Rudy Sandoval lasted three and a half months in retirement. He didn’t want to leave the job in the first place and everyone knew it. Forty years as a Denver cop, eventually becoming head of this bureau and that division before settling in as commander of the busiest district in the city. But rules are rules and at 65, it was time to take off the badge.
Other retired cops Sandoval knew had hobbies. Fishing. Hunting. He played a little golf, but, really, he asked his wife, how much golf could someone play? They did a little traveling and when they returned, a message was waiting from his former administrative assistant in District 4. “Call me right away.”
So, he does and that call leads to another call with another cop who says: “How do you like retirement?” “I don’t,” Sandoval says. “Well,” the cop says. “There’s a job opening in Morrison. “What kind of job?” Sandoval says.
“The chief job,” the cop says.
He-l-l-o, Morrison.
“So much for retirement,” I say when I call to arrange a visit. He laughs. “You know I wouldn’t have quit if it hadn’t been for the age limit.”
“So, what’s it like?”
“This is a great little town,” he says. “No crime. I think they had one burglary last year, and they solved it. So, I gotta hold it to zero burglaries this year to keep crime down.”
Morrison is about 25 minutes west of downtown Denver and is a pretty little place just down the road from Red Rocks Amphitheatre. The operative word here is “little.”
“How many people live in Morrison?” I ask town trustee Mark Williams. “Including the people in the nursing home,” he starts and after we stop laughing, he says: “I think our official count is about 278.”
It’s probably closer to 400, which is still officially tiny. I find Sandoval at his desk, rewriting the policy and procedures manual. He became chief in August. The last time I saw him was at his retirement party, a packed and tearful affair. Sandoval was well-liked and respected within the department and among residents of southwest Denver.
The Morrison Police Department has three full-time employees. Sandoval is one. The other two are the administrative assistant, known here as police secretary Dena Gatschet, and Lt. Anthony Joiner. All police departments should have the friendly faces these two present. The rest of the department is made up of 14 part-time and eight reserve officers. At any given time, one officer is on patrol. “They hit every street in Morrison at least three times a day,” trustee Williams says, deadpan.
Williams was among those who interviewed Sandoval for the job. “We were pleasantly surprised that he was interested in coming here because our town is so small and our Police Department is so small,” he says. “The officers love him and so do the townspeople.”
Sandoval long has been big on community policing. He met every other week with residents of District 4, and here he’s launching various forms of resident and business outreach. The day I visit, Sandoval takes me into several businesses along the strip, and so I get to meet Tom Becker at Morrison Liquors who calls out, “What’s up, Mr. Rudy?” and Gary Conte at Tony Rigatoni’s and Jimmy McGrew, an institution in his own right, who shows Sandoval a pin of Air Force One, which McGrew has adorned with his own name. “How do you like my badge?” he says.
We stop here and there. “How’s it going, Chief?” “What you up to, Chief?” And pretty soon, I’m asking Sandoval whether he whistles the theme from “The Andy Griffith Show” when he walks.
“This is my thing,” he says, “and I’m good at it. District 4 was the busiest district in terms of calls for service. The change here is kind of nice. It’s a good fit at this time in my life.”
At the Morrison Inn, Butch Luedtke asks Sandoval about the previous night’s award ceremony. Sandoval had his staff go through past records to look for officer performances worthy of commendation and then held the ceremony at the town hall. The place, he tells Luedtke, was packed. “All the officers were in uniform and they looked so spiffy.”
Sandoval was a kid from the projects who wanted one day to be a police chief. He applied for the job a couple times here in Denver. In Morrison, I ask him to show me his police chief hat. It’s in the car, he says. I’ll look at it later, I tell him. But he goes to get it anyway. He hands it to me and there’s the badge, affixed above the brim, gold eagle on silver, the word “Chief” emblazoned upon it.
Sixty-five years old. Dream fulfilled.
Tina Griego writes Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. Reach her at 303-954-2699 or tgriego@denverpost.com.
