Suspect in Heist Makes a House Call : Crime: Doctor is in, so the alleged bank robber hides out in his office for an hour, then surrenders when police arrive.

Two suspected bank robbers were arrested Wednesday, but not until after one of them darted into a doctor’s office, handed over an envelope of cash to the physician, begged him to send it to the suspect’s wife and hid in an examining room.

After about an hour, the unarmed suspect, 37-year-old Walter Lewis of Compton, surrendered. No one in the medical office building was hurt or taken hostage.

“He just came in and said he wanted to hide out and said that if the police came to the door, tell them that he wasn’t there,” said Dr. John Lehman, a 75-year-old dermatologist who appeared unfazed by the experience.

“He was not violent or threatening,” Lehman added. “He was tense and nervous but he was very apologetic and seemed like a nice guy.”

The suspect’s alleged accomplice, 29-year-old Maurice Ronae Bowman of Los Angeles, was driving a car and was arrested after a short chase in the parking lot of the complex.

The suspects are being held without bail at Orange County Jail on suspicion of armed robbery. Bowman is on parole for robbery, police said.

At one point, when police were looking for two suspects in a supermarket parking lot, officers handcuffed and detained a couple who were walking through the lot. The couple, who were held for three hours before being released, charged later that they were detained solely because they are black. The two suspects are black.

The incident began at 9:17 a.m. at Wells Fargo Bank in the 200 block of Katella Avenue, Orange, and ended in the large medical complex in the 100 block of 17th Street, Santa Ana.

Orange Police Sgt. Barry Weinstein said Lewis was identified by witnesses as the same man who walked into the bank and demanded money from a teller.

“He passed a note to the teller alluding to a handgun,” Weinstein said. “The teller handed money over to him and (the suspect) ran out of the bank.”

Moments after the robbery, a police helicopter spotted the suspect’s car in the parking lot of The City Shopping Center in Orange. Police followed the car onto the southbound Santa Ana Freeway, then onto Grand Avenue.

Bowman drove the car erratically into the parking lot of a Ralphs supermarket in the 1500 block of 17th Street, then drove to the medical complex a few blocks away, Weinstein said.

Lehman, who became a doctor in 1951, was inside his small, fourth-floor office with his 39-year-old daughter, Jackie Lehman, who works as his receptionist, when the suspect barged in.

They said Lewis told them he had shot a friend in the arm during a dispute over some money and that the police were now after him.

“I guess that story sounded better than ‘I just robbed a bank,’ ” Jackie Lehman said. “I kept thinking, ‘My God. Why did he pick our office?’ ”

Dr. Lehman said Lewis asked for a glass of water, then asked for an envelope in which he placed “a large wad of bills.”

“He said he wanted me to give it to his wife,” the doctor said. “He practically begged me. He gave me her name and address.”

When police, using dogs in a floor-to-floor search, discovered Lewis in the doctor’s office, the suspect surrendered peacefully.

Dr. Lehman later turned the envelope over to police. They did not disclose how much money was inside and did not confirm if it was stolen from the bank.

Meanwhile, police detained a Santa Ana couple who authorities initially thought might have been accomplices in the robbery.

The couple, 34-year-old Armenia Guice and 30-year-old Emmanual Foster, were walking in the Ralphs parking lot at the same time the suspects drove through it. The couple said they were angered and humiliated by the experience and are considering legal action against the Orange Police Department.

“They made us look like criminals in front of everyone out there,” a tearful Guice said moments after being released by police. “They told us to hit the ground and pulled their guns on us. I thought, ‘What did I do? I didn’t do anything.’ I thought they were going to take me to jail for something I didn’t do.”

Weinstein said the couple “were basically in the wrong place at the wrong time. We determined they weren’t involved, they were released and our apologies were given. It’s just part of the job. They were not abused in any way. We had no idea who else might have been in the suspect’s car.”

The couple said they tried to explain to police that they had just dropped their car off to be fixed at a garage across the street and were going to the supermarket to cash a paycheck.