Soul Mosaic

My husband is a geek dude extraordinaire, a 21st century hunter in cyberspace with no peer. I always loved Will Robinson on the 1960s show, Lost in Space, and in my life, my husband is my Will Robinson.

As I’ve previously blogged, he and I started our quest for Toto’s grave, last Thanksgiving. With the recent information graciously provided by one of my readers, we’ve been able to learn about the California Gold show that talked about Toto’s grave, along with the graves of other TV pets, such as Arnold the Pig.

Well, my husband was able to take that information and track down what we believe are pictures of the apartment complex where Toto is buried. He then emailed me the results of his search

Since I see that my blog stats are running high for interest in what happened to Toto, I expect there’s at least a few of you out there who will enjoy this “cyber-journey.” So without further delay, I turn this over to my husband, the cyber-guide to pet grave pictures!! Here is his email describing what he found. Enjoy!  🙂

From Ed:

Here’s how I came to find an aerial photo of Toto’s final resting
place:

o I first read your post from 9-November where a reader says (in part):

“The property where Toto is buried lies behind an apartment complex
next to the Ventura freeway and the Los Angeles river. The
apartment complex is called Diplomat Park Apartments in North
Hollywood.”

o Ah — easy, I thought, and did a Google search for “diplomat park
apartments”. This gave me a number of hits. Here’s the first one:

http://www.thatrentalsite.com/Diplomat-Park-Apartments-in-North-Hollywood.html

From that page, I got this street address:

12360 Riverside Dr # 111
North Hollywood, CA 91607

o Hmmm — According to the Google Maps embedded in the first hit,
that’s close by the Ventura Freeway, but the reader said something
about a river… No water close by…

o Ah — Deb’s got another post, where she talks about a TV show called
“California’s Gold” that mentioned the Toto’s location. There’s a
link:

http://www.calgold.com/calgold/Default.asp?Series=9000

o Skimming that page for the word “toto” brought me to the entry for
“California’s Gold #9008 – PET CEMETERY”, which — sure enough —
mentions Toto. Hmmm — and, an interesting URL for “Steve Goldstein
– our guide”:

http://www.beneathlosangeles.com/

o Poking around the “Beneath Los Angeles” site, I finally found Toto:

http://www.beneathlosangeles.com/cgi/grave.cgi?crypt=1010

There’s a ground-level picture of Toto’s approximate resting place on
the page. But how to correlate this with Google Maps?

o Back to Google, looking through more hits on “diplomat park
apartments”… Oh look — here’s one for a “Diplomat Park
Apartments” with a different address:

http://www.apartmentsandrenters.com/detail.php?contact=687431

The address:

12360 Riverside Dr # 111
Valley Village, CA 91607

o Bringing that address up on Google Maps results in a large building
(Google Maps’ StreetView feature shows that the building looks like
it could be an apartment complex (and the swimming pool tends to
corroborate that):

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=12360+Riverside+Dr,+Valley+Village,+CA+91607&sll=34.151679,-118.367622&sspn=0.012182,0.019312&ie=UTF8&ll=34.156922,-118.403212&spn=0.001523,0.002414&t=h&z=19

o Wait a minute — there’s supposed to be a river of some sort
there… Oh — if I click on the “Map” button in Google maps, that
thing that looks like a recessed concrete roadway going behind the
building and under the freeway reveals itself to be some sort of
drainage system. So this might just be the place.

o But does it correlate with the photo from Beneath Los Angeles? Let’s
see:

– The photo has some parking spaces, then a fence, then more
parking spaces.

– The fence has some dumpsters in front of it.

– The freeway (which we know is elevated, because the drainage
system obviously goes under it) can be seen beyond some
greenery.

– There’s a short palm tree with two trunks right by the fence.

– The photo’s caption mentions Toto’s resting place as being in the
general vicinity of the tall palm tree growing out of some other
greenery in the center of the photo.

o Ok, let’s look at the aerial shot on Google Maps, using the red “A”
marker behind the center of the back part of the complex as a
reference point:

– The angled entrance to the left of the building coming in from
Riverside Drive has parking spaces, and (if you look closely) a
fence (the pavement changes color at the fence line), then more
parking spaces.

– The fence has some boxy-shaped object to the left of it —
dumpsters, perhaps?

– The freeway is directly behind the apartment complex (and the
parking lot to the complex’s rear).

– Near the bottom end of the fence line, there’s a round green
blob — the double-trunked palm tree.

– A bit further to the right from the first green blob (and to the
right of a smaller green blob (which can be seen in the Beneath
Los Angeles photo to be a shrub of some sort) is a larger green
blob. If you look closely at it, you’ll see that a small round
part of it is above the rest (there’s a shadow there). That’s
the palm tree in the center of the Beneath Los Angeles photo.

o So… Toto’s grave is behind that palm tree; probably in the bare bit
of ground behind it.

____________________

As an addendum to Ed’s findings, I looked into the “Los Angeles River.” Apparently long stretches of it are actually concrete channels through the city. So I would guess that the concrete “drainage channel” he mentions above, is actually the Los Angeles river.

If you are interested in learning more about that river, go to Google and type in: Los Angeles river. You’ll get a long list of hits covering everything from images, to history, maps, to revitalization plans. For that list, just click here.