The CEO of U-Haul, one of America’s most famous companies, went barreling down a suburban thoroughfare at 80 mph, with no hands on the wheel and a U-Haul trailer in tow.

Undaunted by the 118-degree heat, Shoen had set out to show two Los Angeles Times reporters that towing U-Haul equipment is perfectly safe — unless the customer screws up.

The high-speed demonstration was part of a 10-hour tour of U-Haul operations that highlighted the take-charge style of a chief executive who wears his corporate pride on his sleeve.

He went from being a star athlete and student body president at Franklin High School in Highland Park to Harvard.

Then came law school at Columbia, followed by a stint at a prestigious L.A. law firm where the firm’s chairman, Warren Christopher, became his mentor. With Christopher’s help, Delgadillo made the transition into politics and, in 2001, won the race for Los Angeles city attorney, becoming the first Latino elected to citywide office in more than three decades.

Even his failed campaign for California attorney general last year had some pundits saying it had increased his statewide name recognition and better positioned him for pursuit of higher office in the future.

Nothing, it seemed, could slow Delgadillo down. Until now.

Over the last several days, the city’s top prosecutor has been forced to make a series of embarrassing admissions about his own conduct and that of his wife, Michelle.

After dodging questions for days, Delgadillo acknowledged that she was driving his city-owned GMC Yukon with a suspended license when it was damaged in an accident and later repaired at city expense in 2004. He has since apologized and, after the incident surfaced publicly, repaid the $1,222 bill.

Delgadillo also acknowledged — after first denying it — that he himself had driven the couple’s personal sport utility vehicle without insurance for more than a year.

On Wednesday he confirmed that he had enlisted members of his staff to run personal errands and baby-sit his children. The city Ethics Commission and the State Bar of California have begun inquiries related to Delgadillo’s alleged use of city resources for personal purposes.

The disclosures came on the heels of his being fined $11,450 for 30 counts of violating campaign finance laws, and an accusation by Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley that Delgadillo had been filing misdemeanor charges against defendants who could have been charged as felons, to keep the cases in the city attorney’s jurisdiction.

What the fallout — politically or otherwise — ultimately will be remains to be seen. There has been widespread speculation that Delgadillo, who will be forced by term limits from the city attorney post in 2009, is considering a run for Los Angeles County district attorney next year.

Even some of his once-ardent backers did not exactly leap to his defense in the wake of the controversies.

Delgadillo, 46, was born July 15, 1960, the fourth of five children. He excelled in sports, and lettered in baseball, football, basketball and track at Franklin High. He also earned high marks and was elected class president as well as student body president.

At Harvard, he played football and later tried out for the NFL’s New York Giants, but didn’t make the team. (He subsequently claimed in campaign speeches and promotional materials that he went to Harvard on a football scholarship, was selected as an All American and played pro football. But those claims have since been modified or retracted.)

MARISSA STERNBERG sits in her wheelchair, barely able to move or speak. Caregivers are always at her side. Progress is measured in tiny steps: an unclenched fist, a look of recognition, a smile for her father.

Nearly four years ago, Sternberg was a high-spirited 19-year-old bound for veterinary school in Denver. She rented a U-Haul trailer to move her belongings, hitched it to her Toyota Land Cruiser and hit the road with her two dogs and a friend.

That evening, as the Land Cruiser descended a hill in the Chihuahuan Desert of New Mexico, the trailer began to swing from side to side, pushing the SUV as if trying to muscle it off the road.

The Land Cruiser flipped and bounced along Interstate 25. The trailer broke free and careened off the road. Hollander crawled from the wreckage, her head throbbing.

Sternberg, who had been thrown from the SUV, lay sprawled on the highway, unable to move.

Sternberg fell victim to a peril long familiar to U-Haul International: "trailer sway," a leading cause of severe towing accidents.

Traveling downhill or shaken by a sharp turn or a gust of wind, a trailer can begin swinging so violently that only the most experienced — or fortunate — drivers can regain control and avoid catastrophe.

U-Haul, the nation’s largest provider of rental trailers, says it is "highly conservative" about safety. But a yearlong investigation by The Los Angles Times which included more than 200 interviews and a review of thousands of pages of court records, police reports, consumer complaints and other documents, found that company practices have heightened the risk of towing accidents.

The safest way to tow is with a vehicle that weighs much more than the trailer. A leading trailer expert and U-Haul consultant has likened this principle to "motherhood and apple pie."

Yet U-Haul allows customers to pull trailers as heavy as or heavier than their own vehicles.

It often allows trailers to stay on the road for months without a thorough safety inspection, in violation of its own policies.

Bad brakes have been a recurring problem with its large trailers. The one Sternberg rented lacked working brakes.

Its small and midsize trailers have no brakes at all, a policy that conflicts with the laws of at least 14 states.

It relaxed a key safety rule as it pushed to increase rentals of one type of trailer, used to haul vehicles, and then failed to enforce even the weakened standard. Customers were killed or maimed in ensuing crashes that might have been avoided.

The company’s approach to mitigating the risks of towing relies heavily on customers, many of them novices, some as young as 18. They are expected to grasp and carry out detailed instructions for loading and towing trailers, and to respond coolly in a crisis.

But many renters never see those instructions — distribution of U-Haul’s user guide is spotty.

To those who receive and read it, the guide offers this advice for coping with a swinging trailer: Stay off the car’s brakes and hold the wheel straight. Many drivers will reflexively do the opposite, which can make the swaying worse.

Yet when accidents occur, U-Haul almost always blames the customer.

The Los Angles Times revealed that a consulting business run by his wife has failed to file state tax returns for several years and until Friday operated without a city business license — a type of offense her husband’s office is responsible for prosecuting.

In 2005, the state Franchise Tax Board barred Michelle Delgadillo’s business, C.R.D. Inc., from operating in California because it had neglected to file tax returns every year since it was founded in 2002, records show.

According to economic disclosure forms that Delgadillo is required to file so the public can be aware of his most significant sources of income, his wife’s consulting work generated between $10,000 and $100,000 a year from 2002 to 2005. Under city rules, the city attorney is required to report only a range of income earned by the business.

Michelle Delgadillo, listed as president of the corporation, has declined through her husband’s office to comment. It was unclear exactly what work her business did or who its clients were, but records show it operated out of the couple’s home. A onetime aide to former City Councilman Joel Wachs, Michelle Delgadillo has identified herself as a consultant and homemaker in city documents.

According to a Delgadillo spokesman, Michelle Delgadillo paid taxes on the income she earned over the years. However, she reported that income on her personal tax returns, not her business’ forms.

Delgadillo’s office refused to answer a list of questions submitted by The  Los Angeles Times about the business. Instead, officials released a short statement late Friday saying that C.R.D. Inc. never did work on any city attorney contract.

"If there are any issues with C.R.D., Michelle takes full responsibility and intends to resolve them," the statement read.

Until Friday, Michelle Delgadillo’s company operated without what is known as a tax registration certificate. Business owners who fail to register with the city are subject to criminal or civil prosecution by the city attorney’s office. Those cases are referred by city finance officials. In the case of C.R.D., no such referral was made — and if one had been, a Delgadillo spokesman said, the city attorney would have recused himself from handling it.

On Friday, the business applied for — and received — a tax registration certificate retroactive to June 10, 2002, the date the business was incorporated. A city finance official said city policy prohibited her from disclosing the amount of penalties and fees that were paid.

The issues regarding Michelle Delgadillo’s business come in the wake of other disclosures this week in which she seemed to have disregarded a number of other everyday rules or laws. She has acknowledged driving on a suspended license and without automobile insurance for at least a couple of years.

She went to traffic court to resolve a 9-year-old ticket citation that resulted in a bench warrant’s being issued for her arrest. And other records showed that she had been delinquent in paying at least five parking tickets in the last several years.

In statements released this week, Michelle Delgadillo said she was "embarrassed" by her actions and was sorry.

Rocky Delgadillo, who is rarely shy about media attention, sought a lower profile in recent days after he had to acknowledge that he had let his wife use his city-owned vehicle for personal reasons. On one outing in 2004, his wife damaged the rear of the SUV, which Delgadillo had repaired at taxpayer expense. After the matter became public this week, he agreed to reimburse the city for the $1,222 repair job. He also said that — unbeknownst to him — he also had driven without auto insurance for about a year.

Just days after those admissions, Delgadillo acknowledged that he had periodically enlisted his office staff to run personal errands and baby-sit his two sons. The tasks were performed on the employees’ personal time, he said. But several sources told The Times that the work occurred during normal business hours.

Robert Stern, the president of the Center for Governmental Studies in Los Angeles, said the "cumulative effect of all these problems really hurts" the city attorney’s reputation and political future because he and his family are expected to be "cleaner than clean."

Michael Bloomberg, the departing Mayor of New York City, says he is not running for president. But this is the man who said he was dropping membership in the Democratic party and becoming a Republican (when it was convenient to ride on the coat tails of the outgoing Mayor) and who, yesterday. announced he has dropped his membership in the Republican party because it is more convenient to be an "Independent."

Just a day after the billionaire mayor of New York City quit the Republican Party, his clear flirtation with a White House run was kept alive by a frenzy of speculation on the what-ifs of a prospective third-party bid.

Those who follow presidential politics closely offered a panoply of opinions on how Bloomberg might scramble the calculations of Democrats and Republicans — even as they expressed doubt that Gotham’s lame-duck mayor could win the White House as an independent.

Some thought a Bloomberg campaign would be a disaster for Democrats, opening the door for a GOP victory despite the dismal poll ratings of the current Republican president.

Others said Republicans would be hurt, especially if they nominate Rudolph W. Giuliani, the man Bloomberg replaced at New York City Hall.

Still others conceded that they had no clue which candidates Bloomberg would help or hurt.

You’ve just got to love politics for this wall-to-wall conjecture underscores the volatility of the rapidly evolving 2008 campaign and a the hunger among many Americans for a departure from politics as usually practiced.

Most of the hypothesizing ignored the huge obstacles facing Bloomberg — or any candidate who tries to win the White House outside the traditional two-party system: the simple fact that the political system is heavily stacked against an independent candidate, in everything from ballot-access laws at the state level to the electoral college, which all but ensures perpetuation of the two-party system.

Californians, like those who live in other states, worship the automobile, and it may take divine intervention to get motorists everywhere to live by the Vatican’s new Ten Commandments for drivers.

That was the view of many motorists as they contemplated "Guidelines for the Pastoral Care of the Road" — and whether it would be faster taking the 5 or the 101 between the San Fernando Valley and downtown.

The new road rules call for "courtesy, uprightness and prudence" and condemns the use of cars as "an expression of power and domination" or for sinful purposes.

But while some drivers acknowledged they pray that they’ll find a parking space, they wondered if Vatican guidelines are really the solution to stopping that black Hummer from tailgating on the Santa Monica Freeway.

This week, the Pontifical Council for Migrants and Travelers issued commandments, along with a suggestion that drivers perform the sign of the cross before switching on the ignition. It also recommended reciting the Catholic rosary, whose "rhythm and gentle repetition does not distract the driver’s attention," as the council put it.

Roadways "shall be for you a means of communion between people and not of mortal harm," states the second commandment.