Ex-Sheriff Duffy Pushing Vacation Plans for Officers

John F. Duffy has three new titles to add to “former sheriff”: chairman, chief executive officer and salesman.

He has been hired to recruit members for the Star and Shield Recreation Club, a corporation that provides discount travel, vacation and sporting packages to current and retired Southern California law enforcement officials and their immediate families.

Membership is not cheap. Active state, federal or local officers and reservists must pay $2,500 for a lifetime membership, plus $200 annually. Retired law enforcement personnel pay $2,000 for membership, plus $160 each year.

“You want to organize a trip for albacore fishing or salmon fishing in Alaska?” Duffy said Monday, sounding his pitch. “You want block seating for a concert or reservations at a resort? We can provide discount kind of rates.”

Duffy, San Diego County’s sheriff for 20 years before retiring in January, 1991, has advertised club membership in newsletters for labor unions that represent the Sheriff’s Department and the San Diego Police Department.

The club was incorporated last November, he said, and the corporation’s officers are “none of your business. We’re still doing the division of stock, and you can get the statements when they are filed in a few months.” In the ads for the club, Duffy is listed as chairman and CEO.

Duffy said he has negotiated special corporate discount rates with some resorts--two of them in Ensenada--that are now open only to private membership. So far, he said, he has deals with resorts and vacation spots in Orange County, San Diego County and Ensenada but is working on other spots throughout the country.

His advertisement boasts of “exclusive resorts,” cruises, tours, charter fishing and hunting trips, discount admissions to theme parks and theaters, discount memberships in golf, ski and tennis clubs and special air fare, car rental and hotel rates.

“For years I have wanted to see affordable family-oriented recreation that would be unique and more readily available to law enforcement personnel,” he wrote in his ad. “Something to help relieve the stress of the tough job and wild world that is part of the law enforcement profession.”

With 80,000 law enforcement officials in Southern California available for special rates, “it will be great if we get a 10% acceptance rate,” he said. “If nobody’s interested, that’s OK too. We’ve already had a lot of fun.”