EARTHQUAKE: DISASTER BEFORE DAWN : Sporadic Looting Reported Citywide : Crime: Thieves hit a fast-food restaurant and clothing and video stores. Police make more than 25 arrests but say there was no free-for-all.

From the Valley to Hollywood to Downtown, the looting began almost as soon as the ground stopped shaking.

Looters stole purses in Downtown Los Angeles. They grabbed coffee mugs and T-shirts at the Wax Museum on Hollywood Boulevard. Down the street, they stole a 10-inch wooden spear and a stuffed badger at a hunting and taxidermy shop.

Los Angeles Police Department officers made more than 25 arrests and responded to many other looting reports citywide. The alleged looters ranged in age from teen-agers to elderly women. Still, most police stations received only sporadic reports of problems in the hours after the first temblor.

“This was no free-for-all,” said Police Officer Karen Owens.

But victimized business owners were still angry after having to contend with a one-two punch--an earthquake and then the looting. At the Sherman Oaks Antique Mall, shop owner Rick Johnson said one of his assistants who arrived at 5:30 a.m. saw “a couple of little old ladies making off with a silver tea service.”

Outside a women’s clothing store in Downtown Los Angeles, police said they caught two men with armfuls of dresses, the price tags still attached.

Inside a Northridge video store, police caught three people checking over the movie selections.

Some property owners took matters into their own hands after they heard reports of looting. Dan Vandermeulen, the Neighborhood Watch coordinator for a mobile home park in Canyon Country, stood guard, armed with a pistol.

“We will be out all night,” he said. “Put this in your paper: Tell looters we will shoot them. Period.”

Greg Goldstein, owner of a Tarzana dry cleaner, said he scared off a group of looters by waving a gun at them about two hours after the quake. The five, whom he described as teen-age boys, were taking dolls and stuffed animals out of the shattered windows of a gift shop next door. Goldstein said he yelled at them to stop and pointed his unloaded gun at them. He said the youths dropped some items and left in a hurry.

In Downtown Los Angeles, police arrested nine looters for stealing items at a purse store, a men’s clothing shop and a dress shop, Detective Tim Dotson said. All were taken into custody within an hour of the quake. Although Monday’s looters did not take much time, thieves had gone to work even sooner during the Whittier quake in 1987, Dotson said, going into a Downtown hotel while the building was still swaying.

“People began running out of their rooms when the earthquake began . . . but as they ran out, other people ran into their rooms to steal their stuff,” Dotson recalled. “They were ripping them off before the quake was over.”

On Monday afternoon, a number of Los Angeles business owners said earthquakes simply are a part of life in Southern California. It is the looting, they said, with which they have trouble coming to terms.

At Number 1 Chicken in Hollywood, owner Babak Omrani said he found his restaurant trashed when he arrived at work early Monday.

“They took everything, all the hamburger, chicken, french fries, everything,” he said. “They broke the brand-new cash register. . . . They just tortured the whole place. We have nothing left. They broke everything we had. Everything.”

David Bateman, a co-owner of a hunting and taxidermy shop on Hollywood Boulevard, said looters broke into his store and stole about 25 classic hunting knives, among other items. Bateman, who employs a security guard during working hours, was so disgusted by the looters that he is thinking of leaving Los Angeles.

“I might pack up and say: ‘Goodby, L.A.,’ ” he said. “I’ve got no insurance because it’s too high. With a small business, how much can you pay? This is just terrible. It shows what kind of people we have here, what kind of city we are in.”

In San Fernando, a reporter saw four young men reaching through a broken window at a shoe store and loading up with armfuls of women’s shoes. Asked why they were stealing women’s shoes, one of the men said: “Why not?”

Down the street at McMahan’s Furniture--which also stocks electronic goods and bicycles--store employee Leticia Quintanilla, 33, and her husband George, 38, were standing by with a heavy flashlight to discourage looters.

“By the time we got here, the looters had already opened up the back,” said Quintanilla, who stood by the store’s shattered front windows. “We were driving up from the corner, and I saw some guys looking in. They looked like they were tempted, but I shook my finger at them, and they walked off. . . . The people who own this store are good people. It’s not right to steal from them.”