FULLERTON : Senior Volunteers Set to Go on Patrol

They take fingerprints, write parking tickets, direct traffic, and they could be your grandparents.

And tonight, a group of 10 senior citizens will receive police volunteer badges as they graduate from a new training program to expand police service and save money. And later this week, members of the unarmed volunteer group, known as the Retired Senior Volunteer Patrol, or RSVP, will each begin performing a variety of routine police duties.

“It’s to free up the officers to concentrate on more serious types of patrolling,” said program coordinator Officer Maureen Flynn.

The Fullerton RSVP program is tailored after similar efforts in at least 10 other Orange County cities and reflects an increasing reliance by officials on the enthusiasm and energy of volunteers to maintain police service in the face of budget cuts.

Ann Derfler, 62, a retired medical assistant and 30-year Fullerton resident, is one of the volunteers. She calls her community relatively safe and said she joined RSVP because she wants to help keep it that way.

“I feel we have time to give while we’re not raising families and (don’t) have full-time jobs . . . and it’s given me kind of a direction to go,” she said.

Volunteers will pair up and cruise the streets in a white patrol car equipped with a radio and sporting a “Retired Senior Volunteer” logo on the door. The Fullerton Neighborhood Watch salvaged the car from a junk yard, fitted it with a new engine and donated it to the Police Department, Flynn said. Derfler said she is also “looking forward to driving around” in the reconditioned patrol car.

Volunteer Fern Kruse turns 69 this week and plans to be putting in more than the minimum four hours per week for senior volunteers. “They only require 16 hours a month, and I can do that standing on my head,” she said.

The energetic Anaheim grandmother is the only volunteer from outside the city limits.

The six men and four women who graduate today will wear the typical uniform of a police volunteer--navy blue pants, light blue shirt and a badge that says “Volunteer.” To qualify for the program, senior volunteers must be at least 60 years old and retired, Flynn said.

Volunteers do not have the power to make arrests and will concentrate instead on routine duties, including checking houses where residents are on vacation, placing flares and traffic cones on the highway, entering data in computers, developing crime film and preparing the firing range in the basement of police headquarters for practice, Flynn said.

The “baby” of the group, 60-year-old Otto Krebs, said he was particularly impressed with the 12 hours of fingerprinting training the group received.

“It’s really a very intricate and complicated thing,” he said. All kinds of jobs require fingerprints as part of the application process, from teachers to day care workers and real estate agents, he said, and most of it is done by the Police Department.

While Krebs is fascinated with fingerprints, he said, he is open to any task handed him. He said he is volunteering for the fun of it and “mainly because I think the city needs help.”