Since leaving high school, I went to CSM and got my A.A. and moved on to Cal-State Hayward. After a couple of quarters there I got an athletic scholarship to the University of Arizona. After a semester at the U of A I returned to Pacifica. Being young and knowing everything, I turned down the full-ride scholarship and returned to Cal-State Hayward, one of a few things I regret to this day.

While waiting for the quarter to start at Cal-State (Arizona was on the semester system and Cal-State was on the quarter system) I received a thick brown envelope from my favorite uncle! "Greetings, from the President of the United States . . ."  Anyway, I went down to my friendly Marine Corps Recruiter and he managed to get me in before the Army got me.

After surviving 13 months in Vietnam and returning home, I got engaged and married my high school sweetheart,  Patricia Lee Henry. We had two children, Kenneth Phillip and Tracy Christine.

Prior to getting out of the Corps, Los Angeles Police Department came to Camp Pendleton to recruit. They told us how hard it was to get a job and said police work was great. They were right, work was very difficult to find. After several months of diligent searching I managed to find a job in Redwood City as a Teamster warehouseman. It wasn’t rocket science, but it paid the bills.

A fellow employee retired and I got moved from the warehouse to driving the truck and making deliveries and pickups. I realized immediately that I could not do this the next 40 years.

A friend of my cousin was a Pacifica cop and he suggested I put in an application for Pacifica P.D. Making this long story a little shorter, I did. Shortly after applying with Pacifica, Jean Fassler (Greg’s mom) called and said she had heard that I had applied with Pacifica. She asked if I had thought about the County. I had not. She was on the Board of Supervisors at the time and sent me an application for the San Mateo County Sheriff’s. The rest is history. I will celebrate 30 years with the Sheriff’s Office on November 4, 2004.

In August of 1985 my wife Pat and the kids had returned from New York after a visit with her grandparents. I met her at the airport and she didn’t look quite right. I asked her if there was a problem and she said that she had been experiencing pain in her lower abdomen. I took her to the doctor the next day. After many tests and many operations it was determined that she had colon cancer. They operated and removed the affected part of the colon and got it all. The problem was it had moved to the liver. Pat passed away on March 6, 1987. Through this whole period, Pat had a positive attitude and I honestly thought she was going to beat it.

As far as the kids are concerned, Ken has graduated from San Francisco State, is a stockbroker working out of the financial district in San Francisco. He recently got married (August 28, 2004). Tracy has graduated from San Diego State and is now a San Francisco Police Officer working the Bay View. She is not married, but it looks very close!

I have been fortunate to find another wonderful woman and we got married on October 6, 1991. She is the former Diane Maria Medford. We will be celebrating our 13th wedding anniversary. We have a beautiful daughter Alexis who is now 11. Diane works for United Airlines and because of that we have flight benefits.

On vacation this year, we took full advantage of her flight benefits, and we flew to Europe. We were in London, Geneva, Rome and Frankfurt. We returned on September 22, 2004.

I continued pole-vaulting in the Police Olympics for the first ten years of my career and did quite well. This was primarily due to Mr. Fisher. He allowed me to use the vaulting equipment at Terra Nova with the conditions that I not sue him if I got hurt and that I would assist in coaching the new vaulters during track session. Eventually, pole-vaulting became a liability for the Northern Peninsula League and is no longer done, thus ending my Police Olympic participation.

I’m sure there is a lot more I could have written, but this is the gist.

(November, 2015)  See 2015 reunion questionnaire response.