Ordinary People Honored for Heroism : Safety: The D.A. hands out the annual Courageous Citizen Award to 12 people who performed good deeds.

They are ordinary people, ages 9 to 74, who chose to be brave.

Each of the 12 was honored Friday as a hero for good deeds ranging from rescuing a neighbor from a burning home to chasing down bank robbers.

Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner and the Rotary Club of Los Angeles presented them with the district attorney’s annual Courageous Citizen Award at a ceremony in the Hilton Hotel.

A sampling of the honorees:

Naomi Sherfield and her daughters, Lisa and Crystal, were driving home from shopping one April day in 1990 when they passed a group of teen-age boys on a Norwalk street seconds before the boys began beating and stabbing a lone youth.

“Lisa saw him in the rearview mirror, being attacked,” Naomi Sherfield said. “She told me to do a U-turn.”

Sherfield drove back and honked the car horn, while Lisa and Crystal rolled down their windows and began shouting at the crowd.

“We screamed, ‘The police is coming!’ ” she said. “Anything we could think of, so they would leave him alone, so he’d have time to get up off of the ground.”

Then they opened the car door, and the victim ducked in as they sped off. The family gave the police a description of a car that led to the arrest of a teen-ager, who eventually pleaded guilty to assault.

Russell Migliore, 60, and Kenneth Sang Ahn, 19, were at a Lakewood intersection in separate cars when they saw a car run a red light and broadside a woman’s car, killing her instantly.

When the driver fled on foot, Migliore got out of his car and chased him, while Ahn drove around the block to cut off the suspect’s escape route.

The man climbed a fence and disappeared. Migliore kept searching for him and finally saw him emerge from a back yard, apparently trying to get away from Ahn.

“I grabbed him when he was coming over a wall, and held on,” Migliore said. “I wasn’t about to let him go back over. I know I am too damn old to be running around like that.”

The man was arrested and convicted of vehicular manslaughter.

Migliore said his bold pursuit was inspired by the thought of his 19-year-old granddaughter.

“The young gal (victim) was only 19, just like my granddaughter,” Migliore said.

Kenneth Murphy, 37, was on his way to the automated teller at a Bank of America in Santa Fe Springs when he bumped into a man and woman.

Brusquely, they pushed by him, without apologizing or acknowledging Murphy’s presence.

“That got my goat a little,” Murphy said.

He then noticed the man was loaded down with a large duffel bag. In the man’s other hand was a gun, Murphy said.

Murphy, a truck salesman, suspected the couple had just committed a robbery, and followed them to the parking lot.

“I got into my Dually (Chevrolet rear dual-wheel truck), and blocked off the exit,” Murphy said.

To avoid the truck, the suspects went over a curb.

What followed was a 15-minute chase over surface streets and the freeway, with the woman suspect leaning out the passenger window at times, firing at Murphy.

As Murphy, a father of four, pursued the suspects, he radioed his wife at the truck sales office, and instructed her to call sheriff’s deputies. Following Murphy’s directions, deputies cut off the suspects’ escape route. As Murphy watched, the suspects were wounded in a brief shoot-out, then arrested. The suspects were convicted and sentenced to lengthy prison terms, the district attorney’s office said.

At the awards ceremony, Murphy said his actions didn’t deserve the fanfare he received.

“When we see something wrong, I think we should all feel like we have to get involved,” he said. Besides, “I didn’t feel like I was in danger at any time.”