Today's top stories from behind the Orange Curtain:

400 gather to honor junior lifeguard (OCR)
Surfers swim out past waves, form a circle to commemorate 11-year-old.

Detective reflects on getting serial killer to confess (OCR)
Pat Dingle was a young homicide detective in 1978 when he got Michael Dee Mattson to talk.

U.S. Open of Surfing kicks off (OCR)
The annual competition will bring more than 500,000 to the sand.

Neighbors unhappy with church's expansion plans (OCR)
Look out from the back yard of Robert and Deanna Saint-Aubin's home in the gated Ritz Pointe community over the top of trimmed pine trees and a lush golf course to the other side of Salt Creek Canyon and a cross rises above an old church perched atop a hill.

Online high school expands into O.C. (OCR)
Los Angeles-based charter school hopes to recruit more local students by promoting technology.

Broken promise? Great Park critics uncomfortable with call for federal funds (OCR)
Park watchers are asking themselves that question after Irvine Councilman Larry Agran summoned his inner FDR during a recent State of the Park address in which he claimed the project could serve as an “engine for economic recovery”… an engine that would move faster with the injection of a little federal stimulus cash.