THE YEAR IN REVIEW 1995 : ANGELS OF THE CITY : Richard Bautista, Terry Gray, the Bruins Basketball Team, Bill Crowfoot, Rosa Varela, LAPD Heroes, Burt Margolin, Hideo Nomo and All the Rest--Wear Your Halos With Pride.

- Bill Crowfoot, the Pasadena city councilman who gave up a lucrative corporate law practice to become a teacher in a run-down high school.

- L.A. Police Academy instructor Mike Grasso, who, haunted by an inability to save a drowning teenager two years ago, dove into the swift Pacoima Wash to rescue a 7-year-old boy and a 20-year-old man who had been swept away. The act nearly cost him his own life, but when they were all finally pulled out, Grasso’s first question was, “How’s the boy?”

- Terry Gray, the Vietnam veteran who single-handedly restored a run-down, overgrown golf course for fellow vets on the grounds of the West Los Angeles Veterans Administration Medical Center and, in the process, found salvation himself.

- Cindy Hartman, the Taiwan-born restaurateur who turned her Chinese restaurant into a headquarters for her sideline: playing cupid to her customers. So far, the Burbank matchmaker has been responsible for two dozen marriages.

- Yvonne Chan, principal of the Vaughn Street 21st Century Learning Center in Pacoima who bucked the bureaucracy of the Los Angeles Unified School District and came up with an innovative way to add 37 days to the school year for her students.

- Dr. Steven Hoefflin, KNBC medical reporter Bruce Hensel and Hollywood madam Heidi Fleiss, who saved the life of a suicidal man who had handcuffed himself and jumped off the Santa Monica pier.

- “Jena,” the anonymous Thai sweatshop worker who authorities said escaped from near-slavery conditions in an El Monte sewing factory and risked deportation and physical danger to report the situation. Three months later, a strike force of state and federal workers raided the factory--an apartment house strung with barbed wire--and found scores of the woman’s co-workers, some of whom had been toiling there for years.

- The 7,500 Los Angeles County volunteers for Coastal Cleanup Day, who hit the beaches for a one-day cleanup effort in September that cleared nearly 66,500 pounds of trash and recyclables from the county’s shore.

- Silver Lake filmmaker Allison Anders, Pasadena science fiction writer Octavia Butler and UCLA music professor Susan McClary, each for winning an eclectic “genius grant” from the MacArthur Foundation.

- The Cal State Fullerton baseball team, which opened the season with instructions from its coach to just have fun and ended it by winning the national collegiate baseball championship.

- Dick Chapleau, the Lancaster High School science teacher who pulled himself out of depression to become so good at his profession that he earned a national Milken Foundation teaching award and was named California Teacher of the Year.

- The Club Pro-Estanzuelas de Los Angeles, a group of Salvadoran immigrants living in L.A. which raised $6,000 this year to buy an ambulance and ship it to Estanzuelos, their impoverished hometown.

- Garden Grove Police Officer James Colegrove, who made a U-turn in rush-hour traffic one evening on Orange County’s Harbor Boulevard to rescue a 23-month-old toddler who was wandering in the fast lane.

- Bruce Karatz, the home construction executive and chairman of the Mayor’s Alliance for a Safer L.A., for his leadership in raising more than $15 million in private donations to install a new computer system at the Los Angeles Police Department. The contribution not only saved thousands of man-hours but also linked all the department’s substations for the first time.

- Pamela Leavitt, the Northridge podiatrist who staged a summer-long drive to collect hundreds of pairs of shoes for needy Los Angeles residents.

- Benito Medrano and his friend Nelson Ruano of Canoga Park, who risked their lives to pull a stranger from a burning van moments before it exploded--a feat Medrano later described as “a reaction most people would have, I guess.”

- Maria Elena Tostado, principal of East L.A.’s Garfield High School, who has quietly lured 33 graduates back to their barrio--this time as teachers at their old high school.

- The UCLA Bruins basketball team, which brought home the university’s first NCAA hoop championship since 1975.

* LAPD Medal of Valor Officers Kimberly Watson and Jeffrey Alley, who broke up an armed robbery and dodged bullets to make the arrests; Raymond Mendoza and Gerald Ballesteros, who were ambushed by gangbangers; Angelito Angeles and Henry Izzo, who rescued quake victims trapped in the collapsed Northridge Meadows apartments; Darnell Davenport and Jean Salvodon, who survived a gun battle during a chase in the Wilshire District; Edward Broussard and Adam Milecki, who risked their lives to save people in a burning apartment complex; Hong Kim and Donald Lint, who rescued numerous people from quake-related fires; Francisco Caingcoy and John Sandling, who rescued motorists from burning vehicles after a traffic accident; Darcie Kolar and reserve Officer Michael Petrusis, who were injured when a drunk driver rammed their squad car, but still rescued the man when his own car caught fire, and Detective Thomas Carr, who, while on his honeymoon, rescued people from a burning building after a gas explosion.

- Burt Margolin, the respected ex-assemblyman who stepped into Los Angeles County’s public health care crisis and helped negotiate a critical $364-million federal bailout.

- Hideo Nomo, the Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher who captured the imagination and admiration of thousands of post-strike baseball fans who had feared they might never be able to love the sport again.

- LAPD dispatcher Margaret Peters and L.A. City firefighter Matthew Johnson, whose calm in moments of crisis earned them outstanding performance awards from the state Public-Safety Radio Assn. Peters, a former airline reservations clerk, was lauded for her compassion in handling a 3:30 a.m. call from a San Fernando Valley woman whose boyfriend was holding a handgun to her head. Johnson talked a frantic Granada Hills mother through the basics of CPR to start her child’s heart after the little girl fell into a swimming pool.

- William J. Popejoy, the former savings and loan administrator who--for no pay--came out of retirement to help lead Orange County out of bankruptcy. After making a series of excruciatingly tough calls (including the layoff of 1,040 workers) and incurring the wrath of voters for endorsing a failed hike in the sales tax, the volunteer chief executive finally threw in the towel, saying his elected bosses were interfering with his authority.

- Don Purseley Jr., Manuel Delgado and Steve Maisner, who rescued a drowning San Pedro woman and her 8-year-old daughter last January when they were swept up in a flood caused by torrential rains.

- Scott Rosenfeld, the Canoga Park emergency worker who was named national Paramedic of the Year after risking his life to pull a suicidal woman from the fourth-story ledge of a hospital parking garage.

- F. Sherwood Rowland and Frederick Rienes, whose scientific research into CFCs and the neutrino, respectively, made them UC Irvine’s first Nobel laureates; Edward B. Lewis, whose scientific research into the way genes control early organ development made him Caltech’s 23rd Nobel winner.

- Ronnie Shapiro, proprietor of the M. Shaprio Co. garment factory in West Los Angeles, who could easily produce his goods at local or Third World sweatshops but has chosen instead to be one of the few in his industry to pay his workers union wages.

- Rosa Varela, the Monterey Park mother of four whose dedication to her children in the face of terminal illness and mounting debt inspired an outpouring of community support.

- Richard Bautista, the 12-year old Dodger fan from Whittier who was nearly killed by the random gunfire of a freeway sniper and whose grit and optimism, even in his hospital bed, have been an inspiration.