Pacific Alliance Medical Center

The French Hospital in Chinatown, originally built to serve French immigrants, but which local Chinese doctors have been trying to save from closing, has a new benefactor, who is Japanese. Zensaburo Hara, an entrepreneur who lives in Japan but has a home in Beverly Hills, has signed a joint-venture agreement with the Pacific Alliance Medical Center, the doctors and other investors who recently completed the purchase of French Hospital, "to improve and expand" the 129-year-old facility.

The French Hospital in Chinatown, originally built to serve French immigrants, but which local Chinese doctors have been trying to save from closing, has a new benefactor, who is Japanese. Zensaburo Hara, an entrepreneur who lives in Japan but has a home in Beverly Hills, has signed a joint-venture agreement with the Pacific Alliance Medical Center, the doctors and other investors who recently completed the purchase of French Hospital, "to improve and expand" the 129-year-old facility.

In Laguna Beach, where life is pretty peaceful, the crime log often recounts incidents that are less than spine-tingling. The News-Post, for instance, said a resident phoned police and "requested that a fireman climb over her fence and let her back into the house. She told police she had locked herself out and had a copper pot on the stove." Ten-four.

For more than two decades, Wanda Remo has battled one illness after another. Asthma, chronic lung disease, heart disease, high blood pressure, arthritis, depression, chronic pain, strokes. Specialists treat her lungs, her heart and her joints. Her litany of ailments brought her to emergency rooms six times last year, between numerous additional visits to a federally subsidized health clinic in South Los Angeles. "You are one of the million-dollar patients," her doctor, Derrick Butler, tells the 57-year-old as she leans on her walker during one appointment.

The gig : General manager of the 54-story Ritz-Carlton and JW Marriott hotel complex at L.A. Live in downtown Los Angeles. A local guy : Cano, 53, is the son of Mexican immigrants, born near Chinatown at what was once known as the French Hospital and is now called the Pacific Alliance Medical Center. Today he can see the neighborhood where he was born and grew up from the top floor of his hotel complex. A long route to the top : He made a lot of stops on his way to the top of the Ritz-Carlton.

Approaching the intersection of Echo Park Avenue and Sunset Boulevard these days is like opening a box of glowing gemstones. The spectacular new mural that adorns the prenatal and postnatal care center on the northeast corner emits a neighborly luminescence that's visible for blocks. Lush lotus leaves painted on the clinic's roll-up doors give way to the mural's focal point, a radiant earth mother figure extending around the building from its corner edge.

Steve Harvey, who is teaching at a journalism seminar, will return next week. While he's gone, this space will be filled with excerpts from his book, "The Best of Only in L.A." Burbank police looking for an escapee from Municipal Court on a cold winter morning chanced upon a swimmer in a nearby motel pool. The man helpfully pointed out the direction the escapee had taken. Upon closer inspection, police saw that the swimmer was wearing boxer shorts only.

The fifth annual Kids Care Fair, a public and private effort to promote preventive health care for children, will be held today through Sunday throughout Southern California. Free immunizations will be given to children over 2 months for diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis, polio, meningitis, measles, mumps and rubella. Parents are asked to bring records of previous immunizations. All sites will have information booths and six basic health screening stations for children through age 18.

My assertion that makers of disaster movies routinely snub Orange County has been challenged by readers Tom Pevehouse and Betty Key. They cited "Independence Day" (1996), in which El Toro Marine base is zapped by the Martian invaders (all I can figure is I was out getting popcorn when the flying saucers attacked). The film, you may recall, stars Will Smith as a career-minded pilot who is stationed at El Toro but lives off base with his love, an exotic dancer.

Violence has claimed the lives of four people this week in Northeast Los Angeles. A Cypress Park man and two teen-agers from Montecito Heights and Highland Park were killed in three separate shooting incidents, and a Silver Lake man was stabbed to death, Los Angeles police said. In the first incident, Cuong Huu Ha, 25, was fatally shot early Sunday outside his Merced Street home in what police said was an apparent robbery attempt.