JUSTICE WATCH : This is a Reward?

We’re willing to concede two points. First, being a hero these days isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. For instance, it requires too much work, like being shot down over a war zone in Bosnia and having to survive off tree bark and bugs for about a week. Second, heroic acts offer no guarantees of success. Consider the Pacoima activist who decided to take on vandals in his neighborhood. They promptly plastered his home with graffiti.

Having conceded those points, however, we have to put our collective foot down. Being a hero in America is not supposed to wreck your work. Yet that has happened to a homeless Vietnam vet named Mark Burdick, who spent his time washing automobile windows for coins at a gas station in Reseda.

Earlier this week, when a motorist driving about 100 m.p.h. broadsided an LAPD patrol car, Burdick turned a fire extinguisher onto the wreckage and rescued an officer from the burning patrol car. Burdick then tried, unsuccessfully, to rescue the officer’s partner and the other motorist. Both perished.

For his bravery, Burdick has been kicked out of the service station, at Sherman Way and White Oak avenues. Seems the operators heard about his heroism and thought his “loitering” was far more significant--and unacceptable.

Well-wishers have offered to help Burdick. But if the gas station doesn’t want to receive the inaugural Snidely Whiplash Villain of the Week award, at least it ought to help Burdick find another place to work.