Survival

They didn't know each other. They didn't even speak the same language. But when Japanese students who survived the Kobe earthquake met local students--survivors of the Northridge quake--they quickly discovered common ground. "We are bound by an earthquake," John Lim, a Van Nuys High School student, told the group at a gathering Monday at Millikan Middle School in Sherman Oaks. "Otherwise we wouldn't be able to be together this way."

Around the Walt Disney Studios in Burbank, Riley Ray Chiorando is one of the eager young faces looking to get a toehold in an industry that can be brutal, especially to someone with empty pockets. Chiorando, a 23-year-old graduate of DePauw University in Indiana, got his foot in the door by winning a coveted internship from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. Throughout the summer he has been toiling away--grunt work, mostly--on the set of "Home Improvement."

A kidney transplanted from a spouse is less likely to be rejected than one from an unrelated donor or a cadaver, even though spousal organs are less likely to be a good immunological match, according to immunologist Paul I. Terasaki and his colleagues at UCLA.

The Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building is no more. Connie Chung, Oprah Winfrey and most of the rest of the national media have packed up and moved on. The main suspect in the April 19 bombing that killed 168 people and shattered the spirit of this heartland city sits hidden behind bars and stone-faced. Demolition crews continue to clear away the wreckage, and Oklahoma City continues to try to move from the shock of the explosion to the task of rebuilding.

White supremacists, survivalists, militia members and others gathered here Friday to share their political beliefs and stock up on survival gear in one of the largest such gatherings since the Oklahoma City bombing. Most of the browsers and exhibitors at Preparedness Expo '95 said they are doing what they've always done and haven't changed their ways since the April 19 blast that killed 168 people and injured hundreds more.

In a sense, Christian Polintan is the flip side of Capt. Scott F. O'Grady's success story. O'Grady relied on the skills he learned in a rigorous Air Force survival training program to elude capture in Bosnia-Herzegovina after his F-16 was shot down by Bosnian Serb forces. Rescued after nearly a week, he is on his way home now to what will be a hero's welcome at Andrews Air Force Base near Washington on Sunday. In 1993, Polintan, then a cadet at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colo.

Aranka Klein of Laguna Hills began writing poetry three years ago, poetry about her experiences 50 years ago at Germany's Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Bergen-Belsen was where Anne Frank died, at the age of 15. Klein did not know Anne Frank. In fact, Klein only began to read about Frank last year, when her granddaughter portrayed her in a play. If she had met Frank, she would have remembered.

For almost six days, the downed pilot coolly hid in Bosnian Serb territory, living on bugs, rainwater and hope. Then, before dawn Thursday, as his strength ebbed, he directed his own rescue. Wringing wet, filthy and hungry, he exploded in a run from the forest in Bosnia-Herzegovina, waving his pistol, sprinting as if the devil were behind him. He flopped onto the welcoming floor of a U.S. Marine helicopter with a whoosh of relief and tears in his eyes. Air Force Capt. Scott F.

In his first phone call home after his rescue Thursday, Air Force Capt. Scott F. O'Grady observed that he had used up one of his nine lives when his F-16 was blown out of the sky by a missile over Bosnia-Herzegovina--and now, he said, he only has six lives left. The joke touched on the core theme of the 29-year-old pilot's life: O'Grady relishes living on the edge and getting away with it--sometimes almost miraculously.

While an anxious nation--including his family and friends--fretted for days that Capt. Scott F. O'Grady might never be found alive after his F-16 jet was shot down over Bosnia-Herzegovina, his superiors and experts in military survival training knew better. To them, the developments that sounded so ominous in news reports were signs of hope. Far from despairing, the experts sensed that the downed pilot was alive and well and behaving exactly the way he had been trained to do.