COMMUNITY COMMENT : ‘The Care and Order Police Give Far Outweigh the Negative’

We have an adult son, John, with autism, who is struggling to lead as normal a life as possible. As a client of the North Los Angeles County Regional Center, he goes out every day with a job coach and takes the 3:00 bus from Topanga Plaza home.

On the afternoon of the worst rainstorm in January, John didn’t show up. Sometimes he comes home late, so we didn’t worry about him right away. When it began to get dark, we drove along the route he takes to see if we could find him but met with no success. When we got home, there was a message saying “This is John.” Nothing else. I began to imagine him sitting huddled on a curb somewhere in the cold rain, wet and miserable, not knowing what to do.

We called the West Valley police. Two officers, one male, one female, came promptly to our home and took a description. They followed his bus route, checking every 7-Eleven and phone booth along the way.

Just after midnight, they returned to our house to see if we had heard anything but we hadn’t. Going back out into the still-pouring rain, they said, “We won’t come back until we find him.” At 2:30 a.m., there was a knock on the door. There stood John with the two officers.

They had asked at a Ralph’s store on Topanga and were told that someone of John’s description had been out in front earlier. They kept searching all the open and closed shops and found him drinking coffee in a tiny doughnut shop where he had gone to get out of the rain. When they asked him if he would like a lift home, John said, “Yes.”

I could tell you many more stories of police kindness and professionalism to our family and our neighbors’ families over the 44 years we have lived in the San Fernando Valley. I know that police are human, the same as the rest of us, and sometimes make mistakes. But the care and order they give us far outweigh the negative.