2002 LOCAL NEWS: AMBER ALERT SAVES GIRLS HUNT FOR KIDNAPPER FIRST USE OF SYSTEM.

Byline: Charles F. Bostwick Staff Writer

LANCASTER - Six days after surviving a gunbattle between their drunken ex-convict abductor and two sheriff's deputies, Tamara Brooks and Jacqueline Marris looked out over hundreds of cheering friends and relatives packed into a youth center.

``I love you all,'' 16-year-old Tamara told the jubilant crowd.

Jacqueline, 17, sang a cappella to the crowd a song she had sung softly to Tamara as they lay bound in their abductor's stolen sport utility vehicle.

``I have been blessed with more than I deserve ... to be here with the ones that love me,'' Jacqueline sang.

The girls' rescue 12 hours after their kidnapping from a Quartz Hill teen hangout marked California's first use of the AMBER Alert system.

AMBER stands for America's Missing Broadcasting Emergency Response and is named for Amber Hagerman, a 9-year-old girl kidnapped and killed in Texas in 1996. The system makes use of the eyes and telephones of California's millions of inhabitants in hunts for abducted youngsters.

The Antelope Valley teens' rescue gave the new system a triumphant initial effort after a string of heartbreaking abductions in California and elsewhere, including the kidnapping and murder of 5-year-old Samantha Runnion a month earlier in Orange County.

Since that first alert, 15 statewide AMBER Alerts have been put out for 20 missing children.

``All of them were either rescued or found safe,'' said California Highway Patrol spokesman Steve Kohler, whose agency issues the alerts from its communications center.

On Aug. 1, a thousand freeway signs and repeated radio and television broadcasts gave Southern Californians the description and license number of the white Ford Bronco in which the girls had been abducted.

Glitches in the communication system caused some radio broadcasts to go silent when the alert was sent out. But independent of the AMBER system, reporters and camera crews flocked to Quartz Hill to the report on the abductions.

Reports of sightings of the Bronco came in during the day, and hundreds of law enforcement officers in patrol cars and aircraft checked them out - without finding it.

Finally, Caltrans worker Milton Waters, working on a job south of Ridgecrest, spotted the Bronco. Then Kern County animal control officer Bonnie Hernandez saw the Bronco turning off Highway 178 near Lake Isabella onto a dirt road.

She radioed sheriff's deputies. A helicopter crew spotted the SUV and directed deputies to it. Cornered, the SUV stuck in a gully, ex-convict Roy Ratliff pulled out a gun and opened fire.

As deputies James Stratton and Larry Thatcher fired 17 shots, one of which pierced Ratliff's cheek and killed him, the girls popped up from the back seat, screaming. Both had been unharmed by the gunfire.

``I believe those two deputies were awesome,'' Kern County Sheriff Carl Sparks said.