A ROLL CALL OF HEROES : 6 Police Officers, 2 Firefighters to Receive South Bay Medal of Valor

Some braved gunfire. Others plunged into burning buildings. Two helped douse the biggest structure fire in the history of Redondo Beach. A few saved lives, and one gave his.

Six police officers and two firefighters will be honored today in Torrance at the 15th South Bay Police and Fire Medal of Valor ceremony. The awards are presented annually by a committee of business people and chamber of commerce officials from nine South Bay cities.

“These guys really put their lives on the line,” said Michael Cantrell, a TRW employee who chaired the 1988 Medal of Valor Awards Committee. “It’s incredible.”

In noon ceremonies at the Torrance Marriott Hotel, the committee will present the eight Medals of Valor as well as three Distinguished Service Awards to two police officers and a fire captain who faced less personal danger but who “exemplified the finest standards” of their professions.

Police officers and firefighters in the South Bay said the awards are highly valued because they are given sparingly. The cities of El Segundo, Hermosa Beach, Manhattan Beach and Palos Verdes Estates chose not to nominate any employees this year.

The award winners come from Gardena, Hawthorne, Inglewood, Redondo Beach and Torrance.

Hawthorne Officer Roosevelt Matthews, 31, wasn’t thinking about police work or heroism last July 24 when he settled down for a late dinner with his fiancee and her mother and sister.

The off-duty officer had just returned from a movie and was visiting with the three women at their house in the Hollypark section of Hawthorne. But as he scooped up his first forkful from a steaming plate of greens, potatoes and pot roast, Matthews heard a distinctive sound coming from the park across the street.

“It sounded sweet; a soft, repetitious sound,” Matthews said this week. “It may sound weird, but it was almost pleasing.”

The 8 1/2-year police veteran said he recognized the soft popping as shots from automatic weapons, probably muted by a silencer.

Matthews looked out the window and saw six young men running north out of Hollypark, a recreation area frequented by the Watergate Crips gang and their friends, the Neighborhood Crips.

The gang members had made “hard eyes” at him in the past, Matthews said, because he had arrested some of them and was now dating a woman from their neighborhood. “Hostility and anxiety had built up” between him and the gang members, Matthews said, so he kept his service revolver strapped to his waist during visits with his fiancee.

When the gunshots began, Matthews said, he told the three women to call the police and to get on the floor.

When he went outside, the night was so dark that he couldn’t see a thing, Matthews said. One of the fleeing gang members screamed that the shots had come from the baseball diamond. As Matthews looked in that direction, he saw flashes from a gun barrel.

He began running in a crouch toward the shots, which came in several short bursts. When he got within 40 yards, Matthews said, he could see two men.

He ordered them to surrender, but they ran. Matthews gave chase, although he realized that there was little cover in the park if the suspects chose to turn and shoot.

One of the two men escaped, but the second slowed to a trot and slowly turned around, Matthews said. “Then I saw the gun starting to come up,” he said. “I stopped. I felt my life was in danger.”

After warning the man several times to drop his weapon, Matthews fired two shots, Hawthorne detectives said. The second shot grazed the back of Cedrick Payne’s head, and the 21-year-old reputed Inglewood gang member collapsed on the asphalt.

Charged With Assault

Payne, who police said is a member of a “set” of the Bloods gang, rivals of the Crips, recovered from the superficial wound. He was charged with assault with a deadly weapon because one of the shots he allegedly fired wounded one of the Hawthorne gang members. The case is pending, Hawthorne police said.

Now the once belligerent Crips have warmed to Matthews. “Some of them came up to me and patted me on the back and shook my hand,” Matthews said. “They said, ‘We knew you were one of us. We knew you were a Crip.’

“I said, ‘Hey, I’ll do the same to you if I catch you in that situation.’ ”

Hawthorne Police Chief Kenneth Stonebraker recommended Matthews for the Medal of Valor because he “put himself in the line of automatic weapons fire at extreme personal risk. . . . His actions were above and beyond the call of duty, underscored by the fact he was off duty.”

Saw Glow in Sky

Gardena Officer Gerald Dudley was on routine patrol just after 2 in the morning last year when he earned his Medal of Valor.

Dudley, a 15-year police veteran, and his partner, rookie Officer Scott McKenzie, saw a glow in the sky. They found part of a trailer park on Mariposa Avenue on fire.

McKenzie began to evacuate residents from the mobile homes and trailers while Dudley, 40, checked a small home.

The house was ablaze, but a young man stood inside an enclosed front porch, not trying to escape.

The scene is still fresh in his mind, Dudley said.

“He was just standing there screaming, with both hands up by the sides of his head,” he said. “The fire was actually burning the hair off his head and his arms.”

Resisted Rescue

Dudley, married and the father of three, rushed inside the home. But the man, whom he tried to pull to safety, grabbed him and began pulling him back toward the flames, screaming incoherently. Dudley broke free and retreated outside for fresh air.

“I felt this guy was going to die right before my eyes,” Dudley said. “I was going to be just panic-stricken. I knew I had to get him out of there.

“I went back in and I knocked him down. I don’t even know how,” he said. “I pulled him outside.”

A report by Gardena Police Chief Richard Propster said flames engulfed the rest of the home moments after Dudley and the man escaped.

The man’s body was so hot that it smoked. Dudley used a garden hose to cool him down.

Gardena police suspected that the man, who survived, was under the influence of PCP, but no charges were filed.

Dudley will receive the Medal of Valor for his “quick thinking and reactions in a rapidly changing situation and his willingness to risk his life for another.”

Honored Posthumously

Inglewood Police Sgt. George Aguilar also risked his life, and lost it. He will be honored posthumously with the Medal of Valor.

Aguilar was in civilian clothes and driving an unmarked police car on March 31 last year when he was flagged down by a courier for a small gas station chain. The courier, Masih Madani, had just been robbed of $2,000. He recognized Aguilar as a police officer.

The two jumped into Aguilar’s car and followed the suspected robbers.

At the intersection of La Brea Avenue and Arbor Vitae Street, Aguilar caught up with the three suspects, pulled alongside and, with his gun drawn, ordered them to stop.

But one of the men drew a pistol and--just as Aguilar warned Madani, “Get down, get down!”--fired several times. One of the bullets struck Aguilar in the chest, a mortal wound.

The suspected gunman, Leslie Holget, shot himself the next day when he was cornered by police in Newhall. His alleged accomplices are scheduled to stand trial for murder within the next two months.

Inglewood Police Chief Ray Johnson called Aguilar, 46, an “exceptionally skilled policeman” whose “courage cost him the ultimate price.”

Firefighting, Rescues

The five other Medal of Valor winners were cited for their heroic firefighting and fire rescues:

Redondo Beach Engineer Robert Engler and Firefighter Carlos Cabeza de Vaca piloted a small fire boat last May that played a crucial role in extinguishing the Redondo Beach Pier fire.

The duo repeatedly steered the 27-foot boat between pier pilings, with flames on the underside of the pier just 10 or 15 feet overhead. The black smoke from the creosote-treated wood was so thick that Engler, 38, and Cabeza de Vaca, 42, had to guide their craft by listening for the crackling of flames and using their hands to find the pier’s pilings.

Burning embers and chunks of the pier fell all around them.

Battalion Chief Pat Aust said the fire might have done even more than the recorded $8 million in damage if not for the efforts of the two firefighters.

On May 12, Inglewood Police Officer Angelo Luis Nieves and several other officers were called to a house fire just south of the city, in Lennox.

Neighbors told the officers and two Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies that two children were trapped inside the home. A deputy entered one bedroom through a window but could not find the children.

Nieves then entered another bedroom and, fighting off smoke and 500-degree temperatures, was able to find 12-year-old Antwon Tiggs. The Inglewood officer pulled the child to the window before he was overcome by smoke.

Other officers pulled both Nieves and young Tiggs out of the window to safety.

The boy died 10 days later of severe smoke inhalation. His sister Tammy, 9, never escaped the home. She was found dead in a bathtub where she had apparently sought refuge.

Torrance Police Officers Thomas Winchester and Steven Harvey faced equally trying conditions when they came upon a house last May 29 in North Torrance that was engulfed in smoke and flames.

Neighbors told them that the fire had trapped an elderly couple, Wellman and Billee Biehler, inside their home.

Winchester and Harvey, both 35, crawled on their hands and knees in search of the couple. After several minutes, they could not breathe and were forced to retreat.

Firefighters with breathing devices later entered the home and found the Biehlers, both of whom died.

Other Awards

The Distinguished Service Award will go to two other Torrance officers, Devin Chase and Jerry Wallace, and to Redondo Beach Fire Capt. Thomas Krig.

Chase and Wallace witnessed a traffic accident in which a young woman’s right leg was nearly severed. The woman lost so much blood that the officers said later that they were sure she would die. But the officers used materials at hand--a rope and a knife--to form a tourniquet. The bleeding stopped, and the woman survived.

Krig directed the 220 firefighters and 30 fire engines that fought the giant pier fire. His expertise and quick coordination of nine fire departments, county lifeguards and the U.S. Coast Guard greatly limited the scope of the fire, said Redondo Beach Fire Chief James Black.

Medal of Valor Committee chairman Cantrell said he has seen the heroic efforts to contain the pier fire on videotape.

“It was incredible what they did,” Cantrell said. “There are a lot of unsung heroes every day.”