Rehabilitation

He's one traffic accident victim that from now on will be watching for oncoming cars like a hawk. That's because the Hollywood resident that returned home Saturday after being hospitalized more than a month with injuries from a presumed car collision is a hawk. Wildlife experts from a Calabasas animal rehabilitation center returned a red-tailed hawk that had been injured in November to the busy urban neighborhood it calls home. The bronze and white bird was found Dec.

In a city that is usually impossible to shock, the savaging of Roy Horn on Oct. 3, 2003, onstage and in front of a live audience at the Mirage, created one of those rare moments where all locals can say where they were when they heard the news. Steve Wynn, who spent millions to have the theater at the Mirage customized for the "Siegfried & Roy" show, remembered his first reaction in an interview this week: "I could not believe one of Roy's cats attacked him."

The woman leans back in the chair, her head flopping from side to side, her bloodshot eyes rolling back. High on heroin and cocaine, she struggles to keep her eyes open. There are lesions on her face, scars of hepatitis B. In a serrated voice, she tells the social workers she is ready to leave the street. "I'm tired. I'm just so tired and scared," says the woman, 26. "I know the next car I jump in may be the last."

Legal aid lawyer Louis Rafti was leading a group of law students on a tour of skid row when he saw it in the corner of a homeless shelter. The cot. The very one, he could swear it was, that he had slept on during his last night on the row a few years before. Rafti froze. He didn't say a word, but a sense of wonder overwhelmed him. Wonder that he did not have a crack pipe in his hand. Or a needle in his arm. That he had a home, a job, a life.

At first glance, the children saddling up the horses look like they were cast by Hollywood to play wholesome, athletic all-American kids. But outward appearances don't tell the whole story. One has molested a sibling. Another has tried to kill the family pet. Lying, stealing, vandalism, fire-setting round out the list of transgressions.

The cul-de-sac in a residential Tustin neighborhood, especially on a gray rainy afternoon like Wednesday, seems a long way from the brightness and glamour of the celebrity world of Hollywood and beyond. But drugs and alcohol don't care where you live, and you can get just as loaded and lost in Tustin as Tinseltown. Or Anywhere Else, USA. Tim Chapman works almost exclusively out of the public eye.

Despite threats of lawsuits from operators of sober-living homes, Newport Beach late Tuesday enacted some of the state's tightest restrictions on the facilities. The unanimous City Council vote, which came after nearly two hours of public comment and discussion, was only a prelude to what is expected to be a drawn-out court battle over the homes, which by the city's count number 76, although critics say there are many more.

For those at Loma Linda University who still haven't met the cheerful amputee tooling about campus in his wheelchair, he's made up business cards: "Visitor from Afghanistan Mohammad Malek," they say, followed by a Kabul phone number. Not that he really needs them. In recent months, Malek, who was first profiled in January by The Times, has been transformed from a frightened teenager in a broken body into a popular, confident young man, attending school, learning English and living independently.

The state has awarded the Orange County Sheriff's Department a $1.5-million grant to help mentally ill people convicted of misdemeanors rather than place them in jail. The Mentally Ill Offender Crime Reduction grant will pay for medication, treatment and housing while the offender is in the program, Orange County Sheriff Michael S. Carona said in a news release.

"GREY'S Anatomy" star Isaiah Washington checked into a residential treatment center Wednesday morning for psychological counseling stemming from his repeated uses of homophobic slurs, most recently at the Golden Globes award ceremony. "I regard this as a necessary step toward understanding why I did what I did and making sure it never happens again," Washington said in a statement released by his publicist.