405 Freeway signs honor retired police Chief Mitch Waller, killed 3 years ago by a distracted driver

Mitch Waller never saw it coming.

As well prepared as the Eagle Scout he was — firm and fit at 53, a longtime police officer with a law degree and an FBI certificate — even the former Westminster police chief couldn’t be prepared for this.

Riding his bicycle with a partner toward the end of a typical Friday morning 50-miler on Highway 133 toward Laguna Beach, Waller and his friend Kevin Beach were plowed from behind by a wayward Toyota sedan. The collision happened about 8:40 a.m., according to reports.

“I looked down at the speedometer. It said we were doing 22 miles per hour,” Beach said, recalling that the pair accelerated on the downslope of a 65 mph stretch of the two-lane road. “That’s the last thing I remember until I woke up from under the guard rail and looked up at the Orange County Fire Authority.”

The emergency worker’s face was familiar. He was a Laguna Beach firefighter whom Beach and Waller had worked with before.

“Mitch didn’t make it,” was the answer to the first question Beach could think of.

Beach, the fleet superintendent in Westminster, suffered a broken pelvis in two places, a broken arm and a dislocated shoulder in the collision.

The more severe pain was going through his mind. Beach had just lost his best friend.

Almost three years later, Waller is remembered with signs just added to a 5-mile stretch of the 405 Freeway in Irvine between Culver Drive and the 133 Toll Road, near where he was run down.

It took that much time and considerable effort by his wife, Sally, to win the recognition. She also wants to pass along the message that distracted driving kills.

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A life of accomplishment

James “Mitch” Waller was born in Texas and grew up in Huntington Beach. He reached the rank of Eagle Scout before his 1977 graduation from Edison High School, where he was also a member of the football and baseball teams.

His early life only hinted at the accomplishments ahead.

After graduating from UC San Diego, Waller took a criminal justice training course at Golden West College and then in 1984 joined the Westminster Police Department. His rise through the ranks, ultimately to police chief, was nothing less than a model of career excellence. After one year as chief, Waller was called on by the Westminster City Council to serve as city manager.

Waller and Sally Gouveia met in a supermarket checkout line in 1987. Handsome, humble and ever reaching for new challenges, Waller was a motorcycle patrolman at the time and also an amateur body builder. The couple married in 1994 and settled in Mission Viejo to start a family.

“Aren’t you afraid of being a cop’s wife?” Sally recalled as the most common question that friends would ask.

“No, because he’s good at what he does,” she said she would respond. “He loves his job, but he knows to be frightened. He doesn’t feel like he’s God, or above it all, or nothing’s going to happen to him, or oh, he’s this macho dude. He always knew that you need to keep that little bit of fear factor there to keep you on your toes.”

The Wallers welcomed a son, Chase, in 1996. Their daughter Kiana arrived two years later. Mitch Waller continued his career climb, earning a law degree through four years of night school at Chapman University and passing the bar exam in 1999. In 2003, by then a captain with the Westminster Police Department, he was accepted for training at the prestigious FBI National Academy.

Waller was named Westminster police chief in 2009. He oversaw construction of the new police station but never moved into his new office. After one year on the job, he was recruited to be Westminster’s new city manager, a role he fulfilled for less than two years.

“Integrity, professionalism, dedication to anything — his family, his friends” is how Beach describes his friend and co-worker. “Just an all-around great individual.”

After three decades of civil service and a fully vested retirement, Waller was ready to move on from serving the public. While considering his next career challenge, he stepped back for more time with his family.

The couple’s children were teenagers in the spring of 2013, and Waller spent significant time helping to coach Kiana’s softball team and assisting with Chase’s cross-country team while guiding the two toward college.

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Friday, June 28, 2013

Sally took the call at around 10 a.m. in the parking lot of a local Target store.

“Did you hear? Mitch was hit by a car,” came the startling news from her best friend, also the wife of a police officer, Sally recalled.

How bad is it? And how did her friend know this before she did? Sally’s instincts kicked in immediately. She called the Westminster police station, where officials would only confirm the accident but not the severity. She then called her children, telling them to meet her at home, and prepared them for the worst.

Several officers in dress uniform arrived at the Waller home a short time later.

Confirming what Sally already knew, officials offered details of the accident, indicating it was a case of distracted driving.

“We’re going to do something good out of this bad tragedy,” Sally told her daughter on the day her husband died.

According to the U.S. Department of Transportation, Waller was one of 3,157 people killed in 2013 in cases of distracted driving. An additional 424,000 the same year were injured in crashes related to the same cause.

The government statistics show that 10% of all fatal crashes, 18% of injury crashes and 16% of all police-reported motor vehicle crashes in 2013 were attributed to distracted driving.

To get a memorial sign erected, a family member of the deceased must apply for it and include proof of the victim’s public service. The manner of death must be related to a criminal roadway occurrence. Assemblyman Bill Brough (R-Dana Point) sponsored the Waller effort, and the honor was approved by the Irvine City Council.

“It’s a great tribute to him. There’s going to be a lot of people that pass by those signs that knew him,” Beach said of the newly dedicated signs. “It just reminds me of Mitch and how thankful I am to have the years I did with him as my best friend.”

“I know that the number one thing of a distracted driver is the use of a cellphone,” Sally said as she explained her mission to raise awareness. She wants to see automobile manufacturers modify mobile communication systems to automatically relay a message of “currently driving” when calls or text messages arrive while a person is behind the wheel.

“Using the phone and driving is a choice, the same way that drinking and driving is a choice,” Sally said. “When you drink and drive and you kill someone, the penalty is a lot higher than when you’re looking on your phone and you kill somebody or cause an accident. I think that needs to change.”

The National Safety Council puts texting at the top of the list among driver distractions, but there are many other common daily occurrences. Eating, switching radio stations, changing clothes and applying make-up are other distractions many drivers too often take for granted.

“It doesn’t matter what the distraction is, there’s millions of things that can distract us any day,” Beach added. “We need to focus on distracted driving, of any kind.”

The 25-year old driver involved in Waller’s fatal crash agreed to plead to a distracted driving charge and served no time in jail. A monetary award to the Waller family in the tens of thousands of dollars is expected to never be satisfied, but that’s not the point for them anyway.

“Even if she only pays $10 a month, I want that to be a constant reminder,” Sally said.