By Brian Rokos
The Press-Enterprise
CORONA, Calif. — A 51-year-old construction worker was on his way to fix a leaky roof in Corona on Oct. 23, when he slowed down his double-cab truck after seeing people in the road.
A man flagged him down and made a request:
“Will you give me a ride?”
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This was no ordinary hitchhiker. This one was wearing a badge and the rest of the uniform of the Corona Police Department. Officers had been running after a man that evening who police said had slipped his phone into a fitting room at Ross Dress for Less on Magnolia Avenue to record a teenage girl who was changing clothes.
A parent had chased the man out of the store, Sgt. Brandon Palaoro said, and the suspect had a head start of several hundred yards on the officers.
That’s when the Good Samaritan answered, “Yeah” to the officer’s request.
The officers were mid-chase — having leaped over several fences and no longer near their police vehicles.
The driver removed a small fan from the passenger’s seat, Sgt. Michael Neff and Cpl. Malessa Gutierrez climbed in, and Neff pointed the way.
“I was getting ready to just give you the truck,” the driver told the officers, according to body-worn camera video posted to the Police Department’s Facebook page. “Where to?”
The officer in the front seat pointed straight ahead.
“It felt like something from a movie,” the driver, who asked to remain anonymous out of fear of retaliation from the suspect, said in an interview on Tuesday, Nov. 3 . “It kind of reminded me of something I saw online about an Uber driver (assisting police). I couldn’t believe this is happening to me, too. I figured if an officer is asking me for a ride, it’s got to be something important.”
The driver was also feeling embarrassed: He had trash in his car from eating lunch inside it.
One of the officers got on his police radio, calmly talking with dispatchers and coordinating the pursuit, the driver said, which lasted a few minutes.
“He was basically pointing the way,” the driver said. “‘Head straight over here.’ All of a sudden, he gets more communications, and he says, ‘Turn right here.’ I turned into one of the industrial parks, and he’s like, ‘That’s him,’ and so I banked left and turned in, and we pulled up right behind him.
“He was unaware, because we were not in a police car,” the good Samaritan recalled. “The officer opened the door, and he very coolly told him to stop running, or he was going to use his Taser.”
The suspect went to the ground, and Gutierrez pulls out the pink handcuffs she had been using during Breast Cancer Awareness Month in October.
The driver walked up to the officers, and one said, “You the man, dude.”
The driver said he called his wife and his parents.
“It was exciting,” he said. “If anything, it made me think this is an exciting job, but at the same time, I’m also thinking this is something they are doing every day.
“It opens your eyes to appreciate what law enforcement does day in and day out. They are trying to make the world a safer place.”
The driver said he is now considering volunteering with the department.
Palaoro said the officers appreciated the assistance and that the department plans to honor the driver.
“In the middle of a foot pursuit, this guy pulls up, sees what’s going on, and basically says, ‘Get in,’ ” Palaoro said.
“It wasn’t something they (the officers) planned for, but in that moment it made sense, and it helped them close the distance safely. It’s not something that happens every day, and they appreciated him stepping up like that.”
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