Impostors

Bertha Pinedo Bugarin, a onetime operator of six abortion clinics in Southern California, was charged Friday with 10 felony counts of practicing medicine without a license and grand theft. "This defendant preyed on women in the Hispanic community," San Diego County Dist. Atty. Bonnie Dumanis said. Dumanis said nine women in the Chula Vista area have said Bugarin performed surgery on them. One delivered a premature baby who lived for only three hours, officials said. Bugarin, 48, faces similar charges in Los Angeles.

A store security guard who told police he was a counter-terrorism agent with the Department of Homeland Security was arraigned Wednesday on charges of impersonating an agent and carrying a loaded firearm. He pleaded not guilty to all the counts. Orange police arrested Kevin Javaheri, 49, in late February after they approached him in a strip mall restaurant where he was sitting with a loaded gun in a shoulder holster, said Deputy Dist. Atty. Keith Bogardus.

WHEN David Vanegas was going to Rice University, school officials say, he gravitated to large lecture classes where he wouldn't stand out. At mealtimes, he never seemed to have his ID card handy and relied on friends to let him into the dining hall. In the evenings, he persuaded students to let him stay overnight in their dorm rooms. But his schoolmates began to notice odd things about him, like he never seemed to have any homework.

Azia Kim, the Fullerton 18-year-old who posed as a Stanford University freshman for eight months, joined the Army ROTC program at nearby Santa Clara University, where she received training and military equipment, university and Army officials said Tuesday. Army spokesman Robert Rosenburgh called Kim a "stealth cadet" who used her phony Stanford identity to participate in the Reserve Officer Training Corps program for two academic quarters before dropping out in March.

Azia Kim arrived at Stanford University last fall from Fullerton and took up residence on campus at Kimball Hall. She ate in the dining hall and seemed to do her homework, often working late into the night on school papers. She told people she was a human biology major and talked about her upcoming exams. There was only one problem: She had not been admitted as a student.

Stanford University officials said Thursday they were investigating claims that a young Orange County woman passed herself off as a student, talked her way into several dormitories and lived on campus for eight months. The university would not disclose the woman's name or the circumstances surrounding her alleged ruse, but the school's student newspaper identified her as Azia Kim, 18, a graduate of Troy High School in Fullerton.

California's Napa Valley is making a name for itself in Europe with officials there declaring that wine bottles can't say "Napa" on the label if the grapes come from someplace else. The European Union's decision to grant Napa Valley what is known as "geographic indicator" status, reached this year and scheduled to be formally announced in San Francisco today, was hailed by vintners as a breakthrough.

YOU won't hear George Treadwell harmonizing on any of the classic hits by the Drifters, not "Up on the Roof," "Under the Boardwalk" or the song that declares "the neon lights are bright on Broadway." But whenever Tina Treadwell listens to those old tunes, she hears a sound that her father pieced together some 50 years ago, music she considers her birthright.

They had police badges, "Housing Authority" uniforms, bulletproof vests and firearms. They cruised the streets of Los Angeles in an LAPD-style cruiser equipped with police radios, side floodlights and metal prisoner partition. But these three men were not cops. For months, authorities believe, they targeted Latino street vendors, pretending to be detectives. They took cash from the vendors and issued fake citations for unlicensed vending and other misdeeds.

An arrest warrant has been issued for a man suspected of stealing the identity of an Army judge advocate general officer to illegally practice law in Southern California. Rigoberto Vazquez, 39, appeared on behalf of clients in a number of L.A.-area courts, prosecutors said Wednesday. Vazquez assumed the identity of Maj. Robert Vasquez, who is licensed to practice law in California but never has, Deputy Dist. Atty. Thomas Wenke said. Vazquez was charged Dec.