`WHIZ KID' GIVES BACK TO ALMA MATER.

Byline: Ken Ward On Business

Dirk Gates is a Valley kind of guy - he's seen good times, not-so-good times, and now he's on the way back up.

Growing up here, Gates graduated from Cal State Northridge, where he earned a bachelor's degree in engineering. On his way toward a master's in communications electronics, he co-founded a little computer peripheral equipment venture called Zircom.

The firm, now based in Thousand Oaks, grew quickly into a multimillion-dollar corporation with international reach.

Gates was honored in 1992 as Greater Los Angeles' High Technology Entrepreneur of the Year. In 1994, he made Forbes magazine's ``Whiz Kid'' list of the five youngest CEOs of the ``Best Small Companies in America.''

Then big companies crashed his party and Zircom's profit margins shrank. In 1995, the firm suffered three consecutive losing quarters.

But Gates and Co. refocused their product line and their marketing, moving Zircom back into the black.

Now 35, an older, wiser and battle-tested Gates is giving something back.

Having earned an MBA from Pepperdine University along the rocky corporate road, he has pledged $1 million to the Malibu school's George L. Graziadio School of Business and Management.

The 1990 grad's gift - in the form of a charitable trust - is one of the largest alumni contributions to the university. Gates figures it's a well-deserved investment.

``I had anywhere from three to five MBA students in my group projects and I always managed to wrangle them into working on a Zircom project.''

Add Linda Foley to the list of bemused - and definitely unamused - Wells Fargo customers.

On Labor Day, the Northridge woman went to her local ATM and asked for $300. Instead, of 15 $20 bills, she got 15 sheets of 32-cent stamps.

That's not as bizarre as it sounds; the money machine at Tampa Avenue and Nordhoff Street actually offers the postage service. But stuff happens when the machine misfires, or the trays are misloaded (the stamp sheets are the same size as the bills).

Whatever the mix-up, it wasn't Foley's fault. Her receipt indicated that she indeed had requested $300 cash. But when she took her complaint and receipt to the nearest branch (her old First Interstate branch at the ATM had been closed), she didn't get much sympathy.

In fact, she wasn't going to get a refund either - until she invoked the name of a Wells employee who suffered the same fate behind her, and started working the branch's customers, apprising them of the perils of ATM snafus. Having a couple of screaming children in tow didn't hurt her cause.

Though she ultimately got her $300 credit (and returned the stamps), Foley's saga isn't over. The bank debited her account an additional $300, saying that she had made another withdrawal (though this was technically impossible because of her $300 limit).

At this writing, she's still waiting to hear back on that one. Meantime, she says she's shopping for a new bank - and stamps aren't high on the priority list.

News flash! Government admits it made a mistake.

The Department of Health Services seized 73 bottles of imported wine from six Central Valley stores earlier this year, ostensibly as part of its ``wine safety act'' inspection program.

Seemed like a good idea at the time. After all, random sampling is the only way to reliably test the lead content of foreign-made wine.

But while such sampling is required by the state, confiscation wasn't what legislators had in mind when they passed the law in 1993. The department last month acknowledged that it went overboard and said it will reimburse the retailers in Fresno, Bakersfield and Visalia.

MEMO: Ken Ward is business editor of the Daily News. He can be reached on the Internet at kenricwardaol.com