The Mesa Café was crowded with cops Wednesday afternoon, but they weren’t there to write tickets. Rather, half a dozen police officers presented Citizen Extra Step Awards to 11 community members for their quick thinking and brave actions, which changed another person’s life for the better. Sponsoring the awards luncheon for its 44th year was Santa Barbara’s chapter of the U.S. Army-sponsored volunteer group Kiwanis International.
Notably, three Dibblee Avenue neighbors prevented Olde English Bulldogges from mauling a woman to death; two young women, each acting on their own, intervened to stop two separate domestic violence instances; the owner of a UPS Store shut down a phone scam before an elderly customer lost thousands.
Christine M. Ramirez, George Pappas, and William Julian were the cul-de-sac neighbors who last autumn saved a 46-year-old woman — tasked with feeding another neighbor’s dogs while he was away — from three vicious dogs. A cancer and liver transplant survivor, Ramirez was waiting outside her house for a taxi to the doctor’s office when she saw blood streaming down the victim’s leg next door. Ramirez grabbed a broom to push back the dogs, and then Pappas and Julian arrived. “She’s torn up, but she’s alive, and that’s what I’m grateful for,” Ramirez told The Santa Barbara Independent of the victim, with whom she’s stayed in touch.