10 MAJOR STORIES THAT ROCKED THE SOUTHLAND THIS YEAR.

The scandals in the Los Angeles Police Department and Los Angeles Unified School District were the biggest stories of the year, but many other stories deeply affected the community and how we see ourselves.

Here is the Daily News list of the top local stories of 1999:

1. Hate Strikes the Valley

Midway through a bright Tuesday morning in August, a stocky, balding racist walked through the doors of a Jewish community center in Granada Hills and opened fire.

That day, Aug. 10, he shot children and the staff scrambling to protect them. He wounded five: three children, one teen and a 68-year-old receptionist.

And as he drove out of town, the shooter, identified by police as Buford O'Neal Furrow Jr., is accused of killing a chess-loving postal worker in Chatsworth, gunning him down in a driveway.

The bloody rampage stunned a country already reeling from the massacre at Colorado's Columbine High School. Never mind the falling crime rate - children, it seemed, had become the target of choice.

The attack also violated the sense of security felt by many in Los Angeles' large Jewish community. Upon his surrender, Furrow reportedly told FBI agents ``he wanted this to be a wake-up call to America to kill Jews.``

The opposite happened. Area residents of different faiths and races banded together in response, proclaiming to the world they would not be bullied by racists.

And they waited anxiously to see if anyone would answer Furrow's call.

2. Valley Secession Study becomes a Go - Armed with 202,514 signatures, San Fernando Valley activists forced a government agency to study establishing a San Fernando Valley city separate from Los Angeles.

Their success led other restive neighborhoods to bolt for the door.

Valley Voters Organized Toward Empowerment triggered the study by collecting signatures of one-fourth of all Valley voters. The $2.65-million study will likely start in March and take up to two years.

Activists in the San Pedro-Wilmington area quickly followed the Valley's suit with their own successful petition drive and will be included in the study. Hollywood residents started circulating secession petitions in November.

3. City Charter Reform - Billed as a way to make Los Angeles government more efficient and derail Valley secession, a revised city charter won voters' approval in June.

The vote marked a major political victory for Mayor Richard Riordan, who spent three years steering charter reform through rugged political terrain.

City Council members and labor unions had fought against the changes, which boosted Riordan's power over Los Angeles' bureaucracy. The final document approved by voters was in fact a compromise between two separate charter reform commissions, one appointed by the council, the other elected by voters and championed by Riordan.

As a result, some eagerly sought reforms never made it onto the ballot. The idea of creating elected neighborhood councils, for example, died in discussions between the two committees.

4. Pro-Football Bid Gets Sacked - In the end, Los Angeles' busted play for a pro-football team died over money. A lot of money.

Houston bid $700 million, including $260 million in public funds, to win the NFL's 32nd franchise. Los Angeles' two bids - $500 million from one business group, $550 from another - couldn't compete.

Disagreements over where a Los Angeles team would play didn't help. Real estate magnate Eli Broad pitched the Coliseum. Super-agent Michael Ovitz championed a site in Carson, then the Coliseum, then Hollywood Park.

Haggling with the league left state and local officials bitter over the NFL's tactics and greatly diminished the chances any future bid for a Los Angeles team would receive public money. And with no other NFL expansion plans in the works, the city's football drought will last long into the next millennium.

5. Kosovars in the Valley - When Serbians began torching houses in their town in March, the Vlashi family knew it was time to flee.

They grabbed a pocket-sized family photo album and headed for the Macedonian border, walking single file to avoid mines.

Their route took them from war-wracked Kosovo to the San Fernando Valley, and an uncertain future.

With the help of relatives and the Jewish Federation, family members found temporary refuge in Los Angeles, settling into modest apartments in Chatsworth, Northridge and Culver City. They dove into English lessons, learned the local bus system, tried to adapt.

Then NATO intervened, ending the Serbian campaign. Most of the Vlashis returned to Kosovo to rebuild their shattered homeland.

6. Controversial Birth of a New City - Over protests from environmentalists, Los Angeles County Supervisors unanimously approved the creation of a mini-city in the Santa Clarita Valley.

When finished, Newhall Ranch will contain 21,600 homes - room for 70,000 people - clustered just east of the Ventura County line.

The project infuriated Ventura County officials, who filed suit to stop it. The suit, filed along with several environmental groups, complains the project will damage the local water supply and ecosystem.

The developer, Newhall Ranch and Farming Co., plans to break ground in 2002.

7. Possible ``Angel of Death`` Victims Exhumed - Glendale police exhumed 20 bodies they believe could be possible victims of an ``angel of death,`` who confessed to killing as many as 50 terminally ill patients in Glendale Adventist Medical Center.

Efren Saldivar, who later recanted his confession, has not been arrested during the intensive, 21-month investigation. Saldivar told Glendale police in 1998 that he used lethal injections of various muscle paralyzing drugs for scores of mercy killings between 1989 and 1997.

Saldivar, who said he considered himself an angel of death, said on a broadcast news program he concocted the story because he was suicidal and hoped to secure himself a death sentence.

Officials are still testing the remains, and a press conference on the findings is expected after the first of the year.

8. Mother Arrested After Sons Found Dead - An exclusive, rural hilltop estate became a tragic triple-murder scene when authorities said the wife of a local doctor killed her school-aged sons in their bedrooms before seriously wounding herself.

Socorro ``Cora`` Caro was arrested in her hospital room on suspicion of murder, shocking both their Santa Rosa Valley neighborhood and the Northridge medical community where Dr. Xavier J. Caro practiced rheumatology.

Xavier Caro filed for divorce and is seeking custody of the couple's fourth child, who was unharmed in the incident.

9. Rocketdyne Study Finds Cancer - A second study of worker health at the Santa Susana Field Lab, released in spring, fueled further concerns over decades of rocket and nuclear energy testing at Boeing's Rocketdyne facility outside Simi Valley.

UCLA researchers said cancer deaths were greater among workers exposed to high levels of the rocket fuel hydrazine than among unexposed co-workers.

The study was a companion to a 1997 health study that also found higher cancer mortality rates among workers exposed to radiation at the lab.

Upon release of the study, residents resumed their decadelong plea for a community health study to determine if activities at the hilltop lab were affecting neighbors.

In the fall, federal health scientists who surveyed the site at the request of Rep. Elton Gallegly and Senators Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer pledged continued investigation.

10. Administrative Chaos in Ventura County - Fallout from last year's failed agency merger plunged Ventura County into an administrative and financial crisis costing the county millions.

The county agreed to a $15.3-million settlement with the federal government after a whistle-blower's complaint launched a U.S. Attorney's investigation into a decade of fraudulent Medicare billings.

A separate state audit blasted the county Behavioral Health Department, and withheld $5.4 million in funding, for having allowed a key program for the mentally ill to deteriorate.

New county Chief Administrative Officer David Baker resigned after less than a week on the job, saying the county was in financial chaos with an administrative culture unwilling to change.

A key architect of the merger between the Behavioral Health and Public Social Services agencies resigned, only to be hired later to serve on a county commission. Another administrator resigned after it was disclosed he had lied on his employment application by not disclosing a previous felony conviction.