O.C. BUSINESS PLUS : ORANGE COUNTY NEWSMAKERS : Thompson Drops Checkers Post to Focus on CKE

* Tom Thompson, president and chief operating officer of Anaheim-based CKE Restaurants Inc., has stepped down from his other job as vice chairman of Checkers Drive-In Restaurants Inc. in Clearwater, Fla. He will be replaced by Peter O’Hara. Thompson plans to focus his efforts full-time on the operations of struggling CKE, which operates Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s restaurants and has a 16.6% stake in Checkers. Thompson will remain on the board of Checkers, which operators the Checkers and Rally’s chains.

* Elliot Hadaegh has joined LanguageForce Inc. in Orange as vice president/sales and marketing. He had been vice president of sales and marketing for ActionTec, a peripheral card manufacturer, and held a similar position with Logicode.

* Gretchen Benes has been appointed vice president of human resources for the Meyers Group, an Irvine provider of new home real estate information and consulting services. She was formerly the human resources generalist for Epoch Internet, an Internet service provider. Benes has also been a human resources counselor with American Sterling Corp. in Irvine.

* Jack Harding has joined the board of directors of ZLand.com in Aliso Viejo. Harding currently serves on the boards of several technology firms, and provides capital and venture management to new and midsized companies. He was previously president and chief executive of Cadence Design Systems.

* Frank Long has been named manager of data processing in the department of survey operations for National Survey Systems in Irvine. He will be responsible for the collection, maintenance and processing of data for mailing surveys for the home-building industry. Long has been with the company since 1996.