Is This the Best We Can Do for Such Heroes?

It was the early shift, another workday. The factory clattered with the ripping sound of a hundred sewing machines. From the supervisor’s window you could survey the rows of workers, dark heads bowed over bright swatches of fabric, and never know that there were four among them whom this metropolis owes--and owes big.

Two and a half weeks ago those four workers here at Holly Bra of California swimwear in Hollywood chased down a homicidal drifter outside the plant. The early accounts paid scant attention to how the guy had attacked one of the seamstresses with a knife as she had walked from her car that morning. A nice woman, there for years, Maria Luisa Rosales. Everyone knew her, a single mother with a teenage kid.

The slasher was an inordinately small man, a psychotic. Upon his capture, the garment workers would later recall, the tiny gringo tried to lick their co-worker’s blood from his fingertips. Rosales would survive her stab wounds after intensive surgery, but the drifter would confess to murdering a little boy in a public restroom in Oceanside two days before. He told police that, until he was stopped, he had planned to kill and kill and kill.

Well, they stopped him. Not that people found out who “they” were at first. At first, the news was all about the drifter’s confession and the unspeakable pain of the little boy’s family. No one knew, for many days, the story behind the end of the rampage, how Rutilia Lopez, a grandmother whose plans that day had consisted of citizenship class and sewing, had been rushing into work when she saw Rosales struggling and screamed.

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No one knew, at first, how her cries prompted Enrique Lool, a sewing machine operator with two kids, to take off after a deranged man with a 4-inch blade. How Lool, in turn, called to David Lopez, a mild-mannered guy who, to everyone’s amazement, jerked the anti-theft Club device from the steering wheel of his car, tossed it to Lool and ran for help. How the chase was joined then by Fidel Elizarraraz, a studious 42-year-old bachelor with horn-rimmed glasses who had pulled a pair of tailor’s scissors from his pocket and lunged at the fleeing killer, shouting in night-school English, “You no stop, I kill you!” No one knew, at first, how Elizarraraz and Lool finally cornered the guy, pulled his bloody hands from his face and tied him up with Elizarraraz’s black leather belt.

No one knew, and fearing that no one would ever know unless he got busy, their boss, David Young, called the LAPD. Lives had been saved, he noted. Shouldn’t there be some official recognition? Were it not for his employees, this man would still be on the streets.

So a press conference was called, nine days after the capture. There were cameras and, yes, kudos from the police. But as is so often the case in this least intimate of cities, few others understood that anyone--not just people with uniforms or titles--can express gratitude for large favors. The sole financial reward for those minimum-wage workers was $200 from a woman who lives near the plant. Three of the heroes blew their $50 cut on groceries.

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For his trouble, Young, the factory owner, ended up fending off hate calls after a cop’s wisecrack suggested--falsely--that Young almost docked the pay of his longtime employees for attending the press conference he had helped bring about. The workers’ families, meanwhile, couldn’t stop talking about how easily they could have gotten themselves killed. Elizarraraz never did get back his belt.

A city proclamation is in the works, but you can’t help wonder: Is this the best we can do? Not that the workers or Young particularly care--the satisfaction of having risen to a crisis, of finding out what you are made of, truly is its own reward--but what about our end of the deal? What about the satisfaction of seeing the day when Greater L.A. can also display a character to be proud of, the kind of character that rushes to give credit where it’s due? There are two phrases that tell you all you need to know about the adult who can or cannot freely say them. One is “I’m sorry.” The other is “thank you.”

What is it about this vast landscape of adult humanity that we have such a hard time in the aggregate humbling ourselves before that latter phrase? Lives were saved here. Anyone who recalls the Night Stalker can tell you what happens when someone doesn’t stop the rampage.

We fawn over actors who merely impersonate good guys, stage ticker-tape parades for professional athletes whose “heroism” consists of remaining civil while doing their jobs. Small favors get thanks aplenty. So when it comes to owing big, why are we so often struck so shamefully dumb?

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Shawn Hubler’s column runs Mondays and Thursdays. Her e-mail address is shawn.hubler@latimes.com.