SAN CLEMENTE : Retired Volunteers Are Extra ‘Eyes, Ears’

It was a quiet morning along the chilly coastline, but Leon Aldrich and Harry Arabia found plenty to do once they donned their police uniforms and volunteer police badges.

“What do you want to do, son?” Aldrich, 76, asked Arabia, 70, as they pulled out of the Police Department in a marked patrol unit. “We’ve got cars and we’ve got houses (to check).”

During the course of their six-hour shift, Aldrich and Arabia did both, checking about 20 homes for vacationing residents and following up on several complaints about illegally parked cars.

“Ours is a question of presence,” said Arabia, a retired aerospace manager. “We’re like the extra eyes and ears of the Police Department.”

About eight years ago, in response to budget cuts from Proposition 13, the San Clemente Police Department established the first volunteer law enforcement program in the county relying solely on retired citizens.

Now, with a whole new round of severe cuts affecting local city services, including the possibility of dismantling the Police Department in favor of contracting for services from the Orange County Sheriff’s Department, the Retired Senior Volunteer Program, or RSVP, has grown to include 25 retired men and women.

Over the years, officials figure the volunteers have contributed more than 32,000 hours to the community by working patrols or taking care of office business.

And more than $250,000 has been raised from the estimated 10,000 parking tickets issued by senior volunteers.

“We fill in the corners of the Police Department,” said program coordinator Bill Walsh, a retired school principal. “We enforce handicap parking laws and fire lane regulations. We make vacant home checks. We patrol six days a week.”

Like most of the volunteers, Aldrich had no background in law enforcement but saw RSVP as a good way to contribute something back to the community he’s lived in for 12 years.

“It does a lot of good for the community,” said Aldrich, a retired engineer. “We need all the help we can, in any community.”

Although the volunteers wear uniforms, badges and two-way radios on their belts, they don’t carry weapons. Anything suspicious or potentially dangerous that comes up during a patrol is immediately turned over to regular officers.

For safety purposes, RSVP members also work in pairs and drive police cars clearly marked with “Volunteer Patrol” to avoid confusion with regular squad cars.

Most volunteers have not encountered any trouble in their duties, although Aldrich was once tackled by a German shepherd during a vacation house check.

“I don’t blame him,” said Aldrich, laughing. “He was doing what he was supposed to do.”

The bulk of RSVP patrol duties include making checks on houses, writing parking tickets, marking abandoned vehicles and checking up on homebound disabled people and senior citizens.

“There’s a lot of good talents sitting around,” said volunteer William (Mac) McGilligan, whose wife, Marion, is also an RSVP member.

“We’re trying to encourage more people to get involved. That frees up the time for officers to do other things,” he said.

Anyone seeking information about RSVP can call Walsh at (714) 492-0701. Seniors must go through training and pass background checks before being accepted into the program. RSVP members are also required to pay for their uniforms and other costs.