Crime Victims Turn Terror Into Political Quest : Legislation: Three Valley retail workers join the call for tighter security in markets and drugstores.

For Sara Martin, a cashier at Ralphs supermarket in Studio City, it’s the memory of an early October morning last year when, wedged between two robbers, she stared down the barrel of a gun.

For Jim Crocker it’s the image of a Coca-Cola salesman taking a bullet in the head as Crocker and four other employees were held hostage at gunpoint at a Ralphs in Van Nuys.

And for Debra Smathers, pharmacist at Thrifty in Canoga Park, it’s recurring nightmares of an armed robbery in January--the gun held to her head as she screamed again and again.

These three San Fernando Valley retail employees have turned these moments of terror into a political quest. Urged on by Local 770 of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, they are speaking out for a proposed state law that would require tighter security measures in supermarkets and drugstores.

“I thought everything was behind me, but just last week I had a severe nightmare,” Smathers said. “My heart was beating like I was running a marathon. I woke up screaming and yelling for help.”

In all of their cases, at least some suspects are still at large. Aliases have been used in this article for them and other retail employees to protect their identities.

The bill, by Assemblywoman Barbara Friedman (D-Los Angeles), won Assembly approval after Crocker--joined by former Vons night manager Andrea Torres, who was raped at a store--flew up to Sacramento to testify before a committee hearing at the Capitol. “We had some big lobbyists against us, but we got everybody to sit down and listen,” Crocker said.

In a hearing room where Assembly members typically mill around, at times seeming only half aware of the witnesses, Crocker and Torres held lawmakers spellbound when they testified in April.

“I noticed when I went back to my seat that all 10 people were sitting there--and we had their attention,” Crocker said.

Torres, 46, said: “Everyone wants to make a difference if they can. I felt I had to put my voice across to help others because I wouldn’t want this to happen to my worst enemy.”

The legislation, AB 1605, requires large supermarkets and drugstores with more than 20 employees to beef up security with employee training, surveillance cameras, silent alarms, telephones with outside lines and adequate outdoor lighting. It also calls for moving stacks of goods from front windows so people can spot a robbery from outside.

After a heated floor debate last week in which Friedman squared off with Assemblyman Nao Takasugi (R-Oxnard), members narrowly approved the measure 42 to 32, one vote more than was needed for passage.

Takasugi, who for 35 years ran a mom-and-pop grocery with his wife, argued that the measure would put an “intolerable burden” on markets and cost each at least $10,000--an estimate Friedman called “dramatically overstated.”

The measure now goes to the Senate, where California Grocers Assn. President Don Beaver said, “We are absolutely going to do everything we can to keep its cost from being thrown at the grocery industry.”

Grocers figure the bill could cost up to $40 million statewide once the 4,000 targeted stores buy video cameras and silent alarms and incur related expenses.

“She can’t seem to understand that businesses have taken about all the costs they can,” Beaver said of Friedman. “She hasn’t been able to show us that putting in cameras and all of these bells and whistles will do anything to reduce crime.”

Beaver said his group agrees with the bill’s less expensive provisions, such as mandatory training to teach employees how to respond to robberies and identify suspects, removing stacked merchandise from front windows and installing more outdoor lighting.

He charged that the legislation amounted to little more than a ruse by union leaders to “establish that this is a high-risk workplace, so they deserve high-risk pay.”

But Friedman, who said the legislation was inspired by such high-profile robberies as those from the Valley, said: “To characterize this as a union bill severely limits its scope. It’s a consumer bill, a public safety bill.”

Friedman contends that, ultimately, increased store security will go a long way toward deterring crime. “We need to do everything we can to work with the police,” she said. “It’s much easier to catch someone if you have a picture from a camera.”

Critics respond that cameras have failed to deter robberies in convenience stores.

While armed robberies seem to be on the upswing, recent statistics from the Los Angeles Police Department reveal a slight decline.

In the first five months of 1993, compared to the same period last year, the number of robberies, burglaries and related crimes dropped by 2.7% citywide.

In the Valley, the decrease was even more dramatic, said Lt. Joe Garcia of the Valley Bureau: a 4.1% drop in the category including robberies and burglaries, with a 6.1% drop in armed robberies alone.

But those encouraging figures, of course, do not go far in silencing Crocker’s flashbacks or Smathers’ nightmares, in soothing Martin’s jitters or Torres’ lingering sadness.

“You just carry this deep scar that you have to keep on healing, and it takes time,” Torres said.

Her ordeal began 15 minutes after closing time one night in November, 1989, when two armed men demanded money from Torres, the night manager, and tied up two other Vons employees. While waiting for the timed safe to open, one of the men took Torres into an office and raped her. Then he raped her again.

“He did leave for a moment,” she said. “If we had had a silent alarm, I would have been able to press it.”

Since the assaults at a South Los Angeles store, Torres has begun speaking to groups of retail employees to educate them about safety measures in the workplace. She has been unable to return to her job as night manager because she fears another assault. Today, she is a price checker, roaming from market to market to record competitors’ prices.

In the incident that left Smathers deeply shaken, three masked, gloved and gun-wielding robbers burst through the back door of Thrifty in Canoga Park on Jan. 6. One of the men jumped over the counter to the pharmacy.

“He put a gun to my head, thinking I had already called police,” Smathers said. “I kept saying I didn’t. He said I did. When I kept screaming and screaming and screaming I didn’t, he finally let me go.”

In retrospect, Smathers said, “I was wondering why there wasn’t a silent alarm--especially in our business, which is often targeted.”

Sara Martin was behind a cash register counting money when two men in gang-wear walked in to her Ralphs store last Oct. 19. “The way they were dressed, they didn’t fit the area,” Martin said. “I was trying to act like I wasn’t scared.”

She tried to count the money quickly, keeping her head down. When she looked up, one man was standing with a gun on one side of her, and the other had moved to the other side. “I just thought I was going to die and that was the end of it,” she said.

No one was injured in the robbery, but an hour later, police say, the same men ran into Crocker at the Ralphs in Van Nuys. The memories have been hauntingly vivid.

“I had witnessed everything that goes along with a person being shot in the head. I had flashbacks. A lot of weird things go through your mind,” he said.

Two armed men were holding Crocker, four other employees and a customer at the front of the supermarket when the Coca-Cola salesman unwittingly walked into the store to call his fiancee. One of the robbers ordered him to hang up the phone, then fired before he could.

Police say 28-year-old Robert Ward’s death brought a tragic end to an early morning crime spree that targeted four Ralphs markets--Martin’s, Crocker’s and two more in Sunland and Sherman Oaks.

The suspects in those robberies are also wanted in connection with six other supermarket holdups that occurred throughout Los Angeles in the two months before the spree.

For hours after the robbery in Studio City, Martin said, she shook like a leaf. When she saw the evening news and learned of the robbery at the Ralphs in Van Nuys, she broke and cried uncontrollably. Ward was her friend.

Supermarket Security

A proposed new state law, AB 1605, would increase security measures in grocery and drugstores of more than 20,000 square feet and with at least 20 employees. It would require:

* Training employees to deal with robberies and identify suspects.

* Surveillance cameras.

* Silent alarms.

* Telephones with 911 access.

* Removal of stacked goods from store windows.

* Well-lit parking lots.

Source: Assemblywoman Barbara Friedman (D-Los Angeles)