Sergeant Returns to Earth for Retirement

The world will never look the same to Don Knutson.

After 15 years policing Orange County’s skies, the sheriff’s sergeant who helped create the department’s elite helicopter squad is about to take in his last 1,000-foot-high view of the county’s red-tile roofs, gleaming blue swimming pools and rolling canyons.

Preparing to retire next month, Knutson has more than 11,000 flight hours--a record in the department. He has scooped up dozens of lost hikers from the Cleveland National Forest. Chased hundreds of fleeing motorists down county freeways. And fielded countless complaints from residents angry about the noise his copter makes.

But most of all, Knutson has played a major role in nudging a department better known for horseback patrols when he joined in 1973 into a state-of-the-art force.

“For our department, his leadership and vision have really taken Orange County into the 21st century for airborne enforcement,” said Knutson’s boss, Lt. Pat Lee. “It’s going to be a real big vacancy when he leaves.”

Working as close as 550 feet high during the day, and 750 feet at night, Knutson’s beat high above homes is the most visible in the county, yet he has successfully avoided the limelight.

The soft-spoken South Dakota native appears uncomfortable talking about himself. But hand over the controls of one of the department’s two MD-600s, and Knutson suddenly seems at ease.

“When I first started flying, I couldn’t get enough of it . . . the feeling of control,” he said. “Making that aircraft do things is something I like to do.”

At 55, Knutson’s cockpit career has spanned three decades. His flight path has taken him from the mountains of Vietnam, where he was shot down twice while flying a gunship, to upscale Laguna Beach, where he spent an exhausting 10 days battling the disastrous 1993 wildfires.

It was those days over the city’s burning canyons that Knutson recalls as the highlight of his career.

More than 400 homes were destroyed or damaged as 80-mph winds fanned the inferno. Knutson and other helicopter pilots spent daylight hours dumping water from 100-gallon buckets on the roaring flames, flying through thick, choking smoke.

“You literally have to turn away sometimes because the radiant heat is so severe,” he said. “We fly with the door off so we can see when we’re picking up water. . . . You end up in the smoke, coughing.”

During the conflagration, pilots targeted fresh flames hidden from firefighters on the ground, and the helicopters are believed to have saved dozens of homes. The pilots were awarded the prestigious Igor I. Sikorsky Award for Humanitarian Service for their efforts.

Knutson joined the Sheriff’s Department in 1973 amid rumors that the agency would soon launch a helicopter unit. Four years out of the Army, he yearned to fly for a living. But it would be another 12 years before he would get a chance.

By 1984, Orange was the only county in Southern California without its own helicopters. It was then that Knutson helped the department sell the idea of forming an air support detail to county officials. A year later, then-Sheriff Brad Gates unveiled two helicopters, Duke 1 and Duke 2--named in honor of Gates’ friend, actor John Wayne.

Suddenly, deputies in a hurry no longer had to fight traffic or harsh terrain to reach an armed standoff or a missing hiker. Traveling at 160 mph, pilots of the Dukes could reach any corner of the county within 12 minutes.

But speed costs money. The department shelled out $780,000 for the original Dukes, and today each hour of helicopter use costs an estimated $643.

Over the years, those figures have prompted some to question whether the county can afford the choppers. Yet despite brief cutbacks during the county’s bankruptcy, the unit has endured. And Knutson, as its supervisor, has pushed it into the high-tech age.

In recent years, the department has switched to quieter helicopters and added video cameras to the aircraft so that pilots can beam footage of bank robberies and other ongoing incidents back to decision-makers at headquarters.

For all the innovations, however, Knutson said he is most satisfied with the stringent safety regimen he introduced for pilots.

The sheriff’s unit has avoided the kind of serious accidents that befall other police helicopters, including the county’s worst in 1987 when a midair collision between Costa Mesa and Newport Beach police choppers killed three people. Sheriff’s helicopters have only been in one accident in 15 years--a minor incident during a training exercise in which no one was hurt.

“That’s the thing that I’m most proud of in this unit,” Knutson said. “The very, very good accident record and the competency of the pilots.”