D. A. Honors 6 for Courageous Actions in Helping Others

A slender mother of two from Mojave was honored as a hero Monday for chasing down a purse snatcher and his accomplice in October and, with a little help from her mother, stalling them until the law arrived.

Tina Morley, 28, was one of six people who received Courageous Citizen awards from Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner at a luncheon in Lancaster on Monday.

Morley was riding in a car driven by her mother in Lancaster on Oct. 3 when she saw a man grab a purse from an 85-year-old woman who was sitting at a bus bench on Avenue I. The man then began striding toward a companion of his who was seated behind the wheel of a nearby car on 10th Street West.

Morley yelled at her mother to stop the car, jumped out and began chasing the man, screaming obscenities.

She caught up to him just after he got into the passenger side of his companion’s auto. Morley kept yelling and began pounding on the passenger window. She stood in front of the car and pounded on the hood. The man threw the purse out.

Morley’s mother, Evelyn Hemmah, then drove up and parked in front of the thieves’ car. For reasons authorities could not explain Monday, the two men did not flee, even though there was nothing behind their car to prevent them from backing up and driving away.

“I think he thought I was a crazy blonde woman,” Morley said.

Within a minute, she said, sheriff’s deputies arrived to arrest the pair.

Morley, an energetic woman who works as a horse trainer, said the elderly woman had tears in her eyes when she got the purse back with her $481 Social Security check still inside.

“Scumbags like that picking on an 85-year-old woman, that really infuriated me,” Morley said.

“Tina could have ignored this robbery,” Reiner said. “She could have driven away as if nothing happened. But she made the decision to get involved.”

The two men were convicted and sentenced to prison. Their identities, however, were not available from the district attorney’s office Monday.

Reiner has been presenting the awards for six years. His office usually holds five or six events a year honoring a total of about 70 people. Monday’s was the first in the Antelope Valley, although residents of the area had been honored in events elsewhere in the past, Reiner aides said.

Other award recipients were:

* Robert R. Jones, 27, of Pacoima. On Aug. 25 in the parking lot of a Sherman Oaks restaurant, Jones shouted to help break up the robbery and beating of a man by three gang members, one with a pistol. Jones also chased them and gave police information that led to their arrest and convictions.

* Robby D. Hartley, 36, of Lancaster and Morrison E. MacKay, 52, of Rosamond. They were eating in a Lancaster restaurant April 6, 1990, when it was robbed by a man. They gave chase, catching the driver of a getaway car and giving information that led to the robber’s arrest. Both men were convicted.

* William G. Daley of Lancaster and Joe T. Graziano of Canyon Country. On Jan. 1, the two men pulled a drunken, belligerent man out of a crumpled car that had begun burning after hitting two utility poles in Lancaster.