Courage in Face of Crime Honored

Duane Miller was lounging in front of his television set one warm evening last August when he heard the screams.

He darted outside his Hawthorne home and saw a man assaulting a young woman in a nearby driveway.

“ ‘Help! He’s trying to rape me!’ the victim pleaded,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. Alyson Messenger, as she gave a play-by-play of the incident during a ceremony Wednesday honoring Miller, 36, and two other Los Angeles-area residents for courageous acts that put criminals behind bars.

“Duane did not hesitate,” Messenger continued. “He yelled that he was calling the police.... It was enough to distract the man, just for a moment, which was all our victim needed to slip away from him.”

Sixty or so members of the Rotary Club of Westchester, which sponsored the “D.A.’s Courageous Citizens” ceremony at a hotel near Los Angeles International Airport, hung on the prosecutor’s words like children at story time.

They laughed and cheered as another prosecutor described how Olivia Nims, 45, of Inglewood chased down a hit-and-run driver who had injured an 8-year-old pedestrian.

“Even as the woman swung and fought and scratched our honoree, Olivia managed to drag her all the way back to the scene of the crime,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. Linda Rosborough.

It wasn’t the first time Nims had gone out of her way to help a stranger, Rosborough said.

Six years ago, Nims was shot by gang members who did not want her to testify about a murder she had witnessed.

Nims eventually testified. The mother of four has long scars across her chest and belly that remind her of the sacrifice she made.

Asked what made her intervene in these situations, she replied: “Somebody might have to help me or one of my kids one day.”

Salvador Cortez, a custodian in the Pasadena Unified School District, held his 2-year-old daughter, Lexus, in his arms as a prosecutor commended him for two acts of bravery.

As Cortez, 37, and his family were driving home from a school event in October, he saw a man snatch an elderly woman’s purse. With the help of two passersby, Cortez wrestled the thief to the ground and returned the purse to the victim.

Two years ago, Cortez helped Pasadena police arrest a man he saw running from the scene of a shooting.

Cortez discreetly followed the gunman on his bicycle long enough to see his face, and later helped prosecutors convict the shooter, who was eventually sentenced to 39 years in prison for three attempted murders.

Although prosecutors held up Miller, Nims and Cortez as heroes, they also cautioned that citizens should first call police if they witness a crime.

“These people are very courageous, more courageous than the rest of us in society, probably, in the face of such great danger,” Chief Deputy Dist. Atty. Curt Livesay said after the luncheon. “But we’d much rather have live witnesses than seriously injured or dead heroes.”

Miller agreed that he put himself in danger when he confronted the would-be rapist. “But my first instinct was to help” the victim, he said.