Security Guard Was Entrepreneur, ‘Great Guy’

Michael McClellan had been through his share of tough scrapes before, first during his 15 years as a Long Beach police officer, then as a modern-day diamond prospector in West Africa.

In one incident, McClellan and business partner Drew Lovett barely escaped with their lives as armed rebellion broke out three years ago around their mine site in Sierra Leone.

“They blew out the back windows of our Mercedes,” recalled Lovett, 35, of Laguna Niguel. “There were bullet holes down the side of the car. . . . It was a jungle terrain, and we’ve endured a lot of hardships over there.

“And then he comes here and gets a job working in an air-conditioned bank, and this happens.”

McClellan, 54, died Wednesday morning in an exchange of gunfire with a would-be robber at Eldorado Bank in Orange, where he recently began working as an undercover security guard.

“I thought that if we could have made it through [West Africa], we could have made it through anything,” Lovett said. “I just can’t believe he’s gone.”

The death came as a shock to McClellan’s friends and family, who described him as a friendly, gregarious man with a sharp mind and enough common sense to slip out of the dangerous situations that he found so appealing.

A few days ago, Lovett said, he talked with McClellan about the security guard job. Lovett said McClellan was clear about the reason he had been hired: The bank had been hit by the same gunman three times in the past year, and McClellan’s job was to try to keep it from happening again.

“I asked him if he thought this guy was going to come back,” Lovett said. “He didn’t look at me. He just said it wasn’t likely they’ll come back for the fourth time. He said there was so much publicity, he’ll steer clear, do it some place else.”

McClellan’s father, himself a retired Long Beach police sergeant, said he wasn’t concerned about his son working as an armed security guard. The younger McClellan was an excellent marksman, said his father, who bought him his first police weapon--a .357-magnum Colt revolver.

His son was full of the kind of self-confidence it takes to handle confrontations, the elder McClellan said.

“That’s why it’s so hard to believe that someone else got him first,” said Lynn McClellan, 78, of Long Beach. “Mike saw who [the suspected robber] was and shot. I guess he didn’t do a good job, because the other guy got him.”

Ironically, at least one business partner said McClellan was planning to quit the security guard job on Friday to go to Baker, Nev., and look for gold.

“We have a mine there,” said Ken Lathrop, McClellan’s partner in a business called Sami Abrasives. “We had been talking about the trip we were going to take there.”

McClellan was married and divorced twice, partner Lovett said. He had a son and a daughter from the first marriage--Debbie, 27, and David, 26, both of San Diego County--and a 5-year-old grandson named Michael, after McClellan. There were no children from the second marriage.

Lovett described McClellan as “a real good person--a real happy-go-lucky type.” But he was also an entrepreneur, running a series of small businesses both while serving as a police officer and after his retirement in 1980.

One of the businesses was Industrial Gold Recovery, a Long Beach firm that reclaimed gold from electronic circuit boards and other industrial applications.

Lovett said he met McClellan eight years ago through Industrial Gold Recovery while seeking someone to “assay” ore--extract the valuable elements.

“I started working with him,” Lovett said. “We became good friends.”

They went on--with a third man, Michael Neri--to form the West Africa Diamond Co., a firm they based in the Cayman Islands. The business took them on several trips to West Africa, where Lovett and McClellan contracted malaria and typhoid.

Despite the excitement of the African experiences, Lovett said, McClellan was conscientious about the relatively mundane aspects of being a security guard.

“He’s very strict and very conscious,” Lovett said. “There wasn’t a single individual coming in and out of there who he didn’t have his eyes on.”

That approach to the job doesn’t surprise officers who worked with McClellan in Long Beach.

“I really feel terrible that this happened to him, but that’s the kind of guy he was,” said Sgt. Richard Rose of the Long Beach Police Department. “He would put himself out in front to save other people.”

McClellan, 6-foot-4 and 220 pounds, joined the Police Department in 1965 and spent most of his career as a motorcycle officer until taking a medical retirement in 1980.

“He hated to leave,” his father said. “He was all policeman, and all man.”

He said McClellan had suffered a number of injuries during his career, including getting hit by a drunk driver while he was working the scene of an earlier accident.

“Mike was just a great guy,” recalled Rose, who said he used to work out with McClellan. “He was a physical nut, in great shape, and always took good care of himself. He was sort of an intimidating figure just by his size, but not intimidating at all in manner.”

Aside from his security and mining businesses, Lovett said, McClellan enjoyed water-skiing and rebuilding Harley-Davidson motorcycles, one of which he rode to work the day he was killed.

Lovett met with McClellan for lunch Tuesday to swap information on their next venture--another diamond expedition to Sierra Leone and Guinea, which Lovett said they had expected to begin in the next few weeks.

It was to be another in a series of exciting prospects, Lovett said, and both men were looking forward to it.

Especially McClellan.

“He used to say that many people make it through life, but few people really live,” Lovett said. “He really believed that. That really got his blood going.”

Times staff writer Lisa Richardson contributed to this story.