Actor set to appear at Modesto’s Gallo Center makes plea as he helps in So Cal wildfires
Actor Steve Guttenberg is set for a show late this month at the Gallo Center for the Arts in Modesto. Now, though, he’s making pleas to residents fleeing the Southern California wildfires.
A TV news interview posted to YouTube shows Guttenberg asking people near the fire in Pacific Palisades to leave their keys in their cars when they’ve parked them on Palisades Drive so he and others can move them to let firetrucks get through the street and to the blaze.
The interview aired on KTLA 5 News on Jan. 7.
“What’s happening is people take their keys with them as if they’re in a parking lot. This is not a parking lot,” Guttenberg, who starred in “Three Men and a Baby” and several “Police Academy” movies, tells a reporter in the video. “We really need people to move their cars, so if you leave your car in Palisades Drive leave the key in there so a guy like me can move your car ... so that these fire trucks can get up there. It’s really, really important.”
The reporter didn’t realize he was talking to the actor until asking him his name. Guttenberg said he lives in the area.
He also said he had friends who couldn’t evacuate “because it’s stuck on Palisades Drive.”
“It’s really important for people to help each other,” Guttenberg says in the video.
Guttenberg is scheduled to appear Jan. 31 at the Gallo Center in a show “Police Academy 40th Anniversary: An Evening with Steve Guttenberg.”
The actor was among the stars in the 1984 hit comedy “Police Academy.” After a screening of the film, Guttenberg is scheduled to take part in a moderated discussion about his four-decade career.
The Gallo Center had not heard of any plans for Guttenberg to cancel the show as of Friday afternoon, according to Doug Hosner, director of marketing & communications.
