Sheriff’s Dept. Helps Find a Happy Ending for Aspiring Writer

Nicole Matheny wants to be a writer someday.

The blond 15-year-old, who has been blind from birth, reads books such as “The Blue Lagoon” in Braille or listens to them on tape.

But when she writes her own short stories, Nicole doesn’t have to use Braille. Like many other writers, she composes on a computer. Hers, adapted for blind people, has an artificial voice to tell her what’s on the screen.

She learned about these computers from Paul Fasmer, an instructor for the visually impaired at Foothill Middle School in Azusa.

Nicole had little chance of owning one, however. She is in the care of a legal guardian, Mireya Andrade of Baldwin Park, who was unable to afford the specially equipped system.

But in 1990, thanks to the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, Nicole got her computer. It was purchased from proceeds of the sheriff’s station’s 999 for Kids 5-K/10-K Race and Festival in the City of Industry.

The event, which takes its name from the police code number that means an officer needs help, is part of the department’s 999 program to raise money for children who have been designated as abuse victims by the Department of Children’s Services.

The fourth 999 for Kids 5-K/10-K Race and Festival will be held Saturday. It begins at 9 a.m. at the Workman and Temple Family Homestead Museum, 15415 Don Julian Road, City of Industry, and is followed by displays and demonstrations by Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department personnel. Runners pay a $15 entry fee.

Jane K. Priewe of Alhambra has written a story published in the March issue of “Highlights for Children.” A spokesman for the magazine says it has the largest circulation--3 million--of any children’s periodical in the country.

In Priewe’s story, “The Stringless Harp,” leprechauns find replacements for harp strings stolen by a troll.

Jeannette W. Cheng has been appointed librarian of Monterey Park’s Bruggemeyer Memorial Library. She succeeds Elizabeth Minter, who resigned in August to become director of the Placentia Library District in Orange County.

Educated in Taiwan and the United States, Cheng, 55, worked for 16 years for the Madison, Wis., Public Library. During the 1970s, she worked at the National Tsing Hua University Library in Taiwan. She will begin April 1, at an annual salary of $60,000.

Monrovia Police Chief Joseph A. Santoro has been appointed to the state Commission on the Future of the Courts as a member of the panel’s committee on crime.

Santoro, 48, replaces Long Beach Police Chief Lawrence L. Binkley, who left the committee recently after he was fired in January after a stormy five years on the job.

The commission, created in November by state Supreme Court Chief Justice Malcolm M. Lucas, will identify long-term trends in the judicial system, focusing on goals for 2020. Its committees include those on technology, crime, alternative court structure, family relations and civil cases.

Monterey Park Police Chief Dan Cross has been selected as one of 20 California police chiefs to develop a cultural awareness program for law enforcement agencies statewide.

The group was selected by the Peace Officers Standards and Training, a state organization that oversees law enforcement training in California.

Cross, 44, has served for 18 years on the Monterey Park Police Department and was named chief seven months ago. Because the majority population in the city has changed from predominantly Anglo to Latino and then to Asian over the past 15 years, city officials and police have developed a number of sensitivity and diversity programs, Cross said.