Good Cop, Bad Cop : Deputy-Turned-Robber Eulogized as Friendly, Helpful

He was the kind of person everyone liked to have around an office--a prankster and joke teller who could dish out a rash of well-meaning jabs as well as take a joke with an easy smile.

Looking back, his friends and colleagues say, Detective Michael Stanewich was something of a hero around the Sheriff Department’s Encinitas Station. One year, he dressed up as Santa Claus at an office party, hamming it up with fellow deputies, asking what they wanted for Christmas.

A self-taught computer whiz, Stanewich was always available to help secretaries with glitches in the office computers. In return, they played along with his antics--using scissors and paste to make cutouts of Stanewich’s picture in a host of hilarious situations, like the one where he was run up a tree by an angry rhinoceros.

There was also a more serious side to the 36-year-old Stanewich--that of an ambitious deputy who had risen rapidly through the department’s ranks. After being named a detective last fall, the former motorcycle officer and traffic investigator already had risen to the department’s elite narcotics unit by the following spring.

It is there that the picture of Stanewich becomes hazy. Parts of the image just don’t fit the easy-going Arizona native, who seemed to step out of character by conducting an unauthorized drug stakeout for which he was recently reprimanded.

The topper is last week’s shocking scenario in which Stanewich was shot to death by another deputy as he was robbing a home in Olivenhain. During the crime, Stanewich attacked a 32-year-old travel agent and his 82-year-old grandmother, threatening to set them on fire if they didn’t open a safe containing more than $100,000.

On Tuesday, friends, family and officers gathered at the Pacific Beach Presbyterian Church for a half-hour ceremony during which Stanewich was eulogized as a family man, provider and dedicated deputy. His body had been cremated after close friends and family attended a viewing over the weekend.

At the Pacific Beach ceremony, Stanewich’s brother John sang the song “If” by the soft-rock group Bread, a request made by the dead officer’s wife, Kathy.

The Rev. Larry Grounds told the packed church that Michael Stanewich should not be judged solely on the rapid-fire sequence of events last week when the veteran officer inexplicably entered the rural home of Donald Van Ort armed with a gun, his face covered by a stocking mask.

“I told them that while these things are churning around in people’s minds and are always in the local news, they could be ignored for the funeral service,” Grounds said after the service.

“I didn’t want one incident to overshadow his 36 years on Earth, the people he touched. I talked about the way people felt about him as a likable, caring, optimistic person. I discussed the two driving passions in his life--his family and his work.”

Later, fellow officers talked about the deputy they now say had many complex and unexplained sides to his character. They asked questions about his return to the Olivenhain home where he and four other plainclothes narcotics officers had served a search warrant in May.

Investigators believe that during the first visit--when he ordered Van Ort to open a safe in the home--Stanewich learned about the cash. The department is investigating other cases Stanewich worked to see if he might have returned to rob other homes.

“We’re looking into anything that might explain why this officer might have become a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” Capt. Bob Apostolos, commanding officer at the Encinitas station, said after the funeral.

“Why did he go back to that house? Was he a rogue cop looking for justice? Did he target them for a rip-off? Or was he in cahoots with someone else to rip them off? The fact that he was off duty and parked his own car down the street after removing the license plates, all that points to something we’re all very familiar with--residential robbery.”

But there were other elements about the shooting that do not add up, he said. For one, Stanewich, who held a black belt in self-defense, was a safety-conscious officer who had given seminars on how to handle a patrol stop with a suspect who might be armed and dangerous.

On the day he was shot, Stanewich was confronted in the kitchen of the home by Deputy Gary Steadman, who apparently shouted a warning at what he assumed was a masked gunman--not a friend and colleague.

But when Stanewich apparently made a move for a knife on the counter, Steadman shot him twice in the torso.

“Mike Stanewich trained other officers in high-risk stops,” Apostolos said. “Why then did he make furtive movements while standing in front of a gun? What the hell was going on in his mind? Did he want to die there?”

In recent days for many colleagues, Apostolos said, grief has turned to anger over being let down by Stanewich. After all, this was not the deputy everyone thought they knew.

“Mike was definitely a hero for the office staff around here,” Apostolos said. “He was someone you could have fun with, somebody who could take your ribbing and give it right back. Not everyone can do that. Some people are pretty sensitive to those kinds of things. But not Mike.”