Honoring Those Who Put Their Lives on the Line : Police officers injured by criminals usually remain anonymous. One such hero and his partner will receive the LAPD’s highest honor, the Medal of Valor.

Police officers who are sentenced to prison become household words. The ones who are rushed to the hospital after being shot by criminals tend to remain anonymous.

Relatively few Angelenos, I suppose, recall the name of Officer Dennis Hinman, who earned hero status early on Jan. 15, 1992, at the Grandview Chinese Restaurant in Northridge. I did not know him before then, even though he is one of 1,500 officers in my command.

I now know a little about Officer Hinman and his partner, Willard Howard, who were among those answering “Here, Sir!” at the morning watch roll call at Devonshire Community Division Police Station.

I met Hinman a few hours after the phone on my night stand rang at 2:15 a.m.

It was the type of call I most dread--an officer had been shot. It occurred during a restaurant robbery. One robber still had not been captured. Hostages were involved.

When I arrived at the restaurant, the action was still going on. One robber had been captured and another was inside with a hostage.

Hinman and Howard had answered a report of a robbery in progress. It is the kind of call that always produces an extra measure of adrenaline, but this time they had a special reason to be edgy. A pair of robbers had been specializing in restaurants recently and two months earlier had murdered a musician at the Grecian Village in Studio City.

The policemen parked in the lot behind the restaurant and headed for the door. A man looked out and ducked back inside. A moment later he reappeared with another man. Both were armed, one with a .44-caliber pistol, the other with an assault rifle.

The one with the pistol fired, striking Hinman in the hip. He would later testify in court that the bullet entered his holster, passed through his buttocks and into the radio in his back pocket.

Both officers fired back. The men retreated into the restaurant as the police officers called for additional units. The pair came outside, fired more shots and ran back in.

Then one of them appeared at the door holding a hostage at gunpoint.

Much had happened in a few seconds, and Howard and Hinman were still the only police officers at the scene. Hinman lay bleeding and in excruciating pain.

To fool the robber into thinking he was hopelessly outnumbered, the policemen shouted orders at phantom backup officers. Howard talked to the robber.

Finally the man, later identified as a parolee named Howard Holt, lay down his weapon, released his hostage and surrendered.

Four hours later the Special Weapons and Tactics team freed a second hostage and arrested a second man, Claude Davis.

It was past dawn when I walked into Hinman’s room at Northridge Hospital Medical Center. “Hi,” I said, “how are you doing?” Hinman looked up from a book and asked, “Who are you?”

I told him, and he said he was doing better, and we joked about how he had asked people not to say that he had been “shot in the butt.”

His wife, Peggy, glowed with a look reserved for the woman whose man has barely escaped death.

Hinman had pushed his book aside. I asked about it, and he said it was a book of poems. When I confessed that I also “read some poetry,” his eyes lit up. He didn’t mind telling me that he thoroughly enjoyed poetry and that the one he had just been reading was his favorite.

It was William Wordsworth’s “The Character of the Happy Warrior.” The happy warrior was described by the poet as the man in arms . . .

Who, whether praise of him must walk the earth

For ever, and to noble deeds give birth,

Or he must fall, to sleep without his fame,

And leave a dead unprofitable name -

Finds comfort in himself and in his cause;

And, while the mortal mist is gathering, draws

His breath in confidence of Heaven’s applause.

It seemed appropriate. Since that night I have quoted it countless times as a tribute to the police officers of Los Angeles. It still gives me a chill.

Three weeks ago, the two men captured that night were convicted of multiple crimes, including the murder of the musician.

They face life in prison with no possibility of parole.

Hinman has recovered fully and is back at work with his partner.

On Wednesday, they will both receive the Police Department’s highest honor, the Medal of Valor, the criterion for which is to “perform an act displaying extreme courage while consciously facing imminent peril.”

They justly deserve the recognition, and while their names will never be household words, some of us will never forget them or their “noble deeds.”