Plumber

San Joaquin County prosecutors sued a plumbing company that charged an 83-year-old woman $10,500 after she called to have a clogged toilet fixed. Dist. Atty. John Phillips filed the $2-million civil suit Monday. It contends that Drain Patrol committed grand theft and elder abuse and violated other business code sections. Drain Patrol's attorney, David Rishwain, said the suit was based on interviews with former employees and complaints against the company.

A plumber was in jail Friday on suspicion of committing a string of South Bay burglaries. Bill Stinson Bounsall allegedly tried to put jewelry and a small amount of methamphetamine and marijuana down a toilet when confronted by detectives Wednesday afternoon at his Redondo Beach apartment in the 2000 block of Artesia Boulevard, said Hermosa Beach Police Sgt. Paul Wolcott.

Don't get David Kulovic wrong. It's not that he's unhappy in his work, but the kind of attractive, available women he'd like to meet aren't interested in, well, plumbers. But movie directors, that's a different story. Or so David thinks.

When Jasmine, a 10 1/2-week-old bull terrier, fell down an 8-inch drainage pipe in Rancho Santa Margarita on Saturday evening, she sparked a 19-hour rescue effort that brought together a community. By Sunday morning, 70 neighbors, plumbers, firefighters, policemen--even the mayor--were gathered on the baseball diamond of Vista Verde Park, trying to lure the white-as-snow puppy from a network of pipes that drain into the ocean.

Flames and smoke damaged four units of a two-story condominium complex in Laguna Niguel on Thursday after a wall caught fire during a repair, fire officials said. A plumber was connecting copper tubing inside a wall at 31522 W. Nine Drive when flames from his torch apparently started the blaze, officials said. "Four units were damaged because they share a common wall," said an Orange County Fire Authority spokesman, who estimated the damage at about $250,000.

The caverns go on for miles--dim, forbidding passageways, dungeon-like rooms crammed with equipment: mazes of wires, grotesque water pumps and compressors, steam pipes and pneumatic tubes. There is no good reason to descend into these concrete catacombs beneath Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center without having some job to do, although now and then an intruder shows up anyway.

Actress Lynn Redgrave was on the witness stand in Los Angeles, hating every minute of it. She was being questioned by her ex-husband in one of the nastiest Hollywood divorce trials in years. John Clark, acting as his own attorney, drew close to show her a document. Redgrave flinched. "Please, I would rather he didn't," she implored the judge. "I understand that sparks fly between you and Mr. Clark," Superior Court Judge Arnold Gold told her. "Just grit your teeth and answer his questions."

There's a debate raging in the medical community about how to prevent deaths caused by patients being given the wrong medicine by mistake, a situation sometimes attributed to a doctor's illegible handwriting. At the San Jose Medical Group, doctors have come up with solution. They--like many others nationwide in a variety of professions and businesses--have gone wireless.

A variety of Internet companies are using the Web to hook consumers up to service providers. Now one of them, EFrenzy.com, is taking the concept a step further. The San Francisco company is connecting consumers to auto repair shops, plumbers and other professionals via Web-enabled Sprint PCS phones.

Fame unclogs an artery . . . Paying Paula . . . The ties that unbind . . . and it's deja vu in palimony land. Plumber John Keating was caught on the 1990s version of "Candid Camera," but he's not smiling. Instead, he's suing. Keating is taking HBO, Time Warner Entertainment and a production company called World of Wonder to court, charging that their idea of entertainment was--for him--a wrenching experience.