Officer Killed by Robber Hailed for His Courage : Violence: Relatives say Thomas Worley was acting in character when he confronted a gunman at a Canoga Park shoe store.

Pam Worley was in line to pay at the register of the Payless ShoeSource in Canoga Park when ex-convict Jesus Valenzuela burst into the discount store with a handgun.

As the clerks emptied out the register, she crawled out on her hands and knees to her husband, off-duty Los Angeles County Safety Police Officer Thomas Worley, who was in the crowded parking lot of the strip mall.

She told her husband the store was being robbed. He grabbed his badge. After confronting Valenzuela, the two men exchanged gunfire.

Ninety minutes later, both were dead.

Those who knew Thomas Worley said Thursday that he believed police work was more of a calling than a profession and that he had been acting in character.

“That’s the way he wanted to go, if he was going to go,” said one family member, Jeff Smolek. “He did just what any officer would do.”

Worley, 33, was the 11th peace officer to be gunned down in the last year and a half in Southern California. And as police, family and friends grappled with the shock of Wednesday’s events, there was widespread praise for Worley’s courage and valor.

Worley, according to family and friends, was living a dream. He had always wanted to be a police officer.

After graduating from Agoura High School, he spent seven years as a police officer in the Air Force, rising to the rank of staff sergeant. When he got out, he worked as a private security guard.

In June, 1993, he was accepted into the Safety Police, the sworn officers who provide armed security for county facilities, including 59 hospitals and clinics.

On his application form, according to one law enforcement official, Worley wrote: “I like helping people and I don’t like when innocent or defenseless people are victimized. I feel drawn to law enforcement because of this. I also believe in ‘callings.’ A calling to religious service or medicine. I feel a ‘call’ to law enforcement.”

In February, Worley graduated from the Rio Hondo Police Academy in Whittier. He was assigned to Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center, where he worked the evening shift.

As evening fell Wednesday, Worley picked his wife up from work. To prepare for a full night of Christmas shopping, Pam Worley asked him to stop at Payless so she could buy a pair of comfortable shoes.

“I can’t believe it,” Pam Worley, 29, and the mother of two children, ages 6 and 2, said Thursday at her mother’s Canoga Park apartment. “Just to get a pair of shoes, just to wear for a couple of hours.”

As Pam Worley waited in line about 6:15 p.m. at the cash register, a clerk bent down to pick something up from beneath the counter. It was then that the suspect, Valenzuela, 44, of Canoga Park, walked up and pointed a gun.

Pam Worley said she ducked down on all fours and crawled outside to her husband, who was in the parking lot. “I whispered to him that there was a man with a gun,” she said.

*

Thomas Worley was carrying his gun, a 9-millimeter Beretta, but dashed to their car to grab his badge, she said.

She heard her husband identify himself as an officer. Then the shooting began.

Valenzuela fired three shots from his .38-caliber Smith & Wesson revolver, police said. “One of the rounds struck the badge in Tom’s hand,” said Clifton Williams, president of the 400-member Los Angeles County Safety Police Assn.

Another hit Worley in the chest. A third hit his groin.

“However, Tom had the presence of mind to return fire,” Williams said, hitting Valenzuela in the chest and in the stomach.

Worley was not wearing a bulletproof vest. A firefighter performed CPR at the scene and Worley was taken to a medical center less than a block away, where he was pronounced dead, said Daryl Meeks, assistant chief of the Safety Police. Valenzuela did not initially appear to be badly hurt, but a bullet had pierced his liver and he died of internal bleeding half an hour before Worley.

Valenzuela, who would have turned 45 on Christmas Day, had three robbery convictions and was a veteran of state prison, according to officials at the state Department of Corrections.

Funeral arrangements for Worley were pending Thursday. Police announced the creation of a fund for the two children. Tax-deductible donations may be sent to: LAC+USC Foundation, Thomas Worley Fund, 1200 N. State St., Room 1112, Los Angeles, 90033.

Times staff writers Chip Johnson and Jeannette Regalado contributed to this story.