Awards Ceremony Honors Local Heroes

Don’t tell Larry Heinlein being late for work is a bad thing. In June of last year, the 35-year-old mechanical engineer saved the life of a woman having an allergic reaction to penicillin, all because he was late for work.

On Saturday, Heinlein and 13 other civilians and peace officers were honored for their heroic efforts by the Peace Officers Assn. of Ventura County. The 24th annual Medal of Valor awards ceremony took place at the Radisson Suite Hotel in Oxnard.

Heinlein, a single father from Ventura, was on his way to work at Astro Aerospace in Carpinteria when he passed a white Ford Explorer that had run into a barbed wire fence on the shoulder of northbound U.S. 101, about three miles north of Ventura.

As he passed the car, Heinlein said he noticed the driver slumped over the steering wheel.

“I guess it was my subconscious that told me that this lady was in trouble,” Heinlein said. “My first thought was to go by, but I couldn’t ignore the voice in the back of my head. That’s when I turned around and got her.”

The driver, 61-year-old Dolores Fernandez of Ventura, was heading to Santa Barbara for a dental appointment and apparently suffered an allergic reaction to penicillin.

When Heinlein found Fernandez, she was gasping for air.

“After looking at her and asking her some questions, I realized she was in a lot of distress,” Heinlein said. “Time was running out for her, and I decided to lift her from her seat into the passenger seat of her Explorer.”

He drove back to Ventura and took Fernandez to the emergency room at Community Memorial Hospital. About 20 minutes later, a nurse gave him the good news.

Heinlein said he has become friends with Fernandez and her husband, Alfred. “I really enjoy their company,” he said.

And as it turns out, they shared something even before Heinlein saved Dolores’ life--his 10-year-old son, Drew, goes to school with the Fernandezes’ grandchildren.

A posthumous Distinguished Service Medal was presented in honor of 26-year-old county Sheriff’s Deputy Peter John Aguirre Jr., who was shot to death while investigating a domestic dispute in Meiners Oaks on July 17.

Aguirre’s partner, Deputy Jim Fryoff, was presented with the Medal of Valor.

A Medal of Valor was also presented to Senior Deputy Glen Sander, who helped rescue a woman Sept. 9 from the second floor of her burning house on Dara Street in Camarillo. Senior Deputy Bret Cox received a Medal of Merit for his efforts in that rescue.

Thousand Oaks resident Vahid Baha, 22, received the Distinguished Service Medal for helping Cox and Sander with the rescue of Victoria Stellman from her second-floor bedroom.

The Medal of Merit also was presented to Officers Daniel Morgan, Michael Federico and Romeo Alvarez of the Port Hueneme Police Department, and Officer Huberto Jiminez of the Oxnard Police Department for their role in evacuating two elderly residents during a fire on Bard Road in Port Hueneme.

Zeke Jaquez, Jeffrey Logan and Les Schellhous were presented with certificates of commendation for their actions after a traffic accident on the Ventura Freeway on Nov. 22 in which a mother of two was killed near Del Norte Road in Oxnard. The drunken driver suspected of causing the crash was later killed when he tried to flee the scene by running across the freeway and was struck by a pickup truck.

Jaquez, an off-duty public safety officer at Cal Lutheran University, was first on the scene. He and the other two men, who are stationed at the Construction Battalion Center at Port Hueneme, tried to subdue the man before he broke free.

The Unit Citation Award was presented to the Ventura County Criminal Justice Training Academy.