Behind the Badge
She swears she named her dog simply because she liked the sound of it, but as an acronym, it couldn’t be any more fitting.
Leo, a 1-year-old English golden retriever, bounds into Liz White’s dining room, excited to see some visitors.
LEO, of course, also stands for Law Enforcement Officer — White’s former career and the current and past career of several of her relatives, including daughter Rachael, a 10-year Orange County Sheriff’s Department deputy currently working patrol in San Juan Capistrano.
During a recent visit, White covered her dining room table with old photos and memorabilia from her nearly 15-year career as an OCSD deputy, which began in late 1981.
Elizabeth Dove was an OCSD K9 handler from 1990-95.
Photo by Christine Cotter
Back then, she was Liz Dove, a transplant from the Midwest who loved to wear her blonde hair in a feathery perm (can you say “Cagney and Lacey”?) but who was, make no mistake, one tough mujer — on and off the job (Rachael was afraid to bring boys home to meet mom when she started dating).
Dove also has the distinction of being the OCSD’s first female patrol K9 deputy (and one of the first in Orange County) when she joined the unit in 1990. She served on the K9 team for five years until an on-duty traffic accident forced her to medically retire in 1995.
Recently, Deputy Katie De-Coup Crank, of Dana Point Police Services, joined the OCSD’s K9 team. She mistakenly was identified on social media as the OCSD’s first female K9 handler. Dove saw the post and mentioned the error to Rachael Dove (as she is known on the job; Rachael married last year and now is Rachael Mathis).
Rachael, 32, grew up idolizing her mother (as well as her father, Guy Dove, a former OCSD deputy and Huntington Beach sergeant), proudly prancing around her Fountain Valley home when she was a toddler in her mom’s way-oversized uniform.
From left, a pregnant Rachael Dove, who is due Nov. 26, Rachael as a young girl wearing her mother Liz’s uniform, and Liz Dove on duty as an OCSD deputy (and pregnant).
Photo by Christine Cotter
In the sixth grade, Rachael got in trouble when she showed up to school dressed as a cop for Halloween. It wasn’t what she wore that got her sent to the principal’s office, but rather the fake gun she brought.
Rachael also became close to her step-father, former OCSD Sgt. Richard White, whom her mother married in 1998.
Liz Dove, now 64, didn’t plan on making OCSD history.
One day, she was walking by her sergeant’s office when an assistant sheriff saw her.
“Hey Liz?”
“Sir?”
“Would you like a dog?”
“Sir, yes sir!”
“Go tell your captain you are coming to get your car for your new dog.”
Dove, who grew up in Wisconsin, never planned on being a K9 handler, but she ended up loving the job. She was paired with Ben, a mixed Belgian Melinois/German shepherd.
Contact sheet of photos from 1992 of Liz Dove and her K9 partner, Ben.
Photo by Christine Cotter
Prior to becoming a K9 handler, Dove worked the Women’s Jail and North Patrol. After she had her third child (Rachael has an older sister, Sarah, and a younger brother, Guy, a Hermosa Beach PD officer), Dove transferred to Transportation, working more sane hours transporting inmates to and from the North Justice Center in Fullerton.
Then came her 5-year career as Ben’s handler.
When Dove joined the K9 unit, there were five other OCSD K9 handlers. She turned heads on several of her early calls, sometimes for different agencies that didn’t have K9 teams.
Dove recalls rolling to the scene of a Newport Beach PD call. An armed man had barricaded himself in his home.
Liz Dove as an OCSD K9 handler with Ben. Photo courtesy of Liz White
The male NBPD officer who saw her roll up said something to the effect of, “Oh great, they sent us a girl with a dog.”
Dove heard a lot of similar comments during her career as an OCSD K9 handler, but her professionalism and take-no-prisoners reputation earned her the respect of her mostly male law enforcement colleagues.
“I had to work really hard,” Dove says, “but the guys were great.”
The City of Newport Beach, in fact, gave Dove a commendation for the barricaded-suspect call.
With an NBPD SWAT team watching from outside, she and Ben were the first to enter the home. They found the man dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Photo courtesy of Liz White
Dove went on countless OCSD calls during which Ben would get suspects to surrender — usually just by making his presence known.
She recalls a residential keep-the-peace call when she was greeted at the front door by a drunk, 6-foot-6, 250-pound man who had been fighting with his wife.
“He told me he was going to throw me on my butt on the lawn,” Dove recalls.
Dove hit a remote button on her gun belt to open the back door of her patrol car.
Out pounced Ben, who barked.
The besotted bully immediately gave up.
Dove planned on being a K9 handler indefinitely, but all that changed when she was hit head on by a motorist around a blind curve on Skyline Drive when on patrol in North Tustin.
Ben ended up being torpedoed from the back seat under the glove box. Dove hurt her back and neck. Both were transported to the hospital. The female motorist who hit Dove’s patrol car escaped serious injury.
Liz Dove holding a photo of herself and Sheriff Brad Gates from her 1981 academy graduation.
Photo by Christine Cotter
When veterinarians examined Ben, they discovered he had cancer.
A few months later, Ben, 9 years old at the time, had to be put down.
“It was hard,” Dove recalls.
Dove’s neck and lower back weren’t broken, but she suffered permanent damage.
A few months later, in 1995, Dove was medically retired from the OCSD.
That was hard, too.
A big part of her identity suddenly was gone.
For years, Dove avoided seeing her old OCSD colleagues and avoiding OCSD functions.
That changed a couple of years ago.
OCSD Deputy Katie De Coup-Crank, of the Dana Point Police Services, recently joined the agency’s K9. She is shown here with Jeremy Buraglia, a patrol deputy with San Clemente Police Services, and her K9, Renzo. Photo courtesy of OCSD Dana Point Police Services Facebook page.
Now, Dove meets regularly with a group of current and former OCSD female colleagues.
It was difficult for Rachael to see her mom end her law enforcement career prematurely.
After her OCSD career, Dove worked as an inspector and investigator for the American Kennel Club for the western U.S. region.
Being a K9 handler, it’s clear, has stuck with her.
Rachael’s husband, Cameron, an OCSD deputy assigned to patrol in Stanton, recently went through “agitator school” in the hopes of one day trying out for the K9 team. At agitator school, deputies wear a bite suit to train K9s and their handlers.
As for Dove, well, she’s just fine raising Leo.
“It was fun, really fun,” she says of her five years as OCSD’s first female K9 handler. “The guys on the K9 team were the best. In fact, some of them went to Rachael’s wedding last year.”
And some of them are likely to be visiting Rachael and her husband soon.
They are expecting their first child Nov. 26.
Liz Dove, the first female K9 deputy in the O.C .Sheriff’s Department, relaxes at home with her dog, Leo.
Photo by Christine Cotter
Rachael Dove holds a friend’s child when both came to visit her in downtown San Juan Capistrano in this photo from 2014. Photo courtesy of Rachael Dove
Liz Dove with her daughter Rachael. Rachael is expecting her first child.
Photo by Christine Cotter
