“My angel”: When bookkeeper Sheri Watts first...

“My angel”: When bookkeeper Sheri Watts first heard of the rioting--and smelled burning buildings--she was stuck in traffic on Vermont Avenue and nearly out of gas. She pulled into a service station and found to her horror that she had no money.

“Then,” said Watts, who is white, “this black guy came up to my car. He wasn’t dressed very well. I pulled out my Mace. He looked at me and said, ‘What are you doing here?’ I told him. He pulled out a couple of crumpled dollar bills and change and said, ‘Put this in your gas tank and go home now!’ ”

Watts added: “I remember he said, ‘Usually I have to ask people for money,’ so he must have been a panhandler. They say this is the City of Angels and I guess he was my angel.”

A little reverse looting: Among the unconfirmed stories coming out of the riots was one that photographer Henk Friezer heard from a mechanic.

“He (the mechanic) said his uncle was driving through South-Central in his pickup truck when he spotted a looter pushing a shopping cart loaded with a giant-screen TV and other electronics items,” Friezer said. “He told the looter, ‘Hey, for $20, I’ll take it to your house.’ The looter said sure and loaded it in his truck. And the driver raced off with the goods and returned them to the merchant.”

True? Nice to think so, anyway.

Most unusual plea for help: Hollywood artist John Thompson heard it on his police scanner Monday: “The dispatcher said a fellow walked into a hardware store in Hollywood and was trying to talk the employees into sawing off his handcuffs. He apparently had escaped from a nearby location. About five minutes later, the dispatcher reported the man was back in custody.”

The repentant Frederick’s looter: A distraught young man handed a bag to Robert Fambrini, the pastor at the Blessed Sacrament Catholic Church in Hollywood.

“He said he was one of the looters at (the lingerie museum at) Frederick’s,” Fambrini said. “He wanted to return it but was afraid to go there.”

The bag contained a bra belonging to actress Katey Sagal (of TV’s “Married with Children”) and the pantaloons of the late actress Ava Gardner.

Fambrini related the incident at Mass Sunday. Joe Shea, who was in attendance, said everyone broke into laughter when Fambrini quipped: “Imagine what the pastor has in his office.”

Madonna’s missing bra: One item stolen from Frederick’s still hasn’t been recovered: a bustier worn by the Material Girl.

It apparently wasn’t taken by the looter who met with Fambrini at the Blessed Sacrament Church.

“He (the looter) said it was already gone when he went in,” Fambrini said. “That (Madonna’s bra) was exactly what he wanted too. He had noticed it on a visit a month earlier.”

A true Southern Californian: On the second evening of the rioting, a young man came running down Temple Street and turned on Broadway, passing helmeted police officers. He wore shorts and tennis shoes and was shirtless. He was, from all indications, a jogger.

The right man to have by his side: KABC (Channel 7) anchorman Paul Moyer paused during an in-person interview with Cardinal Roger Mahony and said apologetically that he was about to sneeze, something he had never done on the air before.

Replied Mahony: “I could say, ‘God bless you.’ ” And L.A. as well.