PEOPLE

Utah State basketball star Jeff Tebbs was just ambling along to church in Logan, Utah when a young mother appeared in the doorway of a house screaming for help and holding an 18-month-old girl gasping for breath and rapidly turning blue. Tebbs grabbed the child, turned her upside down and patted her on the back, which straightened matters out and, according to Mrs. Dale Coburn, definitely saved the baby's life. "I just kept hoping mouth-to-mouth resuscitation would not be necessary," Tebbs said afterward. No wonder. Tebbs had broken his jaw in a recent game and doctors had wired it shut.

For dog lovers everywhere we offer this touching little scene from the Old Surrey and Bur-stow Hunt. There are the hunters standing about the lawns of the Donald Betts country estate with Diana Barnato Walker, who is joint master of the affair. Along comes the butler, carrying a tray of caviar when, suddenly, the hounds jump him. Mrs. Barnato Walker watches, horrified, as the dogs gobble down every last morsel from the tray. "Oh, dear," she exclaims. "Now they'll never eat up their fox."

If interest in the Frazier-Ali fight ran low in Washington. D.C., it was perhaps because Washington is bringing along contenders of its own. At a dinner party given by Llewellyn Thompson, former U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union, Averell Harriman was sharing a small settee with former Polish diplomat Edward Weintal. An argument blew up and Harriman, 79, threatened to break the 70-year-old Weintal's jaw. As if that weren't excitement enough, at the Gridiron Club dinner House Democratic Leader Hale Boggs and ex-Congressman Edward Mitchell got into a hoo-ha over some remarks about President Nixon that resulted in Mitchell's flattening Boggs in the men's room.

Does this bode some new springtime ritual for our nation's capital? Actually, we kind of liked the annual Cherry Blossom Festival.

The Cincinnati Bengals' brass moved into new offices a while ago, and Coach Paul Brown figured it was time to dust off and put down a three-year-old gift, a tiger-skin rug. The rug went very nicely with the orange, black and white of Brown's office, but not at all well with conservationists around the country who heard about it. The Bengal tiger is on the endangered species list, and animal lovers don't care to see it adorning even Gina Lollobrigida, let alone Paul Brown's floor. Correspondence in protest began to fill a filing cabinet. Just when the furor was dying down, a friend sent Brown a clipping about some man-eating tigers that had been killing villagers in East Pakistan, with the suggestion that he send copies to everybody who had complained about his rug. A wearier but wiser Brown had a better idea. "Just let sleeping tigers lie."

The greatest warrior chief of the Zulus was a tall, handsome, well-built African named Shaka about whom Wilbur Smith Productions is planning a film. Tall, handsome, well-built Muhammad Ali was approached to play the lead, but Ali said no. With reason. It's been said of Shaka that his "...despotic and tyrannical rule was marked by cruelty and bloodshed, and was ended only by Shaka's assassination by his own brother." And in a book called Nine Great Africans, author Sir Rex Niven suggests that perhaps a million people were killed by him. "That is a lot of people."

If they are really serious about landing Ali, the Wilbur Smith people ought to check another chapter of Sir Rex's book, the part where he talks about somebody called Muhammed the Askia. Under him, says Sir Rex, "there was a vigorous Muslim revival" in West Africa, extensive foreign trade and general prosperity. Muhammed's greatness, according to Sir Rex, "did not depend on warfare and massacre and the large-scale misery of thousands of innocents." There's a part Ali could get his teeth into. When his jaw heals.

But what's an Askia?

This week's Occupational Hazard Award (and lots of sympathy) goes to Jack Rigby of Wigan, England, who lost his job as the local Bingo caller when the ladies of Wigan complained about the awful suspense during the games he called. Seems that Jack had developed an annoying stutter.

Tactlessness Award of the Week (and no sympathy) goes to George Allen, new head coach of the Washington Redskins. Explaining his approach to rebuilding the 'Skins next season, he cited as examples the waitresses in the Rib Room of Washington's Mayflower Hotel. "I have breakfast there every morning," he said. "While the waitresses might not be the most attractive to look at, let me tell you they get the job done!" Next morning a bellhop advised Allen to stay out of Rib Room, where, he said, the girls were planning to respond to Allen's lack of diplomacy with a lemon meringue pie. Allen, who is longer on courage than good sense, went in for a meal anyway. "There was no meringue pie," he reported later, but also missing, he noted wistfully, was a lot of the warmth that had previously accompanied the efficiency. No complaints, now, George. They got the job done.

TWO PHOTOS