Cartoon character Betty Boop turning heads in Nevada capital

Tuesday, May 25, 1999 | 11:27 a.m.

CARSON CITY -- Betty Christenson do Boop, she do.

Betty Boop magnets stick to the side of her filing cabinet. A Betty Boop musical globe with Ms. Boop perched atop a motorcycle sits on her desk.

Two shelves of Boop baubles hang above her computer. There's a Betty Boop bank from Mexico, Betty Boop coffee mugs, a framed snapshot of a Betty Boop display someone spotted in a Las Vegas bathroom, Betty Boop key chains dangling from the lower shelf, and Betty Boop figurines of every imaginable size.

She even has a Betty Boop mouse pad for her computer. And a huge, cardboard Boop likeness peers into the hallway from her office window.

Christenson has been Senate minutes coordinator for six sessions now. Her boss bought her a first Betty Boop figure during the second of those sessions, and people have been buying her Boop stuff ever since.

She hasn't bought a thing.

"It's all been gifts from other people," said Christenson, who signs off on the Senate minutes with a rubber stamp of -- you guessed it -- Betty Boop.

Now Christenson isn't the only one Booping in the Nevada capital. A giant, waving Betty Boop like the one in Christenson's office peers onto the street from Assemblyman Bob Price's third-floor office window.

"You can actually see it from the street," one of the workers in an adjacent office said.

Hey, it's session time. They don't get out much.

"It belongs to my wife. She's the Betty Boop fan," Price said.

Well of course she is.

Still, nobody out-Boops Christenson, dubbed "Mom Boop," by one co-worker.

Many of her baubles -- including her Betty Boop personal checks -- have been gifts from Sharon Shaffer, wife of Sen. Raymond Shaffer, a Las Vegas Democrat. The globe was a gift from a lobbyist.

"That's legal, because I can't do anything," Christenson said.

Maybe not. But nobody in Carson City Boops like this Betty do.