Careless Car Thief Finds He Should Be More Careful About Choice of Friends

With friends like these: A car thief in Paramount dropped a cell phone while being chased by L.A. County sheriff’s deputies. He got away, but a deputy retrieved the phone. It rang a few minutes later and the deputy answered it.

What happened next, according to the city’s monthly newsletter, sounded like something out of a Joseph Wambaugh novel.

Posing as the suspect, the deputy told the cell phone caller that he was hiding from the cops.

The caller said, “Come here, we’ll hide you.”

The deputy said he couldn’t remember the address.

The thief’s good buddy gave it to him.

Detectives went to the residence, got the name of the thief and put a warrant out for his arrest.

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Hardly big enough for one SUV: As you may have read in Saturday’s Times, Chinese real estate mogul Zhang Bo has built a housing development called Orange County outside Beijing. It’s the kind of gated, master-planned community of luxury homes that Bo had seen on a tour of California’s Orange County.

I did spot something different about the Chinese version, though (see photo).

It has a one-car garage.

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Back to California’s Orange County: The police log of the Rancho Santa Margarita News said: “A Porsche was reported abandoned after sitting in the same place on La Flauta for four days.”

That’s Rancho Santa Margarita for you. In the neighborhood where I grew up, we wouldn’t have reported an abandoned Porsche. We’d have been honored to have it parked on our street.

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This feature won’t be master-planned: Bob Thomas of Newport Beach noticed a mansion evidently being offered by someone with a couple of teenagers in the family (see accompanying).

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Who says Southern California has no history? Jeff Carruthers of Pomona spotted an ad for a house that is old enough to qualify as a classic (see accompanying).

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miscelLAny: In the never-ending alphabet soup discussion here, Mike Bird writes: “At Label’s Table, in Woodland Hills, I can ask the waitress, Tina, for a BELT and she will get it for me. It isn’t on the menu, and like others, we start with the famous BLT. Anyway, she delivers a bacon, egg, lettuce, tomato sandwich.”

When I was younger, I used to order a belt from Alice at the Redwood bar. But she responded with an alcoholic concoction.

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Steve Harvey can be reached at (800) LA-TIMES, Ext. 77083; by fax at (213) 237-4712; by mail at Metro, L.A. Times, 202 W. 1st St., Los Angeles, CA 90012; and by e-mail at [email protected].