LAST-MINUTE SHOPPERS SCRAMBLE FOR FAVORS, SPECULATE ON COMING YEAR.

Byline: Sylvia L. Oliande Staff Writer

SIMI VALLEY - As the last minute rush to buy millennial party favors reached a fever pitch Friday, locals took a minute to contemplate the future and overwhelmingly said they wanted peace and understanding among all people.

At local party supply stores, shoppers said they were planning small, intimate gatherings with family and close friends at home.

They said the coming of the new century and the millennium brings more significance to the changing of the calendar this year. And it has them contemplating where people have been and where they are going.

A good majority said they would like to be able to look forward to a century marked with people coming together, forgetting their differences and being good to each other.

``I'd like to see really equality for everybody,'' said Lina Gutierrez, 19, who was buying helium and balloons at Party for Less in Simi Valley. ``There's still that problem around where people are still judging people by their outside covers. People need to be more down-to-earth and open-minded.''

Some residents said that just as the last century brought many advances in technology and medicine, they'd like to see humans develop more ways to make life easier for everyone.

``I'd like to see us conquer cancer, and have people live longer and healthier lives,'' said Irene Pedder, a Simi Valley resident who was shopping for millennial balloons at Party Max.

Her husband, Robert Pedder, said he'd like to see the country take better care of its own people in the future.

``I'm hoping that people who need help, get it,'' he said. ``There are parts of this country where you see children starving and without medical attention. We need to help those people.''

Others said that as future generations look back on the 21st Century, they hope they will find that people learned how to take care of their environment.

``If we don't, we're not going to be here,'' said Kathy Stone, who also was looking at party favors at Party for Less.

Other shoppers seemed to have international and domestic terrorism on their minds with the coming of the year 2000. They said they hoped the new century brings peace among different countries.

For one man, the barrier to peace right was the government's willingness to keep their enemies close.

``We have a bunch of maniacs out there, a lot more that we as individuals don't know about that the government does,'' said Stan Sigal, owner of Party for Less. ``Take Saddam Hussein for example. We could have destroyed him if we'd wanted to but the government won't. They know what he's like but they don't know what the next guy is like.''

Terror of another kind was on the mind of one woman who was shopping for favors at Party Max - stocking up on Y2K noisemakers and hats for a small get-together at home.

Roberta Marley, 65, said she hopes people one day are able to get a handle on the issue of violence in the schools and get help to those teens who need it.

She said that as a campus supervisor at a local middle school she finds most students are good. But a small percentage have problems that can lead to the kind of violence seen at high schools across the country in the past few years.

``I don't think the problems they face are any worse than 20 years ago, but the means they use are much stronger,'' she said. ``Where they would once fight, they now go in with guns. If they can find out what caused that transition, maybe they can put a stop to it.''

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Photo: (color) Julie Murphy, of Simi Valley, shops for last-minute party favors Friday.

Lilly Barrett/Special to the Daily News