‘All I Did Was Pull a Cop From His Car’ : Rescuer: Homeless man carries survivor to safety. Police praise reluctant hero’s actions.

Tucked inside his bedroll hidden behind a back-street dumpster, a weak morning sunlight making his blue eyes squint, Mark Burdick is a reluctant hero.

But Los Angeles police describe the 42-year-old transient as a quick-thinking, on-the-spot lifesaver who pulled an injured officer from his burning patrol car following a deadly collision at a fog-shrouded intersection early Saturday.

Witnessing the crash at the Mobil station at Sherman Way and White Oak Avenue, where he washes car windshields for spare change, Burdick became a barking drill sergeant: In the 2:35 a.m. darkness, he rushed to the grisly scene and cajoled stunned onlookers to help him right the toppled police car.

Then, using the station’s fire extinguisher to douse the flames licking the black-and-white cruiser, he made a desperate search for survivors, pulling both injured Officer Martin Guerrero and the female driver of a demolished Acura Integra from the wreckage.

In the frantic moments before authorities arrived, Burdick tried repeatedly to pull rookie Officer Gabriel Perez-Negron from the twisted metal and shattered glass. But both Perez-Negron and the female driver were dead at the scene.

Officers at the scene talked of giving Burdick a hero’s medal. But the former Marine and Vietnam veteran wants nothing of it. Already, he feels like a man who has seen too much.

“I don’t want to be a hero,” Burdick said tersely, closing the dumpster lid that serves as a roof to his makeshift home. “Officers kept thanking me and I don’t know why. All I did was pull a cop from his car before he burned to death. Anyone in my situation would have done what I did.”

*

Dennis Zine disagrees. When the treasurer of the Police Protective League heard of Burdick’s refusal to be officially recognized in any City Hall ceremony, he quietly slipped the transient a $20 bill. And Zine wants to do more.

“He came to the aid of a police officer in distress,” he said. “Many people in the same situation turn their backs--they don’t want to get involved. But this man got involved. And we think that’s significant.”

Actually, Burdick said his first reaction was not to help at all--but to run. From his perch at the station’s curb, he watched the speeding Integra broadside the police car with the abandon of a “bullet hitting its target,” causing the cruiser to tumble like a child’s discarded toy.

In the eerie silence that immediately followed the crash, Burdick thought he saw someone moving inside the police car. Then he spotted the flames and remembered the huge gas tanks lurking beneath the Mobil station. And he panicked.

“An explosion could have blown that whole corner to smithereens,” said the former sheet-metal worker, who has been on the street more than a decade. “But I’ve run from problems too much in my life. I just decided not to run this time.”

*

The station’s attendant slid a telephone receiver beneath the bulletproof glass and Burdick rattled off the address to a 911 operator. Then he grabbed a fire extinguisher.

After dousing the flames, he consoled the groaning Guerrero before carrying him to safety. “I told him, ‘We’re going to get you out of here, man. Just hang on.’ ”

Then, as the Integra burst into flames, Burdick realized the extinguisher was empty. He pulled the woman’s body from the fire and ran back to help Perez-Negron. “But he was already gone,” he said. “There’s was nothing I could do.

“It was like some fantastic Hollywood crash scene,” said the Reseda native, scratching his head, “except it was for real, all of it was real.”

When authorities arrived, Burdick slipped into the background. He crawled behind the trash bin, trying to put the nightmare behind him. Now he just wants to return to his life of washing windshields at the station, where he can earn $30 or more a night.

And as a transient with previous run-ins with the police, he doesn’t expect any special favors. “I told those cops, ‘I don’t even like policemen,’ ” Burdick said.

“But I’m not just going to stand there and watch somebody die. No way I’m going to do that.”