On March 6, three days after The Malibu Times ran my dog Chance’s photo, two boys named Chris were playing in a field near our home. They heard a dog whining and went to investigate. A golden retriever had fallen more than six feet through the plywood deck of a foundation of a yet-to-be-built house. The boys tried to pull up more of the deck to free the dog but were not able. They remembered seeing fliers about a missing golden and ran home to call.

When we received the call, we were excited. In the 25 days that Chance was missing, we had only one possible sighting and several collect calls from an “Anthony” who was in jail. My hopes sank a bit when I came near the place where the boys said the dog was “under the house”. Surely if Chance had gotten this close, he’d have come home. We left the outside lights on and the gate open every night since he disappeared, but when we saw the dog trying to claw his way up out of the cement block foundation, we were thrilled to see it was our golden retriever.

Chance is in pretty good shape, a bit dehydrated and matted, but sound. Obviously he has been eating somewhere. I’d like to thank anyone who has been so kind as to feed him as well as all the good people in Malibu who kept an eye out for him, but special thanks go to Chris Jude and his friend Chris who really saved our dog’s life. I believe that Chance was on his way home when he fell through the missing planks in the deck of that foundation. (Isn’t this a danger to children?) Two to three hundred feet more and he would have been home. Thank you Malibu Times for running his picture and all your good wishes.

Agnes Peterson

In all the debate over development, very little has been heard from Malibu’s business community. You know who you are: owners of small shops in the Cross Creek area, boutiques, eateries, movie theaters and so on. What do you think is going to happen to your precious little operations once the Malibu Bay Company gets its green light? Here’s a little math lesson that may shed some light on your future. MBC will probably have to borrow hundreds of millions of dollars — my guess — to finance their little Aspen-by-the-sea development. Tens of thousands of square feet of empty retail space will suddenly come on the market. The lender will be calling MBC every day with one question: “Hey you guys, got any tenants yet? I need my money!” The boys at MBC will then look far and wide for a major landmark or anchor tenant that will need lots of that space right away. This could be a Wal-Mart like operation, some kind of muscular national commercial outfit that will rapidly squash the local ma and pa retailers clean out of existence. They will do this because they can buy their goods in mass quantities more cheaply than you can and sell the same stuff cheaper than you can. Within a few months, at the most a year, I predict most of you small shop owners will be out of business, replaced by these major chains. Sorry, Malibu Lumber! Malibu will then acquire an uncanny resemblance to Calabasas, a once beautiful place rapidly becoming the ugliest, over-built civil cancer I have ever witnessed. One fast food shopping center “Spanish” plaza piece of dung after another. Wait, I’m not through! I got a little ending note for all those new soccer moms and city council members clamoring for ball fields, senior centers and other “free” goodies from the nice folks at the Malibu Bay Company. The math lesson continues: remember, now, there are only about 12,000 or so actual residents in our fair city. So who’s gonna shop in all that fresh retail space? Well, the city’s gotta grow, see, gotta have more people here to make that mega shopping complex work to pay off that massive MBC debt. Where are all these new shoppers going to come from? No problem, that same Malibu Bay Company that is bringing us this swollen shopping development also owns just about every square inch of available buildable land along our beautiful coastline. It’s the domino theory in practice again. 1. They get the permits to build the shopping center. 2. They seduce everyone who should care with trinkets like senior centers and marginal ball fields – goodies for everyone, just like those brilliant Manhattan Indians who sold the place for 24 bucks worth of trade goods. 3. Then watch as the city and county roll over when the MBC demands those other building permits. My prediction? They will build as dense housing as possible and bingo! Malibu Town Square or whatever kitchy name they will call it. The whole system works like a charm. The really cool part is, you’ll never have to get lonely for Calabasas because from the water’s edge to the 101 freeway, it will all look exactly the same!

You may sense that I am not pleased with this state of Malibu’s present and future and I’m not. I got a frightening sense of Malibu Bay Company’s intentions when Lyn Konheim showed me his little model in the trailer and told me that the extensive parking area with its little trees counted as “open space.”

Marshall Thompson

It’s absolutely certain — Elvis will be seen tonight in Malibu.

“Idols of the King,” a theatrical tribute to the fans of that king, plays tonight (Thursday) at Pepperdine’s Smothers Theatre, part of a 28-state, 31-week tour of the show produced by Arkansas Repertory Theatre.

While Elvis does appear onstage, played by actor/singer Lance Zitron, “This really is about the fans of Elvis, and how he has affected their lives,” says co-writer Ronnie Claire Edwards, perhaps best known for her role on “The Waltons.”

Edwards says co-writer Allan Crowe (writer for “Designing Women” and “Evening Shade”) was a huge fan of Elvis, while she was more interested in the fans themselves. “He’s very good with dialogue, I’m very good with monologue. It came together very rapidly.

“It either could be called a musical or a play with music” says Edwards, speaking by telephone about the two-act, 16-song evening.

Actor Kevin Bartlett plays eight of the male fans, Dale Dickey plays eight female fans. Edwards says the characters are connected in some way, and after each scene, “Elvis” sings an appropriate song. A live band backs the songs.

Why the fascination with Elvis? “He sort of spoke to some part of people,” she says. “He was an American phenomenon. There’s something about him that reached people.” She quotes Sam Phillips, who owned Sun Records, “Elvis Presley embodied the innocence of America.”

The writer hopes what the audience takes from the play is enjoyment. But, she adds, “I hope they realize that it’s a play that has some literary merit. What these people say, and how he’s affected their lives, is interesting.”

She says audiences, particularly women, flip for the production. “These Elvis fans, they come from all over to see it,” says Edwards.

Maybe the real Elvis will be among them.

“Idols of the King” plays tonight (Thursday) at 8 p.m., Pepperdine’s Smothers Theatre. Tickets, $30, are available at the box office. Tel. 456-4522, fax 456-4556.

The Rev. Pam McCarety vigorously expressed (letter to the editor [“Giving elderly a lift, March 4]) her well-placed concern for Malibu’s elderly citizens on fixed income. Her rage at the City Council’s attitude towards the Dial-a-Ride Program was not so well placed. After the city staff advised the council that the cost of the program was out of control, and that there appeared to be significant abuses of the intent of the program, the council asked the Public Works Commission to review the matter and advise the council on an appropriate approach to solving the problem. The council did not express any “attitude” to the commission on the matter.

The staff advised the commission that this fiscal year the costs would probably exceed the available funding by more than $50,000, and thus possibly force an undesirable early termination of the entire program. The staff noted that much of the problem seemed to result from what might be termed “abuses”: use of the program by individuals not living in the city, by those too young to be eligible, use of the program for commuting to work or connecting with car-pools in Santa Monica; and use by those with an automobile, a driver’s license, and more-than-adequate financial resources. These possible-abuses are associated with a small percentage of the nearly 150 users of the program. The staff noted the county’s ACCESS program is available to about 90 percent of the handicapped living in the city.

After a thoughtful discussion, and constructive input from the public, the commission voted (unanimously) to recommend that the council take action to limit the Dial-a-Ride program to residents of the city; and to require users to register, identifying their age, whether they had a driver’s license and car, and the nature of their disability, if they had one. The commission also suggested that the staff examine possible annual “financial caps” on the use of the program by individuals, as used by some other cities. The commission did not recommend that any change be made at this time to the minimum age, that a financial-need requirement be established, or that the program be limited to the disabled. It noted that the ACCESS program is available to disabled persons living within 3/4 mile of a bus route (about 90 percent of the homes in Malibu), but that it requires advanced planning and sometimes inconvenient scheduling.

It is too bad that the Rev. Pam McCarety did not choose to attend the Public Works Commission meeting, nor apparently review the information presented in the city staff’s report on the Dial-a-Ride program. I’m sure that her well-informed and thoughtful input will be welcomed by a concerned council when the matter comes before it.

John Wall