ORANGE : Bank Rewards Citizen Who Tailed Robber

Stewart Peck sensed trouble as he watched a man run out of the Wells Fargo Bank on Oct. 28.

“It was a really hot day and this man had a ball cap pulled low over his head, he was wearing a wool coat and he had this brown paper bag,” Peck, 48, recounted Wednesday. “I thought that there was something wrong.”

The man got into a waiting car, which sped off from the bank on Katella Avenue. And Peck, who was parked nearby, decided to follow in his Infinity.

Using his car phone, Peck led police to the suspects. Today, Wells Fargo will present a $5,000 reward to Peck, an Orange resident and president of FormWorks Plastics Inc., a manufacturing firm in Orange.

Peck is “an excellent citizen,” said Wells Fargo spokesman Dan Conway.

Peck will be the first recipient of a James B. Hume Reward established in December, bank officials said.

The reward’s namesake was a chief of detectives for the bank from 1873 to 1902, Conway said. Hume chased outlaws across California and brought most of them to justice.

When Peck followed the suspects into Santa Ana, he used his cellular phone to call 911 and learned that the bank indeed had been robbed, he said. Witnesses said a robber had pointed a handgun into a teller’s face and demanded money.

At an apartment complex in the 500 block of North Tustin Avenue, the car stopped and the man ran out from the back seat, Peck said.

The driver “just sat there looking at me while I’m on the phone with police officers, telling them how to get there,” Peck said.

Officers arrested the driver, Tina Lynn Sandusky Demko, 27, and the robbery suspect, her husband, Robert Allan Demko, 29.

About $1,000 in cash and a handgun were found in the Demkos’ apartment in the complex, police said.

Conway telephoned Peck several weeks ago to invite him to a thank-you lunch at the bank, but the honoree only learned of the monetary reward Wednesday from reporters.

“They’re giving me money?” Peck asked. “That’s very nice of them to do that.”

He said he will put the $5,000 into the college education account for his 12-year-old daughter, Nicole.