11 Honored for Heroic Actions : Courage: Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti thanks each, notes that pursuits all ended in jail time for the criminals.

They were ugly incidents all too common in contemporary Los Angeles--a woman crying out for help during a rape, a drunk driver swerving dangerously across a freeway at 90 m.p.h., and a pair of crooks fleeing a bank they’d just robbed.

But for 11 San Fernando and Santa Clarita valley residents, they were heart-stopping moments in which outrage turned to action. On Tuesday, at a luncheon at the Porter Valley Country Club, Los Angeles Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti lauded them as “truly courageous citizens in our community” for their heroism in the face of emergencies.

Speaking to the Northridge-Chatsworth Rotary Club and the honorees’ families, Garcetti thanked each of them for their actions, noting that each of the pursuits ended in jail time for the criminals.

Roger Sanchez, 40, of Glendale, came to the aid of his disabled neighbor late one night in 1991 after hearing noises from her bedroom window and asking if she was OK, Garcetti told the crowd.

“I’m being raped,” was the woman’s reply.

Sanchez burst through the window and chased the rapist outside, Garcetti said, adding that Sanchez’s description was instrumental in sending the attacker to state prison for 159 years.

“Doesn’t that make you feel good?” Garcetti asked the applauding audience after presenting Sanchez with an ornate certificate. “It does, it does.”

Studio City resident Joseph Gonzalez, 33, was driving north from the Valley on the Golden State Freeway Dec. 20, 1994, when he noticed a car weaving back and forth across traffic lanes. After calling 911 on his cellular phone, he followed the vehicle for 17 miles and helped direct it to the shoulder where he and 24-year-old Brian Larkey of Canyon Country blocked the escape of the driver until police arrived.

“The guy thought he was in Pasadena,” Gonzalez said of the drunk driver, whose blood alcohol level measured three times the legal limit to drive. The man was sentenced to 147 days in jail and five years probation, Garcetti noted.

In April, 19-year-old Devon Conroy of Canyon Country was heading to the beach with several buddies when he decided to stop at a bank for cash, Garcetti said. A couple of robbers had the same idea and were fleeing the scene with sackfuls of money when Conroy pulled up in his mother’s car.

Conroy’s group gave chase along the Golden State Freeway at up to 120 m.p.h. while his pals, Adam Anderson, 17, Adam Fine, 15, and Caleb Willis, 16, took turns calling 911 from a car phone. When a Sheriff’s Department helicopter arrived on the scene the police operator told the group to pull back.

“Since their car was out of gas, it was probably just as well,” Garcetti quipped.

After the ceremony, Conroy said the accolades were “OK” but admitted that he had mixed feelings about the high-speed chase.

“I shouldn’t have put myself and the other boys in the car in danger,” he said.

After posing for pictures with each of Tuesday’s heroes, Garcetti said it was “an innate sense of right and wrong” that distinguished them, a quality that he hoped members of the audience would emulate.

Edward Trirogoff, 28, who foiled a burglary in his Northridge neighborhood in June, agreed.

“If it just makes a difference in one person’s life, it’s worth it.”