On the lookout for a 60-year-old sign

For years, a memorial sign that saluted the life of Officer Harvey “Hobbs” Griswold stood proudly at the California Highway Patrol station in Newhall, a reminder of a life cut short in a 1950 car crash.

But now the sign is missing and old colleagues and friends are rushing to find it so that it might be rededicated when the department marks another sad chapter in its history -- the 40th anniversary of the “Newhall Incident,” a 1970 shootout in which four CHP officers were killed.

Dan O’Connor II made the sign shortly after Griswold’s death as a permanent memorial to the officer. Griswold, 45, was killed near Williams, Ariz., when his car “struck a soft shoulder in the road, skidded and overturned several times,” according to newspaper reports. He was off-duty, heading home from a deer-hunting trip in Utah. His belongings, including hunting gear, were stolen from the accident scene, according to former CHP officials who knew him.

“The Highway Patrol called our dad and requested a sign for their station,” said Dan O’Connor III, 64, reciting a well-known family tale. He and his brother George were toddlers at the time and Griswold was a family friend.

The elder O’Connor, a sign-maker by trade, gladly obliged, offering his services free of charge, according to George O’Connor, 62.

He crafted a double-sided, round, neon symbol about 4 feet in diameter. In the center was a seven-pointed star, the logo of the CHP. At the bottom, a small plaque bore an inscription honoring Griswold. The sign, he said, was mounted on a pole outside the station.

“I can remember hooking it up to the electricity in the office,” said Martin W. Forinash, a retired CHP sergeant who was based at the Newhall station from 1942 to 1971, and knew Griswold. “It sat there for years. We all liked it.”

But in 1957 the CHP’s Newhall station moved and the sign was returned to the O’Connors. When the sign-maker died in 1980, his eldest son stored the sign in his garage, but, when the garage became overcrowded, he asked a friend to look after it. The friend died in 2004 and the sign disappeared.

Now the O’Connor brothers are on a mission to get it back, though finding it will be a chore. There is speculation that a memorabilia collector may have it, though there are few leads beyond that.

George O’Connor, a retired Los Angeles Police Department officer, said he has spread the word among his network of retired law enforcement friends and is following up on a tip from the CHP station in Antelope Valley. The Santa Clarita Valley Historical Society also has offered to help the O’Connors find photos of the sign that show it once stood outside the Newhall station.

“I have no reason to doubt it . . . but I have no way to prove it,” said Pat Saletore, executive director of the Santa Clarita Valley Historical Society. She added that the search for the sign might help jog old-timers’ memory of it.

The brothers’ fervor to recover what they consider a historical and sentimental treasure, has been heightened by the 40th anniversary of the Newhall shootout April 6.

“We want to resurrect the sign, rebuild it and put it in front of the new CHP station . . . and add the names of those four officers to the plaque,” said George O’Connor, who continues to run his father’s San Fernando-based lighting company. “It’s of intrinsic value to the officers who have given their lives.”

Officer John Lutz, a spokesman for the CHP’s Newhall station, said he had no personal knowledge of the sign, but commended the O’Connors’ efforts to find and rededicate the memorial.

“The gesture is obviously important,” Lutz said. “It’s a wonderful idea. Maybe there’s someone out there who knows the whereabouts of the sign and might be able to help them locate it.”

In 2008, a 5-mile stretch of the 5 Freeway in Santa Clarita that runs past the shooting scene was renamed in honor of the officers killed in the shootout.

Forinash, the retired CHP officer, worked with the four slain officers and had been dispatched to the scene of the fatal shootout between the officers and two heavily armed men. He said he would be thrilled if the sign were found and installed at the CHP’s Newhall station.

“It looked good then, and if it were resurrected at the present office, it would look good now,” Forinash said. “It would be a dignified sign.”

ann.simmons@latimes.com