Author: Monte Morin

The Vatican insisted Saturday that Pope Benedict XVI had done nothing wrong when, earlier in his career, he hesitated to defrock a California priest who had admitted molesting two boys.



A Vatican lawyer said it was the local bishop, John Cummins of Oakland, who bore primary responsibility for protecting children from the abusive priest, and that the pope, then known as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, had acted appropriately when he declined to take immediate action against the cleric, Stephen Kiesle.



“It’s the job of the bishop to discipline the priest,” said the lawyer, Jeffrey S. Lena of Berkeley, in an e-mail to The Times. “[T]he canonical trial and punishment are going to be meted out by the local bishop … The pope is not a five-star general ordering his troops around. That is simply an incorrect idea about the allocation of authority as between the pope and his fellow bishops.”

Cummins, now 82 and retired, had written Ratzinger in the early 1980s, when the future pope was the Vatican’s top official in charge of doctrinal enforcement, asking that the Vatican agree to Kiesle’s request that he be “laicized,” or defrocked. At the time Kiesle had been relieved of his duties as a priest after pleading no contest to misdemeanor charges of lewd contact stemming from the molestation of two boys, ages 11 and 12.



Ratzinger had replied that, while the matter was of “grave significance,” he needed more time and information before deciding whether to grant the request. It was granted two years later. In the interim and for a period afterward, Kiesle volunteered at a parish in Pinole, where he was later accused of having abused children. Benedict has come under criticism in recent weeks as documents have exposed what some perceive as his plodding management of several sexual abuse cases. In every case, the Vatican has suggested the responsibility fell on lower-ranking officials.



Cummins could not be reached for comment Saturday. He told the Associated Press previously that he “didn’t really care for” Kiesle and didn’t recall having written Ratzinger about him in 1985. In his e-mail, Lena said it would have been normal for Ratzinger to weigh a request for defrocking carefully and deliberately.



It is, he said, “a rigorous canonical process of deep religious significance that in many instances takes time, particularly in the pre-electronic communication age. … It is not like simply taking off a collar, or firing a person from a job.”

Moreover, he said, defrocking is not the primary way the church disciplines priests. “It is an important mechanism for ridding the priesthood of malefactor priests,” he said. “But it is not the primary mechanism of protection of children.“

— Mitchell Landsberg and Victoria Kim

It wasn’t just any burglary.



The crime that struck Sunrise Community Outreach early Saturday was more like a blow to the heart. The thief took the $50,000 tattoo-removal machine central to the group’s mission: removing tattoos from former gang members anxious to erase their pasts.



“It’s devastating. Now we can’t do our thing,” said Rosemarie Ashamalla, executive director of the small nonprofit based in the Westlake area of Los Angeles.



Los Angeles police said they got the burglary call at Friday morning, after the group’s receptionist arrived to find the front window smashed at Sunrise’s second-floor clinic.

At first, it didn’t occur to her to check whether the clinic’s cosmetic-laser machine was still in place. After all, the machine is heavy and mounted on rollers, more like furniture than medical equipment.



But when she walked to the back room, it was empty. The machine was gone. Police investigators later interviewed a passerby who saw someone roll it away around 1 a.m., said Capt. Steve Ruiz of the Los Angeles Police Department’s Rampart station. “They were pushing a large device,” Ruiz said.



Police are continuing their investigation. But Ashamalla said she doesn’t have much hope.



The organization is probably out of business “unless something fantastic happens,” she said.



Ashamalla said the machine was not insured. She said that she tried to insure it, but that Sunrise’s nonprofit status was an impediment. A used version in today’s market might cost $25,000, she said, far beyond the group’s meager resources.

With the loss of the machine, “all that’s here is a broken window and an empty room,” she said.



Gang members, prostitutes and other underworld denizens in Los Angeles often get their tattoos and a young age, marks of ill-conceived loyalty that later hinder them when they try to get jobs and change their lives.



Low-cost tattoo removal services are in short supply in Los Angeles, Ashamalla said.



Ashamalla said she founded Sunrise about a decade ago using a grant from the organization QueensCare that recently dried up. Grants and payments from clients support provide about $100,000 yearly for Ashamalla’s and her assistant’s salaries and for contracts with nurses and a supervising physician.



Sunrise has provided tattoo-removal for about 200 people a year. Clients scheduled eight to 10 sessions with the now-stolen machine, which was used to beam a laser beneath their skin to break up the molecules of tattoo ink. The clients pay a low fee on a sliding scale. Most are referred by juvenile detention, police or parole officials or by gang-intervention groups, Ashamalla said.

Ashamalla said she doesn’t know why anyone would take the highly specialized Palomar Q-Yag 5 machine. “This is not something you take to a local pawnbroker,” she said, adding that she suspects the thief had a prearranged buyer.

In the meantime, the city has one fewer provider of low-cost tattoo removals.



“We were expecting 30 people” the day of the theft, Ashamalla said. “Our patients are angry. They say, ‘Who could have done this?’ ”

— Jill Leovy

Top Photo: A client has a tattoo removed at Sunrise Community Outreach. Bottom Photo: Palomar Q-Yag 5 tattoo-removal device. Credit: Sunrise Community Outreach

To the cognoscenti, Edward H. Fickett was the award-winning architect behind the Port of Los Angeles, La Costa Resort & Spa, Edwards Air Force Base and tens of thousands of airy, affordable tract homes throughout Southern California.

To Better Homes & Gardens, he was the “Frank Lloyd Wright of the ’50s” — a visionary who designed mansions for the likes of Joan Crawford and Groucho Marx, and more modest accommodations for regular folks.

But to Joycie Fickett, he was simply Eddie, the handsome, life-of-the-party husband who greeted her each morning with an original love song and breakfast in bed.

 “We laughed every day of our lives together,” she said. “He was so romantic.”

Since the architect’s death 11 years ago at the age of 83, Joycie Fickett has kept her husband’s memory alive by jealously guarding his vast body of work in his old Fairfax-area office. The work space contains blueprints, renderings, Julius Shulman photos of Fickett homes and marketing brochures for his many master-planned communities.

Despite multiple honors during his prolific career, Edward Fickett never achieved the widespread recognition of such Modernists as Richard Neutra and Rudolph Schindler, not to mention Wright.

Joycie Fickett is working to change that, however. She recently agreed to cede the collection to USC, her husband’s undergraduate alma mater, where he founded the architectural guild.

“He really is kind of an unsung hero,” said Claude Zachary, the university archivist and manuscript librarian at USC. “We’re privileged to have an opportunity to bring this incredible material in and preserve it and make it available … and hopefully get Mr. Fickett’s name much better known.”

The deal, which was disclosed this month, comes not a moment too soon for the woman who has devoted her life to tending the Edward Fickett flame. Joycie Fickett has been ordered to vacate her husband’s old office by the end of the month.

At 65, the former Joycie Helen Steinberg still has the slender figure and raven hair that drew the eye of clothing designer Emilio Pucci, who employed her as a model after she finished medical school in the 1960s.

The Ficketts met in the mid-1970s in Los Angeles, when Joycie chaired a tennis tournament. Edward had offered use of his court in Trousdale Estates. He asked for her card, but she didn’t have one. Edward gave her his after extracting a promise that she would call. She never did.

When the pair stumbled upon each other more than a year later, Edward exclaimed, “You’re the lady who didn’t call me.”

On their first date, they played tennis and dined at Trader Vic’s. “We started talking and never stopped,” Joycie said. 

Born in 1916, Edward Fickett was a fourth-generation Angeleno whose father and grandfather were in construction and development. After Fickett completed his first year of architecture study at USC, his father told him money was too tight for him to continue.

That summer, Fickett worked with his father on a house for actress Irene Dunne. One day, Fickett found Dunne crying at her kitchen table, which was covered with architectural plans. “What’s wrong?” he asked. “I hired the best architects in Europe and the United States, but neither understands what I want,” she replied.

Fickett turned the plans over and drew on the blank side as Dunne shared her ideas. They worked for four hours, and she was delighted with the results.

Soon after, the dean of the USC architecture school told Fickett that an anonymous donor had offered to pay his school and living expenses until graduation. Years later, Fickett learned the angel was Dunne.

Eventually, Edward Fickett homes would be known for their many innovative features, such as floor-to-ceiling windows, vaulted ceilings, open kitchens connected to dining rooms, sliding closet doors, plentiful wood, brick and glass and landscaping that went all around the house — “to bring the outside in.”

Joycie Fickett said her husband was the first architect to mix colors — peach, pink, turquoise or light green — into concrete, providing a cheery exterior without the cost of painting.

Despite these many innovations, Edward Fickett never sought the limelight, Joycie Fickett said. He died of pneumonia on May 21, 1999.

“He will rest in peace,” she said, “knowing his architectural archives will be housed at his beloved USC.”

–Martha Groves

Top photo: Joycie Fickett, wife of architect Edward H. Fickett, at her husband’s old office.

Credit: Glenn Koenig / Los Angeles Times

Middle photo: Edward H. Fickett

Credit: Courtesy of Joycie Fickett

Bottom photo: The one-bedroom Beachwood Canyon home of Jim and Marianne Fox was
designed in 1954 by prolific L.A. architect Edward Fickett.

Credit: Gary Friedman

A Los Angeles police officer shot a man to death early Saturday morning east of Koreatown.

Police said the shooting occurred around midnight but they did not have any further information.

— Jessica Garrison

A body was found on a road in Angeles National Forest early Saturday morning.

Authorities were summoned to the mile 14 marker of Little Tujunga Canyon road above Lake View Terrace about 3:30 a.m. by a passerby.  A spokeswoman for the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department said she had no further information.

— Jessica Garrison

A water main ruptured early Saturday morning in the Whitley Heights neighborhood, sending water flowing down the 6600 block of Emmett Terrace in the Hollywood Hills.

Department of Water and Power officials said there was no property damage from the break in the six-inch pipe. About 40 homes lost water service for about six hours, according to DWP spokeswoman Maychelle Yee.

— Jessica Garrison

Two Diamond Bar siblings have been arrested and charged with felony auto insurance fraud after authorities stumbled upon a YouTube video allegedly showing that their car, which they said were in two separate accidents, was actually damaged during a street race.

Jay Xi Chen, 21, and his sister, Tracy Chen Chen, 29, were arrested last week on suspicion of filing false claims for the damage on a Nissan GT-R “supercar,“ for losses potentially as costly as $76,000, according to the California Department of Insurance.

Jay Chen initially filed an insurance claim stating that his sister had been driving the car when it was involved in a collision on the 10 Freeway last March, and Tracy Chen corroborated his story, authorities said. He withdrew that claim, but later filed another saying he crashed the vehicle in June on the 60 Freeway in Riverside, Insurance Department officials said in a news release Friday.

But investigators found that the damaged Nissan had been sitting in a shop, unrepaired, since March, according to authorities. Investigators also found a video clip on YouTube showing the car on Glendora Mountain Road in an apparent nighttime street race.

In the video, titled “New GTR R35 crashes following Evo IX MR,” a car, which is difficult to make out in the darkness, is shown crashing into a barrier on the side of the road during a turn. The vehicle in the video had the same damage as described in Jay Chen’s claim, authorities said.

Jay and Tracy Chen have been charged with six and one felony counts, respectively, by the San Bernardino County district attorney’s office. Each of the counts carry a maximum sentence of five years in prison, authorities said. They could not immediately be reached for comment.

— Victoria Kim

Photo credit: YouTube

Police and firefighters have removed a body from Ballona Creek in Del Rey, according to the Los Angeles Fire Department. The body was described being that of male about 35 years old and was discovered at 9:18 a.m. Saturday near a bike path. The Los Angeles County coroner has been called to the scene.

— Monte Morin

A magnitude 4.2 earthquake occurred at Anza-Borrego Desert State Park about 50 miles east of San Diego, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

The temblor took place about 8:30 Saturday morning. No injuries or damages were reported, a CalFire dispatcher said. A sheriff’s dispatcher also said there have been no earthquake-related calls.

The epicenter was about 14 miles from Julian.

[Corrected at 12:05 p.m.: A previous version of this story reported incorrectly that the quake occurred west of San Diego.]

— Victoria Kim

California doctors want the state to require that day care-age children get vaccinated against pneumococcal disease.

More than a dozen doctor’s groups, including the California Medical Assn., are sending a letter to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Friday urging him to mandate the vaccine to increase vaccination rates statewide, especially among minorities. They argue that it is especially urgent to vaccinate children now, before they catch seasonal or H1N1 flu, which puts them at added risk of catching pneumococcal disease.



“The California Department of Public Health can and should act today to require children to receive the pneumococcal disease vaccine and help ensure that all Californians are protected from this increasingly dangerous threat,” the doctors wrote.



The vaccine protects children against pneumococcal bacteria, which can lead to deafness, blindness and fatal meningitis. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends it for children age 5 and under. Nationwide, 35 states already require the vaccine, including Florida, New York and Texas. Officials in six additional states are considering whether to require the vaccine.

State legislators passed a law two years ago that would have required the vaccines, but the governor vetoed it, saying he was satisfied with the statewide vaccination rate of 86%.

The vaccination rate has since decreased to 83%, according to the latest National Immunization Survey. The survey showed vaccination rates were even lower among children in Los Angeles County (80%) especially Latino children (75%).



The doctors’ groups argue the state would recoup the cost of subsidizing the vaccinations—$198,000 to implement the requirement and $360,000 for Medi-Cal costs—through reduced doctor and hospital visits.



Dr. Jonathan E. Fielding, director of the county’s Department of Public Health, called the proposal “reasonable,” but cautioned that state officials should ensure there are adequate supplies of the latest pneumococcal vaccine before mandating them.



“Otherwise, it becomes a burden on parents,” Fielding said.

— Molly Hennessy-Fiske

Photo: L.A. Times file

State inspectors making a surprise follow-up visit to UC Irvine Medical Center last week found two deficiencies in "medication management" and issued an "immediate jeopardy" warning, alleging that patient care was at risk, hospital officials acknowledged Thursday.

The warning, which was lifted Wednesday, is one of the most serious that can be issued to a hospital.

UC Irvine Medical Center’s chief executive, Terry A. Belmont, disclosed the findings by state inspectors working on behalf of the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services in e-mails sent to the staff this week and last.

In the latest e-mail to staff Wednesday, Belmont said hospital officials have already submitted plans to improve care.

“Though the inspectors lifted the findings and no patients were harmed, the survey identified additional areas that require our attention,” he wrote. “We are acting aggressively to correct them.”

A hospital spokesman would not disclose what the medication problems were. State and federal regulators said they were still investigating and could not comment. Once they issue a deficiency report to the hospital, hospital officials have up to a month to respond with a plan of correction.

Federal investigators have documented repeated examples of poor oversight at the hospital and threatened to cut Medicare funding before.

In July, Medicare officials issued a finding of immediate jeopardy after investigators discovered that five UCI patients had received overdoses because nurses using pain medication pumps were not properly trained. UCI officials immediately began training nurses to use the pumps and the finding was lifted within 24 hours and the hospital submitted a plan of correction.

But during an October inspection, regulators said they observed poor oversight and mistakes by UCI doctors, nurses and pharmacists, leading to inadequate care that in some cases harmed patients. The hospital submitted a plan of correction in January, and the latest inspection was a follow up.

Belmont told staff in his statement that hospital leaders planned to hire an outside consulting team to advise them about how to improve pharmacy services. He also said they planned to fill the vacant positions of interim director of pharmacy services and interim chief nursing officer with outside hires.

— Molly Hennessy-Fiske

Photo: UC Irvine Medical Center. Credit: Geraldine Wilkins / Los Angeles Times

Federal prosecutors Wednesday filed criminal charges against a Santa Monica sushi restaurant and one of its chefs, alleging that they sold endangered whale meat.



Named in the complaint, which was filed in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, were Typhoon Restaurant Inc., owner of the Hump restaurant at Santa Monica Airport, and chef Kiyoshiro Yamamoto, 45, of Culver City. Both were charged with the illegal sale of a marine mammal product, a misdemeanor that carries a maximum penalty of one year in prison and a maximum fine of $100,000 for an individual and $200,000 for an organization.



“Someone should not be able to walk into a restaurant and order a plate of an endangered species,” said U.S. Atty. André Birotte Jr. in a prepared statement.



The Hump restaurant, a hip sushi hangout, came under fire after allegations surfaced in Tuesday’s  New York Times that it had served endangered Sei whale meat, possibly straight from the trunk of a white Mercedes.



In a statement, Gary Lincenberg, an attorney for the Hump, said the restaurant “accepts responsibility for the wrongdoing charged by the U.S. attorney and will agree to pay a fine and resolve this matter in court.”



The sale of whale meat came to light after federal agents and animal activists cooperated in a sting orchestrated by the associate producer of the Oscar-winning documentary “The Cove.”



Mark Gold, president of Heal the Bay, an environmental organization, said he was shocked by the revelations. “This is something I never thought would happen in Santa Monica, home of Heal the Bay, the NRDC [Natural Resources Defense Council] and my house,” he said.



— Martha Groves

Minority and low-income women in Los Angeles County are more likely to have limited access to healthcare and struggle with chronic diseases, according to a new report by the Department of Public Health.

The report, “Health Indicators for Women in Los Angeles County,” was released Wednesday by the department’s Office of Women’s Health and the Office of Health Assessment and Epidemiology.

Among the findings:



– African American women had higher mortality rates for many chronic diseases compared with other ethnic groups. For example, white women had a higher incidence of breast cancer, but African American women had the highest mortality rate.



– Latinas reported the poorest health status for women of all ethnic groups. They also reported poorer access to healthcare, with more than a third lacking health insurance and about 41% reporting difficulty accessing care. Latinas also had disproportionately higher death rates from diabetes.



– Asian/Pacific Islander women reported low rates of preventive healthcare. They were the least likely of any ethnic group to have had a Pap test in the last three years or a mammogram in the last two years.



– Of uninsured women, 54% had a mammogram in the last two years, compared with 68% of women who had Medi-Cal and 79% of women who had private insurance.



“One of the most important or startling findings is the fact that African American women continue to have the greatest health disparities and have far higher mortality rates than other women,” said Dr. Rita Singhal, who helped write the report. “They actually do fairly well when it comes to access to healthcare or rating their own health status.”



Singhal said it was not clear why African American women struggled with access to care and staying in good health, but researchers suspect racial inequality, discrimination and stress all play a role.

 

“What types of resources are required to meet the needs of these women? That’s something we need policy makers to look at,” Singhal said.



The report was based on data from the Los Angeles County Cancer Surveillance Program,  UCLA Center for Health Policy Research, California Quality of Life Survey and the 2007 Los Angeles County Health Survey of 7,200 adults, about half of them women.



— Molly Hennessy-Fiske

In a dramatic escalation of the war against illegal supergraphics in Los Angeles, authorities have jailed a businessman accused of posting an eight-story movie advertisement on an office building at one of Hollywood’s busiest intersections.



Kayvan Setareh, 49, of Pacific Palisades was arrested at his home Friday night and ordered held in lieu of $1-million bail. An arrest warrant obtained by Los Angeles City Atty. Carmen Trutanich accuses Setareh of three misdemeanor city code violations, two of them related to this city’s sign law, according to William Carter, Trutanich’s chief deputy.



The arrest was an unusually aggressive move by Trutanich and comes less than a week after the city attorney filed a separate lawsuit involving more than a dozen other supergraphics scattered across the city. Just days after that lawsuit was filed, workers used bolts and wire to wrap the new ad around the face of a 1928 corner office building on the northeast corner of Hollywood Boulevard and Highland Avenue – a major tourist destination along Hollywood’s Walk of Fame.



“The days of lax and inconsistent enforcement of billboard and outdoor advertising laws in this city are over,” Trutanich said in a prepared statement.

Setareh, who is scheduled to be arraigned Monday, could not be reached for comment Saturday. A woman who answered a phone listing for Setareh declined to discuss the case but said the arrest had been “a shock to the whole family.”

City officials say that unpermitted supergraphics like the one in Hollywood pose a threat to public safety because the huge sheets of vinyl can fall onto cars and pedestrians if they are not attached properly. Still, some law enforcement observers voiced surprise at the large bail amount, saying $1 million is typically used in far more serious cases, such as homicide, rape or kidnapping.

— David Zahniser

Photo: Supergraphic at Hollywood Boulevard and Highland Avenue in Hollywood. Photo credit: Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times.

Syliva Drew Ivie has seen schools and a medical college named after her late father Charles Drew, a black surgeon whose pioneering work in the science of blood preservation was key to the development of large-scale blood banks.



But the U.S. Navy’s christening and launching of the massive, 689-feet long dry cargo/ammunition ship Charles Drew from a San Diego shipyard early Saturday may have been the most unusual “edifice” named after him. But it was no less touching, the 66-year-old Drew Ivie said.

 

The Los Angeles resident acknowledged that some people would find it unusual for a warship to be named after her father, who also serves as the namesake of Willowbrook’s Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science.  Then again, her father’s research on the storage and shipment of plasma is credited with saving hundreds of lives during World War II.

 

“Even though he was not in the miltary, his name is connected to saving lives in the military,” Drew Ivie said. “Whatever my politics are about the wars the U.S. is engaged in, taking care of people fighting in wars and among our allies was a very integral part of his story.”

 

The ship will deliver dry cargo, including food, fuel, repair parts, ship store items, and ammunition to U.S. and Allied aircraft carriers and destroyers. It is about 85% complete, and is expected to be delivered to the Navy in July, said Karl Johnson, a spokesman for General Dynamics NASSCO, the ship’s builder.



“It will provide them with all the supplies they need, from corn flakes to missles, from gasoline to ice cream,” he said . “It will be crewed by civilian mariners, like a merchant marine fleet.”

 
 


The ship was christened by Drew’s eldest daughter, Bebe Drew Price, who broke a bottle of champagne against the bow under rainy skies before more than 1,300 people. The Charles Drew is so large that there are generally only two days a month when the tide is high enough for the Navy to safely slide a ship into San Diego Bay, Johnson said.

 

He said that the ship will return to the NASSCO shipyard to be completed and for testing, including sea trials. About 1,000 people have worked on building the ship at any one time, Johnson said. When it is finally complete, the ship will be crewed by about 135 people, he added. Two helicopters can land on the Charles Drew.



Drew Ivie said she was looking forward to keeping in touch with the ship’s crew, a tradition for family of people who have ships named after them. She said she sensed “tremendous pride” in the men and women who have been working on completing the ship.

 

“We will stay in touch with the crew,” Drew Ivie said. “We can go aboard the ship and go out with the ship for short stints. I can send cookies to the officers or the people in the mess hall. We can have a living relationship with the crew. It’s very inspiring.”

 

Drew Ivie, a top aide for L.A. County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas, said she was only 6 years old when her father died in 1950. But she remembered how tender he was to his four children, and the way he would take them in the family’s 1949 Packard to Rock Creek Park, where he would pretend that the car was stalled in a stream.



“We screamed. No matter how many times he did it, we always loved it,” she said. "We knew we were safe, but we pretended we were lost at sea.”



Her father was the director of the first American Red Cross effort to collect and bank blood on a large scale, but he nevertheless encountered racial discrimination. When the military issued an order to the Red Cross during World War II that blood be “typed” according to the race of the donor, Drew was outraged. And despite his contributions to blood plasma research, he was denied membership in the American College of Surgeons.

 

“He would have been just thrilled,” Drew Ivie said of the naming of a ship after her father. “It’s extremely gratifying, and it will be a beacon to people of all races and ethnicities that their contributions are appreciated. That we are appreciated.”

 

— Hector Becerra

Photo: The Charles Drew. Credit: U.S. Navy.

 

Despite the tsunami advisory issued for the California coast as a result of the 8.8 earthquake in Chile, Los Angeles County fire officials said they were not warning people to stay off beaches because they did not expect waves to rise more than 3 feet.



But National Weather Service meteorologists said harbors could see a little bit more turbulence.

 

“There’s just a heightened awareness right now,” said Ron Corpus, an ocean lifeguard specialist in Hermosa Beach. “We’re making sure engine bays are open, and staging equipment if we need to evacuate people if we have to.”

 

Corpus said the largest wave fluctuations are expected on south-facing beaches such as Malibu, but that even those weren’t expected to reach dangerous levels. He said the rise in tides is supposed to reach La Jolla just before noon and that authorities there will warn L.A. County fire officials if there is reason to take drastic action. Corpus said that as of about 9:30 a.m., surf conditions were not good, at least in Hermosa Beach, because of the winter storm.

 

“They’re very stormy, very choppy, like a washing machine,” he said.

 

Mark Jackson, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Oxnard, said that people sitting on beaches would probably notice only that the water would lap farther onto dry sand, according to the latest forecasts. But he said that harbors could see more movement because of the way the change in water levels could interact with piers and boats.

 

“With harbors, you could see more deflection of waves in more confined spaces. A lot of times that will speed up the water flow,” Jackson said at 10 a.m. He said that after the initial waves hit Southern California between noon and 12:25 p.m., a second, larger water-level increase should arrive about two hours later, peaking at about 3 feet, he said.

 

However, he said that the West Coast/Alaska Tsunami Warning Center in Palmer, Alaska, was examining data from buoys in the Pacific and that models could soon yield a more updated forecast.

— Hector Becerra

Graphic: The map shows estimated arrival times Saturday of the minor tsunami, according to predictions issued by the National Weather Service. Credit: Rong-Gong Lin II / Los Angeles Times

They were pouring 750 of the rarest and most high falutin’ designer beers in the world Saturday at Bravo Restaurant and Night Club in Anaheim, and certified cicerone William “Dr. Bill” Sysak had something to say about the finer points of each of them.

Sysak, a Falstaffian character with a beard and easy smile, was the man of the hour at the private, invitation-only event sponsored by a group called Woodshop 5.0 and attended by more than 250 fussy connoisseurs, aficionados and fans of finely crafted beers from as far away as Denmark. Throughout the 9-hour event, he was urged to savor the scents and flavors of an array of lagers, ales and stouts, including some vintage styles more than 30 years old.

When Sysak commented on a particular beer’s foam, color, aroma, taste or bitterness, guests within earshot took notes on clipboards and laptop computers.

Sysak, the beverage supervisor at Stone Brewing World Bistro & Gardens in Escondido, had this to say about a style called J & J Rose from Belgium, which sells for $150 a bottle: “Lemon, sharp, acidic at the front palate, ice-tea at the mid-palate and a champagne finish.”

Then there was the potent, zesty dark brew made with coffee beans passed through the digestive systems of rare Indonesian Civet cats. Sysak swirled a sample of that beer in a snifter, eyeballed the viscosity and sediment, took a sip, smiled and said to no one in particular, “Think wine, rich coffee, 80% dark chocolate, bourbon and vanilla.”

Page Reilly, 23, who markets beer for a San Francisco brewery, said, “What Dr. Bill says, goes. If I think a particular beer is bad or good, I like to share some with Dr. Bill to confirm my suspicions.”

Sysak, 47, figures he’s tried more than 30,000 beers over the past 30 years — not counting the roughly 200 beers he planned to taste at Saturday’s event, which was scheduled to run from noon to 9 p.m.

Extending a glass of a Denmark beer called Olfabrikken Dekadence 2005 over the crowd gathered around Sysak, John Stern, a 28-year-old graduate student at UC San Diego, said, “Hey Dr. Bill, want some?”

“Ahhh,” Sysak said after swirling a mouthful. “Hint of oxidation, rum and winter fruit notes.”

At 3 p.m., after three hours of continual beer tasting, Sysak smiled and said, “I’m holding up pretty well.”

— Louis Sahagun

Photo: Certified beer guide William “Dr. Bill” Sysak sampling several styles of designer brew during at the 5th Annual Woodshop Tasting at Bravo Restaurant & Night Club in Anaheim. Photo credit: Louis Sahagun / Los Angeles Times

Pasadena’s 28th annual Black History Parade attracted several thousand spectators Saturday.

Bands, drill units and floats set off from Altadena’s Charles White Park and finished at a festival in Pasadena’s Robinson Park. Roughly 2,000 spectators lined the parade route while another 2,000 attended the festival, according to authorities.

The recently renovated Robinson Park is named after the family of local African American athletes Jackie Robinson, of baseball fame, and his brother, Mack Robinson, an Olympic medal-winning runner and community activist.  

KTLA anchorwoman Michaela Pereira was the celebrity grand marshal for the two-hour parade, which began at 10 a.m. and was followed by the festival of music, food and community activities. 

— Larry Gordon

Photos: (Top) Amyha Fields, 4, enjoys a snow-cone at the Black History Parade and Festival held at Robinson Park in Pasadena. (Bottom) Parade marchers stroll the park. Credit: Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times.