Monday, March 17, 1997 | 11:59 a.m.
ANDY PATZER AND Ed Serrano were still waiting for the coffee to kick in when they saw the column of smoke.
Just a few minutes out of Metro's northwest substation on Jones Boulevard, the two officers went to check it out.
What they found at 7:27 a.m. on Feb. 26 was an apartment in flames at 1702 N. Decatur Blvd. About 10 neighbors were standing outside. Smoke was billowing from a broken window.
Patzer, 27, and Serrano, 32, jumped the fence and asked if anyone was inside. Nobody knew -- but an older man lived there.
Patzer ran to the door and yelled inside. No answer. He could see the fire along the wall to his right, but not much else.
So Patzer and Serrano went in.
"I'd never been in a burning building before, so I didn't know what to expect," says Patzer, a Las Vegas native and 5 1/2-year Metro veteran. "I just knew it wouldn't be pleasant."
He was right.
The flames crackled along the wall, the heat blasted them in the face, and they were quickly engulfed in thick, black smoke.
"We made it back to a hallway by the bedrooms," Patzer says, "But it was too smoky. We couldn't see anything. It was too hot and too hard to breathe, so we ran back out."
Patzer found a fire extinguisher on the patio and ran back in, but the cylinder was empty. He retreated for a second time.
A maintenance man brought another extinguisher and Serrano pulled a small one from their car. The officers ran back in and emptied the extinguishers in seconds, dousing most of the flames.
They looked around quickly.
"The heat had damaged the kitchen. It had melted just about anything in there," says Serrano. "It was intensely hot. We ran out and got some air again."
Both officers were coughing and gasping. But while the flames were mostly out, they knew the dense smoke would kill anyone left in there long.
"The thought of someone being inside -- I couldn't stand that," says Patzer. "That was more important than my fear of going in. We couldn't just let someone die in there."
So while Serrano tried to stop coughing, Patzer went back in -- for the fourth time.
This time he made it back into the bedrooms: empty. On his way out, Patzer thought he heard a low moan, but couldn't be sure.
After filling his lungs again with fresh air, he went in for the fifth time, entering the kitchen, where he found 74-year-old Don Bresnahan, unconscious, badly burned and slumped against a wall.
Patzer yelled to his partner, who came in with the maintenance man and helped pull Bresnahan out onto the lawn just as the fire department arrived.
Police records show the whole ordeal lasted four minutes, but to the officers it felt "like an eternity."
Patzer, a former emergency medical technician, and Serrano helped the paramedics treat Bresnahan, took some oxygen themselves and were ready to go back to work.
Their sergeant, however, insisted they go to the hospital, where they were pronounced healthy.
Bresnahan was not so lucky. The former writer for ABC had third-degree burns over 80 percent of his body. He died two days later.
* It hasn't been particularly easy to be a Metro officer lately.
From an alleged drive-by slaying to shoplifting a videotape, from forging personnel documents to losing a kilo of cocaine, from a public fistfight to allegedly coercing sex from a prostitute, Metro officers have made a lot of the wrong kind of headlines in the last nine months.
The steady drumbeat of negative stories has taken its toll on Metro officers and brass. Some officers say privately they've stopped telling people what they do.
Patzer and Serrano haven't been immune.
"For the past 5 1/2 years I've been very proud to work for Metro and be a police officer," Patzer says. "But within the last few months, I do feel the department is getting bashed, and I do bear some of that weight."
Patzer says he busts his tail every day to do his job and it's disheartening that the public's confidence in Metro is being undermined.
"I know what I'm about," he says. "I know what the guys I work with are about. I work with a lot of great people and I don't think that picture's being painted by the media."
Part of that is the nature of the news business. A story about 100,000 airplanes landing safely makes for pretty boring reading. But if one crashes, everybody wants to know what happened.
Nevertheless, the men and women of Metro have a point.
The misdeeds of a few are tarnishing the good and brave work of many. And, as the story of Patzer and Serrano illustrates, many officers are out there busting their tails and risking their lives every day.
Both young officers say they got into the business for two reasons: because the work is never boring and often exciting, and because it gives them the opportunity, as Serrano says, "to help people in their time of crisis."
"When you leave the shift and you've made a difference in someone's life, it feels good," Patzer says. "After awhile, police officers don't talk about it anymore, but that's why they got into it."
* Even though Erin Taylor's father succumbed to his injuries from the fire, she says Patzer and Serrano made a difference to her.
"I just really felt they gave it their best," says the Santa Clarita, Calif., resident. "They couldn't have done anything more. I'm just really proud of them. I'm grateful."
The 39-year-old mother of two was in Las Vegas today to meet the officers in person.
"I would like to shake their hands."
Taylor says she was very impressed with Serrano in a telephone conversation shortly after the fire.
"He was saying it's all in the line of duty -- but I'll never believe that.
"You can say it, but to me, you're my hero."
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