Santa Clarita

Bob Brickman spent months fighting a ticket he got last fall from a red-light traffic camera at Wilshire and Sepulveda boulevards in West Los Angeles. The 61-year-old from Playa Vista eventually decided to give up the fight and fork over the $476 fine. Now he's regretting paying every penny. City officials this week spotlighted a surprising revelation involving red-light camera tickets: Authorities cannot force violators who simply don't respond to pay them. For a variety of reasons, including the way the law was written, Los Angeles officials say the fines for ticketed motorists are essentially "voluntary" and there are virtually no tangible consequences for those who refuse to pay. The disclosure comes as the city is considering whether to drop the controversial photo enforcement program, with the City Council scheduled to vote on the matter Wednesday.

When Jackie Morgan MacDougall and other parents learned that their Saugus Union School District received the least state aid of any district in the county, she said they had to act. With the state contemplating deeper aid cuts, MacDougall and others began circulating petitions to create an education foundation — a nonprofit organization in which community members raise funds for teacher grants, instructional equipment, extracurricular activities...

Betty the gibbon and her mate, U Maung U Maung, were making the most of the space they had. A few awed visitors looked on Sunday as the active and agile apes swung rapidly from the branches in their enclosure and the chain-link fence that surrounded them. The two small singing apes are among the 39 animals housed according to family in enclosures about the size of a two-story living room at the Gibbon Conservation Center in Santa Clarita. When the center's founder, Alan Mootnick, moved to the 10-acre piece of rural land in 1980, he planned to stay only two years.

WASHINGTON and LOS ANGELES - It's not a TV political drama but it could be. Call it "The McKeons. " It's set in the sunny, suburban and largely conservative Santa Clarita Valley and stars Republican Rep. Howard P. "Buck" McKeon, former co-owner of a chain of western wear stores turned powerful congressional committee chairman. His wife, Patricia, long by his side during campaigns, has launched her own bid for political office at age 69. Though it's unusual to have a husband and wife on the same ballot, the race has another odd twist: Patricia McKeon's chief rival in the June state Assembly primary is a former staffer to her husband, Scott Wilk.

That parental advice to turn off lights when leaving a room is projected to help Santa Clarita save about $70,000 per year. Work crews from Honeywell Inc. are finishing retrofits this week to Santa Clarita's field services office, replacing fluorescent lights and installing separate lighting circuits.

Workers taking cigarette breaks here will have to go outside beginning Monday when the city's new smoking law goes into effect. The hotly debated tobacco control ordinance, approved by the Santa Clarita City Council in June, bans smoking at most indoor job sites. It also prohibits cigarette vending machines in the workplace. But restaurants, bars and small businesses were given some leeway under the new law.

Metrolink is preparing to open its fifth train station in two weeks on the Santa Clarita line, which has seen ridership swell dramatically since the Jan. 17 Northridge quake crippled many Southland freeways. The Santa Clarita/Princessa station, at 19201 Via Princessa, will open Monday. It is the latest emergency station to open since Metrolink extended service north to the Antelope Valley--opening stations in Lancaster and Palmdale on Jan. 24.

The Santa Clarita farmers market offers experienced management, a good mix of quality local growers, and plenty of parking. It took some time after its establishment in 1993 to catch on, but the numbers of shoppers and vendors have steadily increased, and it's really flourishing now. Dried fruits and nuts are available all year, but now is their time to star. The oddly named Fat Uncle Farms, which just started selling at local markets in April, has extraordinarily tasty almonds from Wasco, northwest of Bakersfield.

The body of a Santa Clarita woman who disappeared last week has been found in the Angeles National Forest. Investigators confirmed Friday that the body was that of 59-year-old Renata Klein. Her husband, Dusan Klein, also 59, was still missing, along with their 10-year-old black-and-white cocker spaniel, Cindy. Public works employees found Renata Klein's body about 7:30 a.m. Wednesday off Upper Big Tujunga Canyon Road. The cause of death remains unknown, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department said.

On a cold, wet afternoon two cowboys trudge across a muddy street in a western town carrying saddles on their backs as a loudspeaker blasts Jim Croce's hit song "I Got a Name. " The scene was being played out at the historic Melody Ranch in Santa Clarita, where director Quentin Tarantino was filming his upcoming western "Django Unchained," starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Jamie Foxx. "It's a blast shooting here," Tarantino said during a break from shooting. "Most other western towns look like dollhouses.

Students who are sexually abused by school employees may sue public districts if their administrators ignored warning signs or failed to monitor the employees, the California Supreme Court unanimously ruled Thursday. The state high court's ruling revived a lawsuit against the William S. Hart Union High School District by a student who alleged that a counselor repeatedly abused him sexually. The suit said that school administrators knew or should have known that the counselor, Roselyn Hubbell, had a propensity for sexual abuse when they hired her at Golden Valley High School in Santa Clarita.

A large residential complex in Santa Clarita's town center with a mix of apartments and condominiums has been sold for $56.65 million to Los Angeles real estate investors. Decron Properties Corp. bought Madison at Town Center, which in real estate parlance is a "broken condo" complex where some of the units are owned and others are rented. Mixed ownership at the Madison occurred when owners attempted to convert the upscale apartment complex to condos during the last real estate boom.

On a cold, wet afternoon two cowboys trudge across a muddy street in a western town carrying saddles on their backs as a loudspeaker blasts Jim Croce's hit song "I Got a Name. " The scene was being played out at the historic Melody Ranch in Santa Clarita, where director Quentin Tarantino was filming his upcoming western "Django Unchained," starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Jamie Foxx. "It's a blast shooting here," Tarantino said during a break from shooting. "Most other western towns look like dollhouses.

An L.A. County Superior Court judge on Tuesday rejected a bid to free a man convicted in a 1995 dismemberment murder, questioning the credibility of a key witness who recanted her original testimony in the case. Edward Contreras, now 40, was found guilty along with Scott Taylor of beating, beheading and cutting up a friend, Frederick Walker, with a chain saw and a machete at a backyard barbecue in Santa Clarita and stealing $635 from the victim. Contreras was accused of helping to clean up blood and body parts from the scene and driving his car to a remote area of Bouquet Canyon to dispose of the remains.

A judge listened to closing arguments Thursday on whether to reopen a case involving a man who has already served almost 15 years of a life sentence for a notorious 1995 dismemberment killing in Santa Clarita. "Something unusual is going on here," Superior Court Judge Gregory A. Dohi said at the conclusion of two days of arguments in the habeas corpus hearing in Van Nuys. A ruling will come after the holidays, he said. Edward Contreras, now 40, was convicted in 1997 along with Scott Taylor of killing their friend, Frederick Walker, at a backyard barbecue and stealing a $635 cash inheritance that Walker was carrying.

Gene Dorio, an old-school doctor who makes house calls in Santa Clarita, drives a 1990 Volvo with 362,000 miles on the clock and duct tape holding things together. His patients have a lot of miles on them, too. Dorio is a geriatric physician. "Medical technology allows us to live longer, but is it with the quality of life we want?" Dorio wrote after reading a column I wrote about my father's failing health. "The discussions are avoided and I believe physicians are responsible for this," Dorio went on. "For some, dementia sets in, but for those who remain cognizant of mind and body, life can dribble away.

After nearly a decade of steadfast denials, three interrogations and two inconclusive polygraph tests, the man who last saw 20-year-old Lynsie Ekelund alive led detectives to a tree-dotted Santa Clarita hillside last week and indicated where to start digging. He had done a construction job there, police said, and it was where he had buried her. Tearing into the hillside with a backhoe Wednesday, investigators unearthed a blue sneaker. They got on their knees and continued searching with small shovels and handheld buckets.

Words and their effect Re "Councilman's 'proud racist' comment splits Santa Clarita," Jan. 28 When Santa Clarita City Councilman Bob Kellar was accused of being a racist after expressing his support of Teddy Roosevelt's statement that we have one flag and one language, he had two choices. He could have used the outburst to promote the unifying idea that his position had nothing to do with race, but had to do with his belief in assimilation and American values and our nation's identity.

Alan Mootnick, a self-taught primate specialist who rose to become a leading authority on gibbon biology and conservation, died Friday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles of complications following heart surgery, relatives said. He was 60. A self-described modern-day Tarzan, Mootnick founded the nonprofit Gibbon Conservation Center in Santa Clarita in 1976. In interviews, he stated that his aim was to advance the study, propagation and protection of the endangered species.