Hero's Reward : Rescue: Gas station bans transient who was washing windshields for spare change even though he doused car flames and helped save officer.

Hero’s Reward : Rescue: Gas station bans transient who was washing windshields for spare change even though he doused car flames and helped save officer.

By JOHN M. GLIONNA

Nov. 8, 1995 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

An act that turned a San Fernando Valley homeless man into an overnight hero has cost him his livelihood.

Less than three days after Mark Burdick pulled an injured Los Angeles police officer from his burning patrol car, the 42-year-old transient has been banned from returning to the Reseda gas station where he washed windshields for spare change.

The station’s owners say they acted after reading news reports that Burdick used the station’s fire extinguisher to douse the flames and then helped pull LAPD Officer Martin Guerrero from his blazing police cruiser. The patrol car crashed after it was broadsided by a car that police estimate had been traveling about 100 m.p.h.

Burdick also helped pull Tammy Danford of Canoga Park from the other car and tried to rescue Guerrero’s partner, Officer Gabriel Perez-Negron, from the police car. Both Danford and Perez-Negron died at the scene.

Police officers at the crash site called Burdick a hero and offered to nominate him for a city award. When the homeless man refused, one pressed a $20 bill into his hand.

On Monday evening, however, as Burdick set up his cleaning equipment at the pump islands at the Mobil gas station at Sherman Way and White Oak Avenue, the former Marine and Vietnam veteran was told by the manager he would have to leave the premises for good.

The gas station owners say they had no idea Burdick washed windows at the business. And--hero or no hero--they say they simply cannot allow loiterers.

“It’s unfortunate that his being a hero made us aware of the situation, but no matter how we became aware, he would have to leave,” said Allen Gimenez, a vice president of Winall Oil, which owns the station.

Burdick, who Tuesday visited the injured Guerrero at Northridge Hospital Medical Center, took the banishment in stride.

“Hey, this is their property. It’s their business,” Burdick said of the decision. “They don’t want freeloaders here.”

But Burdick’s regular customers aren’t taking the news as calmly.

Bob Danford, one of several dozen local residents who have paid Burdick to wash their windshields since the transient set up shop at the station three years ago, was outraged. “So this is what being a hero gets you in this country today,” he said.

Burdick, a sandy-haired, former high-rise construction ironworker who has lived on the street for a decade, is by now used to such cruel turns of fate: Drinking and drugs ruined his former life, he says. The tip of his right index finger was lost in an industrial accident.

As a result, the bulk of Burdick’s livelihood came from washing windshields, for which he sometimes earned $50 a night. Now, even that’s gone.

Since the accident, Burdick’s usually quiet life hasn’t been the same: He has been awakened as early as 6 a.m. by well-wishers and reporters wanting his story. Some people have given him cash, others used clothes.

On Tuesday morning, Burdick’s mother, Ruth, drove him to Northridge Hospital Medical Center to visit Guerrero. “I just told him that I was glad to see him alive,” Burdick said.

Burdick said Guerrero, a police officer for seven years, asked him several questions about the accident. “All he remembers are the very last seconds before the car hit,” Burdick said. “That’s all.”

Burdick’s mother said the officer’s fiancee “walked over and just hugged Mark. Then Officer Guerrero embraced him. It was wonderful. I was so proud of my son at that moment.”