Pizza delivery driver Charli Loren considers her job ordinary but when the time came to help a woman in need, she did not shrink from the opportunity to do something extraordinary.
“You see certain situations and you think maybe you could help maybe you couldn't and I just tried to help,” Loren said.
Loren spoke to NBC 7 just hours Ismael Hernandez, 27, of Chula Vista pleaded not guilty to 13 felony counts of sex crimes.
Prosecutors say there were two victims in this crime spree. The first woman escaped after throwing her takeout soup at the suspect then running back inside the Pho Noodle Bar.
“This took a great effort on behalf of the victims in this case that were able to focus during such a traumatic event,” said Deputy District Attorney Judy Taschner.
In court Wednesday Taschner detailed the terrifying two and a half hours that the second victim was sexually assaulted at knife point on the south side of Balboa Park then again behind a utility box in Cortez Hill.
Loren became involved as she was driving north on Ninth Avenue at Date street last Thursday night.
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She was on her way to the next customer when she saw the suspect walking away with his shirt over his face.
Then a woman flagged down the pizza delivery driver.
“She knew exactly what happened to her,” Loren said. “She was terrified and probably out of her mind about it.”
Loren says she spoke only a short while with the victim before police came but stuck around for the next three hours to make sure she was OK.
Delivering pizzas gets her into many neighborhoods and she sees many things, Loren said.
She has no professional training in violent crime response but feels this chance call to Good Samaritan duty was somehow fate.
“Maybe I didn't get that delivery that night you know,” Loren said to NBC 7. “Maybe somebody didn't order it. Maybe I wouldn't have been there. Maybe It was meant to be.”
