She’s No. 1 at Tracking Down Stolen Vehicles

Diane Holloway has done some strange things in nearly five years as a Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy. But one of the weirdest was following the tracks left by a 1968 Mustang without tires as it traveled slowly down a North Long Beach street.

Once Holloway found the car, she arrested the driver for stealing it and scored one more in a record for recovering stolen vehicles that allowed her win an award from the California Highway Patrol and the Automobile Club of Southern California.

The 10851 Award, named for the California Vehicle Code section that prohibits vehicle thefts, went to Holloway for stopping and arresting six suspected car thieves during a 12-month period while on duty in the Lakewood Division of the Sheriff’s Department.

Auto Club District Manager Michael Foster said in his 25 years with the Auto Club, Holloway is the first woman to receive the award. “She’s a very aggressive officer. She’s very much aware of what’s happening around her. That’s why she comes up with more stolens than other officers.”

As a young deputy, Holloway trained in East Los Angeles with an officer whose favorite arrest was vehicle thieves, she said. It was there that she learned how to spot suspicious circumstances. When she pulls someone over and notices a broken wing window on an older model or the casing broken on a steering column or wires hanging from the ignition, “I figure something’s not right,” she said.

But she also finds car thieves by running their license plate numbers through a computer. “When it comes back with a Department of Justice stop on it,” she said, “we confirm with the dispatcher that it’s a stolen car.” Favorite makes and models among car thieves include the Oldsmobile Cutlass, the Chevrolet Monte Carlo, Cadillacs and Hondas, Holloway said.

One of her more amusing arrests involved the guy driving the 1968 Mustang coupe with no tires, she said. “I got a call that the car was traveling on 59th Street in North Long Beach,” she said. She followed the indentations left in the street from the rims about a mile and a half to the Carmelitos Housing project in North Long Beach.

That time she arrested the suspect without incident, but it isn’t always that easy. “I’ve had people pull guns on me,” she said. Fear lurks in the back of her mind every time she walks up to a car.

“A lot of us have our guns out or we’re just real ready, watching the driver’s hands. We always get backup. Because we all want to go home at night.”

Even when she was a little girl in the San Fernando Valley, Holloway wanted to be a cop, she said. “When I told people, they figured it would pass.” Instead, after high school she became an intern with the Sheriff’s Department and has worked there ever since.

Being a deputy sometimes makes her social life a little difficult, she said. “Everyone wants to talk about the time they were pulled over and what a jerk the cop was,” she said. “I try not to talk about work after hours.” Being a woman, though, has never been a problem, either with colleagues or criminals, she said.

“A lot of law enforcement is not about physical strength. It’s about talking yourself out of situations,” she said. “Men want to fight with men because they’re macho. They don’t really want to fight with women. If I’m nice and I give (suspects) the respect that they deserve, they usually get with the program.”

In the future, Holloway hopes to work investigations for a gang detail. But for now, she said, she wants to stay where she is. “I’m real comfortable on the street.”

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The La Mirada Public Safety Poster contest announced its student winners recently. Entrants from La Mirada elementary schools drew posters illustrating public safety concerns.

First place winners are: Gabe Walters, seventh grade, Hutchinson Elementary School; Erin Joy Weller, fourth grade, Escalona Elementary School; Dustin Brewster, third grade, Hutchinson Elementary School, and Rachel Shook, first grade, Hutchinson Elementary.

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Conductor Steven Sloane has been named music director of the Long Beach Opera. Sloane, a native of Los Angeles, was the principal conductor at the Frankfurt Opera in Germany before accepting the Long Beach job. The music director position had been open since 1988 when Randall Behr left to become conductor of the Los Angeles Music Center Opera.

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The Whittier Optimist Club elected Jose Zertuche president for the coming year. Zertuche works for Rockwell International in Los Angeles and lives in Hacienda Heights. The Optimist Club is a community service organization.

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Dennis Dirks is the new dean of Biola University’s Talbot School of Theology. Dirks has been a professor and administrator at the La Mirada university since 1976.

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Norwalk City Councilwoman Judith Brennan has been appointed to the Los Angeles County Economy and Efficiency Commission by County Board of Supervisors Chairman Deane Dana.