Kibitzing Her Way to Kardashian

ENCINO —  Like Blanche DuBois, sometimes we reporters rely on the kindness of strangers.

I certainly did during the week the verdicts were announced in the O.J. Simpson case.

Walking into the newsroom an hour before the verdicts were unsealed, I was approached by the city editor.

Get Kardashian, he said.

That phrase became my mantra. I repeated it over and over again to myself and to my colleagues. I even repeated it to my kids, who kept looking at me quizzically. And my husband, who thought I was talking about an alien from the “Star Trek” TV series.

So I tried to get Kardashian. And I did land the interview, finally. But in the end, it was Robert Kardashian’s neighbors who really got me.

While the residents of O. J.’s neighborhood in Brentwood have become famously surly to the press in reaction to all the television news crews, photographers and reporters traipsing through their tony precincts, Kardashian’s neighbors in the Encino hills exemplified the acme of hospitality.

In Brentwood, they call the cops or sic the dogs on reporters.

In Encino, they offer you wine, bathrooms and telephones.

But I’m ahead of myself.

This quiet hillside neighborhood, with its large, rambling homes, got its 15 minutes of fame 16 months ago, when Simpson, staying with best pal Robert Kardashian, fled from the police with his other best pal, A. C. Cowlings. It was in this house where Kardashian read the “goodby” letter from Simpson that was widely received as a here-comes-suicide note.

By reading that letter on national television, Kardashian thrust himself into the public eye. I wrote a profile of him for the paper shortly thereafter.

It was then that I first visited Kardashian’s neighborhood. His house has an imposing presence--a modern, peach-hued, two-story home set on a slope behind wrought-iron gates. His neighbors’ houses, by contrast, are more traditional for the area, rambling ranches with views.

What I didn’t know then was how much these neighbors knew about the man who rents (yes, he’s probably the only renter on the block) that house and the people who come and go through those electric gates. (They’ve even worked out his likely rental tab, but that remains unconfirmed.)

I didn’t find out exactly how much they knew until one day last week, when I ended up sitting outside his house. With rumors swirling about a possible reunion between Simpson and his younger children, I was sent to stake out Kardashian’s place.

I drove up the winding streets and ended up parking in front of the house, near an NBC news van and behind a New York Daily News reporter. A photographer from a South Bay newspaper had already arrived and was sitting on someone’s grass.

The afternoon grew longer and hotter. No sign of Kardashian. No sign of Simpson or the kids.

We just sat around, cooking in the sun and the boredom. And some people think journalism is glamorous.

The Daily News reporter needed a bathroom and I needed a telephone that worked--the cellular I had borrowed ran out of juice.

Just then, a woman walked up the hill, asking us who was in the house and if we’d seen Kardashian. She stood on the sidewalk with us for several minutes and someone told her about the reunion rumors.

A construction van plodded by us and the woman thought it was an undercover security guard, checking to see if the media was still watching. No, we said, that was just a construction worker in a van.

So she stayed and watched the empty house with us, then said she’d go home and check TV news and report back to us if she heard anything new. The Daily News reporter went with her to use the restroom.

She returned, 20 minutes later, carrying cold sodas for all of us. The reporter said it was hard leaving; the woman wanted to talk but the reporter was worried about missing something outside.

She hadn’t. It was getting later. And hotter. And even more boring.

Then a van pulled into the driveway across from Kardashian’s house. A man got out and nodded to us. We were standing in front of his house and the photographer, by this time, was kind of stretched out on the man’s grass.

Soon, his wife came out. I thought this was it. They were going to ask us to leave or they’d call the cops.

Far from it. She offered us more drinks. Was there anything else we needed?

A telephone, I said. Sure, she answered, come right in. It’s in the kitchen.

I called my editor, who told me to stay put (of course). Then I introduced myself to Pia Jackson, the homeowner. She was putting away leftovers and asked if I was hungry. I wasn’t. I still had the “Get Kardashian” mantra running through my brain and I couldn’t think about much else.

She filled up her wineglass and offered me some.

Then we went outside and along with the other neighbor, sat on the front steps and talked about that house and that man.

They told me about Kardashian’s ex-fiancee (what a nice girl, they said, so friendly). They told me about the girlfriend’s departure (it took two moving vans). They told me about his kids (nice children who ride their bikes along the hilly streets).

And then there was “Robert” (a lovely man, very friendly, a very nice neighbor). But they said the trial had been a strain and he was leaving for court very early in the mornings and returning late in the evenings.

They said they’d seen “Johnnie” (Cochran), “Mr. (Robert) Shapiro” and A. C. Cowlings. But they hadn’t seen Simpson. And they hadn’t even known that Simpson was at their neighbor’s house that day in June, 1994, until after he was arrested.

They even talked about the house (yes, it’s modern, but they used the finest wood and marble).

By this time, Pia’s husband had joined us and the three neighbors sat on the stoop, drinking white wine and smoking cigarettes.

You go home, they told me. We’ll sit here and call you if anything happens.

I declined the offer. I can just imagine my editors if they heard I handed off the job to a civilian.

But I called Pia the other day and thanked her again for letting me use the phone so much.

“It really didn’t bother us at all,” she said. “You were all just doing your job.”

Take that, Brentwood.