Jill’s Pick: Radio or the Police : Radio: As KNX’s Bill Keene retires, CHP Sergeant Jill Angel is offered his weather and traffic reporting job. She’s likely to accept and quit law enforcement.

Today, radio reporter Jill Angel must decide which identity she wants. Her choice: To stay with the “security” of her primary career as sergeant on the California Highway Patrol, in the fast lane toward becoming a lieutenant. Or to go for the “opportunity” of becoming the prime morning traffic-weather reporter on KNX-AM (1070), replacing venerable punster Bill Keene, who is retiring.

At 36, Angel, who has been “Bill’s afternoon sidekick” for nearly three years, almost as long as she’s been a CHP sergeant, knows she can no longer straddle both worlds. Her body won’t allow the two-job, nearly 80-hour-a-week stretch to go on, despite the fact that as a champion athlete she won the title of Toughest Cop Alive (female) in California in 1988.

Nor will her psyche. “I love my two careers,” she says wistfully. “But I want a life. “

You know the Angel voice: a melodic alto, talking at the clip of a high-speed chase, exuding energy and optimism even as she spotlights collisions. “It’s a tumultuous Tuesday out there,” she said during one of her 21 spots last Tuesday in her 3-7 p.m. slot. “There are accidents all over the place. On the Foothill Freeway. . . .”

Her own collision course came Wednesday afternoon when her boss, KNX news director Robert Sims, offered her Keene’s coveted spot. It was not unexpected. The mantle of transition was forecast in her being named emcee of Keene’s farewell picnic in Malibu next Sunday for tipsters and fans. In promotional materials, she shares bio and photo with Keene on the “KNX Traffic and Weather Together” page. And Keene had hinted, telling her it would be “ ‘a natural next step.’ ”

Angel, who started in radio in 1985 doing live traffic reports for the CHP while still a patrolwoman--”I began with three stations and wound up with 22”--would be unable to continue on the air if she became a lieutenant after taking the exam June 5. And she wouldn’t be eligible to take the exam if she decides to assume Keene’s seat June 1. Keene, 67, retires at the end of May.

“It’s been very stressful,” she says of having to make the choice.

Angel is also aware that other “highly-qualified people are waiting in line” behind her and that if she turns this down, such an opportunity may not come her way again.

At first, she had just 48 hours to decide. Ironically, CBS-TV’s “48 Hours” was trailing her and Keene Thursday and Friday for a segment on a program about the decline of Los Angeles.

“I feel really, really blessed and lucky, and like torn,” she said shortly after she got the offer. “I (would be) giving up a lot. You know what? You have to really believe in yourself. This is big time. To step out and do these things? And I’m just trying to sort this out inside. But I got a 10-year career in law enforcement, the lieutenant’s test coming up. I’m going places there. . . .”

In her seesaw joust with her decision, she was on her way to saying yes Thursday when she learned that KNX’s money offer was somewhat less than what she now earns at both jobs. (The top CHP sergeant’s salary is a little more than $50,000 a year.) She had her own counteroffer. But she said Sims told her flatly, “ ‘I can’t do that for you.’

Still, over dinner at a nearby restaurant, she brightened, reasoning that for nearly the same money she would be working Keene’s 29-spot, 5-10 a.m. shift (they currently alternate a four-hour Saturday-morning slot) with the opportunity to do on-camera reporting for KCBS-TV as she did during the riots. Angel had also negotiated extending the 48-hour decision. “I’ll go for a run and listen to my inner voice.”

However, by Friday afternoon she confided she was “leaning” toward taking KNX’s offer. After spending the morning patrolling West Los Angeles’ freeways, she was sipping cranberry juice in a “cop-stop” diner. “As long as nothing changes I’ll step out. . . . It’ll seem strange after 10 years not having my badge and a gun.”

Such is the crazy intensity of her current life that Friday afternoon she was seen galloping up KNX’s stairs, having just driven from the CHP’s Culver City station to the radio station in Hollywood. At 3:03 p.m. she arrived in the booth she shares with Keene. After playing a bunch of computer buttons like a virtuoso pianist, Angel was on the air discussing accidents, slow drives and a SigAlert. She had made it with three minutes to spare.