Police Council Honors 11 Civilians as Heroes in Fighting Criminals

It was about 6 a.m. on New Year’s Day and Sam Jusino had just risen from bed in his Van Nuys home. He heard scuffling outside and looked out his window.

Two men were attacking 76-year-old Le Roy Lewis, trying to rob him. They kicked and stabbed him repeatedly, gashing his throat.

But Lewis lived to sit at the same table Thursday with Jusino, who, on that crisp morning 10 months ago, saved Lewis’ life by driving the attackers off with his car.

Jusino, a Van Nuys commercial artist, was one of 11 people honored at the annual luncheon ceremony sponsored by the Mid-Valley Community Police Council as a way of recognizing civilians’ crime-fighting acts. The council, a support group for the Van Nuys Division of the Los Angeles Police Department, has joined police in presenting the awards for seven years.

The soft-spoken Jusino said one of the attackers confronted him in his car. “I thought he had a gun,” Jusino said. “I thought I’d had it.” But the attacker, seeing that his accomplice had fled, also fled. The two never were identified.

Jusino played down his brush with danger. “The way I drive,” he said, “I’m always in danger.”.

Lewis, a retired landscaper whose heart condition requires him to take regular walks, said he probably would have been killed if not for Jusino. But he said he has refused to alter his walking habits because of the incident.

“I will be out walking this New Year’s Day, at the same time and place, just in case they happen to be interested,” Lewis said.

The $17.50-a-plate ceremony was attended by representatives of business and community groups as well as police officers, including Police Chief Daryl Gates.

Gates praised the 11 honorees as people who “went beyond their duties as a normal citizen.”

“For too long, there has been a feeling that the public was apathetic when someone was in need of help,” Gates said. “. . . It’s just not so.”

Gates handed award certificates to a varied group.

There was 5-foot, 4-inch, 107-pound Bernadette Gambino, a 22-year-old letter carrier from Granada Hills who phoned police after spotting a neighborhood prowler, who was later arrested.

And there was 6-foot, 6-inch, 303-pound Tommy Smith, 27, a bearded Sherman Oaks carpenter who resembles former Rams football player Merlin Olsen. Smith helped apprehend two men trying to steal a car.

The other honorees were:

Ron Hamilton, 26, of Sepulveda and Roy Wheaton Jr., who seized a woman who had robbed a dress store with a toy gun.

Hamilton, a florist, said that, when the woman pointed the fake gun at him, he thought he was a goner. Then he noticed a red plug at the end of the barrel, and he got mad. “If somebody’s going to scare the hell out of me, it better be a real gun,” he said.

Wheaton did not attend the ceremony.

Steven C. Smith, 36, of Northridge, an attorney who spotted a man who had fled after robbing a restaurant. Smith pursued the robber by car and called for police assistance on his car phone.

Phyllis Williams, 39, a North Hollywood hospital worker who was leaving a bowling alley when a purse-snatcher in a passing car grabbed a companion’s purse. Williams and several others blocked the parking lot exit and called police, who arrested three persons in the car.

Brad Barnes, 24, of Woodland Hills and Ron Gotch, 17, of Van Nuys, who were in a restaurant where Barnes worked when a man walked up to the cash register and brandished a pellet gun. Barnes tackled him. As the struggle moved outside, Gotch took the robber’s gun and, wielding a baseball bat, convinced him to submit.

Otto Pfundt, a 95-year-old resident of a Van Nuys retirement home who received a ransom note after the sole manuscript of his autobiography was stolen in a burglary. His cooperation with police led to the arrest of the burglar suspect. Gates said the award would be delivered to Pfundt, who is bedridden and was unable to attend the ceremony.

Sam Demetriou, 33, of Simi Valley, who foiled a robbery of a pizza shop next to his Sepulveda floor-covering business. He chased the armed robber, who fled after dropping his knife and the loot.