MEDICINAL MARIJUANA FIGURE MAKES AN OFFER

Steve McWilliams, whose "medicinal" marijuana operation here was raided by
police two years ago, has offered to drop his lawsuit against the city for
damages. In exchange, he wants a seat on the city task force being
assembled to study the prescription pot issue and draft guidelines for
local law enforcement.

The kicker is that McWilliams has hired lawyer David Songco to help him.
The same David Songco who prosecuted him for distributing marijuana in
1999. (McWilliams pleaded guilty and is serving three years on probation.)
Songco, who left the S.D. District Attorney's Office shortly thereafter,
says McWilliams called him two weeks ago and asked for help.

Songco says he agreed to get involved because he believes law enforcement
needs guidelines. "I'm not a proponent of medicinal marijuana, but it is
the law," he says. Voters in 1996 passed state Proposition 215, which
allows seriously ill people to use marijuana on a doctor's recommendation.
"Police officers need to know: When do they yank this stuff? When do they
leave it? How do they determine when people really need it?"

Meanwhile, the City Attorney's Office is amenable to McWilliams' proposal.
And Councilwoman Toni Atkins, in charge of the task force, is willing to
add McWilliams with the city attorney's OK.

The name game

Mark Twain once said, "The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated,"
and Doris Hughes is singing the same tune. In honor of her March 29
birthday, her name was listed for special observance in her church's
service bulletin that day. But beside her name was the notation: (dec.)
Doris, who was in the congregation when a priest asked for the happy repose
of her soul, quickly let her friends know she was not yet dead -- merely a
year older. Her husband, lawyer Peter Hughes, received condolences at work
and, at a University of San Diego dinner Saturday, Doris was assured she
looked darn good -- considering . . . Judge Larry Stirling passed China
Camp restaurant's neon sign the other night and noticed the "a" in "China"
was dark. Could the establishment, he wonders, now be catering to Jay Leno
wannabes . . . The city of Coronado has selected the perfect person to
oversee the handling of community input on the bridge toll issue: Gail Brydges.

A history-making event

The S.D. Natural History Museum in Balboa Park reopens Saturday after
extensive remodeling. Someone had better tell authors Tom Clancy and Jerome
Preisler. Page 357 of their "Bio-Strike" book published last October
describes this scenario: "The snipers had assumed a four-pointed pattern of
deployment around the grassy area between the rear of the Natural History
Museum and the Spanish Village Art Center to its north . . . One of them
was prone on the roof of the long, three-story museum, his Walther rifle
nosed over its baroque ornamental edging. A second was concealed on the
120-foot spread of the exotic Moreton Bay fig tree that had stood behind
the museum for almost a century . . . " The museum now boasts five stories
(two underground) and is crowned, in part, with a sloped glass roof. More
important, the fig tree no longer is behind the building but in front of it
because the main entrance has shifted from the museum's south to its north
facade.

New home for memorial

The plaque posted where skateboarder Rob Wood died on Cardeno Drive has
been claimed. Brendon Shackleton, who made the memorial and read in
Tuesday's column that the property upon which it was located had been sold,
is moving the plaque to a new site, probably in the Tourmaline Surf Park.
That's where 70 surfers burned "the skateboard" and held an offshore
memorial service for Wood in 1997.