Covina Code Officer Uses ‘Wicked Stick’

It takes more than Municipal Code sections to clean up suburban blight.

That’s where Valerie V. Ver Kuilen comes in.

She carries a badge. Also a “wicked stick,” she says.

She is the first and only official employee of Covina’s new code enforcement division, created Nov. 1 as a branch of the Community Development Department.

Her job includes investigating alleged violations of city planning, development, fire and building codes. The complaints range from illegal parking on residential property to substandard housing.

During investigations of abandoned houses, she has found drug paraphernalia, knee-deep trash, a mattress and baby clothes in a swimming pool, and raw sewage in a front yard.

“Code enforcement used to be hit or miss,” she said. “Before, if there were major complaints, a planner or the Community Service Department worked a couple of hours a day, and would go out and take a look.”

But for Ver Kuilen, it is a full-time job. And sometimes she wishes she had help. When she first started, she said, she sat on the floor in her small office and sifted through boxes of files containing 400 Municipal Code violations--about two years’ worth.

“It was a mess,” she said. “There were stacks of files, and no rhyme or reason to the filing system.”

The first thing she did was obtain file cabinets and folders and organize complaints by street names.

When she receives a complaint, she investigates it and, if necessary, leaves a warning notice with a 10-day deadline for compliance. If the violation continues, the property owner is allowed 10 more days to correct it. A conference with the district attorney’s office is scheduled if the violation persists.

Since she started, Ver Kuilen has pursued criminal charges against two property owners--the first such cases in the city. One will go to trial in October; no trial date has been set for the other. She has 11 other cases pending in which criminal charges may also be filed.

She rips down illegal signs from telephone poles with the help of what she calls her “wicked stick,” which is four feet long and pointed. She removed it from an illegal campaign sign, she said.

Ver Kuilen is also certified to make arrests and to carry a gun, although she chooses not to. Still, the job is not without its risks.

“One man told me that if I came on his property, he would blow me away,” she said. “Another time I was sitting in my car when a man grabbed my arm, yelling and screaming: ‘It’s my property! I can do what I want!’ I get a lot of yelling and screaming.”