‘Very Brave’ Hostage Maid Thanks Her Police Rescuers : Crime: The still-shaken woman and SWAT officers recount the nine-hour siege by a religious fanatic at a hotel near LAX.

As the police SWAT team rushed into the room after blowing apart the door, they found Rollen Frederick Stewart lying on a bed clad only in shorts, his hands clasped behind his head and a loaded .45-caliber pistol near his feet.

“You didn’t have to come in that way,” Stewart said to two of the five Los Angeles police officers who stormed the room to end the religious fanatic’s nine-hour siege Tuesday of a hotel room near Los Angeles International Airport.

“I think he was relieved that it was over,” said Officer Richard Guerrero, one of the two officers who captured Stewart, best known for wearing a rainbow wig and mugging for television cameras at sporting events.

Stewart was charged Thursday with kidnaping, burglary and other offenses. Prosecutors said they also suspect that Stewart had planned to kill Democratic presidential nominee Bill Clinton, but backed off the idea because of the candidate’s heavy security.

Stewart has been a fugitive since May, 1991, when he was named in an arrest warrant accusing him of four stink bomb attacks in Orange County. Although Stewart’s last known residence was in Downey, investigators believe he has been living out of his car for the past several years.

While the officers rolled Stewart onto the floor and handcuffed him, two other officers rapped on the room’s bathroom door, persuading Stewart’s hostage, 38-year-old maid Paula Chan Madera, that she could come out.

“She appeared very frightened but she was very brave,” said SWAT Officer Robert Bennyworth, part of the five-man team that rushed the room. “She didn’t cry and she wasn’t hysterical, but she was slow in getting out.”

The officers recounted the experience in interviews after a ceremony at the Los Angeles Police Department’s Pacific Division station, where Chan Madera thanked officers for rescuing her, and the Hyatt presented the officers with cookies and milk.

“I didn’t want to come here because I still don’t feel good,” a shaken but uninjured Chan Madera said in Spanish. “But they told me the police officers were going to be here and I wanted to thank them and thank God that the police saved my life.”

Surrounded by police officers who responded to the call, hotel officials and the housekeeping staff, Chan Madera spoke quietly and only after prodding from reporters and hotel officials.

“During my time in the bathroom I felt alone and I thought a lot about my children,” said the Lennox mother of four, who has worked at the hotel for more than seven years. She planned to take a vacation, but it was unclear whether she would return to work. “I feared for my life,” she said.

Chan Madera declined to speak further and after sampling the chocolate-chip cookies, including a six-foot one bearing a thank you message to police, she was escorted away by hotel staff.

For the SWAT officers it was another call in a busy year. SWAT Sgt. Al Preciado said SWAT has logged 90 calls this year, with 70 to 75 being the norm for the unit.

Officers acknowledged that this call, however, was unusual given their suspect: the man with the rainbow wig whom they had seen several times on television during sporting events.

“It was kind of humorous making an arrest on someone we moderately know,” Guerrero said, adding that Stewart’s infamous wig was found in a satchel on the bed.

Police decided to go in with explosives after they learned that Stewart had pushed a dresser in front of the door and had tried to nail it shut.

The blast from the explosives blew off the top of the door and caused chunks of the ceiling to rain down in a cloud of dust and smoke.

Through the smoke, they spotted Stewart’s feet on the bed.

Leaping over the dresser, they first subdued Stewart, who offered no resistance and hardly budged from his repose on the bed as the officers stormed in.

“I think he put his arm back there so we would know he was not going for the gun,” said SWAT Officer Joe Cordova, who helped apprehend Stewart.

They hustled him out of the room to other officers for interrogation.

“It’s something we practice for all of the time. It was almost like going through a rehearsal in a simulated scenario,” SWAT officer Paul Torrence said.