The owner of Ray’s Candy Store saved Guardian Angels founder Curtis Sliwa when he was attacked on a Manhattan street in 1992 — and the red-bereted crusader says it’s his turn now.

Sliwa told The Post on Sunday — the day before the Angels’ 44th anniversary — that his crime-fighting crew will routinely patrol the neighborhood where the now-90-year-old Alvarez was recently pummeled to ensure he’s never hurt again.

“We’re going to make sure everybody knows that Ray is an untouchable,” Sliwa said. “You just don’t touch Ray.”

Alvarez was already a neighborhood fixture and about 60 years old when he yelled at three men beating Sliwa outside the Angels leader’s apartment 30 years ago, distracting them long enough for the wounded crime-fighter to get up and scramble to safety in Tompkins Square Park.

“I have Ray to thank,” Sliwa, 68, said Sunday. “If he had not come out of his store …

“Most anybody else would have hid,” Sliwa said. “They wouldn’t have come out and confronted the guys.”

Sliwa recently honored Alvarez — who was brutally beaten by a stranger outside his famed East Village store late last month — with the Guardian Angel friendship award while also sending his red-bereted colleagues to patrol Ray’s neighborhood after the attack.

Sliwa, who lived on the Lower East Side from 1983 to 1993, said he started the routine Lower East Side patrols shortly after the Alvarez beating because there just aren’t enough police in the area.

“I see how it’s slipping,” Sliwa said of the neighborhood. “There aren’t enough cops there.”

Police have charged Luis Peroza, 39, and Gerald Barth, 55, with allegedly beating Alvarez so badly that he now eats through a straw.

Alvarez was attacked around 3 a.m. Jan. 31 by a man who asked if he wanted to buy a package that the stranger was carrying, cops said. When Alvarez asked what was inside the box, the suspect handed it off to another man — and threatened to kill the elderly store owner, police said.

“They had soda. They wanted to sell it to me,” Alvarez later recalled. “I said no. One punched my head and my chest. One handed [the soda] to the other guy [and said], ‘Hold this, I’m going to kill this guy.’ “I couldn’t believe it.”

Peroza, who allegedly hit Alvarez, is being held on $200,000 bail on assault, robbery and attempted-robbery charges. Barth has also been charged with assault, robbery and attempted robbery, according to the complaint against them.

The pair also allegedly attacked another man on Avenue C, pummeling him after they demanded money.

Despite being attacked, Alvarez was back behind the counter of his 24-hour candy store a day later.

Sliwa said he and his elderly friend both believe that people should work to improve New York City, not move away from it. And they’ve proven their dedication the hard way, he said.

“We both had our blood on the sidewalk and the streets of the Lower East Side, right outside his candy store,” Sliwa said.