Where I Stand — Mike O’Callaghan: It happened 10 years ago

Thursday, May 2, 2002 | 8:46 a.m.

TEN YEARS AFTER THE RIOTS in Los Angeles and Las Vegas we hear some people putting a positive spin on what happened. This is thinly sliced baloney coming from people with poor memories or with a propensity to justify murder and destruction because it was in response to an injustice.

This happened during the administration of George Bush, the father of our present president. His White House spokesman, Marlin Fritzwater, immediately blamed the social programs of both President John F. Kennedy and President Lyndon B. Johnson. He held a most interesting press conference that eventually had the Republicans taking credit for Head Start. This must have resulted in both Kennedy and Johnson turning over in their graves.

Some Nevada Democrats didn't do any better when speakers at their state convention blamed the Republicans for the riots in Las Vegas and Los Angeles. Obviously they had forgotten about Rodney King and large numbers of looters who used his cause as an excuse to destroy the lives and businesses of other citizens. In Los Angeles, 54 people died and 3,000 businesses were looted or burned.

Here at home at least one West Las Vegas leader blamed the police and firemen for allowing the Nucleus Plaza to burn. A shop owner told reporters that he was "more angry at the police than anybody." Well, this may have sounded good to some people but it wasn't the police who tried to kill Sun reporter David Clayton and photographer Marsh Starks. They returned to the newspaper with Starks' smashed car and Clayton covered with his own blood.

There were many heroes among responsible local residents, police and firemen. They responded well to a violent situation that was triggered by what happened in the streets and a jury room 300 miles away. The outstanding hero, in my mind, was truck driver Bobby Green who saved the life of truck driver Reginald O. Denny. Green was angry about the jury ruling in favor of the King beaters and the light sentence given to the woman grocer who killed 15-year-old Latasha Harlins. His anger didn't keep him from going into an extremely dangerous situation to save the life of a stranger. I watched his heroism on television and was proud to know that Green is a fellow American.

Recently he was interviewed by Los Angeles Times reporter Stephanie Chavez. Chavez writes, "Bobby Green is sitting on his couch in suburban Rialto, talking about the night 10 years ago that he saved a man's life, a moment that made him a hero to most and a traitor to others.

"Back then, in the first hours of the Los Angeles riots, Green was sitting on another couch, this one in South-Central Los Angeles. He was watching a black man on live TV smash a brick, then another brick, into the head of a white truck driver, who lay writhing on the pavement. It was happening about half a mile away.

"The second brick did it.

" 'That is enough,' Green decided. He jumped off the couch and rushed out the door. It didn't matter that he was black, or that he, like virtually everyone else in the neighborhood, was mad as hell after that day's not-guilty verdicts for LAPD officers in the Rodney King beating trial. He raced to the scene and helped rescue Reginald O. Denny from a mob of rioters."

Chavez goes on to write: "At the time of the riots, Bobby Green was a trucker himself, 29, scraping out a living working part-time. Now he's the father of five, a man of commanding stature, muscular arms and few words -- a man who says he must remember, must embrace those three hours in his past. They mean so much to his future.

" 'I can tell my kids that color is on the outside, not the inside,' he says. 'To me, I turned justice around and showed them that all black people ain't the same as you think.'

" 'I know I am different from the rest of the people' (who rioted). 'I saved another man's life because to me, he was another human being who needed my help.' "

Bobby Green showed millions of Americans that the color of a person's skin isn't what counts. When all is said and done, what really matters is the heart and soul of an individual. Good people come in all sizes, shapes and colors. For this, truck driver Denny can be most thankful.