They Passed the Test : Police: Distinguished Service Awards and Medals of Valor go to officers who in the face of death, faced down their fear, caught the bad guys and saved the good ones.

Redondo Beach Police Officer Leonard Knott was speeding to a call of an apparent suicide attempt. He quickly planned what route to take to the condominium on Francisca Avenue. He thought about how he would approach the front door.

When there was nothing left to think about, the 14-year police veteran felt the hair on his neck stand on end. He thought: “There is a strong possibility I might get hurt on this call.

“I had never had that strong a feeling on a call before,” Knott recalled this week.

Fellow officers say that Knott’s prescience has only been exceeded by his courage since that day last September, when he was shot in the face as he and fellow officers surprised a murder suspect in the middle of his getaway.

Knott was one of 19 South Bay police officers honored Thursday in Torrance for bravery and outstanding service by the South Bay Police and Fire Medal of Valor Awards Committee. He and six other officers who “exemplified the finest standards of their profession” were presented with the Distinguished Service Award in ceremonies at the Torrance Marriott, and 12 others were awarded the Medal of Valor for bravery.

Three of Knott’s colleagues were among those who received commendations, for their outstanding conduct on the day of the shooting.

After seven months of painstaking recovery, Knott is prepared to return to work Monday. Many who saw the blood streaming from a wound below his lower lip on Sept. 19 of last year did not think he would even make it to county Harbor-UCLA Medical Center.

“I was so sure he was dead, I didn’t even say anything to him,” said Officer Mark Rodina, one of Knott’s best friends. “All this blood was coming out of his head. I didn’t see any movement.”

Knott, 40, had switched to a squad car that day because rain-slick roads appeared to make it dangerous for his normal motorcycle patrol. It was about 1:40 in the afternoon when he heard two other cars dispatched to the condominium, where a neighbor had reported shots fired.

Knott decided his colleagues might need some backup. He joined three other officers at the condominium, where they heard a car running in the locked garage and suspected that the occupant might be committing suicide.

The garage door would not open, so Officer David Tanemankicked down the front door and found a man just inside, dead of three gunshots to the head. Taneman and Rodina heard the car still running in the garage and rushed down an inside stairway, while Knott and Officer Roy Newton covered them.

Taneman recalled this week that, as he pushed open the door to the garage, a man later identified as Roger Bollinger, 52, lowered a pistol and fired one shot. The bullet whistled just over Rodina’s head, and the two officers responded with a volley of 18 shots, killing Bollinger.

Bollinger’s shot traveled up the stairwell and hit Knott, who was standing at the top, throwing him out the front door and onto a landing in front of the condominium.

The bullet shattered his jaw, passed under his tongue, bounced off his spine and lodged--bulging just beneath the skin--at the back of his head.

As he spit up mouthfuls of blood, Knott said, he prayed and felt reassured that he would survive. He thought about his wife, Linda, and his three sons--Mike, 15, Matthew, 11, and Steven, just 5 months. “I all of a sudden just started grabbing on to a lot of things,” Knott recalled this week. “Things that were important to me.”

He also relied on many years of first-aid training. He moved his feet and hands and was relieved that he was not paralyzed. He asked Newton to pinch off the carotid artery, which carries blood to the head, but that did not seem to slow the bleeding. He lay on his side to keep his airway open.

Most of all, Knott said, he tried to stay calm because “panic and shock kill a lot of people.”

“It was real serious,” said Sgt. John Skipper, who carried Knott off the porch. “But because of the way he handled it--he was real cool about it--I was convinced that he was going to be fine.”

Surgeons at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center removed most of the bullet, although a few fragments remain near Knott’s spine.

His jaw was broken and had to be wired shut for six weeks. For three months, a metal “halo” brace was screwed into his skull to immobilize his neck. He drank plenty of milkshakes and used a note pad to communicate with visitors. Once the brace and wire were removed, he began slowly to recover strength and the 25 pounds he had lost.

Fellow officers lined up to donate blood, visited religiously and bought a VCR to keep their comrade entertained.

Mentally, Knott said, he is ready to get back on his motorcycle and rejoin the department’s SWAT team, on which he served before the shooting. But, he said, his stiff neck and occasional headaches tell him that a desk job might be more advisable for the time being.

Taneman and Rodina received the Medal of Valor for leading the police action that day and successfully stopping Bollinger, who police say had just killed his lifelong friend, Gary Taylor. Newton also won the Distinguished Service Award for providing cover and aiding Knott.

The awards were presented for the 16th year by a committee of Chamber of Commerce and city officials from nine South Bay communities.

Two other Redondo Beach officers--Sgt. Mark Klempa and Officer Mike Clifton--won the Medal of Valor for apprehending a suspected burglar last August. Clifton was grazed by a bullet but continued to fire his gun, along with Klempa, until the suspect surrendered. Clifton was treated for a scalp wound at South Bay Hospital and released.

Four Inglewood officers also won the Medal of Valor.

In February, 1989, Officers Ben Vargas and Thomas Baxter confronted reputed gang member Joseph Adams, who allegedly had just shot a man several times. The policemen killed Adams in a fierce gun battle.

On March 27, 1989, Officers Steven Gentry and Edgar Johnson confronted a shooting suspect in an adult bookstore. Gentry was hit once during the ensuing shoot-out, and later lost his kidney during surgery, but he continued to fire and helped Johnson to capture the suspect.

Gentry returned to full duty in January. The gunman is in prison for assault with a deadly weapon.

Three Hawthorne officers received Distinguished Service Awards and a sergeant from Gardena the Medal of Valor for preventing a disturbed man from taking his own life. Officers James Kerns, David Gregor and Patrick Lane and Sgt. Robert Michaelsen surrounded the man--who alternately pointed the gun at himself and the officers--and negotiated with him for two hours before he finally gave up.

The gunman was later charged with the murder of two women, whose bodies were found in his home.

Hawthorne police officer John Austin also won the Medal of Valor for leading a man from a burning home. Smoke and flames were so intense that Austin was twice forced outside before he entered the building a third time and rescued the man.

Officer Catherine (Cory) Brumbelow and Sgt. Walter Krumbach of the El Segundo Police Department also saved a life and were each awarded the Medal of Valor.

They were pursuing a suspect who had sped off after being implicated in a barroom brawl.

The 6-6, 240-pound suspect appeared to be drunk and belligerent after he crashed to a stop, the officers said. When the car burst into flames, the officers found that both doors were jammed shut, but Krumbach forced open one door, and Brumbelow helped drag the suspect to safety.

Two Torrance police officers--Ronald Ruby and Michael Browne--won the Distinguished Service Award for preventing women, on separate occasions, from committing suicide.

On March 16, 1989, Ruby responded to a call of a young woman sitting on the edge of the roof of the 14-story Golden West Towers. Ruby was able to sneak across the roof of the building without being detected and pull the woman off the ledge.

Last November, Browne was trying to talk a woman off the top of a five-story parking structure adjoining the CCH Computax building on Hawthorne Boulevard. When Brown was within a few feet of the woman, who was standing on a ledge just two inches wide, she said she could no longer hold on and would jump.

Browne lunged, grabbed the woman in a bearhug and pulled her to safety.