Janitor

A would-be robber killed a janitor early Monday at a Paramount market, a Los Angeles County sheriff's spokesman said. Super A Foods is offering a $10,000 reward for information leading to the conviction of the man who entered the market on Downey Avenue shortly before 4 a.m., sheriff's spokesman Matt Rodriguez said. The manager and janitor Cesar Cruz, 30, were getting money for the intruder when he shot Cruz and fled, Rodriguez said.

Jurors said overwhelming evidence against a 16-year-old girl charged with killing her mother and stepfather left them with little choice but to find her guilty Friday of first degree-murder. Several members of the Compton jury said they were unconvinced by Cynthia Alvarez's testimony this week that she was helpless to stop her parents from being killed by her boyfriend. The jurors, who declined to give their names, said notes that Alvarez wrote to her boyfriend while he was hiding inside her Compton home shortly before the October 2011 killings showed she played an active role in the crimes.

A janitor at the Martin Luther King Jr. Multi-Service Ambulatory Care Center in Willowbrook has been charged with felony commercial burglary for allegedly selling 14 boxes of patient records to a recycling center, authorities said Thursday. The boxes contained computer printouts of about 30,000 patient names, addresses, phone numbers and medical record numbers — not private medical information, according to William T Fujioka, L.A. County's chief executive. Robert Sanders, 55, was arrested Sept.

SACRAMENTO - A group of Republican state lawmakers Wednesday proposed allowing school districts to spend education funds to train teachers, administrators and janitors in gun use. Responding to last month's mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., the lawmakers said arming school personnel would help protect campuses against violent intruders. "The idea is to create essentially an invisible line of defense around our kids," said Assemblyman and tea party adherent Tim Donnelly of San Bernardino.

A legal claim has been filed against the San Diego Unified School District on behalf of a woman who alleges that her 6-year-old daughter was sexually molested by a janitor at the elementary school the girl attended. The claim, filed May 9 by attorney John Clifton Elstead of Pleasanton in Alameda County, is the first step in filing a lawsuit against the school district. The mother's name is not listed in the claim. A criminal investigation by the San Diego Police Department is continuing, Lt. Kraig Kessler said.

A former Glendale elementary school janitor charged with molesting two third-graders was sentenced in Glendale Municipal Court this week to 36 months probation. Under terms of the probation, Ralph M. Camden, 66, is prohibited from being near children out of the presence of another adult or guardian. He is also required to undergo psychiatric counseling, Deputy Dist. Atty. Jeanne Behling said. Camden pleaded no contest in February to two counts of engaging in lewd and lascivious conduct with a minor.

Josef D'Heygers was a 41-year-old Belgian shoemaker who spoke no English when he came to the United States in 1956 and began working as a janitor at Mater Dei High School in Santa Ana. The Catholic high school literally became home to D'Heygers, who initially slept on a bed in an unused restroom before moving into a converted nurse's infirmary. He later moved into a mobile home near the faculty cafeteria that eventually was replaced by a more modern one. By the time an apartment was built for him above the new Campus Ministry Center in 2000, the unassuming D'Heygers had long become as much a fixture at Mater Dei as the statue of Mary in the grotto in the center of campus.

A 42-year-old bank janitor was arrested Thursday on suspicion of taking $16,000 that was mistakenly left on a counter at Union Bank in Moorpark. Investigators questioned the bank's cleaning crew, then searched Alejandro Ortega's home, where they recovered about $14,000 in cash, police said.

A janitor who apparently was agitated over the late payment of a $150 check doused a bookkeeper with a flammable liquid Tuesday, then calmly walked away as flames engulfed her, police said. The bookkeeper, Karen LaBorde, 42, of Orange, died shortly before 5 p.m. at UCI Medical Center, about nine hours after sustaining burns over 95% of her body, police said.

Gov. Ned McWherter appointed a capitol janitor as Tennessee's ambassador to the NCAA Midwest Regional on Thursday so the man can watch his grandson play for Memphis State tonight against Georgia Tech. Rev. David Vaughn, 66, will get an expenses-paid trip to Kansas City, though earlier in the day the NCAA had ruled against a plan that would have enabled him to see his namesake play. "He's going to represent the governor at the basketball game," said Billy Stair, an aide to the governor.

George Perez started at the bottom of Cudahy city government, cleaning toilets as a $6.50-an-hour a janitor. He was ambitious, though, and in eight years was elected to the City Council. Six years later, with no college education or management training, Perez was running the southeast L.A. County town as city manager. He became the embodiment of power in the working-class immigrant city along the 710 Freeway. His up-from-the-bootstraps story made him a hero to some - a kind of "Mr. Cudahy," with a tattoo of the city seal on his right leg to prove it. He served as emcee at town hall meetings, where door prizes such as blenders, fans and heaters were raffled off. When people came to City Hall to complain, Perez sometimes met them personally.

Some documentaries just make you feel good about the world and the people in it, and "La Source" is definitely one of those. Directed by Patrick Shen, "La Source" opens with its subject, Josue Lajeunesse, a lead janitor at Princeton, receiving the university's prestigious Journey Award, given to someone exemplifying the spirit of Martin Luther King and in this case making the problems of others his own. Lajeunesse is an immigrant from the...

The prosecution in the child sex-abuse case against former Penn State football coach Jerry Sandusky rested on Monday, turning the proceedings over to the defense. For its first witness, the defense called former Penn State assistant coach Dick Anderson. Before the prosecution formally ended its presentation,  one of the charges against Sandusky - relating to Victim 7 - was dropped. It was thrown out  because the state statute did not apply in the years the witness said he was abused.

Outer space is about to get its first janitor satellite. Engineers from the Swiss Space Center at the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne announced this week that they soon will begin work on CleanSpace One, a prototype for a line of brand-new satellites whose sole mission will be to remove defunct satellites from orbit. If the prototype is successful, the EPFL hopes to create a family of "de-orbiting" satellites so that humanity can practice in space what the Boy Scouts preach here on Earth - take only pictures (or data readings)

It isn't just that some of the candidates for the GOP presidential nomination occasionally seem divorced from modern reality; it's that they're determined to re-fight battles that most of us thought had ended roughly a century ago. A case in point is newly inaugurated front-runner Newt Gingrich, who in a talk Monday at Harvard University denigrated federal child labor laws that date back to the 1930s. "It is tragic what we do in the poorest neighborhoods in trapping children … in child laws which are truly stupid," Gingrich said.

Rosa Ayala has been arrested seven times, endured three hunger strikes and marched in so many protests, she long ago lost track. As the 67-year-old janitor was interviewed for an oral history project on Saturday, she sat proudly in a chair dressed from head to toe in her union's symbolic red and told her story. "I fight for our union's cause because it comes from deep inside of me," she said, an audio recorder a few inches away. "We will never be satisfied until we have respect and fair wages.

BRIAN BIRKENSTEIN mops floors in Antarctica, but he is not a professional janitor. He graduated in 1996 from UCLA with a bachelor's degree in geography, traveled the world as a tour guide, then applied for a cleaning job way down under because he wanted to see Antarctica. Why pay thousands of dollars to take an Antarctic cruise, he figured, when you can collect $7 an hour for cleaning toilets at McMurdo Station? Raytheon Polar Services Co., a Centennial, Colo.

In Monday's article on the NCAA eligibility scandal, the man accused of paying money to players, Myron Piggie, was described as "a former janitor and a convicted crack dealer." I could understand if being a janitor is how he met the players, or was relevant to the case in some other way, but there was nothing else in the story about janitorial work. Am I the only one who found it strange that an essential, honest job and a despicable, illegal practice are mentioned together in the same sentence?

A janitor at the Martin Luther King Jr. Multi-Service Ambulatory Care Center in Willowbrook has been charged with felony commercial burglary for allegedly selling 14 boxes of patient records to a recycling center, authorities said Thursday. The boxes contained computer printouts of about 30,000 patient names, addresses, phone numbers and medical record numbers — not private medical information, according to William T Fujioka, L.A. County's chief executive. Robert Sanders, 55, was arrested Sept.

A life's gift Re "In death, a promise for the future," Aug. 29 Thomas Curwen's feature article absolutely captivated me. The subject was heart-wrenching, but I was moved even more by Curwen's ability to juxtapose the practical and real world of ALS, death and giving and the less-definable space of suffering, hope and future. Thank you for sharing with us this woman's powerful and significant life — and death — and promise. Nancy Strow Sheley Long Beach What a treat to see a positive article about donating one's body to science on the front page of The Times.