With reluctance, Kelly Messiana allowed her husband,...

With reluctance, Kelly Messiana allowed her husband, Gary, to talk her into going to the San Gabriel Public Library to return a book that was 17 years overdue.

What she didn’t know was that her hubby had plotted to make her feel even more self-conscious by packing the library with 30 friends and relatives wearing funny noses and armed with noisemakers.

“At first she didn’t know what was happening,” Gary said. “Then she recognized her chiropractor.”

All Kelly could say to her husband was, “I’ll get back at you for this,” as she laughed and periodically hid her face behind her fugitive copy of “Guinea Pigs--All About Them,” by Alvin and Virginia Silverstein, which she had checked out when she was 10 years old.

Kelly, who wouldn’t have been fined more than the cost of the book, didn’t have to pay any fee. Instead, she was made an honorary member of the Friends of the San Gabriel Library.

The staff did ask her not to let it happen again, though.

Those weren’t lifeguards that Hermosa Beach police found in the city’s 16th Street lifeguard shack the other night. They were two naked men and two naked women, all civilians.

“When we arrived and said, ‘Police officers,’ they called out, ‘We’re just having a little orgy here,’ ” said Officer Garth Gaines.

“Then one of the females asked if we’d like to join them. We said, ‘No, you’d better come on out here.’ ”

Officers had gone to the 8-foot-by-8-foot shack after the four were observed breaking in through a window by lifeguards at the main headquarters.

Gaines said it was apparently the birthday of one of the men.

The four party-hearties, all in their early 20s, were booked on suspicion of trespassing, vandalism and indecent exposure (if not trying to bring back the free-loving 1960s).

List of the Day:

With the Lakers’ elimination all but certain, let’s ease the pain by replaying some of the daffy moments of past L.A. championship celebrations at City Hall.

1980--When Lakers fans become unruly, the team is sequestered for 75 minutes in a small, stuffy room in City Hall. “Day Two of the hostage situation,” Kareem Abdul-Jabbar mutters.

1982--Dodgers fans, booing the absence of Fernando Valenzuela, refuse to quiet down until Tommy Lasorda grabs the mike and growls: “Hold it!”

1982--An illegally parked Cadillac is the temporary leader of the parade down Broadway as police tow it ahead of the Laker floats. The City Hall crowd of fans is later put at 6,044. “The 44,” says a police spokesman, “were in the trees.”

1988--To prepare for the Dodgers’ City Hall celebration, workers paint numbers on 34 trees on the south lawn. That way, it’s explained, when a fan falls off a branch, paramedics can be directed to a specific tree.

Rescue-by-the-numbers.

miscelLAny:

When a fire broke out in L.A.’s early days, the alarm was sounded by the firing of a revolver five or six times. Firing just two or three shots, a historian noted, was not enough to attract attention, because it would probably be dismissed as a mere difference of opinion between two citizens.