Orange Coast College

The Costa Mesa community college that was given a craggy British Columbia island has sold it for $2.19 million to two men and a woman from a suburb near Calgary, officials said Tuesday. The buyers plan to use it as a vacation retreat, school officials said. Henry Wheeler, a yachtsman from Downey, donated the island 50 miles north of Vancouver to the college in December 2002 after using it for nearly a decade as a family vacation retreat.

The first thing you notice upon entering the tidy white room is the pervasive smell of formaldehyde. Then you see four people in lab coats cutting into an enormous, dripping elephant's heart. A few feet away is a table strewed with a human head, feet and arms. And on a shelf nearby sits a large set of someone's no-longer-functioning intestines. Oh dear, you realize, it's another day at Orange Coast College, full of learning and fun. "How beautiful!" exclaims Ann T.

At the tip-top of an archipelago that stretches down to Washington state, where dozens of tiny, forested islands are traded like rare coins among the rich and impetuous, this 36-acre isle stands as a testament to infatuation. Its newest owner, Orange Coast College, bragged -- at first -- about the island unexpectedly donated to the Costa Mesa community college in 2002. Small-time school snags world-class treasure! Community college gets mini-Galapagos!

A Costa Mesa community college has decided to sell its craggy British Columbia island over the protests of students and faculty who had hoped to transform the ecologically delicate parcel into a field research station. The Orange Coast College Foundation Board of Directors voted 15-1, with one abstention, on Thursday to proceed with the sale of Rabbit Island, a 36-acre swath in the Gulf Islands, which dot the Strait of Georgia off of Vancouver.

The morning sky was battleship gray and the air chilly, but not even the weather could dampen the mood Saturday at Nancy Christiano's college graduation. Other graduates of Chapman University's Department of Communication Studies cheered when her name was called. She stood out from the 1,000 undergraduates also receiving degrees because she was at least twice their age.

A Costa Mesa community college that was given a craggy British Columbia island has agreed to sell the property to an unnamed Vancouver man for $2.4 million, school officials said Monday. Orange Coast College had hoped to transform the ecologically delicate Rabbit Island into a field research station, but the school's foundation deemed the 36-acre swath too costly to maintain. "We're very pleased," said Jim Carnett, a college spokesman. "It really hasn't been on the market that long."

They're three hours into the contest, cooking hard, when team captain Marissa Gerlach peers into the deep fryer and glimpses potential doom. Not this, she thinks. Not now. She's tried to anticipate every calamity. She's practiced sick, juggled work, labored for hours with her fellow aspiring chefs in their Costa Mesa school's cramped kitchen.

LAST WEEK, while tens of millions of us were voting in the midterm elections, a small group of undergraduate politicians at Orange Coast College in Costa Mesa voted to ban the recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance at their student government meetings.

No. 15 Santa Ana Mater Dei (3-2) vs. Orange Lutheran (2-3) at Orange Coast College, 7:30 p.m., Prime Ticket -- Mater Dei's motto should be "Expect Mystery." The Monarchs opened with a loss to Carson and upset Corona Centennial before nearly being upended by Los Angeles Jordan. Mater Dei then took Huntington Beach Edison to double overtime before losing. Orange Lutheran has defeated the Monarchs in four consecutive years, but Lancers Coach Jim Kunau said, "I don't think the past is any sort of prelude to the future."

DURING a stroll through the cobbled streets of Shigu (Stone Drum) in China's Yunnan province in April 2005, Steve and Peggy Goetz heard something behind them. It was this little boy poking his head out from behind the large red metal door to peek at the tourists. Steve, a faculty member at Orange Coast College, used his Pentax Optio S. "I like the fact that it was so fleeting," said Steve, of Irvine.