Road Warriors

Among tow truck drivers, it’s known for its nighttime isolation--a stretch of the 405 Freeway that winds within the Los Angeles city limits, but feels more like it was plucked from the dark heart of some secluded country back road.

The Sepulveda Pass.

Even on moonlit nights, drivers say, the banked mountain curves on this part of the nation’s busiest freeway remain shrouded in moody shadows. Radio transmissions routinely flicker and die, cut off by the brush-covered canyon ridges.

“It’s a pretty scary place to have car trouble,” said Arturo Montano. “Especially at night. It’s a no-man’s land after dark.”

Montano knows. For two years now, the 30-year-old tow truck driver has patrolled the Sepulveda Pass during rush hours as part of the Metro Freeway Service Patrol, an emergency road service jointly provided by Caltrans, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and the California Highway Patrol.

He has stopped to help vulnerable motorists, broken down and trapped along the freeway’s impersonal shoulder. He has seen women and families enduring their private predicament in a public place--a fishbowl world where peering faces whiz past behind car windows but do not stop. And in a teeming, sometimes lawless city such as Los Angeles, Montano says, they know they must be leery of those who do.

Last month, Ennis Cosby was shot to death as he stopped on a darkened freeway feeder road to change a flat tire--near the Skirball Center Drive exit ramp at the crest of the Sepulveda Pass.

Motorists say the specter of Cosby’s unsolved death has added even more stress to breakdowns in the secluded pass area--or any of the other 511 miles of freeway crisscrossing Los Angeles County.

In part due to Cosby’s death, officials say, on Thursday the MTA is expected to decide whether to spend $1 million over the next three months to expand the 404 miles freeway miles already covered by the service patrol and add weekend patrols in areas that include the Sepulveda Pass.

The new coverage would add tow truck patrols to more stretches of freeway and for longer hours: between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday and between 7 p.m. to 3 a.m. on Friday and Saturday nights.

Now, tow trucks patrol eight hours a day during the morning and evening weekday commute--assisting stranded motorists free of charge. They fix flat tires or tow broken-down cars to the nearest drop-off point. There are additional daytime hours for the super-congested downtown freeway area.

Started in 1991 to ease traffic flow, the program has expanded to 43 beats countywide, where 185 tow trucks--contracted from local firms--do nothing but cruise freeways in their area searching for broken-down vehicles.

“The purpose of the program isn’t to stop murders but to stop congestion, to clear people off dangerous freeways,” said Diane Perrine, director of the congestion relief program for the MTA. “But there is also a residual effect of having these trucks out there. Because when people break down, there are just too many dangers to confront out there alone.”

Indeed, the need is there: Each month, CHP dispatchers answer an average of 40,000 emergency calls from more than 4,000 call boxes. That’s about 1,300 calls a day. Fifty calls an hour. One a minute.

Officials say that by clearing stranded vehicles more quickly, they have reduced the number of accidents caused by “looky-loos.”

Still, the road shoulder is a place of quick and sometimes foolish decision-making: Panicked motorists have been struck as they raced across traffic lanes to a call box. A transient was struck in the fast lane of the Golden State Freeway as he searched for his lost dog near downtown Los Angeles. And a vacationer was killed as he sidestepped through traffic to retrieve a suitcase that had blown off the top of his car.

But on the road, it’s not just speed that can be dangerous. Crime can play a role as well.

CHP Officer Brad Davis, who supervises the freeway service program, stressed that the safest way to handle being stranded on the road shoulder is to remain calm. “After you’ve made the rescue call from either your cell phone or a call box, just stay in your car with doors locked and your windows rolled up,” he said.

“One of our guys will be there before you know it,” Davis said. “They’re roaming the roads just looking for broken-down cars. This is what they do for a living.”

Still, it is from dusk till dawn that freeway breakdowns become most unsettling. And, after the Cosby murder, especially in the Sepulveda Pass--where the road winds for miles without bright lighting or services, tow drivers say.

“For weeks afterward, there were a lot of ‘hot’ calls, which means we have to get there within 10 minutes because the motorist is afraid or is in a real dangerous place,” said Darryl Wilson, a graveyard-shift driver for Foxx’s Village Tow, of his experience assisting stranded drivers along the Sepulveda Pass.

“We even got hot calls from men, people who took one look at the Skirball Center Drive road sign where Cosby was killed, and who called up and said, ‘Get me out of here!’ ”

Officials say carrying a cellular phone can keep a stranded motorist’s exposure to a minimum. Cheryl Feldman Hesse knows why.

The 50-year-old Sherman Oaks woman suffered a flat tire on the northbound lanes of the I-405 in the Sepulveda Pass about dusk last month. Two male motorists stopped to help, motioning her to a wider spot on the shoulder at which to wait for help.

Hesse followed their instructions, but never opened her window, using her phone to call for a tow truck. Now, she is one motorist who supports an expanded freeway service program, especially in the Sepulveda Pass.

“If you’re out there at night, they’re angels coming to the rescue,” she said. “I know. I’ve been there.”