Ian Maier felt the heat against his uniform. Fire and black smoke surrounded him as he reached into the burning car for the trapped woman. He could smell the scent of his singed arm hair. The Torrance police officer had been on the job just two months. “I could feel her in my hands that I had her,” Maier recalled. “At that point there is no turning away.” Maier, assisted by five fellow Torrance officers, managed to extract the driver from her car just before flames engulfed it. Although badly bu...
