Balboa Island

Wing Lam still isn't quite sure what happened to his last name. The former Wing Lee had his moniker changed somehow when his family emigrated to the United States from Brazil in the 1970s. Either his father misspelled it, or the immigration official did, or one of them misheard the other and it wound up on his official paperwork. The name, which Lam has never changed back, proved to be only part of the transformation. Wing Lee, the small-town boy whose idea of a lively weekend was to pick mangoes back home, grew in later years to be Wing Lam, the co-founder of Wahoo's Fish Taco, which launched in Costa Mesa in 1988 and has expanded to six states.

Archie Gregory has spent four decades visiting schools, riding in parades and speaking at functions to deliver one basic message: that he is not a hero. Not now, not ever. In his mind, he wasn't a hero when the bombs first struck at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941. Gregory, a sailor in the Navy who was serving on a repair ship, had stepped onto another vessel to visit an old school friend the moment the explosions began. The force threw him into the water and gave him a concussion that left a permanent scar.

The red and gold facade of Li's Chinese Restaurant in Huntington Beach is as much a distinctive part of Huntington Beach as Mann's Chinese Theatre is to Hollywood. Stepping inside is like entering a miniature Chinese palace with intricate gold-embossed walls and ceiling, colorful pictures of peacocks done on silk -- a room that holds a promise of such tempting dishes as mushu pork and orange peel chicken that owner and chef Kai Chen has offered for the past 27 years to his faithful diners.

o7 Baci f7 (Italian for kiss) may be your romantic choice for Valentine's Day. The eye-catching restaurant on Beach Boulevard between between Garfield Avenue and Ellis Street, Huntington Beach, was designed and painted by Franco Masci, an artist brought from Italy by owner/chef Angelo Juliano to re-create the streets of an Italian village. Inside, the illusion continues as you pass through arches to intimate dining areas -- ours hado7 Langolo degli innamoratief7 -- "lover's corner" scrolled on the wall.

Angelique Flores HUNTINGTON BEACH -- Eleven-year-old Alex DeVries makes wishes come true. In fact, she's made two wishes come true. Following her family's generous example and taking a few ideas from some books she had read, the Huntington Beach girl called the Make-A-Wish Foundation last December with the desire to do more than help with the chapter's toy drive. On her own, the fifth-grader raised enough money to grant 5-year-old Sophia's wish to have her bedroom decorated during the holidays.

In a business in which image is critical, will young surfers and skateboarders care that Costa Mesa clothing makers Volcom Inc. have gone corporate? Probably not, said Paul Burnett, president of Surfside Sports, a Balboa Island retailer. "The average guy on the street, that's not his thing," Burnett said Tuesday. On Monday, Volcom announced earnings figures for the second quarter of 2005, the first time it has released quarterly numbers since becoming a public company.

Local real estate values appear to have cooled off during the hot month of July, though homes in south Costa Mesa marked a pricy exception. Real estate statistics showed that in July, most Newport Beach homes commanded median sale prices above July 2004 prices. However, July values dipped from June's numbers around Newport. That was not the case in south Costa Mesa, where median home prices broke the $700,000 barrier. Local home price figures were compiled by La Jolla-based DataQuick Information, a real estate tracking company.

DINING OUT With a red and gold pagoda as distinctive as the Chinese Theatre in Hollywood, Li's Chinese Restaurant anchors a long strip of small stores at the corner of Magnolia and Adams streets in Huntington Beach. The interior is just as exotic. It's like entering a miniature Chinese palace with intricate gold-embossed walls and ceiling, colorful pictures of peacocks done on silk -- a room that holds a promise of tempting classic dishes prepared by owner and chef Kai Chen and his wife and manager, Grace.

Robert Gardner, a Corona del Mar resident and former judge with the Orange County Superior Court and the Court of Appeal, died Saturday afternoon at age 93. His daughter, Nancy Gardner of Newport Beach, was with him at the time and said he passed away peacefully in his sleep. She said her father's health had been steadily declining since he broke his hip about two years ago. "Newport Beach has lost one of its legends," said Nancy Nelson of Newport Beach, who worked with Judge Gardner for many years when she was a probation officer.

On a cool and breezy evening Oct. 6, Mayor Joe Carchio, three City Council members and the city manager of Huntington Beach welcomed Sunset Beach as a part of Huntington Beach. The meeting was attended by members of the community and the Sunset Beach Community Assn. (SBA) board at the outdoor community lot next to the fire station on 12th Street in Sunset Beach. Some of the benefits of joining Huntington Beach are: 1. Residents are much closer to the seat of government. We won't have to drive 19 miles to the Civic Center in Santa Ana to transact business.