LASD Awards Dispatcher Who's Saved Lives--Twice!

On Monday Last year he helped saved two people from a burning building in Altadena. On Wednesday, he received the Sheriff's Lifesaving Award.

Los Angeles County Sheriff's Dispatcher Richard Engersbach is one of 17 members of the department was honored by Sheriff Lee Baca for heroic actions on Wednesday.

On day shift at Monday, Engersbach received a 911 call from a panicked Sunland mother, whose toward a bustling La Cañada intersection at Sport Chalet Drive and Foothill Boulevard, the sheriff's department reported. The 40-year-old woman sobbed, "There are cars in front of me and I can't stop.''

Engersbach calmly told the woman, whose child sat beside her, to shift the car into neutral and remove the key from the ignition. The car stopped before reaching the street light.

"I was shocked when I first got the call," Engersbach said in a statement prepared by the sheriff's department.

"Knowing that a child was in the car made it that much more urgent that the car be stopped. I remembered that recently we had , and that a deputy had to get in front of that car at a high rate of speed to block and stop it, so while talking to her I was also sending patrol cars to help. I am really glad everyone is OK."

In the morning hours of Aug. 17, 2010, Engersbach and Evidence and Property Custodian Marc Harvey were leaving the Altadena Sheriff's Station when they spotted smoke billowing from a house in the 3000 block of North Lake Avenue. Both men saw the house was fully engulfed, so they entered and woke up the residents, evacuating them from the burning building. The victims were  treated by L.A. County Fire Department personnel for smoke inhalation.