Officer’s Family Feels Apparent Suicide Was Result of Love Affair

An off-duty Los Angeles police officer who apparently committed suicide by ramming her car into a freeway support column was distraught over an extramarital affair with one of her former LAPD bosses, the woman’s brother said Wednesday.

Officer Nadine Arango, who was separated from her husband, began dating one of her superiors at the LAPD’s Foothill Division, said Andre Arango, Nadine’s older brother. The affair came to light in January when Officer Arango, 25, attempted a drug overdose, reportedly because her lover reneged on a promise to leave his wife.

Andre Arango said he thinks a similar conversation might have triggered his sister’s apparent suicide on Tuesday.

“I think he talked to her,” Arango said. “I think that’s what this is about.”

The officer, whom Arango did not name, was transferred to another LAPD division after the affair became known, Arango said.

A spokesman for Chief Bernard C. Parks declined comment on the alleged affair, citing privacy issues.

“All I can tell you is that Officer Arango was well liked and a good cop,” Cmdr. Dave Kalish said. “Her performance was good . . . This had nothing to do with the job.”

Arango, a four-year LAPD veteran, returned to work in March from a leave after the earlier suicide attempt. On Tuesday, shortly before ending her shift at Foothill Division, she called her estranged husband, California Highway Patrol Officer William Badgerow, with whom she maintained a close friendship, her brother said.

“She said she was tired, that she couldn’t go on anymore,” said Arango, who spent the morning comforting his brother-in-law. “She just wasn’t happy with life anymore.”

Badgerow immediately called the LAPD’s Foothill Division and warned officers that Arango might be suicidal.

After searching for Arango in the police station and parking garage, officers drove to her Sun Valley home, Capt. Ron Bergman said.

As they approached, Arango sped off in a black Chevrolet Suburban. She drove into the hills near her home and managed to elude the officers, Bergman said.

Inexplicably, Arango then called police herself from a coffee shop on Sunland Boulevard. But as officers approached, she again drove away. This time her car came to a stop on Hollywood Way near the Golden State Freeway, less than a mile from the modest pink house she shared with her brother.

“At that point, one of the detectives who knew her said over the loudspeaker, ‘Nadine . . . we need to talk,’ ” Bergman said. “A few minutes later, she floored it and hit the pillar.”

The coroner performed an autopsy Wednesday, but withheld an official cause of death pending further investigation.

Bergman said Arango, who had been assigned to Foothill Division for the past two years, was currently assisting detectives in following up on assault investigations.

“She was a young, energetic officer who was very outgoing and friendly with all the people here,” he said. “She’s going to be greatly missed.”

If deemed a suicide by the coroner, Arango’s death would mark the third instance in less than a year in which an LAPD officer has taken his or her life.

“Unfortunately, we have more officers taking their own lives than are being killed in the line of duty,” Kalish said.

As a result, Chief Parks has increased the number of department psychologists, many of whom were available Wednesday to counsel officers at Foothill Division.

Arango, orphaned at the age of 6, had dreamed of being a police officer since she was 12, her brother said.

Friends described her as a natural athlete who enjoyed running, working out at the gym and in-line skating at the beach in Santa Monica.

Until a couple of months ago, she and her husband owned a Burbank coffee shop, Kelly’s Coffee and Fudge Factory.

Ken Hartnett, an employee of the coffee shop and longtime friend of Arango’s, remembered her this way:

“She had a smile that came from way inside of her and would just warm everybody up,” he said. “She was alive . . . more alive than anyone I know.”

Hartnett said the couple sold the coffee shop about two months ago, largely because it took too much of their time.

Despite their separation, Badgerow was “torn apart” by Arango’s death, her brother said.

“He still loved her to death,” Arango said. “He still cared.”

Arango said that although his sister seemed outgoing and jovial to those around her, she was “very lonely and sad inside.”

He said the two lost both their parents when they were young, their mother to a stroke and their father in a car accident. They were raised by aunts and uncles in the Los Angeles area until Andre turned 18, got a job and began taking care of his sister.

“She never got to be a kid,” he said.