Baby almost on board: Lisa Loomis was...

Baby almost on board: Lisa Loomis was riding the Metro Blue Line to work the other morning when a woman groaned, “Oh, my God. I gotta get out of here. My water just broke.”

The train driver notified authorities and stopped at the next station. Loomis and two other women passengers disembarked and laid the pregnant woman on a bench.

“I stroked her head,” said Loomis, a systems analyst at The Times. “We kept telling her everything was going to be all right.”

Paramedics showed up a few moments later and picked up the woman, who later gave birth to a premature boy at Long Beach Memorial Hospital.

And Loomis and the other two women? They looked up to see the train depart without them.

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Counter-intelligence: Elmer Neto sent along the enclosed listing for the Central Intelligence Agency in the GTE Pomona phone book. We smell a conspiracy.

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Their proofreading is a riot too: Barry Glassner, USC’s Sociology Department chairman, notes that the program for a Miami, Fla., seminar on “Social Problems in a Global Economy” has a session titled:

“Comparing Los Angeles Rots 1965 and 1992 . . . “

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The wrong massage: A West Los Angeles physician has sued the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Dana Point, saying she was treated too roughly by its masseuse while a guest. Her attorney, Anthony Young, say she had warned the masseuse to take it easy because it was her first massage.

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Another kind of squeeze: Musician Joe Vento (see photo) is planning the world’s largest accordion concert during the June 12 dedication of Grand Hope Park at 9th and Hope streets. (We believe the current record is five, but the records in this category are hazy.) Vento says that admitted accordionists who want to participate should fax him an application at 805-583-0450.

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Press releases that get our attention: The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine sent out a fax protesting the use of animals in cosmetic surgery classes for doctors at a Beverly Hills facility. It was headlined: “No Face Lifts on Pigs, Say Doctors.”

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One local disaster prediction that came true: Nostradamus’ latest quake forecast fell through, but Street & Smith’s magazine’s pre-season baseball guide deserves an award for prophecy. The publication probably didn’t realize it at the time, but it anticipated the disabling injury of Darryl Strawberry with a headline on the cover that proclaimed:

“Darryl’s Back!”

miscelLAny:

In the Hitchcock movie “Saboteur,” Bob Cummings plays a war worker unjustly accused of sabotage who says he fears no one will believe him because “I’m just a guy from Glendale, Calif.”