up with a new plan: Another 300-unit condo project, this one with taller buildings and about three times as many units set aside for senior citizens. The redesigned project by Casden Properties will be presented to community leaders next week, and developer Alan Casden hopes the enhanced senior citizen component will win him support this time around.

The normally straightforward process of starting a neighborhood council has degenerated into an ugly spat over who should be the recognized voice of Westwood. Since last summer, public meetings and communications about a proposed council have been punctuated by shouting, name-calling and accusations, while the blizzard of e-mails that has accompanied the process has been dotted with rude and crude language. "Morons with wacko ideas do not qualify," read the subject line in one electronic message.

James Carnett, director of marketing and community relations for Orange Coast College, was named Wednesday as "National Communicator of the Year" for 1986 by the National Council for Community Relations. The group honored Carnett during its national convention in Las Vegas. The award is the highest the council bestows. The council is an organization of community college public affairs and government affairs professionals.

The Irvine Co. said it has named former Los Angeles Olympic Committee Vice President Frank L. Smith to the newly created post of community relations vice president. Prior to joining the Irvine Co., Smith, 42, served briefly as president of the Orange County Centennial, a special committee charged with developing a celebration of the county's 100th birthday. Earlier, Smith had served as executive director of the Orange County Economic Development Corp.

Malibu residents are fighting a proposal to use a local fire station as quarters for prison inmate firefighters who need a new home after the Station fire burned through their camp in the Angeles National Forest. Los Angeles County Fire Department officials are looking at the Malibu facility as a temporary replacement after an inmate firefighter camp atop Mt. Gleason was destroyed last summer by the largest brush fire in Los Angeles County history. The blaze killed two county firefighters who were defending the camp.

They awoke from the nightmare to find things were the same in the light of day. Their 17-year-old son, Aydin, was dead. Three hours after leaving home to attend a party, the student leader respected throughout his high school had flat-lined in the back of an ambulance. Hamid Salek and Azita Rezvan discussed returning to Iran. America had been Aydin's dream; South Pasadena, his kingdom. Perhaps putting an ocean between themselves and the place that held too many memories of their only child would ease the ache.