'Thank God, in a way, it was me'

It stings to wince. But Colleen Schultz can't help wincing when she imagines what might have happened had a child come across the plastic bottle that exploded in her hand and her face at Howarth Park last week.

"It was so random, anybody could have picked it up," said Colleen, 68, a gracious, retired AT&T employee and Sonoma County child-support officer. "Thank God, in a way, it was me."

Of course she's still upset that somebody would rig bottles to explode and place them at a public park. And she's concerned that the explosion wasn't merely a freakish, one-time incident: After nightfall on the day she was hurt, she and her husband, Ron, heard a blast at the park and wondered if it was another bottle bomb.

But five days after an exploding bottle broke two bones in her right hand and badly split her tongue and upper lip, Colleen was also counting blessings.

She's grateful that no child found the bottle, and grateful for something her new dog, Becky, did as she stooped to pick up litter on the rim of Lake Ralphine.

Colleen saw the bottle near the water and told Becky, a Labrador mix, to sit maybe 6 feet up a rise from the water's edge. Colleen then stepped down to retrieve the bottle. Just as she picked it up, she noticed that her dog suddenly stood up.

Colleen looked at Becky, so her face was turned up when the bottle exploded in her hand. She believes that had she been still looking down, the blast that damaged her hand, neck, chin, tongue and lip might also have blinded her.

She's deeply grateful, too, for an outpouring of flowers, cards, calls and other expressions of support, thanks and sympathy. "It's so nice to have people care," she said.

She also said that when she and her husband, a retired Piner High math teacher, look for trash near the lake they're less concerned with bottles than with the fishing line that can ensnare wildlife.

"Yes," she replied to an obvious question. "We'll continue to pick up garbage."

SO WILL MR. JOHNSON: The fellow who daily whacks weeds, paints over graffiti, picks up trash and corrals shopping carts along Stony Point Road south of Sebastopol Road is 65-year-old David Johnson.

He's taken it on himself to maintain several blocks of Stony Point near his home because nobody else will do it.

A good man, that Mr. Johnson.

70 HOMEMADE SCARVES from far and wide will be admired at a showing at Ukiah's Tierra Art-Garden-Wine on Thursday, then they're off to help warm some very poor girls in Pakistan.

Ukiah resident Kathryn Hall asked readers of her garden blog if they might donate a scarf for a child in the remote village of Askole. She was inspired by the best-selling adventure book, "Three Cups of Tea," about a mountain climber's quest to build dozens of schools for children with virtually nothing in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Hall said the response to her call for scarves for Pakistani girls amazed her. She'll share them at Tierra from 5 to 8 p.m. Thursday.

MAKING A SCENE: If, one day, 15-year-old actor Elias Allen accepts an Oscar, he may thank Vicki DeArmon of Copperfield's Books for giving him his first big role.

Thousands of passers-by crooked their necks Saturday to see Elias lounging in a book-cluttered bed set up in the Montgomery Village parking lot. For hours, Elias stretched out and pretended to read alongside a placard bearing the slogan of the bookstore's new campaign, "Eat. Sleep. Read."

Elias may tell the Academy Awards crowd that though his solo performance in the parking lot tested him, he did it lying down.

Chris Smith is at 521-5211 and chris.smith@pressdemocrat.com.