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Published on 08/31/1998 All articles from this issue

The beat goes on

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By Joanne Griffith Domingue

Town Crier Staff Writer

The Town Crier rides along with a beat officer in

Los Altos Hills

Dave Rodriguez treats people the way he wants to be treated. So there's lots of smiling and waving as he drives around Los Altos Hills.

Rodriguez, a 14-year deputy sheriff with the Santa Clara County Sheriff's office, has been one of the three beat officers in Los Altos Hills for the past five years. He works from 3 p.m. to 1 a.m. Friday through Monday.

"I don't want to seem unapproachable," he said. "I liked it when cops waved at me as a kid. I want a face with the job.

"It's a quiet beat," he said. "That's true." But the low volume of calls "allows me to stay with the people longer. It allows me to help people."

He did a lot of that on a recent hot Friday night, with a Town Crier reporter tagging along.

At 4:50 p.m. he spotted a man in a teal Honda, pulled over onto the side of Arastradero Road, with its emergency lights flashing.

As Rodriguez walked up to the car, the man got out and met him.

"When people come up to meet me, I like to go up to the car to see inside," he said. Turns out the man's car had overheated, and he was just waiting for it to cool down.

We passed a man, in dusty, disheveled navy dress slacks and a blue button-down shirt, leading a horse.

Larry Rouse had come home from work and discovered his horse was sick. He'd recently bought the animal for his 5-year-old daughter and didn't yet have a heavy-duty vehicle to pull the horse trailer.

So he did the only thing he could think of. He walked the horse, from his Los Altos Hills home near Arastradero Road and Highway 280, to the horse vet in Portola Valley.

"See, here's the prescription," he said, and held out a tube of anti-inflammatory medicine.

Typical calls in Los Altos Hills, Rodriguez said, "are domestic disturbances - anything from a husband-wife, or children - family matters." He also receives calls about juvenile parties.

"We also get a lot of hit-by-deer calls, with a carcass lying in the roadway. I get it out of the road," he said.

Then San Jose Tallow Company comes, with whom the sheriff's office has a contract, and picks up the carcass.

In between calls, he does radar monitoring, particularly at the 280 off-ramp at El Monte, near the spot of a fatal accident on El Monte two years ago, he said.

"Since I've been hammering that intersection, accidents have gone down dramatically," he said. Sometimes he issues eight or nine citations. Sometimes none.

"There are joggers, bikers, hikers," he said, "people you need to be mindful of."

A champagne-colored Maxima GLE blazed by, going 55 in the 35 mph zone.

Rodriguez cited the 45-year-old Santa Clara resident. "He knew he was speeding," Rodriguez said.

One of the best things about having beat officers, "is how well these guys know the town," said Elayne Dauber, a Los Altos Hills resident and member of the town council.

Not only do they know their way around the winding roads, "they know when to be alarmed and not to be alarmed. These guys have the problem solved because they know the town so well."

Rodriguez likes what he does, and he does it well, a happy synergy for Los Altos Hills.

"I am really blessed to work here," he said.

The beat goes on.