La Jolla Ca

They are sons of La Jolla, five friends who came of age on the edge of the Pacific. They all played on La Jolla High School's football team. One was the defensive player of the year. Another was a star quarterback mentored by former pro standout Doug Flutie, who said he'd be proud to have the boy as his own. Off the field, they cruised around town and hung out in picturesque coves beneath bluffs lined with spectacular homes. As they grew from youngsters to young men, they also became known as partyers who sometimes threw a few punches.

Summer Dunsmore, 19, glanced over her shoulder at the 50 or so harbor seals snoozing on a small horseshoe-shaped beach beside the Children's Pool in La Jolla. "Look at them," said the La Jolla High graduate who is now a student at San Diego Mesa College. "They're such peaceful creatures."

Four of five La Jolla men initially charged with murder in the beating death of a professional surfer pleaded guilty to lesser charges Friday. The fifth defendant, accused of delivering the fatal blow, rejected a plea bargain and still faces murder charges. What began that night in May 2007 as a barroom argument ended in a fatal confrontation -- with Emery Kauanui, 24, bleeding from his head outside his mother's La Jolla home.

Four of five La Jolla men initially charged with murder in the beating death of a professional surfer pleaded guilty to lesser charges Friday. The fifth defendant, accused of delivering the fatal blow, rejected a plea bargain and still faces murder charges. What began that night in May 2007 as a barroom argument ended in a fatal confrontation -- with Emery Kauanui, 24, bleeding from his head outside his mother's La Jolla home.

"My desires are like seeds," the physician and New Age luminary Deepak Chopra is saying. "Left in the ground, they wait for the right season and then spontaneously bloom into beautiful flowers." His voice is a silken thread, emanating from an audio cassette spooling through the tape player in my car. I'm stuck in Friday afternoon traffic on Interstate 5, wondering whether my desire to reach the Chopra Center for Well Being in La Jolla (about 110 miles south of L.A.) will ever blossom.

With a smile that slid into an easy laugh, Jackie Haddad Hellingson recalled that free-frolicking beach summer of '65 when her gang of bronze-skinned teen-agers waged war against The Outsiders. Yeah, those were the crazy times when every day seemed to last a year and the surf-wompers, sun-lovers and rock 'n' roll kids staked out the Windansea Beach in La Jolla like it was their own back yard--because it was. Back then, The Enemy drove huge gas-guzzlers with out-of-state plates.

A picturesque seaside town with roots in Spanish California and a love of mission-style architecture, La Jolla can be packed with sightseeing visitors in summer or winter. But just a few blocks away from town center, there is a lazy local flavor that is surprisingly laid back. Blazing flower beds bright with blossoms are La Jolla's natural neon.

A leisurely drive down to La Jolla. A chance to walk the beach, sniff the affluence, see family and celebrate somebody else's 40th birthday. And then to sink into a ritzy new inn two blocks from the sea. What could be finer? Not much, my wife and I thought. And so we headed south in late May, armed with high hopes and a fistful of Internet printouts on the new lodging, the 20-room Hotel Parisi. Also we had baggage.

Estrella Mer is an architectural marvel of old-world taste and elegance, coupled with modern, high-tech amenities. Originally built as a 3,000-square-foot Spanish Colonial in 1929 by the head of an Illinois power company, the La Jolla home later was sold to a local attorney and stayed in that family until 1999, when Philip and Cheryl Stewart purchased it. Two years later, they began a renovation that would transform the small hillside home into an 8,563-square-foot estate.

A La Jolla cove popular with families as well as seals was the only San Diego beach to receive a failing grade from the clean-water advocacy group Heal the Bay. The Children's Pool was rated the worst-polluted beach in California due to chronic, excessive fecal coliform bacteria from a colony of harbor seals that has lived in the area since the mid-1990s. The man-made cove, which has poor water circulation, was a longtime swimming spot for children.

They are sons of La Jolla, five friends who came of age on the edge of the Pacific. They all played on La Jolla High School's football team. One was the defensive player of the year. Another was a star quarterback mentored by former pro standout Doug Flutie, who said he'd be proud to have the boy as his own. Off the field, they cruised around town and hung out in picturesque coves beneath bluffs lined with spectacular homes. As they grew from youngsters to young men, they also became known as partyers who sometimes threw a few punches.

The Supreme Court of California this week refused to get involved in a 15-year-old political and legal fight over the presence of harbor seals on the beach at the Children's Pool in La Jolla. The high court declined consideration of an appeal of a lower court ruling that the city should clean the beach even if it means chasing the seals out to sea. Seal feces have presented a health hazard on the beach. The city is working on a plan to dredge the beach to create a greater tidal flow. -- --

The firestorms that swept much of Southern California recently were especially cruel to this hardscrabble reservation clinging to the southern slopes of Mt. Palomar. Residents described flames sweeping over lush hills and valleys, burning 94% of the reservation and destroying 59 of its 170 houses. Thick forests of live oak that once shaded homes and provided acorns for generations of Native Americans are gone now, replaced by black scars of ash.

LA JOLLA INDIAN RESERVATION, Calif. -- One by one, they returned from the fire lines and steered their clunkers into a gravel parking lot. The dust from their wheels rose into the Pauma Valley and blended into the smoke billowing from three mountaintops behind them. One had two chain saws in the bed of a rusty pickup truck, another a portable generator and a shovel in the back of an SUV. One walked with a limp; another was covered in tattoos.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger declared a state of emergency Monday for the city of San Diego, five days after a landslide in a La Jolla neighborhood destroyed a busy road and sent houses sinking into the crevasse. The declaration clears the way for the state transportation agency to ask for federal assistance for cleanup and reconstruction. City officials said the slide caused more than $25 million in damage to roads and public utilities. Private property losses were estimated at $22 million.

SAN DIEGO -- A landslide that tore away a chunk of a pricey hilltop neighborhood caused an estimated $48 million in damage, according to city officials. The amount includes $26 million for broken sewer and water mains, and $22 million for private property losses in the upscale La Jolla area, officials announced last week. The initial estimate probably will change as geologists continue their investigation into why the land gave way, city homeland security program manager Donna Faller said.

The firestorms that swept much of Southern California recently were especially cruel to this hardscrabble reservation clinging to the southern slopes of Mt. Palomar. Residents described flames sweeping over lush hills and valleys, burning 94% of the reservation and destroying 59 of its 170 houses. Thick forests of live oak that once shaded homes and provided acorns for generations of Native Americans are gone now, replaced by black scars of ash.

SAN DIEGO -- A landslide that tore away a chunk of a pricey hilltop neighborhood caused an estimated $48 million in damage, according to city officials. The amount includes $26 million for broken sewer and water mains, and $22 million for private property losses in the upscale La Jolla area, officials announced last week. The initial estimate probably will change as geologists continue their investigation into why the land gave way, city homeland security program manager Donna Faller said.

SAN DIEGO -- Oblivious to the 15-year legal and political fight their presence has caused, harbor seals loll in the water off the Children's Pool in La Jolla. They come ashore to sun themselves, bark their distinctive barks and, during pupping season, give birth to adorable little bundles on the beach. But they also poop, on the sand and in the water, extensively.