7 Citizens Honored During Ceremony for Their Acts of Courage and Heroism

It took Victor Martinez less than 10 minutes to prevent the kidnaping of a little girl, but Jeanine Enriquez and Anna Van Loun spent almost two years watching and gathering evidence that saved a starving, abused toddler and helped send his mother to prison.

Becoming a hero can take a split second or it can take years. That is what these three local citizens and four others were told by Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner, who honored them Friday for their heroic acts. Reiner gave them poster-size scrolls and words of praise as part of his office’s Courageous Citizens Award Program at a ceremony in East Los Angeles.

Enriquez, 19, and Van Loun, 18, employees at a Whittier pizza parlor, gradually became suspicious after noticing that an emaciated boy, who often was brought into the restaurant with his mother, her boyfriend and two siblings, was never given food or drink. The youngster also seemed listless and sickly.

Noticed 3-Year-Old

One day last June, the family came into the pizza parlor, but this time the 3-year-old was not with them. The two decided to investigate and found the child, starved and dehydrated, locked in a van parked outside.

Enriquez and Van Loun called police, who discovered that the boy weighed only 19 pounds and had a broken arm. Today, the boy is in a foster home, and his mother is serving a 12-year prison sentence.

“I was scared because a lot of people say if you report child abuse and it isn’t, then that’s bad,” Enriquez said. “I didn’t want to get involved. But then I thought, God, what if he dies? It would be our faults. I’m glad now that we did.”

Martinez, 33, was working in his South El Monte printing office last February when he saw a young man in a van pull to the curb across the street, jump out and force a small child on her way to school into the vehicle. The West Covina resident rushed outside, jotted down the license number of the van and called sheriff’s deputies, who consequently rescued the girl safely and caught the kidnaper.

Saved Their Assailant

Also honored Friday were three Los Angeles County animal control officers who actually saved their assailant. Bruce Richard, 47, of Pomona; Rosemarie Cardona, 32, of Pico Rivera, and Matthew Taylor, 39, of Rialto, last February caught a man in the act of stealing drugs at the animal control center in Downey. The man, who said he was homeless and wanted to take the drugs to die “like a dog,” pointed a gun at Richard and told him, “Count your minutes, this is your last day.”

The three calmly talked to the man until he turned his gun over to Taylor.

“It wasn’t any heroism, not something I thought about before I did it,” Richard said. “Actually, I didn’t get frightened about it until I was driving home, and then I thought about what the man said.”

‘Lord Was on My Side’

Cardona said she had no time to be scared. She was busy praying. “I knew the Lord was on my side. When you have your mind on the Lord, you’re not worrying.”

A seventh person, Paul Sanders, 36, was honored for helping detectives recover losses of almost $1 million in supplies from the Los Angeles Unified School District. A chemical company executive, Sanders played a key role in quashing the theft, which is one of several currently under investigation by the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office. The seven join about 30 people who have been honored by Reiner’s office this year.