Calamity Jane : Rookie Officer Packs a Lifetime of Mishaps Into 11 Months

For 11 months now, anyone who knows Anita McKeown has been waiting for somebody to yell “Cut!”

This is Southern California, where the only place that blonde, blue-eyed cops are supposed to get stabbed, pummelled, shot at and smashed up is on film.

But around the Santa Monica Police Department, even veterans have to keep reminding themselves that what has happened to their 24-year-old rookie isn’t a TV police show, it’s painfully real life.

Last year, when McKeown was bitten by a rattlesnake and briefly dislocated her shoulder during training at the Police Academy, she might have realized that something was up.

Now, in her 11 months as a fledgling Santa Monica cop, she’s been beaten up, hacked at with a butcher knife, shot at twice, run over by a drunk driver and smashed up in a high-speed stolen-car chase, all with accompanying broken bones, a wrenched back, bruised heart, two concussions, blurred vision in one eye and an injured kidney. It has kept her off-duty for all but two months on the force.

Greeted With Cartoons

In cartoons by a fellow officer and in growing legends around the squad room, “I’ve been pegged ‘Calamity Jane,’ ” she said.

Sitting on the sofa of her San Fernando Valley home--a place she has seen a great deal of lately--McKeown briskly rubbed her right ankle, which was broken twice. The shelves behind her are rather bare; perhaps one day she could fill them with a museum noting her mishaps: her shredded bulletproof vest, the eight-inch butcher knife someone hacked at her with, scrapbooks of her X-rays and the get-well cards that never seem to stop coming.

Her run of run-ins is extraordinary even in a dangerous profession, although some officers retire without once having pulled a gun. Said her supervisor, Capt. Billy King, “Each time it happens, we keep telling ourselves she’s had more happen to her than anyone in the department in 50 years, and it can’t happen again. But the next time, something bizarre happens. And we sit around wondering what’ll happen next.”

The first came last Nov. 9, on an overnight shift, when McKeown and her training officer stopped a drunk driver. He ran off, McKeown caught up with him and both tussled on the ground. He tried to pull her revolver from its holster and, for his pains, he got a broken nose. McKeown wrenched her back and broke her engagement-ring finger.

That was her first visit to Santa Monica Hospital’s emergency room. It was the beginning of a beautiful medical relationship.

After a month off, she returned to work. Her fellow officers seemed proud that she could handle a “knock-down, drag-out” fight.

Then, Dec. 23, her first day “solo,” was “when I got into the hairy thing.”

Before midnight, a little old lady stopped McKeown’s car to complain of noisy neighbors. As McKeown walked up and questioned two men, one pulled a butcher knife and stabbed her frenziedly in the chest. The metal plate in her now-shredded bulletproof vest deflected the blows. Her hand was badly cut. His buddy “put a gun to my head and tried to fire, but it didn’t go off,” she says. When she heard the click, “I thought I was dead.”

She kicked the knife-wielder away, and one of the men hit her in the head; before she passed out, she managed to crank off several shots in their direction.

Back to the same hospital, then home to recuperate. Over the holidays, it seemed most of the Police Department called or stopped by to visit.

‘Omigosh, Duck!’

By the time she returned to work Feb. 1, she was already a minor legend. The Calamity Jane cartoons were posted, and she took her share of ribbing--the “Here she is, omigosh, duck!” variety.

Her colleagues seemed happy she was back, although “most of them, I’m sure, thought I was going to quit, after two major fights like that in such a short time. Many were surprised to see me back.” Most kept telling her, “You’ve got to come back; this doesn’t happen all the time.”

Sure.

Midnight, eight days later, Feb. 9. Driving back from Los Angeles in the rain after taking a robbery victim home, she came upon a freeway accident. She stopped, laid out flares and was pushing the car out of the road with its driver when a drunk driver in a Porsche “ran through the flare pattern I set up and hit us, sent us flying.”

Her ankle was broken, but she covered the injured driver with a blanket, called for back-ups and was soon back at her home-away-from-home, the Santa Monica Hospital emergency room.

She was off six weeks that time. At home, she was the florist’s friend. “It looked like a mortuary in here,” she said of the floral tributes.

‘One of the Scariest’

On April 23, after 23 normal days of work, she was pulling over a car with a busted tail-light and a couple of bad-looking yeggs inside. The passenger half crawled out his window and blasted several shots at McKeown’s car. Two whizzed by her head under the rear-view mirror. More than half a dozen other police cars joined hers in chasing the pair into Inglewood, where they lost them.

That, she said, was “probably one of the scariest” moments: almost getting shot.

By this time, her parents were urging her to think about another line of work, with her psychology degree from California State University, Northridge.

Her boyfriend, another police officer, was feeling rather we’ve-got-to-stop-meeting-like-this about the unromantic predawn visits to the emergency room. He is proud of her gumption, but he “wants me to quit, desperately,” she said. “He doesn’t want to come to the hospital any more. He hates that.”

McKeown acknowledged that friends were hinting that Someone was Sending Her a Message. “I think about that. Some days, I say I don’t like the pain, but I really enjoy the job, the few days I’ve worked.”

Finally, on June 10, about 1 a.m., she pulled over a car for a traffic violation and found that it was stolen. The driver took off toward Pacific Palisades. At speeds hovering above 60, the car missed a turn, hit a curb and, airborne, flew into a retaining wall. So did McKeown.

A girl in the first car was killed. McKeown was knocked out and woke up at the Santa Monica Hospital. This time it was for six days, two days in intensive care, for a bruised heart, blurred vision in her right eye, a re-broken right ankle and a broken sternum that “probably would have been crushed without a (new bulletproof) vest.” Even the police chief went to visit.

‘Keep Bouncing Back’

McKeown is home still, soon to return to a probation that will end Aug. 3.

“Her attitude is fantastic--a very upbeat young lady,” said King. “I worry about her self-confidence,” with so many people telling her what a run of bad luck she’s had, “but she seems to keep bouncing back like a rubber ball.”

For McKeown, there has been no lack of time to think. “I’m young and I used to take everything for granted, just like anybody young,” but no more. “I’ve become more realistic about the job, too. . . . I don’t have my fill of it yet, but I’m seriously trying to understand all my misfortunes.”

Then she excused herself; she had to be in court, in the case of one of the three people arrested so far in her various mishaps. She walked rather stiffly to her car and drove off--to the distant whine of an ambulance.