Behind the Badge
Los Angeles PD Officer Asunción Maribel Plascencia in front of her home on Wren St. in Anaheim where she grew up. The Watts jacked represents the community in Los Angeles where she works.
Photo by Steven Georges/Behind the Badge
Asunción Maribel Plascencia is on a remembrance and reunion tour of sorts. As she stands in a cul-de-sac in her old Chevy Chase neighborhood, once one of the more notorious and gang-ridden spots in North Anaheim, also known as “the jungle,” she recalls some of the more chilling memories of her young childhood.
But she also remembers highlights, such as the encouragement and advice she received from former Anaheim Police Captain and Behind the Badge Editor Joe Vargas, to pursue a career in law enforcement. Advice delivered in the only language she understood: Spanish.
Plascencia, who goes by Maribel, points to a wall near Manzanita Park and remembers a man covered in blood trying to remove gang tattoos from his arm with a razor blade.
“I don’t know what he was high on,” she says.
Just down the street is where she saw her first murder victim, whom she found as she was retrieving a ball from a kickball game.
“There was a garage there where they used to play music and do drugs,” she says.
She also recalls a New Year’s Eve when her often absent father came home drunk and attacked her mother with a knife, wounding her arms as she shielded the children.
While Plascencia saw plenty of bad things, both in her home and around the neighborhood, it’s the good moments that sustained her and put her on a path from which she never strayed.
Former Anaheim Police Captain Joe Vargas with Los Angeles PD Officer Asunción Maribel Plascencia at the corner of Wren St. & Bluejay Ln. in Anaheim where Capt. Vargas inspired a then 8-year-old girl (Plascencia) to pursue a career in policing.
Photo by Steven Georges/Behind the Badge
Fateful day
Vargas was a well-known figure in the neighborhood in the early 1980s as part of the SCAT, or Street Crime Action Team.
Plascencia remembers well.
“You were in a Crown Vic with that hair, that beautiful hair,” Plascencia said with a chuckle. “You were so cool. You were a legend.”
As a result, the memory stuck from that day when Vargas picked her from a crowd of children playing tetherball at the corner of Wren St. and Bluejay Ln.
Still does.
So, when the Consulate General Of Mexico office in Los Angeles presented a “Mexican Pride of the Month” award to Plascencia, now a Los Angeles police officer with the Community Safety Partnership Bureau, it was Vargas who handed it out.
And it all began with that chance interaction nearly 40 years ago.
Although the specifics have faded over time, the effect didn’t.
Vargas was passing out police badge stickers to kids when Plascencia, who spoke only Spanish at the time, told him she wanted to be a police officer.
Vargas didn’t remember Plascencia until the meeting at the Consulate. However, he says, he often talked to children in their native Spanish and stressed the importance of learning English.
“I told them to watch cartoons, because that’s what my dad did,” Vargas said of his immigrant father, who would go on to become an Anaheim policeman.
Plascencia remembers he ended the pep talk with “Élchale ganas,” an informal expression that roughly translates as “get cracking” or “give it your best.”
“I ran home to tell my mom and I never looked back,” Plascencia says. “I was six or seven.”
She took Vargas’ suggestion to heart.
“I learned English from cartoons … and Michael Jackson,” she says.
While police work may have been a far-fetched dream for an immigrant child from horrific circumstances, Plascencia says her mother never dissuaded her.
“Culturally, she could have stopped me,” Plascencia says. “She could have said, ‘That’s not for girls.’ But she never did. She always encouraged it. She never hesitated and she never saw me hesitate.”
Former Anaheim PD Capt. Joe Vargas, left, and retired Anaheim PD Sgt. Rick Martinez as they listen to Los Angeles PD Officer Asunción Maribel Plascencia talk about her childhood as they visit Manzanita Park in Anaheim where she grew up.
Photo by Steven Georges/Behind the Badge
A fortifying relationship
Plascencia covers her face with her hands and tears up as a visitor approaches.
“Oh, my God,” she exclaims as Rick Martinez, a former sergeant and Explorer advisor who mentored Plascencia through her years as a Police Explorer in Anaheim, approaches with a grin.
He’s the other half of the duo that helped lift Plascencia.
“He carried my adolescence through a safe harbor,” Plascencia says. “Knowing where I came from, those were critical years when a kid can get lost.”
Many children didn’t escape the neighborhood’s pall.
Before the Chevy Chase area was redeveloped and renovated in the late 1980s, it was a neighborhood devoid of positive role models except, maybe, the police.
Drugs were openly dealt. Violent crime rampant. And, threaded through it, were the families and children just trying to survive and make their way in the United States.
“Twenty-four hours a day this is where people came to buy crack, coke, meth, and in the midst of it were all these kids,” said Vargas, then a narcotics investigator. “It was very busy.”
Every day there were undercover sting operations going on, foot pursuits, and car stops and chases, Vargas said.
Plascencia said kids in the neighborhood often knew when police were about to conduct an operation. They would rush to buy snacks and sit on a curb to watch.
“Then the ninjas would come in,’” Plascencia says with a smile. “It was a whole show. It was awesome.”
Martinez became a surrogate figure for Plascencia’s father, who was in and out of jail and the family home as he battled his addiction.
Plascencia said she remembers inviting Martinez and her father to her prom, where she was nominated a queen, as well as graduations from high school, college, and the Police Academy.
Again the tears came as Plascencia remembers her dad never showed.
“But there was Martinez trying to get the camcorder on me,” she says.
Martinez said he knew from the outset that Plascencia was special.
“Oh, yeah, she was a leader,” he says. “She had this big personality and kids gravitated around her.”
Los Angeles PD Officer Asunción Maribel Plascencia at Manzanita Park in Anaheim where she grew up.
Photo by Steven Georges/Behind the Badge
Recognition as a cop
Plascencia attended San Diego State, graduating with a degree in sociology. Although her sights were still on police work, she had been told it was good to have experience in another career before applying.
She was hired by the YMCA, where she put her sociology skills to use, working with youth groups.
Her first attempt to become an officer was with Anaheim. And she failed – coming up short in strength and agility testing. Although she might have been able to use her connections, she didn’t tell Martinez or Vargas, preferring to succeed or fail on her merits.
After building her strength, she was accepted by the Los Angeles Police Department, attended Police Academy, and joined in 2006.
She has steadily risen through the ranks and in 2011 was selected for an elite “relationship-based” unit created to improve neighborhood interactions. As part of that, she has worked in several tough projects and neighborhoods in South Los Angeles, including Nickerson Gardens, Imperial Gardens, and Jordan Downs.
Donning a green jacket that reads “108th Watts,” Plascencia is proud of the neighborhood she represents.
With her pleasant, upbeat attitude, she quickly connects with residents, chatting up children and handing out apples and carrots. She leans toward empathy rather than authority whenever possible.
“I blend who I am as a person and as an officer,” she says.
She remembers helping break a case by convincing an elderly witness to come forward by praying with her to the Virgin of Guadalupe.
“The way I was raised and my culture allow me to be relatable to the community,” not just Latinos, she says.
Plascencia’s caring extends to her home life as well. Her mother passed away several years ago, but Plascencia has reconciled with her father, who is now sober and lives with her.
She is a single mother. Plascencia’s son recently enrolled at UCLA and she drives him from their San Diego home to and from school twice a week around her work shift.
Someone brought Plascencia’s work and sacrifice to the attention of the Mexican Consulate, which arranged to surprise her.
Plascenia says she sees the recognition as an affirmation.
“I felt like God was telling me, ‘Well, done.’” she says. “Who as an adult gets a chance to rewind to where it all began?”
Plascencia turns to Vargas and Martinez, who alternately launched and sustained her.
In a quiet voice she says, “You planted the seed, and you built me up.
