Citizens Patrol Provides Helping Hands

It’s Sunday morning at Stony Point in Chatsworth, and a man is stuck in a crevice of a huge rock formation, just inches from the edge of a 30-foot drop. Half a dozen rescue workers, equipped with ropes and a stretcher, are trying to bring him to safety.

“Pull on that line!” one rescue worker yells, while another straps the man onto the stretcher.

“Get him away from that rock!” screams a third, as the stretcher brushes against a ledge on its way down.

When the stretcher reaches the ground, Antonio Arizo, the man strapped aboard, smiles. “It was just like an E-ticket ride at Disneyland,” he says.

Arizo could joke because he wasn’t really injured. Everyone at the site was practicing rescue techniques, part of their training for the Citizens Emergency Mobile Patrol.

CEMP is an all-volunteer, nonprofit organization that helps the Los Angeles Police Department at fires, floods, earthquakes and other disasters that require evacuations and crowd control. The group, financed solely by donations, also helps search for missing people and provides first aid and other services to community organizations and private agencies.

The group’s mobile command post, a blue van equipped with several radios and a cellular phone, is parked at the Police Department’s Devonshire Division. Members are alerted by beepers and can get to most San Fernando Valley locations within half an hour.

“They are really invaluable to us,” said Sgt. David Johnson of the Devonshire Division. “The citizens of L.A. are really getting a bargain from these people.”

During the holidays, Johnson said, CEMP helps police monitor shopping center parking lots, where many crimes occur. ‘They’re our eyes and ears,” he said.

Johnson said CEMP was especially helpful during the Granada Hills brush fire of December, 1988, evacuating residents and assessing damage. CEMP members also provide first aid at 10-kilometer races and help organize the Chatsworth and Granada Hills Christmas parades, freeing police officers for other duties.

Members must be 18 or over and trained in cardiopulmonary resuscitation and first aid. They meet at least once a month to practice search-and-rescue techniques. Sometimes they will send members out into wilderness areas and then try to locate them. “We tell someone to go get lost, and they do,” said member Mike St. Amand.

The group has about 30 members, all from the San Fernando and Antelope valleys. Five are women.

Member Richard White of Northridge said most people don’t realize the CEMP members are not police officers. “Usually we’re ‘Officer’ to the public,” said White, 29, an environmental consultant. “We don’t get a whole lot of thanks for it.”

But, members said, they do get a lot of rewards.

Earlier this year, for instance, White and member Jeff Keitz were providing first aid services for a jeep race in Palmdale when one jeep broke an axle and got wedged between boulders. In the back seat of the jeep sat a pair of frightened 3-year-old twin boys. White and Keitz each rescued a baby.

“They just hung on to us,” said Keitz, 20, a Pierce College student. “When they grabbed us, it was such a good feeling.

Keitz said he joined CEMP because he wanted to make a difference in the community. “It seemed like an organization that really does something,” he said.

Keitz said he has learned a lot about safety in the eight months he has been a member and has gained a lot of confidence. “If I see someone fall or a car on fire,” he said, “I know there’s something I can do besides sit there and panic.”