If a stranger answers . . ....

If a stranger answers . . . : Topanga resident Lance Zeck was worried about the fate of his house, which he had evacuated Tuesday. So, Zeck, an art director for the TV show “In Living Color,” called home periodically to make sure he still had phone service.

Not only was his phone working, but on Wednesday evening, someone answered it.

“Who is this?” Zeck asked.

“Who is this?” the voice asked right back. “Well, I live there!” Zeck said.

“Do you have a phone in your garage?” the voice asked. Then the explanation: “This is the Fire Department.”

A crew had entered the unlocked building, firefighter Pete Rouse reported, and turned it into a mini-command center.

Told that his home--and those of his neighbors--had survived, Zeck expressed his gratitude and said the least he could do was get the crew tickets to the show.

But Rouse replied: “If it’s OK with you, could we just make some collect calls to loved ones?”

Rouse, a Chico fire chief, explained that his crew was from Butte County, about 500 miles from Hollywood.

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The personal touch: Mayor Richard Riordan was touring Malibu with some other officials Wednesday when he peered into a half-burned garage. “He said, ‘Wait a minute, it’s on fire again,’ ” related spokesman Tom Creusopon.

The mayor rushed inside and started to pull out several boxes that contained family photos. “He created a line of us,” Creusopon said, “passing them out.”

Then someone noticed several bottles of Sparklett’s drinking water in the garage. “We punctured them, poured the water into some buckets and threw it on the fire,” Creusopon said. “We were able to get out all the boxes of the pictures before a crew put it out.”

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Muted greeting: When the fire was drawing close to the Pepperdine campus Wednesday, university President David Davenport agreed to do a phone interview with KRTH-FM disc jockey Robert W. Morgan.

Pepperdine spokesman Jeff Bliss said the show’s producer reminded Davenport beforehand to use the trademark sign-on for the deejay’s guests--”Good Morgan.”

Davenport declined.

“You know,” the president explained, “we’re not having that much fun out here this morning.”

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A bit of misplaced kindness: “Where can I send my check?” the caller asked receptionist Adrienne Roseberry.

The woman said she was 83 years old and wanted to reward the firefighters for doing such a heroic job.

The problem: Roseberry is a receptionist for Fireman’s Fund Insurance Co. in Woodland Hills.

“I told her to contact the city,” Roseberry said later. “And I told her there should be more people like her.”

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Postscript: In Times staffer David Colker’s first-person account of the scene along Pacific Coast Highway during the worst of the fires, he mentioned seeing a large parrot on the edge of the road, its owner nowhere in sight. “We never did find out what happened to the parrot,” he wrote.

On Thursday, he received a call from the bird’s owner, who said her pet had “made it--she’s fine.”