Policewoman Was Standout at Academy

She was a 45-year-old mother of two, by far the oldest police rookie in her class. Her father was a retired Los Angeles police detective. And recently, Christy Lynne Hamilton’s classmates in the Police Academy voted her the most inspirational new officer--an honor named after slain cop Tina Kerbrat.

On Tuesday, Hamilton’s name again was linked with Kerbrat’s as she became the second woman in LAPD history to be killed in the line of duty. Only four days before, Hamilton was standing proudly next to her father as she finally realized her dream, which came late in life, to follow in his footsteps.

Her father, Kenneth L. Brondell, had planned to meet his daughter Tuesday morning for breakfast and “to shoot the breeze,” he said. Instead, he found himself at a Northridge hospital, hearing the words a police officer’s family dreads most: His daughter had fallen while in uniform.

One of those offering solace was Police Chief Willie L. Williams.

“Chief, you’ve lost a good one with Christy,” Brondell responded. “You had a mature, compassionate, intelligent person who had lived life already, and made it to the age of 45 and decided to start her career at that point.”

He would later tell a reporter that “for the first time in my life, I feel sorry I was ever a police officer.”

He recalled how his former wife had warned him against encouraging their daughter to wear a badge.

“She was not happy about Christy becoming a police officer because of the danger,” he said, stopping to regain his composure, “which makes me feel guilty. I had a lot of influence on her.”

Within hours of her slaying, Hamilton was being mourned throughout the department she and her father loved. The terrible coincidences linking her name to Kerbrat’s were well understood at the Devonshire station, where officers--like others throughout the city--wore black mourning bands across their police badges in memory of their slain colleague.

In just a few short weeks, they said, Hamilton had endeared herself to them like few others.

“She was a breath of fresh air,” said Lt. Dan Hoffman, who 20 years ago had served with Hamilton’s father in the San Fernando Valley. “She was a pleasure to have here. Her father and mother were extremely proud of her.”

Born in 1948, Hamilton grew up in North Hollywood before attending Valley Junior College. She left school to marry Richard Steven, with whom she had a son and a daughter, and worked at his family’s nursery business in North Hollywood for 16 years, until just before she entered the Police Academy.

After divorcing Steven, she married Harold Hamilton, a Los Angeles city firefighter, in 1977. The couple were in the process of getting divorced at the time of her death.

Christy Hamilton is survived by a daughter, Kelly, 24, and a son, William, 21, from her first marriage, and two stepsons, Lance Hamilton and Jody Hamilton, from her second marriage.

Hamilton had long wanted to follow her father into the Los Angeles Police Department, but had all but given up because of her age. She had gone back to school, earning a liberal arts degree from Cal State Northridge in December, 1992. Then, in October, her father called and told her that the LAPD had lifted the age ceiling so people over 34 could apply.

“I did and just followed it through, and here I am,” she told reporters at her graduation last Friday. “My father was a Los Angeles police officer for 30 years. I always wanted to be a police officer, but I got married when I was 19 (and) started a family, and my life sort of changed.”

Hamilton was voted most inspirational in her class by her peers, who cited her upbeat attitude and perseverance. Colleagues said she endured the physical and mental rigors of police training that many men half her age couldn’t withstand.

“She was very positive,” said Nick Fotiades, the Police Academy’s senior training officer for Hamilton’s class. “She just hung in there. She never quit.”

Officer Michael Reyes, leader of Hamilton’s graduating class, said her toughest challenge was purely physical--making it through the obstacle course and scaling the wall.

Determined to succeed, Reyes said Hamilton would go out on the obstacle course early and even constructed a makeshift wall at her Thousand Oaks home to help her improve.

“She really didn’t allow her age to play a factor,” said Reyes. “She was there to become an LAPD officer.”

Privately, Hamilton was struggling with the rigors of training.

“Sometimes,” her father recalled, “she felt as if she didn’t know if she could make it. . . . You don’t become a cop unless you go over that wall. Sure enough, a couple of days later, she pulled into the driveway, ran inside and said, ‘Tell dad I went over the wall.’ She did it.”

By the time of graduation, Hamilton not only had conquered the obstacle course but won the admiration of her classmates and family. Reyes remembered meeting Hamilton’s family at a pre-graduation breakfast last Friday, and how she and her father had beamed at each other.

“She was on cloud nine,” he said. “She was extremely proud of her father, and he was extremely proud of her.”

Called up early with her other classmates because of the earthquake, Hamilton had already been on the street for a month.

In an interview Tuesday, Hamilton’s father remembered how proud he was of his daughter when she walked down the aisle at graduation.

But in the end, becoming a cop was something Hamilton told friends she wanted for herself, not for her father.

“She was the most self-disciplined and determined person I ever met,” said her brother, Kenneth Brondell Jr. “If she got it in her mind to do something, she was going to do it.”

As news of Hamilton’s death spread through the ranks Tuesday, her classmates began dropping in to the academy to console each other and remember the woman who had come so far.

At Parker Center, headquarters for the LAPD, flags were ordered to fly at half staff; just days earlier they were lowered in memory of two Palos Verdes officers who were shot and killed earlier this month.

After a moment of silence at the weekly Police Commission meeting, Police Chief Williams recounted his conversation with the rookie officer’s father at the hospital that morning.

“The Los Angeles Police Department will never know the type of officer it lost this morning,” Williams said Hamilton’s father told him. “Only her family will know.”

Her husband, Harold, was too grief-stricken to comment.

Others remembered Hamilton as “the mother” of her Police Academy class who never lost touch with her old friends.

Hugo Martinez, manager of Stevens Nursery where Hamilton had worked so long, said Hamilton dropped by Monday night “just like old times” to chat with her former co-workers.

“She was visiting her friends here on the way to the police station, talking about the demands that her new job required and letting us know how happy she was to be a police officer,” Martinez said. “She always said it was what she wanted to do.”

Times staff writers Ann W. O’Neill, Jim Newton and David Colker contributed to this story.