Bob & Carol Hardy

This month we again have a husband and wife team who made great contributions to the job and the people that they worked with. However, it was only at the end of their law enforcement careers that they found each other just in time for retirement.

Carol: Carol was born in Santa Monica, California. She was raised there until her high school years when she attended South Pasadena High. She graduated in 1956 and married her first husband, Marlin. She also attended the American Airlines Business School, but her first job was working for her father in his equipment and hardware business for grocery stores. She had two daughters, Virginia and Terry, in 1958 and ‘59 respectively before her husband was transferred to Oregon. They lived in Oregon for 8 years during which time they had their third daughter, Debbie. In 1961 Marlin was again transferred this time to Arizona where the family lived for 8 more years before moving back to the LA area.

In 1978, financial times were tight for the family and Carol needed a job to help raise her daughters. Bessie Bolington worked for NBPD in Records and convinced Carol to work there too. Training was a real challenge. Carol worked different shifts and every trainer and fellow clerk would tell her a different way to do things. Sergeant Wally Kerr was her first supervisor. He had to tell her one more month to get it right or she was out the door. Finally, one clerk called “Tinkerbell” told the other clerks to leave Carol alone for a few weeks which resulted in Carol passing probation with flying colors.

While Carol worked in Records, her daughter, Virginia, began working for Newport Beach, first as a crossing guard and then as a PCO for the Police Department. While working in Records there were several memorable events, but two characters jumped to mind first: Daryl Youle and Al Fisher. They were both real pranksters and loved teasing the female clerks as well as the rest of us that could be caught off guard.

In 1994, Carol’s husband of 38 years died after a long battle with cancer. As it turns out, it was the caring and understanding that she developed along the journey to Marlin’s death that would forge the future enduring link to Bob. In 1998, Carol retired with 20 years on. During that time, she worked both in Records and in Warrants. Some of her memorable supervisors were Wally Kerr, Rudy Valenti, Al Fisher, Reed Gloshen, Greg Mattson, Don Chandler, Mike Jackson, and Doug Fletcher.

Bob: With his trademark straight face, Bob related that he was born in 1940. (Since I am not known as a good poker player, I did not know if I should demand to see his driver’s license. I did not have him swear in before testifying about his life. Thus, some of this report must be taken with a grain of salt.)

Bob said he was born in East LA, but I have never seen a pair of fuzzy dice tied to his motor home’s rear view mirror! He went to 4th Street Elementary and when they kicked him out of there he went to Garfield and then Whittier High Schools where he graduated in 1958. He was good with his hands which showed when he and his senior shop class built a working steam locomotive. He further trained as a tool and die apprentice and began working for the Willard Battery Company. He learned that kind of work was not

for him because for three months all he did was lug around lead ingots. After several jobs, he ended up being a car salesman at a Chrysler Plymouth dealer in Downey. Watch out buyers!

In 1960 he was about to be drafted. Being a lover and not a fighter, he went to the Coast Guard office on Friday, and on Monday he was in their boot camp! After 4 years, he was honorably discharged. While Bob was gone, his brother had become a police officer for Whittier with lots of stories about the fun of the job. Bob tried to join his brother, but in the first interview he was told that the 3 speeding tickets he’d received in the last 6 years disqualified him. Bob applied at several other departments with no luck, including Newport Beach. In 1965, Lt. Lauren informed Bob that the openings went to LAPD laterals. In 1966, he went back and took the oral again in front of John Simon, Ernie Lauren, and Dick Heineke, and when 7 officers were hired, he was in.

The new hires were not sent to the academy right away. Bob’s first job was traffic control at the entrance to Ford Aeronutronics on Jamboree Rd. and PCO from the Arches to the East city limits riding the old Harley three-wheeler. In order to work a car, Bob had to ride along with a regular officer for 100 hours on his own time. After completing that, he was assigned 4327, but there was one catch. He did all the work before and after, but another officer had to be called over to officially arrest a suspect before Bob could take them to jail. Eventually the department sent Bob to LAPD’s academy with several other Newport officers.

Bob worked Patrol for several years where he intermittently served as jailer/dispatcher at the old station on 32nd Street. On one quiet morning watch, a typed 5150 booking slip was mysteriously found naming a certain watch lieutenant as the defendant. I wonder, were Daryl Youle and Al Fisher working that night or was NBPD blessed with another comedian?

Eventually Bob was transferred to the old F-unit, NBPD’s antiquated version of “CSI Las Vegas.” From there he was moved to Juvenile Detectives. He received further training at the Delinquency Control Institute at USC. He later worked Auto Theft, Crimes Against Persons with Sam Amburgey, Personnel, and finally Fraud until he retired in December 1995.

Bob’s wife, Pat, was a real entrepreneur. She operated 6 successful businesses, but the cancer she discovered in 1993 finally took her in 1995. After 29 years of marriage Bob was devastated. Even though his fellow officers were like family, try as they might, they did not know how to talk to him. It was Carol that knew how he felt because she had just lost her husband not too long before. The bond grew and grew to the point where they were married in 1999 at the notorious “Santa Ana Heights Wedding Chapel” better know as Mike and Connie McDonough’s house.

Bob and Carol lead an exciting retired life. They own a condo on Maui where they vacation twice a year. They also spend many days on the road in their motor home. Their first campground was an eye opener. The campground was filled with beat up camper shells on stilts with inhabitants more unique than the people that Bob had dealt with in 29+ years of law enforcement. However, that did not shake the intrepid adventurers’ travel bug. On they rolled for more than 100,000 miles.

Thank you Bob and Carol. It was a pleasure and a privilege to work with both of you. Thank goodness that all those years I knew better than to either play poker with?or buy a used car from?Bob, ‘Mr. Straight Face.’

May 7, 2008