Sacramentions

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The Incredible Yegg—When Adam Lewis became a locksmith for the Sacramento office of Bode & Bode, he was continuing a tradition that began with his grandfather, George Checketts, who was a professional safecracker for the U.S. Air Force. “I’ve been in this business about nine years, but I’ve enjoyed picking locks and cracking safes ever since I can remember,” Lewis tells me one recent afternoon when he drops by our ancestral home, Goldmanor, to break into our safe. (He was asked to, I rush to point out. My wife, Candy, and I had misinterpreted the combination we’d been provided for the safe, which had belonged to her late father, Judge Loren S. Dahl.) Well, it takes Lewis less than 45 seconds to break the code and crack the safe, in which we find—imagine suspenseful music—absolutely nothing. This makes us appreciate how Geraldo Rivera must have felt when he had a safe opened during a live, prime-time TV special in the hope of discovering Jimmy Hoffa in there. (We were grateful to not discover Geraldo Rivera in ours.) After performing his magic, our personal yegg tells me he’s done a lot of work recently for government agencies, including the FBI, which he hopes to join when he completes his degree in psychology. (“I originally majored in mechanical engineering, but I got bored,” he says.) I ask him if he’s ever locked himself out of his car or house. “I’ve never been not able to get back in somewhere,” he says, but admits that not long ago he couldn’t get his own home safe open and “would have felt embarrassed drilling it.” Instead, he says, he hit the safe (but not the lock) with a rubber mallet “and the door popped open. I wouldn’t advise this as a technique.”

Bowling for Donors—If you love soup, are in the mood for some on March 10 between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m., and happen to be in the vicinity of Sacramento Masonic Temple at 1123 J St., have I got a meal for you. PR maven Susan Bitar reports that in exchange for a $25 donation and a can of soup, you’ll receive a bowl of soup as well as bread and dessert from such notable eateries as McCormick & Schmick’s, Scott’s Seafood, Michelangelo’s and Paragary’s. It’s the sixth annual fundraiser for River City Community Services’ emergency food and shelter services, which served meals to around 34,000 people in 2008. Tickets are online at rivercitycommunityservices.org or in person at Tulip Paperie, Trinity Cathedral Bookshop and The Avid Reader at the Tower. Here’s the best part, Bitar says: “After lunch, everyone gets to keep a handmade ceramic bowl, which was spun and donated by high school potters.”

Just Put It on My Bill—We had just finished a pre-theater dinner in The Sterling Hotel’s Chanterelle restaurant, which had included our sharing one of executive chef Santos Najera’s amazing entrées, Duck Wellington. The people at the next table were perusing the menu and asked their server about the same dish. She motioned in our direction and suggested, “Ask them what they think. They just had it.” So the fellow who apparently had been appointed spokesman for the group cleared his throat and asked for our opinion of the dish. “It was all it was quacked up to be,” I said before thinking. Of a better joke, that is.