Featured Articles from the Daily Pilot

A new Wild Rivers location is expected to open in May 2014 in Irvine with a 25-year lease. The Orange County Board of Supervisors unanimously approved the park's construction and operation at its July 30 meeting. The Irvine Co. did not renew its lease with Wild Rivers last October, leading the water park to close, according to the Los Angeles Times. Its last day was Sept. 25. The location, next to the Verizon Wireless Amphitheatre, was open for 27 years. "We are pleased to be bringing apartments to the greater Irvine Spectrum area," said Irvine Co. spokeswoman Erin Freeman.

NEWPORT BEACH — Sitting on an oversized plush chair in baseball legend Chuck Finley's Newport Beach home, actress Tawny Kitaen seems to be in a much different place than she was eight years ago. A soccer goal is visible in the backyard, and her daughter's art covers the refrigerator in the family home. Her adopted dog, Woody, nuzzles Kitaen as she talks about a new off-camera passion: helping others. A volunteer at Kathy's House, a shelter for at-risk women in San Juan Capistrano, and a member of the board of directors at Testimony Life Resources, an alternative counseling center, Kitaen appears to be a far cry from her role as the eccentric star of "The Surreal Life," or the woman battling a dependency on prescription pills on "Celebrity Rehab.

Newport Beach's city attorney said Monday that the city plans to ask a judge this week to close seven recovery homes found to be operating outside of the law. The proposal comes after an Orange County Superior Court judge ruled Thursday that Morningside Recovery in Lido Village operates in violation of a city ordinance barring commercial recovery centers in residential areas. Morningside Chief Executive Mary Helen Beatificato did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The California Supreme Court this week rejected a Jewish organization’s appeal against the estate of Joey Bishop, the late entertainer and member of the “Rat Pack.” But the legal battle over his fortune isn’t over yet, an attorney for the Newport Beach Chabad Center said Friday. The center filed several lawsuits and claims against Bishop’s estate, alleging that the entertainer’s advisors and live-in caretaker blocked his final wishes to have part of his estate go toward setting up a charity for special-needs children in Orange County.

I worked on a story about Michael Milken many years ago, not long after the infamous junk-bond tycoon's release from prison. During the reporting phase, I observed him fulfilling his court-ordered community service by teaching a math clinic at a middle school in a low-income Los Angeles neighborhood. The clinic was not at all what I had expected. Milken, accompanied by his usual entourage, approached the job with the fervor of a motivational speaker. He knew the kids by name and took them through a series of math games, during which they used techniques they'd been taught to multiply and divide multiple-digit numbers quickly in their heads.

COSTA MESA - Matt Hurst, Troy Hardy, Nick McGuinness and Tanner Love hung out at the track and field meet as they always do, together. They weren't going to run together on Saturday, though. The race that united them on the track was the 4x400-meter relay, an event they were disqualified from last week at the Pacific Coast League finals. The episode marked the end of the season for one of the best relay teams in Corona del Mar High's history. Not being able to race together again bummed them out. Hurst said the 4x400 relay, which he anchors, is his favorite race.

Entryway design concepts for Corona del Mar, the city's next fiscal year budget and disestablishing two business improvement districts are on the Newport Beach City Council's Tuesday agendas. During its 4 p.m. study session, the Public Works Department will show concepts aimed at enhancing Corona del Mar's parkway near MacArthur Boulevard and Coast Highway. The project has been scaled back in recent years, city staff wrote, and will include more landscaping and a pedestrian area along Coast Highway between Begonia and Carnation avenues.

Costa Mesa police have arrested two men suspected of stabbing three people, an officer said Sunday. Roman Nava, 18, and Felipe Moreno, 19, both of Costa Mesa, were arrested on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon and promoting a criminal street gang, Their arrest follows the stabbing of two men and a boy at about 12:32 a.m. Saturday near the intersection of Anaheim Way and Yorkshire Street, according to the Costa Mesa Police Department....

COSTA MESA - Trash containers with built-in locks were so popular that residents snapped up the first 120 available in two days, city officials said. The Costa Mesa Sanitary District distributed the bins to residents earlier this month. Now, because of the demand, the district's board of directors will weigh a request for $10,000 to supply residents with more of the scavenger-proof bins. After the initial 120 locking bins were made available to residents July 18, the district received 128 applicants requesting a locking container in two days, according to a news release from the district.

After charging an Irvine tennis coach with eight felony counts of lewd acts with a child under 14, prosecutors are asking for more victims to come forward, the Orange County district attorney's office announced Monday. Prosecutors allege Jarrid Thomas Baldogo, 29, met his 12-year-old male victim at the tennis courts in Irvine's Santa Clara Park in November. Irvine police originally said the boy was 13. After being hired as the boy's private coach, Baldogo sexually assaulted him at least eight times in his car and apartment between December and May, prosecutors said.

If you seek verification that Orange County has grown up, the evidence lies simply in the coming of a new generation of community leaders. In some ways it is hard to comprehend that time has passed, not by years, but by decades. The great men and women of the mid-20th century push on out of the bean fields and into the new technology, passing the proverbial torch to a generation coming of age in their 30s and early 40s. One such family of demonstrable influence recently held a sunset cocktail reception in Newport Beach to promote the philanthropic mission of their daughter and her associates.

Andrew Edwards The name is a tongue twister. The store is like a giant toy box. Gary and Diane Naumann opened the fourth branch of Toy Boat Toy Boat Toy Boat last Tuesday at Fashion Island. The store is filled with tricycles, dolls, trucks and pirate ships. "We carry just about everything -- we have Mattel; we have Hasbro; but we have a lot of specialty toys," Gary Naumann said. Some favorite toys at the store, the Naumanns said, are the bright plastic Bruder trucks that are stacked near the doorway.