Deputy’s Beat Covers a Lot of Ground--and Water

It is the most remote law enforcement beat in Los Angeles County, a bucolic section of Santa Catalina Island with more pigs and buffalo than people and where there has been not a single murder in living memory.

Lee Nielsen, who patrols this distant outpost, is the last resident deputy in the Sheriff’s Department, an officer based so far from a station that he works out of his home.

The more populated side of Catalina, the side most tourists see, is not exactly a hotbed of crime, but there is enough to warrant stationing 13 Sheriff’s Department officers in Avalon. On a busy summer weekend, the population can swell to 20,000.

Nielsen works more than 20 miles away in Two Harbors, which has only 150 permanent residents. Two Harbors is on a narrow isthmus about six miles from the western tip of the island. This is a lonely, wind-swept spot, with dirt roads and a few trailers, a one-room schoolhouse, a lodge, a restaurant, a general store and a few boating-related businesses.

With its white sandy beaches, stands of coconut palms and ambience of desolation, visitors feel as if they had been stranded on a picturesque South Pacific island.

Before Nielsen arrived on Catalina in 1992, he was a sheriff’s canine handler in the Antelope Valley and only responded to murders, rapes, robberies and other felonies. Now he investigates an entirely different type of crime, such as illegal pig hunting, lobster poaching or operating a boat while intoxicated.

Shortly before Nielsen transferred to Catalina, he pursued a robber on the freeway at speeds of up to 100 mph, from Palmdale to Northridge, until the driver crashed into another car.

“At the time, I was thinking that I was getting too old for this kind of thing,” says Nielsen, 52, a 29-year veteran of the department.

He stands on a rocky cliff with a spectacular view of the harbor, the sea shimmering beneath him, and says, “I’d much rather be here at this stage in my career.”

Nielsen’s first day on the job in Two Harbors was a memorable one. A few hours after his shift began, a sailboat was found splintered on the rocks with a corpse below deck. The man had committed suicide by taking an overdose of pills.

Because the sheriff’s makeshift morgue on the island is in Avalon, Nielsen had to transport the body immediately. The corpse was so heavy, however, that the deputy could not get it into the back seat of his two-door, four-wheel-drive Bronco. So he put it in a body bag, deposited it in the front seat and strapped it in with the seat belt.

The road from Two Harbors to Avalon is winding and treacherous, much of it unpaved. And by the time Nielsen headed out it was dark--a foggy, moonless January night. Suddenly, out of the mist, he spotted dozens of pairs of huge glowing eyes, staring at him as he drove past.

“I was really spooked,” he recalls. “I had no idea what they were. I didn’t know what was going on.”

He finally realized they were buffalo, grazing by the side of the road. Buffalo were originally brought to Catalina in 1924 for the filming of a movie, and there are now about 500 on the island.

When Nielsen finally arrived in Avalon, he spotted a deputy who was breaking up a fight on the street. He pulled over to help and, when he returned to the car, found it surrounded by passersby wondering why a body bag was in the passenger seat.

Nielsen soon discovered that most days are considerably less dramatic. Still, there are times when people are happy there is a deputy nearby. After heavy rains, panicked residents occasionally call when they see a human skeleton emerging from the mud.

“These are never the result of a murder, though,” Nielsen says. “They’re usually Indians who had been buried a long time ago. You can tell by the teeth: There aren’t any fillings, and the teeth are ground down.”

During summer, the pace picks up considerably at Two Harbors, and Nielsen sometimes works 24-hour shifts, with just a nap to keep him going. He patrols the island--by truck and by boat--searching for people camping illegally, responding to boating accidents and drownings, aiding lost hikers or snake-bitten campers and apprehending poachers on land and sea.

At night, he stays up well past 2 a.m., when the two bars on the isthmus close. After he is certain that all the drinkers have returned to their campgrounds or boarded dinghies and safely arrived at their yachts and sailboats moored up to four miles offshore, he can finally sleep.

“People who have been drinking too much sometimes get lost,” Nielsen says. “Some people sneak off on someone else’s dinghy. Others run out of gas. So I get in my boat and make a sweep every night and make sure nobody is stuck out there.”

John Phelps, general manager of Two Harbor Enterprises, which owns and operates most of the businesses on the isthmus, says Nielsen has the ideal temperament for a small-town deputy.

“He’s very easygoing, he’s fair and he doesn’t gossip,” Phelps says. “He’s good in the water, and he’s good on land. He can track an illegal pig hunter in the mountains, and he can take care of a boating accident at sea. Lee is versatile, which is critical out here, because he doesn’t have any backup.”

Nielsen joined the Sheriff’s Department in 1970 and worked in the County Jail, the busy Lennox station and, for 15 years, in the Antelope Valley.

When he first heard that the deputy in Two Harbors was retiring, the idea of taking the job intrigued him. Nielsen is an avid sailor who at the time owned a boat docked in Ventura. On a weekend, he sailed to Two Harbors with his 9-year-old son, and they were enchanted.

His two oldest children had just graduated from high school and were on their way to college. So Nielsen, his wife, who was also seduced by the majestic vistas, and his young son moved into a trailer that doubled as the sheriff’s substation.

In his off hours, Nielsen enjoys all the recreational activities the area offers, including hiking, camping, mountain biking and sailing. His wife, a nurse, works part-time at an Avalon hospital. Their son, who makes the hourlong trip to high school in Avalon every day by school bus, graduates in June.

“We just fell in love with the place,” Nielsen says. “Living here may not be for everyone, but I knew this is where I wanted to be.”

In the 18th and early 19th centuries, there was considerably more crime on Catalina than there is today. The isthmus and Avalon were havens for smugglers and pirates. During the Civil War, Confederate sympathizers planned to use the island as a base for raids on the ships that transported gold along the coast. So Northern troops, in 1864, were quickly shipped to Catalina to evacuate all private citizens.

During Prohibition, the isthmus became a refuge for bootleggers who smuggled whiskey to Los Angeles. Today, the remote western end of the island still serves as a base for smuggling.

“When you see an aircraft flying around at night with its lights off, you can assume someone is looking for a dope drop-off spot,” Nielsen says. “And if you see a good-sized boat riding well below the water line, that’s also a tip-off it’s carrying something it shouldn’t.”

But Nielsen does not pursue smugglers. He simply calls federal drug authorities and lets them make the arrests.

Nielsen’s daily duties are considerably more mundane. Every season except summer is considered the off-season, and the residents seem even more cut off from the outside world then.

During the 1920s, there were a number of lawmen in remote sections of Los Angeles County--known as town constables--who were based out of their homes. But for the last few decades, the only resident sheriff’s deputies left in the county have been based in Gorman and Two Harbors.

Four years ago, the department closed the housing facility at the Gorman station. The two officers moved to residential neighborhoods, and Nielsen became the last resident deputy.

On a recent weekday morning, Nielsen is taking advantage of the dearth of tourists by repainting his patrol boat, a 22-foot Boston Whaler, replacing several parts and getting it ready for the summer crush. When he receives a tip that a lobster poacher is at work, he hops on a county lifeguard boat that is also stationed at Two Harbors.

It is a clear, breezy afternoon, and from the water Two Harbors is an arresting sight, a picturesque village flanked by the verdant hillsides, dotted with sage and sumac, and the turquoise sea. A few miles up the coast there are towering cliffs, a rugged coastline and numerous inlets and coves. The only sign of civilization is the faint, vaporous outline of Long Beach’s skyline, shrouded in a film of fog and smog.

The boat cruises past Blue Cavern Point, at a rocky cove a few miles from Two Harbors, the most famous site in the history of the isthmus. This is where Natalie Wood was found floating face-down in 1981. She accidentally slipped while trying to get into an inflatable boat from her 60-foot yacht, the Splendour, after she argued with her husband, Robert Wagner. Wood was “slightly intoxicated,” the coroner reported at the time.

Nielsen cruises along the inlets near Two Harbors for about an hour but cannot find the poacher and returns to shore.

“This guy steals commercial lobster traps, takes the lobsters and then resets the traps in remote spots,” says Nielsen, who has arrested the poacher in the past. “Sometimes he puts them in marine sanctuaries. Sometimes he sets them up out of season.”

Nielsen will only be searching for lobster and pig poachers for another year. Next spring, after 30 years with the department, he plans to retire. He will probably buy a motor home and travel across the country with his wife. Then he hopes to purchase a boat and possibly live on board. He says he will probably dock the boat on the mainland, to be closer to his children, but he plans to make frequent trips back to Two Harbors.

“I’ll miss living here,” he says. “The one-room schoolhouse, the dirt roads, the absence of hustle and bustle, all make it a very special place. You’re kind of lost in time. Being a sheriff here is probably pretty much the same as being a small-town sheriff a century ago.”