Money Raised for Slain Officer’s Family Stolen From Car : Crime: About $6,500 from a dinner-dance is taken during a brief stop at a county parking garage Downtown.

A car thief made off with about $6,500 that had just been donated to the family of slain Los Angeles County Safety Police Officer Thomas B. Worley, authorities said Tuesday.

The money, raised at a dinner-dance on Friday, was in a briefcase belonging to Clifton Williams, president of the 400-member Safety Police Assn., who had stopped at the Downtown county Hall of Administration on Saturday to run an errand. Although the building was closed, authorized personnel were permitted to park there.

Fifteen minutes later, Williams came back to his car in the lot under the building to find a window shattered and the briefcase gone.

“It kind of sets us back, and it hurts,” Williams said Tuesday.

Worley, 33, was shot Dec. 21 in a gunfight in the crowded parking lot of a Canoga Park strip mall after confronting Jesus Valenzuela, 44, who witnesses said had just held up a discount shoe store in the mall.

After Worley identified himself as a police officer, investigators said, Valenzuela shot at him. Worley returned fire.

Worley, who was off-duty and not wearing a bulletproof vest, was shot in the chest and groin and died about 90 minutes later. Valenzuela, an ex-convict with three prior robbery convictions, was hit in the liver and died within an hour from internal bleeding.

Friends and family held the dinner-dance to raise funds for Worley’s wife, Pam, 29, and two children, Christina, 6, and Matthew, 2, Williams said.

The event netted $3,600 in savings bonds, about $2,000 in checks and at least $900 cash, Williams said. The cash estimate, he said, was low because “a lot of those envelopes hadn’t even been opened yet.”

Officers have no leads in the theft, LAPD Detective Connie Gordon said. Police know only that the thief--or thieves--used the porcelain chip from a spark plug to shatter the window because the chip was found inside the car, Gordon said.

The spark plug chip is an increasingly popular tool for car thieves because it will fracture a window but make little noise and often not even disturb a car alarm, the detective said.

Services for Worley will be held Thursday morning at First United Methodist Church of Santa Monica. Burial will follow at Oakwood Memorial Park in Chatsworth.