A CITY IN CRISIS : Trying to Get Away From It All : Refugees: Panicked L.A. residents wealthy enough to afford it flock to expensive hotels in neighboring areas, including Orange County.

When rioters hit the streets, the rich hit the road.

Frightened Los Angeles residents flocked to hotels in Orange and Ventura counties, begging for space and snapping up every $200-a-night room in sight, hoteliers said.

Long Beach resident Tony Pezze said he drove his wife and 2-year-old daughter to the Dana Point Resort after National Guard troops took up positions about a mile from his house.

As he relaxed Saturday in a hotel Jacuzzi, Pezze said he was glad to leave Los Angeles behind.

“There seems to be a borderline between where the tension is and where the tension isn’t,” said Pezze, who owns a rubber-stamp manufacturing company.

Only about 25 of the 350 rooms at the exclusive seaside hotel were vacant and available to the riot refugees, said Greg Champion, the hotel’s general manager.

The callers told him they wanted to get out of town and asked what the hotel had to offer them, Champion said.

Stuart Rutkin, president of the Garment Contractors Assn. of Southern California and a Mar Vista resident, said he was faced with the predicament of leaving his manufacturing production facility in the garment district unattended to attend a seminar at the resort.

“We’re all concerned,” Rutkin, 44, said as he sat in a poolside patio chair. “We’re watching TV with one eye and trying to enjoy ourselves on the other hand.”

Ellen Grutsch, a 30-year-old retail manager from Brentwood, said she left home when she feared rioters could head her way. “When the police asked us to leave work, at that point I realized it,” she said.

Grutsch said she hoped to return home on Sunday. But, she added: “No need to rush back.”

Others fled to Ventura County.

“People had such a panic-stricken look on their faces when they checked in” Thursday and Friday, said Lu Fletcher, assistant manager of the 250-room Mandalay Beach Resort in Oxnard.

“They said, ‘Please, oh, please. We’ll take anything!’ ”

On Saturday, the scene was markedly different. Dozens of couples and families sat at the edge of a pool in bathing suits, soaking in the sun. Some knocked back margaritas and daiquiris and relaxed for the first time in days.

Stacey and Fred Cohen of Hancock Park said they nervously drove out of their upscale neighborhood Friday morning amid the sounds of helicopters and fire engines, carefully taking surface streets until they could turn onto the freeway to Ventura County.

The burning embers of Samy’s camera store two blocks away from their two-bedroom house had convinced the Cohens to bundle up their 4-year-old daughter Lindsey and abandon their home to the rioters.

“All up and down Beverly and La Brea, they were looting businesses,” said Fred Cohen, 40. “It’s only three blocks from our house.”

They grabbed important papers, and checked into the Mandalay resort.

Stacey Cohen, 42, who is 8 1/2 months pregnant, said she was glad they left. The smell of smoke had made her sick, the phone lines were dead and the dusk-to-dawn curfew made her feel like a captive in her own home.

“Everything was closed, you couldn’t go out. You couldn’t get food. The supermarkets were all closed,” she said. “We’re not yuppie refugees. We’re just scaredy-cats.”