Something in the living room woke Melvin Sanchez-Lopez and his wife, Regina Leticia Cabrera-Lopez, from a comfortable winter's sleep in their Buckingham home. Moments later the bedroom door swung open and there stood a complete stranger, Michael Stewart, armed with a handgun.
"I asked him what he wanted just to get him to leave," said Regina, speaking through a translator.
Stewart roused them from bed, demanding money as he ordered them out into the hall and into the next-door room. There the Lopez's three children, Teodulo Silvino Cabrera-Lopez, Fabiana Hernandez-Lopez and Filadelfo Mendez Lopez, were sleeping. He woke them too, waiving his pistol in the air.
Just then, faced with a wild intruder and fearing for his family's safety, Teodulo took action. Glancing over Stewart's shoulder, he pointed to door behind him, indicating the presence of someone else. Stewart turned to look and Teodulo leapt on the gun. His father and brother Filadelfo tackled the gunman.
"My first thought was to grab the gun," Teodulo said. "I knew he had the intention of doing harm to us. I didn't really care that I might get hurt. He brought that gun for a reason."
To give her family the upper hand as they wrestled Stewart to floor, Regina ran to the kitchen, returning with a bottle of hot sauce. She tossed it into Stewart's eyes, blinding him for a moment.
"That was just the first thing I thought of to throw at him," she said.
Regina then ran to her neighbor's door and soon after, the police arrived to find the entire family holding Stewart on the ground.
According to police reports, Stewart was responsible for two similar home invasions in the Buckingham neighborhood that year. He was convicted of armed robbery and abduction and sentenced to 59 years in prison.
Almost one year later, the entire family would be five among ten Arlington residents honored with the county police department's Civic Hero Awards, given Wednesday night, Dec. 15, in a ceremony at Courthouse Plaza. The occasion marked the first time the department has granted the award.
"What prompted this was just the number of cases we saw in the space of only a couple months where citizens were able to help us close serious felony cases," said Chief Douglas Scott. "They kept people from being injured or injured more and helped to catch people and close cases we otherwise might not have."
Eight months after the break-in, two more Arlingtonians would find themselves combating crime, this time near the Rosslyn Metro Station. According to police, a woman was walking home from the Metro when a man, Steven Jones, grabbed her from behind and forced onto the ground. Jones held a knife in front of her and told her not to scream. He took her purse and her cell phone but it didn't end there. Taking the woman by her hair, Jones began leading her into a darkened parking lot. To get away, she faked a foot injury and stumbled. Jones let go of her just long enough for the woman to make a break for it. She ran, heading for two men she'd spotted nearby and called out for help. The men, Anis Zerrouki and Dorjderem Lkhagvajav, ran after Jones, catching up to him hidden between two parked cars where he was sifting through the woman's purse. Seeing them, Jones ran and attempted to scale a guardrail to escape. But instead of making a daring getaway, Jones fell 20 feet and broke his ankle. Zerrouki and Lkhagvajav stood right next to him until police arrived, ensuring Jones would not flee again.
And two days after the attack, a 15-year-old boy would come to the rescue of another woman, this one in the Buckingham neighborhood. As Jose Fuentes was looking out the window of his family's living room, he saw a woman. She was being followed by a man, Mauricio Garcia Jimenez, according to police, who suddenly grabbed her from behind and reached under her skirt. The woman broke free and ran but Jimenez caught her. She screamed and that's when Fuentes ran outside.
"I just wanted to help her," he said. "I wasn't afraid."
Fuentes ran towards Jimenez, who fled. But Fuentes followed him, keeping enough distance so that the attacker would not know he was being trailed. During the pursuit, his brother, Francisco Fuentes and neighbor Gamaliel Romero, got word of the attack and came outside to help the victim. Jimenez nonchalantly returned to the scene of the crime with Fuentes still following behind him. That's when Fuentes called out to his brother and neighbor that the man before them was the attacker and the two tackled him.
"They jumped on the guy and we held him down for about 29 minutes until the police got there," Fuentes said.
Jimenez was arrested and charged with a felony sex crime.
The new Civic Heroes Award honors Arlingtonians for actions, according to Cpt. Dave Daley, that are "above and beyond civic duty with personal risk."
The ceremony also marked the graduation of nine members of the police department's Citizen's Police Academy, a training course for local residents on crime prevention and awareness.