Behind the Badge
Mr. Rogers is going to be spending a lot more time in the neighborhood.
That would be Mr. Ron Rogers who, at the age of 82 , is retiring from volunteering with the La Habra Police Department after 21 years.
“We have a great force here,” Rogers said at a reception in his honor on Thursday. “You are all great people. Now let’s eat.”
Rogers and others dug into the lemon cake he had requested. It was the least the department could do for a man who had worked for six police chiefs in his tenure as a volunteer, said Bureau Manager Cindy Knapp. He also got a book and a $50 gift certificate for his Kindle reader.
“We have had the pleasure of Mr. Rogers’ company for all these years,” she said. And Rogers didn’t ask for much in return.
“A good cup of coffee is all I asked for,” he said. “That was my pay.”
Rogers got started after a friend of his who was volunteering at the La Habra PD invited him to come pay a visit. Afterword, Rogers was hooked. He spent the next 21 years working three and a half hours a day, two days a week. The department estimates he volunteered over 7,000 hours of his time.
“He first worked with our Records Division, primarily bring order to a chaotic jumble of pawn slips and filing,” Knapp said.
He has also assisted in the Investigations Bureau, the Animal Control Division, answering phone calls, filing, helping to text calls for service to the officers in the field, folding brochures, and stuffing a multitude of envelopes for all the renewal notices that were sent out monthly, she said.
Highlights of his 21 years includes receiving a shoulder patch from one of his favorite LHPD captains upon his retirement several years ago and getting to ride in La Habra’s annual Corn Festival parade after winning Volunteer of the Year.
On Monday, July 21, the La Habra City Council will honor Rogers with an official proclamation.
This was the second retirement for Rogers, a Whittier College graduate who previously spent 37 years as a teacher in the El Rancho School District in Pico Rivera.
He plans to spend his free hours helping his wife Phyllis tend to their one-acre property in La Habra Heights. And he’ll likely have more time to spend with his three grandchildren and three great grandchildren.
