Electrician

Vincent Pelliccia wouldn't have been sitting in Los Angeles County Jail, shackled to his chair, if he hadn't gone to his usual Studio City hangout to meet with old friends and colleagues from the movie industry. A friendly gesture cost him his freedom. He agreed to give a ride to a man he knew only slightly, who, it turned out, was under surveillance by Los Angeles police in an unrelated investigation that has not been publicly described.

Vincent Pelliccia, the retired electrician from Newhall who was arrested earlier this month for escaping from a Virginia chain gang 41 years ago, was pardoned Tuesday and released from custody. "You see, Mr. Pelliccia, justice does work," said Los Angeles Municipal Judge Glenette Blackwell, ordering Pelliccia freed after Virginia Gov. Gerald L. Baliles issued the pardon.

Reincarnation is Kallu Khan's stock in trade. His workshop floor is a swamp of cardboard strips hacked from salvaged boxes. Laborers scoop them up, work them over and give them new life as smaller boxes, which Khan then sells to stationery and packing companies. In another warehouse a few doors down, dozens of rubber soles cut from discarded shoes also await a second chance. Next to these, a mountain of plastic castoffs -- toys, computer keyboards, car parts -- is separated by squatting workers, to be melted down into tiny pellets before being reborn in some new form.

The Keystone Kops-like explosion came with an ear-busting bang and white puff of smoke. In the calm aftermath, black bits of electrician's tape floated to the ground like snowflakes. I was fine, but, sadly, my garden chipper was dead. Having known the joys of chipping for only a few brief but glorious days, I was devastated. "You'll want a chipper," my landscape contractor had said as he finished our new backyard paradise.

ON a bright afternoon, about two dozen people gathered on a bend overlooking the San Gabriel River. The idyllic sounds of birds and flowing water mixed with the low growl of gas-powered suction dredges. Clusters of men (and one or two women) crouched in the water with vacuum hoses, circular pans and sluice boards. Their goal -- in some cases, their obsession -- was the same. "The gold looks so good underwater," gushed Coel Schumacher, a 19-year-old junior at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo.

John Robert Aguirre stood forlornly at RPM Lenders on the edge of South-Central Los Angeles, slapping twenties onto the yellow countertop. He was a week late with his monthly payment, and the anxiety showed on his face. His loan has an annual interest rate of more than 100%. He'd put up his truck as collateral. A missed payment could result in the loss of his vehicle. "I'm a self-employed electrician," Aguirre, 41, told me as he finished counting out the bills. "If I don't have my truck, I can't work.

A Camarillo electrician who was badly burned early Tuesday morning while working at a video company was in good condition at the Grossman Burn Center at Sherman Oaks Hospital with second- and third-degree burns to his face and arms, a hospital spokeswoman said. Thomas Patten, 49, was burned about 4:40 a.m. while working on a circuit breaker box at Technicolor Video Service on Mission Oaks Boulevard in Camarillo, said Joe Luna, a Ventura County Fire Department spokesman.

Sydney Giddens, an electrician who ran his own business in Burbank for 45 years and served on the city Building and Fire Code Appeals Board, died Tuesday of cancer at age 79, his wife, Evelyn Giddens, said. Born April 25, 1911, in San Francisco, he moved to Los Angeles as a child and graduated from Manual Arts High School.

Raymond Martin Bornand, retired owner of Major Electric Co., died Monday at home in Ojai. He was 64. He was born Nov. 7, 1935, in Santa Barbara, where he grew up and went to school. After serving in the Marine Corps during the Korean War, Bornand returned to Santa Barbara and became an electrician for Craviotto Electric Service. He then began his own business, Major Electric Co., which served the Ventura County area for 25 years.