65-Year-Old Man Trains for Police Reserves

At an age when most people are thinking of retirement, 65-year-old Donald Absey of Woodland Hills is planning on holstering a gun and heading out into the mean streets to fight crime.

For the past 17 weeks, Absey has been scaling walls, studying criminal law and practicing cardiopulmonary resuscitation in preparation for his graduation today from the South Bay Police Reserve Academy.

A retirement pension actuary during the week, Absey traded his three-piece suit for a reservist’s uniform while attending a paramilitary boot camp for trainees nights and weekends.

Every Saturday, Absey and his classmates spent hours running wind sprints, doing push-ups, practicing self-defense and pushing their bodies to the limit.

“It’s a grind, believe me. That was the worst 17 weeks of my life . . . but in a good way,” said Absey, who recalls undergoing equally relentless training before he flew Banshee jets for the Navy during the Korean War.

For many in his class, the rigorous physical training, challenging criminal justice courses and stringent background checks were too much: only 49 of the 94 who showed up the first night of class made it to today’s graduation.

Absey, a gray-haired, bespectacled father of five children and grandfather of two, has lived in Woodland Hills for 27 years with his wife, Patricia. His favorite hobby is flying biplanes in aerobatic competitions, at which pilots perform stunt maneuvers before nit-picking judges.

He said he first got interested in becoming a reserve officer, which he admits worries his wife, after talking to a business associate, attorney Robert Ridley, a lieutenant in the South Pasadena Police Department Reserves.

“It’s a noble profession,” said Absey about adding police work to what seems an already full life. “It’s kind of exciting. I just assumed I could do it and that it would be tough and I was right.”

Despite the difficulty of the training, Absey managed to distinguish himself in the eyes of his instructors.

“He’s a dedicated, goal-oriented, determined gentleman,” said Mike D’Amico, director of the South Bay Academy.

D’Amico considers Absey an ideal reservist. “He came into the academy and knew he was competing against people half his age, and he was willing to put himself into those circumstances and he did exceptionally well.”

After graduation, Absey hopes to join his friend Ridley in the South Pasadena police reserves. He looks forward to putting in the 500 hours of field work that might merit him his own patrol car, but admits he still has a lot to learn.

“The real training starts when you hit the street,” Absey said.

But Absey’s good-natured, gentle demeanor and abundant life experience are bound to serve him well. He is the kind of person police departments say they’re looking for: someone concerned about people.

“He’s got a sense of compassion and understanding, yet when he needs to be forceful, he can get the job done,” said D’Amico. “He’s outstanding. If every officer had all of his traits, we would be very well off.”

The multiplicity of agencies training reserve officers makes it hard to say that Absey is the oldest reserve graduate in Los Angeles history. But the largest reserve academies--including the South Bay, Los Angeles Police Department and the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department academies--have no record of any line reserve graduate anywhere close to Absey’s age.

“I have been the chief of police and director of the academy for the last 15 years and he is the oldest graduate we’ve had out of the last 2,000,” D’Amico said.

“We’ve had somebody 58, but that’s it. If there is anybody else I’m unaware of it and I’ve been around a long time.”