In Retrospect/1987 : Folklore

Amid the heroic and villainous headliners in 1987, some locals who also made their mark:

When 62-year-old Vincent Pelliccia of Newhall gave a ride to a man who was under surveillance by Los Angeles police, they ran a check on his license plate--and discovered that Pelliccia had escaped 41 years earlier from a Virginia chain gang. Neighbors, not to mention Pelliccia, were stunned inasmuch as the retired electrician had worked 28 years for Burbank Studios and reared five children. However, in 1946, he’d been convicted on three counts of “store breaking.� After his escape, he served six years for burglary in Rhode Island, before coming West. Friends and supporters rallied to his cause, and Virginia authorities pardoned him, saying “prosecution would serve no useful purpose.� Pelliccia said he hopes to have a book written about his life so he can donate the proceeds to charity.

Eagle Rock nuclear physicist and bassoonist John Backus, 76, hiked to the top of Garnet Mountain in San Diego County to become the first member of the Sierra Club to climb 270 mountains--six times. “I would have brought along my bassoon and played a tune if I hadn’t had a recent operation on my lip,� said Backus, who has climbed mountains in eight Southern California counties, including 11,499-foot Mt. San Gorgonio. Instead he broke into a few lines of poetry from “Alice in Wonderland�: “O Oysters, said the carpenter,/ We’ve had a pleasant run./ Shall we be going back again? . . . “

As he lay dying in Childrens Hospital, Mexican-born Arturo Medina didn’t ask for a trip to Disneyland, a visit from a favorite celebrity or a horseback ride. The 10-year-old leukemia-stricken boy asked for his own temporary residence card. “Other kids had been taunting him in school,� his mother explained. The Immigration and Naturalization Service gave Arturo his final wish, and he died a few hours later, a legal. Later, the INS helped raise contributions to pay for Arturo’s funeral.

With Schwab’s out of business, a 28-year-old actress with no credits and only one name--Angelyne--hoped to be discovered by commissioning an 85-foot-tall portrait of herself on a big building near Hollywood and Vine. “I’m the first person in the history of Hollywood to ever become famous for nothing,� she said, revealing a perhaps limited knowledge of local history.

It was one of the most moving moments of Pope John Paul II’s visit. Television cameras followed the Pope as he worked his way through the crowd at Universal Amphitheater to hug the legs of Tony Melendez, 25, who had just sung and played the guitar with his feet. Then John Paul kissed the thalidomide victim on the cheek and whispered words of encouragement to him. Melendez, who taught himself to play the guitar, said later: “Before, I just told people I’d play and sing for them if they’d give me enough for gas and something to eat. . . . Now I can hardly answer all the calls.�

Caltrans wouldn’t allow her perform on a median strip for the city’s alternative Fringe Festival. So Sandra Tsing Loh set up her borrowed 9-foot, white Steinway grand piano on top of a parking structure near the 7th Street overpass of the Harbor Freeway and serenaded rush-hour traffic with two 45-minute sets of her own compositions. Loh, 25, a USC instructor whose works include “Music for the Bonus Car Wash,� said that the competing noise, rather than detracting from her performance, added to the “musical environment.� Malissa Hathaway McKeith could eat there, the manager of Bernard’s restaurant in the Biltmore Hotel said, but her guide dog, Brandeis, would have to stay outside. McKeith left but the matter didn’t end there. McKeith, a 28-year-old partly sighted corporate lawyer, filed suit. Later, she agreed to settle when the Biltmore not only apologized, it hosted a morning seminar--with continental breakfast--for more than 150 hoteliers and restaurateurs who were briefed on the rights of the handicapped in California. “We felt . . . we could really do a lot more in educating the hotel and restaurant owners and the general public by doing it this way,� said McKeith’s attorney, Charlotte I. Ashmun. The manager who rejected McKeith has since left Bernard’s.

Donald Cram, whose carpet-cleaning business entails mixing and applying rug shampoos, received a telephone call from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences on Oct. 15 telling him he had won the Nobel Prize in chemistry. “Now, I do a good job on carpets, but this seemed a little excessive,� he said later. Actually, the academy had meant to contact Dr. Donald J. Cram, 68, a UCLA professor who shared this year’s chemistry award.