The Plot Kept Changing for Her

Just another night on Sunset Boulevard.

Mary Michiels, who owns a liquor store on that fabled rue, shut down for the day, went outside and discovered her car was missing from her lot.

She called 911 and was giving a description of the car “when all of a sudden this huge black SUV crashed into the front of the store, just demolished it. I told 911 to change the stolen car report to a terrible-crash report. They asked if anyone was hurt. I got outside to look and saw the SUV was fleeing the scene. I couldn’t believe it could still move.”

The police arrived, and while they were investigating, “a man drove up in a Honda, got out, and started screeching, ‘Where’s the hospital? Where’s the hospital? My wife’s having a baby!’ ”

The officers were preparing to deliver the baby on the spot but an ambulance arrived in time to take the man’s wife to the hospital.

“You know, it was my first day back from vacation,” Michiels said. “I had been up in the little town of Cayucos. My sister and I have thought about moving up there. It’s so quiet.”

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THIS JUST IN: Michiels’ car, by the way, was not stolen. It had been towed away by mistake.

After Michiels had locked up that night, she stayed in the store for nearly an hour to do some chores. The towing company, thinking everyone had gone home, assumed the parked car belonged to a trespasser.

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MAKING AN ENTRANCE: The media were assembled at a landing site outside City Fire Station No. 108 at Mulholland Drive when into view came a new water-dropping helicopter carrying Mayor Richard Riordan, Fire Chief William Bamattre and other officials.

As it came to earth, the chopper produced a strong backwash of air.

“The podium [set up for the news conference] began to vibrate,” said radio reporter Diane Thompson of KNX-AM (1070). “And then it flew away ‘Dorothy-style’ down the hillside. I knew city officials were full of hot air but this is ridiculous!”

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ON A ROLL: An item here about Charles “Fantastic” Smith’s unsuccessful attempt to log-roll his way from Cabrillo Beach to Catalina Island atop a barrel-like device in 1953 brought a note from Dave Kenney of Palos Verdes Estates.

“I was sailing my Mercury sloop in the harbor,” Kenney recalled of that day. “Spotting what appeared to be a floating Jungle Gym, I sailed up close. Smith was walking backward on the drum (to make the contraption move forward) in his very wet stocking feet.

“ ‘Going to Catalina?’ I joked.

“He pointed in the general direction of the island and asked, ‘It’s this way, isn’t it?’ Still thinking he was joking, I laughed and sailed off.

“The one thing that baffled me was the pair of roller skates hanging in front of him. I later read in The Times that he’d originally intended to roller skate on the drum to rotate it. Talk about getting off on the wrong foot . . . “

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“OUCH” IS RIGHT: Ed Carter of Culver City found a sign at the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach whose spelling wasn’t fit to a T (see photo).

Just to restore balance to the world, Kitty Oda of Moorpark produced evidence that a sign maker at a fast-food joint in Simi Valley used an extra T to spell “Loitering” (see photo).

The error-plagued “Loittering” warning had as much trouble with “skating” as Fantastic Smith did.

miscelLAny:

An Emmy award for sound effects on TV’s “Sesame Street” show during the 1984-85 season was among the items offered by Leland’s auction house in New York.

Although it came with a framed certificate, the gold statuette itself had “no affixed plaque,” the auction house’s catalog said. “So impress the ladies with tales of your own boob-tube glory.”

It was purchased by an anonymous individual for $17,439. A star is born!

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Steve Harvey can be reached by phone at (213) 237-7083, by fax at (213) 237-4712, by e-mail at steve.harvey@latimes.com and by mail at Metro, L.A. Times, Times Mirror Square, L.A. 90053.