COPS AREN'T SUPPOSED TO CARE? THINK AGAIN.

Byline: DENNIS McCARTHY 

The calls started coming in shortly after the paper hit the streets early Friday morning.

Readers responding to the front page story in the Daily News on a hit-and-run incident in Burbank that left a 43-year-old mother dead and a good Samaritan helping her in critical condition.

Responding to a Burbank police lieutenant who reached into his own pocket to buy airline tickets for the dead woman's six kids so they could be with family in Cincinnati during this traumatic time instead of being placed with the Los Angeles County Department of Children's Services, which would have split them up.

Responding to two other Burbank officers who loaded the kids - ages 4 to 17 - in a police van with the family dog and personally drove them to Los Angeles International Airport to catch an American Airlines flight to Cincinnati.

Responding to the airline's decision, after learning of the tragedy, to fly the kids to their mom's sister for free and to reimburse the Burbank cop.

Responding to what one reader, Hugh Dane Lanktree of Hollywood, calls the little known, rarely followed 11th Commandment: Thou shalt help.

It's a commandment that often surprises people when they read about it being followed by anyone in L.A. because we've been so conditioned not to help or get involved.

Step outside and lend a stranger a hand, and you might well wind up in a hospital bed. Worse, wind up a murder statistic.

Agustin Luz Trejo, 28, a house painter by trade, stepped outside his Burbank apartment late Wednesday night when Sharon McPherson banged on his door and said she needed help, that she had run out of gas and her kids were in the car.

He's now in critical condition at Los Angeles County/USC Medical Center after a hit-and-run driver sideswiped McPherson's car as Luz Trejo was pouring gas in the tank.

McPherson was thrown 90 feet and died instantly, as three of her six children watched in horror. Luz Trejo suffered a fractured pelvis and back injuries.

Why this young man stepped outside to help a strange woman in the first place wasn't hard to understand, not if you knew Agustin, his sister-in-law Araceli Vargas told our reporter Anne Burke.

``He wanted to help her because if his wife's car broke down, he would want somebody to do the same thing,'' she said.

We all would, if that was our wife, girlfriend or daughter who needed help.

But it still shocks us, makes us call up a newspaper and want to respond when someone actually does follow the 11th Commandment - and pays for it.

``Here's a guy who never saw this woman before in his life, and he's still willing to come out of his safe apartment late at night to help her,'' said reader Art Todd of Encino.

``It makes me feel that there's still some hope out there,'' he added.

But at what price? asks reader Janet Lumas of Glendale. ``You want to take this young man and hug him, shake his hand and tell him thank you for trying to help,'' she said.

``But you can't. You can't because he's hanging on to life in a hospital room. It's so sad. If anything, I'm afraid it will stop more people from trying to help others.''

And what about Burbank police Lt. Edward Skvarna, who put more than $1,000 in charges on his credit card to fly McPherson's children home to her sister in Cincinnati?

And Officers Teresa Geier and Mark Knight, who took time off to drive the children to the airport to catch a 7:45 a.m. flight?

Cops aren't supposed to care, are they? Cops are supposed to look at the world through hard, skeptical eyes and not let anything they run into out on the streets get to them inside.

Not these cops. ``We needed to keep the kids together and get them back to their family as quickly as possible,'' Skvarna said.

No, they didn't, not really. What happens to the victim's survivors is not a cop's job. There are other agencies that follow up and handle that.

Cops are supposed to conduct crime and accident scene investigations, then go out and catch the bad guys, which the Burbank Police Department did early Thursday morning, arresting two men in the hit-and-run collision.

For six frightened and now motherless kids, though, a few of Burbank's finest went beyond their job descriptions this week. Way beyond.

And when they did, it touched people out there - made them want to respond.

``A police officer doesn't make the kind of money where flying . . . children across the country doesn't hurt financially,'' Lanktree said.

``But it wasn't money on that officer's mind, it was children, and that means something to all of us.''

It means that the 11th Commandment is still alive and kicking in this city, no matter how hard we try to break it.

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Photo

Photo: Agustin Luz Trejo

Injured in hit-and-run