A STAR WAS BORN HERE
ENTERTAINMENT: Actor Martin Donovan, mainly known for art-house type movies is a Reseda native. He's in a film being screened at the Sundance Film Festival called "The United States of Leland" (link takes you to schedule, click on the title--2nd down-- for info.) Variety (subscription needed) didn't care for it much:
Wearing its earnestness and studied sensitivity on its sleeve with self-righteous conviction, Matthew Ryan Hoge’s “The United States of Leland” is as maudlin and monotone as the whiny alt-rock that drenches its overly articulated emotional disclosures.

In '97, Donovan was featured (in the travel section) in the New York Times. It recounts some early travails:
Mr. Donovan's road as an actor has not been easy. Growing up in Reseda, Calif., as one of four children in a middle-class Irish Catholic family, he went for two years to Los Angeles Pierce College before deciding to attend American Theater Arts, a combined conservatory and theater company in Los Angeles. He soon acquired an agent and began to go on film auditions. Invariably, they proved fruitless.

A LONG WAY TO GET A LITTLE NOTICE
R.I.P.: When Godfrey Gaston died last month, his obit ran in the New York Times.
GASTON-Godfrey Olivier./d Of Reseda, CA, died December 11, 2002, age 74. In New York he was a research librarian at the Knoedler Gallery, 1955-1965, then Director of Research at the Kennedy Galleries. Moving to California in the 1970s, he was Director of the Howard Morseburg Galleries and then a private dealer. Memorial contributions may be made to the Archives of American Art, 1285 Avenue of the Americas, 2nd Floor, NYC 10019

AIRING A GRIEVANCE
KNOCK, KNOCK: In a story about LA's victory over carbon monoxide emissions, the writer uses Reseda as the edge of the pollutant's spread. Canoga Park was somehow spared.
During the mid-1970s, unsafe concentrations of the pollutant spread from Reseda to Costa Mesa, from downtown Los Angeles to San Bernardino. Since then, the pollutant has all but disappeared from Orange County and the San Fernando and San Gabriel valleys.

A SHOT IN THE ARM
HEALTH: LA Unified School District is offering immunization clinics for children. For info, call Sue Rue at (213) 763-8374. The site is next to Newcastle Elementary.
Local District C Nursing Office, 6505 Zelzah Ave., Reseda: 7:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m. Jan. 28; 7:30-11 a.m. Feb. 11; 7:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m. Feb. 24; 7:30-11 a.m. March 11; 7:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m. March 24; 7:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m. April 8; 7:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m. April 21; 7:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m. May 6; 7:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m. May 19; 7:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m. June 3; 7:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m. June 16.

FREE AND APPROPRIATE EDUCATION
EDUCATION: LA Unified School District operates under the Chanda Smith Consent Decree.
The decree is part of a 1996 settlement of a class action civil rights lawsuit that calls for improved programs and services for the district's special needs students. A committee of parents, educators and community members are responsible for overseeing implementation of the court order.

But even when services are available, obtaining them can be cumbersome and time-consuming.

The demand is the result of federal statute.

Under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act passed by Congress in 1975, the federal government was expected to cover 40 percent of the cost of educating students with disabilities and behavioral problems.

Since then, the subsidy granted to schools nationwide has averaged 8 percent a year. But last year, the subsidy amounted to just 6.1 percent for LAUSD, representing a shortfall of more than $400 million.

At Cantara School in Reseda, Teddy Landes recieves adaptive physical education, speech therapy and occupational therapy.

MAKING HIS POINT
SPORTS: Resedan Charles Chiccoa doesn't like UCLA basketball coach Steve Lavin (2nd item).
The recruiting pipeline has slowed to a trickle as even high school jocks can see through him.

SWITCHING GEARS
SPORTS: In 1999, Eddie Whitaker was an unrecruited senior quarterback at Reseda Cleveland, who went on to play at Los Angeles Valley College. Last week, he received a scholarship to Oregon as a 6-foot-4, 245-pound tight end.

HELPING CHILDREN
VOLUNTEERS: Column highlights Resedan working with the Big Brother/Big Sister program:
For Pam Jones, it was just this simple. She stopped talking about it. Now she's doing it.

"It was about me finally getting off my butt and doing what I had been talking about for years," says the 36-year-old Reseda woman. "There's never going to be a right time, so just do it."

Become a mentor to a kid.

What does mentor mean?

Los Angeles Mentoring Partnership referral line -- (323) 634-4151-- provides information on the various mentor opportunities in addition to Big Brother/Big Sister program. Who they are. What they do. How they do it.

RUNNING GUN BATTLE
CRIME: Armed robbery suspects, whom officers say are responsible for a string of grocery store robberies, are arrested when they try a holdup in Reseda.
Three Los Angeles Police Department undercover detectives engaged in a gun battle Sunday night with three armed men who police said were running through the streets of Reseda after robbing a Ralphs supermarket.

One suspect was wounded in the left shoulder and another was bitten by a police dog. All were taken into custody.

No officers, Ralphs employees or bystanders were injured, said Sgt. John Pasquariello, a department spokesman.

This story quotes Resedans.

Detectives are part of the LAPD's Special Investigations Section, here's the LAPD press release. The unit has been controversial; this summary of a Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals decision (fourth item) about immunity addresses some of the issues of the unit: "The three consolidated lawsuits arise out of the actions of the Special Investigative Services of the LAPD, whose purpose was to interdict and apprehend armed, violent career criminals."