People

O'Neal: Cops saved me

Actress Tatum O'Neal, 44, told a newspaper columnist she is grateful to the New York City police officers who busted her for cocaine and saved her from herself. "I'm still sober!" she told New York Post columnist Andrea Peyser in a phone call soon after being released from custody Monday. "Just when I was about to change that and wreck my life, the cops came and saved me!" She was arrested Sunday night during a routine drug sweep in her Lower East Side neighborhood. Police said they found two bags of cocaine in her pants pocket. O'Neal, the daughter of Ryan O'Neal and ex-wife of John McEnroe, has publicly chronicled her struggles with heroin and cocaine addiction.

Hulk's son stays put

Nick Bollea, 17, the son of Hulk Hogan, will stay in solitary confinement for now. A Florida judge on Tuesday denied Bollea's request to change the conditions of his jail sentence because solitary confinement is causing him "unbearable anxiety." He is serving eight months in jail after pleading no contest to causing a crash that seriously injured his friend. Officials said he is segregated from other inmates in the county jail in Clearwater because he is a minor, even though he was convicted in adult court.

Honors

Call him Dr. Jones

Music legend Quincy Jones was awarded an honorary doctorate Tuesday by Princeton University's President Shirley Tilghman as part of the university's 261st commencement ceremony. The citation for Jones, who attended Seattle's Garfield High School and started his musical career in Seattle, reads, "[he] has opened up our musical world and provided the soundtrack for an integrated universe born out of the Civil Rights era." Jones also is scheduled to be the University of Washington's commencement speaker June 14, when he will receive an honorary doctorate from the UW.

Sick bay

Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., 90, will remain hospitalized in Fairfax, Va., for several days for treatment of a mild infection, an office spokesman said Tuesday. Byrd was hospitalized Monday.

Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., 76, spent time with his family, kept up with the news and walked the hallways at his hospital in Durham, N.C., on Tuesday, a day after surgery on a brain tumor, a spokesman said. The senator is expected to stay in Durham for about a week before returning home to Massachusetts for further treatment.

Former "Frasier" star Kelsey Grammer, 53, is recovering in a Hawaii hospital after a mild heart attack Saturday, a spokesman said. The actor was paddle-boarding with his wife, Camille, when he experienced symptoms. The couple lives in Kona, on Hawaii's big island.

Passages

Paul Sills, 80, one of the founders of Chicago's The Second City improvisational comedy group, which has turned out some of America's best-known comedians — including John Belushi, Bill Murray, Gilda Radner and Stephen Colbert — died Monday at his home in Baileys Harbor, Wis., of complications from pneumonia.

Mel Ferrer, 90, an actor-director-producer who starred in scores of movies, including "Lili," "War and Peace" and "The Sun Also Rises," and directed his wife, Audrey Hepburn, in numerous others, died Monday at his ranch near Santa Barbara, Calif.

Alton Kelley, 68, a graphic artist whose mind-blowing posters and album covers for the Grateful Dead, Big Brother and the Holding Company and legendary San Francisco concert halls ushered in the psychedelic rock-and-roll era, died Sunday of complications of osteoporosis at his home in Petaluma, Calif.

Grigory Romanov, 85, a Politburo member who was Mikhail Gorbachev's chief rival to become Soviet leader in the mid-1980s, has died in Moscow, the Communist Party said Tuesday, without providing a cause or date of death.

Today in History

1896: Henry Ford made a successful pre-dawn test run of his horseless carriage, called a "quadricycle," through the streets of Detroit.

1939: The German ocean liner St. Louis, carrying more than 900 Jewish refugees from Germany, was turned away from the Florida coast by U.S. officials.

1989: Chinese army troops stormed Beijing to crush a pro-democracy movement, killing hundreds, possibly thousands, of people.

2003: Martha Stewart stepped down as head of her media empire, hours after federal prosecutors in New York charged her with obstruction of justice, conspiracy, securities fraud and lying to investigators. (Stewart was later convicted of lying about why she'd sold her shares of ImClone Systems stock in 2001, just before the stock price plunged.)

Today's Birthdays

Actor Bruce Dern, 72. Musician Roger Ball, 64. Actress-singer Michelle Phillips, 64. Actor Parker Stevenson, 56. Actor Keith David, 52. Actor Eddie Velez, 50. Singer-musician El DeBarge, 47. Actress Julie White, 47. Former tennis player Andrea Jaeger, 43. Actor Scott Wolf, 40. Comedian Horatio Sanz, 39. Actor Noah Wyle, 37. Actress Angelina Jolie, 33.

Seattle Times news services