Southwest Community College

In a decision expected to ignite an intense political battle over who will be the next representative from the overwhelmingly Democratic 32nd House District in West Los Angeles, Bettye Dixon, the widow of Rep. Julian Dixon, said Wednesday that she will not seek election to the seat left vacant by the recent death of her husband. "I am not going to run for my husband's seat," Dixon said in an interview with The Times. "I have a business that I am operating. It is the business that I enjoy."

It's a powerful thing, a voice. The folks over at Imperial and Western found one Thursday, so resonant it carried beyond their words, into their smiles, their handshakes, their hope. It was believable, this voice, echoing around a gymnasium hallway at Los Angeles Southwest College, where neighborhood children, students and champions gathered to celebrate a gift.

On the day Rep. Julian Dixon died, Assemblyman Roderick Wright filed the papers for a special election to fill the suddenly vacant seat. "It is hard to raise money to run an effective campaign," Wright said. "You want to file your papers as quickly as you can." Four days later, a day before Dixon was laid to rest, another politician in a hurry, state Sen. Kevin Murray of Culver City, sent in his papers for the election.

Gang members seeking revenge over a drug deal shot and killed two teen-age girls Monday in a case of mistaken identity, police said. The victims were sitting in a car that the assailants mistook for the car of the sister of a drug dealer who had cheated them out of $14,000 in cocaine, investigators said. Latonjyia (Nicki) Stover, 18, and Jamee Finney, 13, were killed when gunmen fired a machine gun and a shotgun into their car at a street corner in South Los Angeles about 7:15 p.m. Monday.

In a dramatic protest, two-time Cuban Olympic champion Felix Savon refused to report to the ring and American Michael Bennett was awarded the heavyweight gold medal in the World Amateur Boxing Championships on Thursday night at Houston. Moments later, Cuban boxing official Raul Villanueva angrily withdrew Cuba from the tournament, claiming that four Cuban fighters had been treated unjustly before Thursday night's finals card.

What Joseph Young remembers most about the day in 1968 that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was slain by an assassin's bullet was the silence that fell over the slum where he lived. "I can remember everything being really quiet," said Young, who was 11 at the time and lived next to a pawn shop in South-Central Los Angeles with his parents and eight brothers and sisters. "You know how it is quiet on Sunday? It was quieter than that," said Young, a janitor who now lives in Inglewood.

The day 31-year-old Mark L. Briggs was diagnosed as having HIV, a million thoughts flew through his mind. He imagined himself sick and feeble. He imagined that his days of working and bodybuilding were over. Since his diagnosis in 1997, Briggs has faithfully adhered to a daily regimen of medications--a regimen that he says is the reason those fears have not been realized.

At age 5, when some girls are still playing with dolls and tea sets, Katrina Nimmers slammed doors, threw temper tantrums and pouted until her parents pulled her from etiquette classes at Los Angeles Southwest Community College and took her to play tennis.

After two lean seasons, the Cal State Long Beach football team, which begins its 1989 schedule against Cal State Northridge at noon Saturday at Veterans Stadium, is hoping to regain respectability. "We've got good-looking athletes now," Athletic Director Corey Johnson said while watching a recent practice. "Before, we had guys who didn't look good in uniforms."

Veteran Los Angeles City Councilman Robert Farrell is expected to announce today that he will not seek reelection in April, creating the second vacancy in a predominantly black district in a week and providing an unexpected opportunity for an increasingly impatient younger generation of black political leaders.