HOT TOPIC: It looks like county supervisors...

HOT TOPIC: It looks like county supervisors are serious about returning a hot springs resort to Caspers Wilderness Park. Last week they gave the staff the nod to negotiate a deal with Korea-based Hang Shin Co. to turn the inaccessible natural springs--closed more than 50 years ago for health code violations--into a tourist attraction. . . . “There is nothing else like this in Orange County,” says Holly Veale, executive assistant to Supervisor Marian Bergeson. . . . Plans for a 46-acre resort include log cabins or tepee rentals, restaurants and exercise rooms.

RED SPANKING NEW: Ever wonder what it costs for one of those fire trucks you see racing down the street? Huntington Beach’s new truck: $700,000, counting Jaws of Life. But this is no ordinary firetruck. Its 90-foot ladder--the largest manufactured--can reach as high as seven floors, and the truck can pump 1,500 gallons of water a minute. Says city Fire Chief Michael P. Dolder: “It gets us there quicker and gives us more rescue tools.”

NO VOTE DAYS: Dolly Walker of Laguna Hills celebrated women’s suffrage when she was 18 by arriving at the polls in her horse and buggy to vote. That was in 1920. . . . Thursday, Walker, 94, will be with four generations of her family for a Newport Beach luncheon by Women For, honoring the 75th anniversary of women’s right to vote. . . . Her great-granddaughter, Kaylee Frazier, 12, of Rancho Santa Margarita says there’s still more work to do: “I’d like to join the City Council and help women to rise to the place they really should be, which is equal to men.”

BYGONE DAYS: Show-biz historian Randy Skretvedt has built a career out of his lifelong love of vintage entertainment from the ‘20s through the ‘40s (E1). And the 36-year-old Buena Park resident especially loves interviewing the era’s survivors. . . . People like 90-year-old sax player Arnold Brilhart of Vista. “Talking to him about making records in 1921 is just flabbergasting,” says Skretvedt. “It really hit me that I was talking to history.”