Loss of Autographed Photos Leaves Carjacking Victim Broken-Hearted : She says they were reminders of her years as a Hollywood seamstress.

The three men who carjacked and beat 83-year-old Amelia Tillman Albright hurt her in a way they never could have imagined.

Albright was dozing in her parked car Sept. 17 when she was yanked from the driver’s seat and struck repeatedly in the head. Bruised and battered, she played dead as the men drove off with her 1977 Chevrolet Caprice Classic.

The sedan was later recovered, but several half-century-old autographed photographs in the car were never found. And while her wounds are healing, the loss of the photographs has left Albright with a broken heart.

The Whittier woman worked as a seamstress for Paramount Pictures in the 1940s, and the photos--one of Bing Crosby and another of Bob Hope--were given to her by the actors nearly 50 years ago at a glamorous, post-production film party.

The photos were one of the few links Albright had to a bygone era, a time she remembers as the most exciting in her life when she sewed gowns for the stars and lived in Hollywood.

Their loss is another reminder that in a world where carjackings and big-time burglaries capture the headlines, the loss of a simple, personal memento can take a toll on the human heart.

“I’m sad and I’m angry,” Albright says, eyeing the tattered, brown photo album now missing its first few entries. “I can replace everything else, but I can’t replace those photos.”

Several times a year, Albright dusts off the photo album and remembers the time she sewed dresses for stars like Angela Lansbury and worked under the direction of Academy Award-winning designer Edith Head. Albright often talks about those days with friends at the Whittier Senior Center, and she had planned to show the photos of Crosby and there.

But when she parked her car in a lot behind a Whittier restaurant late one night because her medication was making her too drowsy to drive, those plans were crushed. Three men pulled her from the car and began beating her. “One of the men said, ‘Get out of the car or I’ll kill you,’ ” she recalls. “I was terrified.”

Albright tried leaning on the car’s horn to summon help as she was being pulled from the seat, but none came, and the beating continued for another minute. Then the men drove off with her car.

Albright was rushed to a hospital. Today, her broken finger, sprained ankle and other assorted bruises are healing.

The contents of her car, however, were found strewn about Whittier roads. Police say the men only wanted to joyride for the night. Even Albright’s purse was found, her cash still inside.

But her most precious possessions, the actors’ 9-by-12-inch portraits and several family photographs and death certificates, were never found.

Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies arrested three 18-year-old Whittier men who will stand trial in the case. Deputies even made a special trip to Turnbull Canyon, where some of Albright’s possessions were dumped, to look for the photographs. But the officers didn’t find them.

As she relaxes at the senior center, Albright carefully opens her album to look at the remaining photos. Soon, her face lights up. She spots a photograph of character actor Fritz Feld, a former boyfriend. “I was having a ball, playing the field just like the men did,” she says.

Albright says she never visits Hollywood these days. It’s too dirty, and “they don’t make movies like they used to.”

As the afternoon winds down, Albright puts her photo album into the nylon bag she bought to protect it.

Then she thinks of the men who carjacked and beat her, and she wonders aloud, “How could somebody do that?”