Officers Fight Each Other on Their Time Off

To most people, facing a karate opponent who is wearing a black belt around his waist can be a pretty frightening thing.

To Wayne Lowery and Raymond Sua, it’s nothing.

After all, it’s just a belt. There is no knife stuck in it. Nor a gun. Nor a round of bullets.

And these two guys have seen all that and more, and lived to tell about it.

Take Lowery, for example.

A Vietnam veteran, he served in the Army Rangers. He was on patrol one night in the Central Highlands.

Suddenly, he felt cold steel on his neck. An enemy soldier had snuck up behind him and was about to kill him.

Thank goodness for karate.

Lowery flipped the guy over his head and smashed him into submission.

On another occasion in Viet Nam, Lowery came face to face with an enemy soldier making a charge, rifle in hand.

Again a karate move saved Lowery.

He used a leg sweep to separate the man from his gun, then ended the brief struggle with his fists.

Today, Wayne Lowery, a 41-year-old resident of Burbank, is a supervisory criminal investigator for the Los Angeles branch of the U.S. Police Federal Protective Service. The job, which he has held for a decade, requires him to pursue perpetrators of federal crimes.

But in his spare time, he’s still flipping people over his back and flooring them with leg sweeps. Lowery is now a ninth-degree black belt in Tae Kwon Do--a Korean form of karate that emphasizes kicks--which he studied under Korean master Seung Goo Dong.

He won the world heavyweight title in Tae Kwan Do a decade ago, then was injured soon after in an auto accident, suffering a concussion.

“I quit competing then,” he said. “By the time I was healthy, I had lost interest.”

For eight years, Lowery was satisfied teaching karate to others, including nearly 200 disabled people.

Then last year, Lowery, 40, had a strong urge to return to the ring.

He competed in the California Police Olympics in Oxnard and won a bronze medal. That qualified him for the first World Police and Fire Games. Lowery’s unlikely comeback seemed complete when he won the gold medal in the heavyweight division in open karate competition at the World games.

But the 6-2, 208-pound black belt was just warming up.

Lowery went on to win the open competition in the senior division national karate championships in February, took a silver medal at the California Police Olympics in Newport Beach a few months later and then finished second at the International Police Olympics in Columbus, Ohio, in the heavyweight division in August.

“I’m having more fun than I did when I was younger,” Lowery said. “I think I can go on for another five years.”

Although he has never met Sua in competition, Lowery has spent more time stalking him on a mat than anyone else he’s ever faced. The two work out as often as their busy schedule allows at the Los Angeles Police Academy in a small padded area above the gymnasium.

Sua, 32, is a third-degree black belt in Tae Kwon Do. And like Lowery, Sua, who lives in Simi Valley, is in law enforcement. He began 11 years ago by driving a patrol car for the West Valley Division of the Los Angeles Police Department. Today, he is in community relations, operating out of the office of Police Chief Daryl Gates.

Some of Sua’s greatest battles, however, took place in his family household when he was growing up in North Hollywood. His father was a boxer and several of his six brothers (he also has three sisters) had black or brown belts.

“It was open competition in our house,” Sua said. “We broke a lot of windows and put a few holes in our bedroom walls, some that my parents still don’t know about.”

Like Lowery, the 6-1, 200-pound Sua has enough trophies and ribbons to fill up mantle. He was an overall grand champion in international competition a decade ago, has won championships up and down the state and has been rated No. 1 in this region by Karate Illustrated Magazine.

Strangely enough, in all these years of law enforcement, neither Lowery nor Sua has ever found himself faced with a life-threatening situation where karate was needed. Oh, there have been a few drunks who needed a leg sweep to get them in the patrol car, but nothing serious.

That’s fine with both men. Especially Lowery. He knows what it’s like to have a man charge him with a rifle in hand. He’ll take an unarmed black belt any time.