Yuppies Replacing a Dying Breed

--The owner of a posh Miami Beach apartment complex is offering 15% “Yuppie discounts” to persons under 50 despite cries of discrimination from older tenants. “It’s a war of attrition. We’ll die anyhow. He doesn’t have to rub it in,” said Minna Wallach, 73, who has lived at Robert Blum’s Carriage House for 12 years. “We’re being discriminated against,” she said. Blum said he has rented 32 apartments--studios start at $500 a month, one-bedrooms at $800--since he began offering the discounts last month. All but four of them went to young urban professionals. Blum said he wants to change Miami Beach’s image as a “dying community of old people” and calls the predominance of older residents “a cancer in Miami Beach.” Outside, he has installed swings and a sandbox and started providing live music and a barbecue by the pool on weekends. Not all the older tenants are against the discounts and the Yuppies. “Let’s not kid ourselves. It’s certainly more pleasurable not to see the nurses and the wheelchairs,” gray-haired Miriam Faust said.

--Michael K. Deaver, who left the job of White House deputy chief of staff last month, said he feels responsible for the shooting of White House Press Secretary James S. Brady. Deaver was with President Reagan as the President left a Washington hotel on March 30, 1981, and was fired on by a gunman. Reagan and two security officers were hit, as was Brady, who took a bullet in his skull and still suffers speech and physical impairment. ABC’s Barbara Walters asked Deaver why he felt responsible for Brady’s being shot. Deaver answered: “Well, as we walked out . . . someone shouted a question at the President and I immediately, as I always have done over the years, grabbed the arm of the press secretary and moved him forward to go over and handle the question and then (I) went around behind the limousine and the shots began and Jim was standing where I would have been standing. And, so, it’s very hard for me to see Jim.”

--Joey Mascotti grabbed the gearshift and forced the family car into reverse to stop it after his mother lost control of the vehicle and fainted, Wakefield, Mich., police said. “I was hoping that it would tear (stall) the engine,” said Joey, 9, who was forced to take emergency action when his mother, Jayne, 28, suffered a diabetic reaction behind the wheel. “I’m thankful he was in the car,” Jayne Mascotti said. “He saved three people.” The boy’s 5-year-old sister, Sarah, also was in the vehicle. “My husband is a logger and he has a log truck and skidder and my son has driven it all,” the mother said. “He has more experience with changing gears than I do.”