Their Pal Joey : Mentally Disabled Man Is Friend, Helper at Station

Twice a week Joey Ronquillo hops on his bike at 9 a.m. and rides the short distance from his mother’s house to the West Valley Division of the Los Angeles Police Department. He’s going to work.

Sometimes he sits in on high-level meetings or the midmorning briefings at the station. Sometimes, he flirts with the women working in the Records Bureau or chats with staff members in Los Angeles City Councilwoman Laura Chick’s adjoining field office. Usually, though, he sits near his best friend, Senior Lead Officer Kenny Knox, monitoring the day’s events on his police scanner.

Ronquillo, who is mentally retarded, wandered into the West Valley station offices one spring morning in 1990 with nothing but a cheerful demeanor to serve as his pass. At 28, he has “worked” for Knox and the other officers ever since.

Given access to the entire station, his job is to run small errands for Knox or to simply be “Joey” for everyone else.

“It’s just nice to have someone around who appreciates you for what you are,” said Knox, who pays Ronquillo $5 per shift. “Joey’s part of the division.”

When Ronquillo was born, he stopped breathing for a few minutes, hindering his ability to speak and to reason effectively.

He attended schools for the mentally retarded throughout his childhood, consistently displaying a low attention span and severe behavioral problems.

During his last year at Reseda’s Leichman Special Education High School, however, Ronquillo began to show progress through a friendship with a visiting LAPD Explorer officer. For years afterward, he harbored a fondness for the police force. Eventually, it grew into fascination.

“Joey wants to be a cop so bad he is sometimes beside himself,” said Knox, who was one of the first officers to talk to him when he initially walked into the station. “He makes it fun to come to work because he’s so enthusiastic about everything.”

With his police scanner in hand, Ronquillo shows up to the station at about 9:30 a.m. and greets virtually everyone at the division.

“Hey, Joe!” said a patrol officer as he walked past Joey in a hallway.

“I heard you on the radio yesterday,” Joey beamed.

“You got me again,” the officer replied.

Ronquillo’s favorite hobby is scanner surfing. Why? “I like to hear them catch the robbers.”

The call he remembers most, however, did not go so smoothly.

“There was a burglary and they couldn’t find the house,” he said, laughing. “Whoops! Sorry, Kenny,” he apologized to Knox, slapping his head in worry that he had just embarrassed the station.

“That’s OK, Joey,” replied Knox.

Ronquillo grinned and flashed a “thumbs-up” at Knox.

“Kenny’s my best friend,” he said. “He said ‘Hi’ to me first.”

It’s hard to say who gets more out of the relationship--Ronquillo or the police.

“Joey’s presence brings you down to earth,” Sgt. Danny Mastro said. “When you look at his situation and consider his positive outlook, you remember that the world and your own problems aren’t so bad.”

For his part, Joey has grown more perceptive, more aware of his surroundings, since he began visiting the station. Two years ago, he was standing outside a local 7-Eleven store when somebody asked him if he wanted to buy some drugs.

“I told them ‘No, thank you, leave me alone’ and came here,” Ronquillo said. “They were the bad guys.”

Ronquillo occasionally has reported other wrongdoing he’s seen on the streets. Along with his constant scanner monitoring, it shows that he is increasingly in tune with what goes on at the station. “He’s made a lot of progress in the last few years,” Mastro said.

Captain Bob Gale, whose 23-year-old son is also mentally retarded, finds encouragement in Ronquillo’s development.

“My son still has to be supervised when he goes out in public, because he’s too trusting,” Gale said. “Joey has reached a point where he can tell the difference between good and bad. He knows a crook when he sees a crook.”

“He now watches the news every day and listens to that scanner constantly,” said his mother Lesle Ronquillo. “I sometimes have to yell at him to turn it off when it gets too late. They’ve really taught him a lot,”

According to Mastro, the person most responsible for any development in Joey’s mental abilities is Kenny Knox.

With Ronquillo’s father absent from the scene since he was 5, Knox has stepped in as a stable figure of authority for Ronquillo. Nicknamed “Joey’s Dad” by his colleagues, Knox can often be heard barking at Ronquillo to pull up his sometimes drooping pants or seen readjusting one of Joey’s several citizen police badges.

He drives Ronquillo around on some of his assignments and was recently instrumental in securing a part-time job for Ronquillo doing custodial work at a local Carl’s Jr. restaurant.

Raising funds for holiday gifts and meals in the past, Knox is currently considering a major project to paint both the inside and outside of the Ronquillo household.

“Joey and his family don’t have much,” Knox said. “It’s not their fault Joey’s the way he is. Some people are put off by Joey, but you’ve just got to get to know him.”

Lesle Ronquillo takes care of her son and her 74-year-old mother by herself. Currently unemployed, she said that the West Valley officers’ continual “help Joey” projects have eased the burden of her efforts.

But, as Mastro explains it, the police have received as much as they have given.

“Taking the time out to help someone so vulnerable makes you feel a lot better about yourself,” Mastro said. “We need to feel that way sometimes.”

Besides, he said, Joey sometimes has a trick up his sleeves that will bring the house down and make it all worth it.

Last Christmas, Ronquillo walked into the station singing a song he made up about the West Valley Division. In a sing-song narrative tone, Ronquillo listed everyone at the station he came into regular contact with.

“Sgt. ‘Rillo, Sgt. Mastro, Kenny Knox . . . the grumpy janitor,” he sang, “all I want for Christmas is to be their friend . . . “

“He went around the station all day singing those same words,” Mastro said. “And, when he was done, he’d flash his contagious ‘kid in a candy store’ smile without saying another thing. Everyone just burst out laughing.”