Happy landings

THERE’S NOTHING LIKE A HERO for the holidays, and the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department has a pair of them. Deputies Annmarie Matusik and Jeff Kim are credited with saving two children from a likely Christmas tree fire in one of the toughest neighborhoods of Watts. Their story may help the public understand that there is more to the department than budget troubles and jail mismanagement.

As flames licked at her apartment before dawn Tuesday, Wilshawnda Watkins saw stairs blocked by fire and a second-story window as the only way out for her, her year-old baby Tyrea and her 9-year-old brother Jermaine. Arriving on the scene in the nick of time were Matusik, who used extinguishers to help beat back flames from the first floor, and her partner Kim, into whose outstretched arms Watkins safely dropped the baby. Watkins herself jumped, then helped persuade the terrified Jermaine, recovering from severe injuries in an automobile accident, to take the leap. Kim caught the boy and cushioned his fall at the cost of a split lip and some cracked teeth.

Just as remarkably, the deputies were on the scene because a trucker had flagged down their patrol car on nearby Imperial Highway and pointed to the fire, which wasn’t even in the Sheriff’s Department’s patrol territory. It was in Imperial Courts, a public housing area where even Los Angeles police tread cautiously and where residents are often hostile to and mistrustful of law enforcement.

At least one family there now has reason to feel differently. And the Sheriff’s Department, battered by questionable shootings and violence at county jails, has reason to be proud. Yet this happy ending isn’t necessarily anything more than that. The Sheriff’s Department, in particular, faces problems that will require more than goodwill (or good publicity) to solve.

Sheriff Lee Baca’s 8,000-member force is more than 1,000 short of the number afforded by his budget, and it struggles not only to add to the department but to replace the hundreds who leave each year for retirement or less stressful jobs. Hiring is made tougher by the requirement that deputies spend their first years in the dismal county jails before getting more desirable patrol assignments. The recent beating death of a mentally troubled inmate -- left unsupervised in a roomful of violent offenders -- was, like earlier such incidents, attributed to short-staffing as well as a lack of common sense.

The actions of Kim and Matusik do, however, show a more complex and human picture of policing. The deputies did what children imagine themselves doing when they put on a Batman cape or a Spidey mask and dream of growing up to be firefighters or police officers. It’s too bad the department can’t sign them up right then and there.