Behind the Badge
Elegantly dressed in black, her neck adorned with a white pearl necklace, Adrienne Brandes looks every inch the super-successful real estate agent she is — a specialist in high-end homes, most in Corona del Mar, for Surterre Properties, a boutique brokerage in Newport Beach.
Brandes, 58, also is wearing her trademark red lipstick — a feminine flourish she applied daily in her former incarnation, way back in the big-hair 1980s:
LAPD police officer.
That’s right.
Then-Officer Adrienne Doyle poses for a playful photo for her boyfriend at the end of a photo shoot for a billboard campaign about the state’s new seatbelt law in 1986. Photo courtesy of Adrienne Brandes
Brandes, who since 2014 has sold $127 million in uber-chichi homes for Surterre, used to pack heat as one of the LAPD’s 60 female officers (out of some 7,000 total sworn employees) back in 1981.
And, in 1983, she was instrumental in the launch of D.A.R.E. (for Drug Abuse Resistance Education), the police officer-led series of classroom lessons that teach kids K-12 how to shun peer pressure and blow off drugs and violence.
D.A.R.E., the brainchild of the late LAPD Police Chief Daryl Gates that was co-founded by the Los Angeles Unified School District, now is active in 75 percent of the nation’s school districts and in more than 52 countries around the world.
Brandes played a critical role in getting it off the ground.
Adrienne Brandes, a former LAPD officer, was instrumental in getting the D.A.R.E. program started.
Photo by Steven Georges/Behind the Badge OC
Gates selected her to visit legendary movie studio and talent agent Lew Wasserman (of MCA Inc./Universal Studios) to secure $25,000 in seed money. Brandes gave Wasserman a sample 45-minute D.A.R.E. lesson.
“How did it go?” Gates asked after the one-on-one meeting.
“Well, I didn’t get the money you requested.”
“How much did you get?”
“I got $50,000.”
Brandes is like that: a fearless go-getter who usually gets what she aims for.
Her relatively short but notable career in law enforcement — she was an LAPD officer from 1981-86, but stayed on as reserve for 10 more years — wasn’t planned.
Her mother, who because a successful real estate agent in Los Angeles after the family immigrated from Dublin when Brandes was 6, urged her to apply for the position for the money.
Officer Doyle (the cop with the red lipstick, front row) poses with her colleagues in 1983 when D.A.R.E. was launched. Photo courtesy of Adrienne Brandes
At the time, Brandes — née Adrienne Paula Doyle — was halfway through a master’s degree program at Chapman University (her mother didn’t believe in handouts) and needed tuition money.
The LAPD, at the time, had just been subject to a federal consent decree that set minimum quotas for the hiring of women and minorities. The agency was offering a $38,000 salary to rookie cops.
Brandes, then living in San Clemente, bit.
“It was a specific means to an end,” Brandes said. “Never in my whole life did I ever dream about being a police officer.
“And,” the lifelong fashion plate said, “uniforms only come in blue, so there’s that.”
At the time, Brandes also was a smoker and “having fun in college.”
She was studying for a master’s degree in counseling psychology at Chapman to become a family therapist, after earning her undergraduate degree in social ecology at UC Irvine.
Not surprisingly, she failed the LAPD’s physical agility test.
Then-Officer Adrienne Doyle of the LAPD was featured in a billboard campaign about the state’s new car seatbelt law, along with this flight attendant, in 1986. Photo courtesy of Adrienne Brandes
“They told me I couldn’t do it (become a cop), so I thought, ‘Now I’m gonna do it,’” Brandes said. “That really got my Irish up.”
Brandes spent the next six months getting in shape for the academy, and made it.
During the academy, her tactical officer told Brandes she never would graduate.
That got her Irish up again, and she made it through the academy.
“Officer Doyle” — could there be a more Irish cop moniker? — began her law enforcement duties in late 1981 as a patrol officer for the LAPD’s Van Nuys division.
When Chief Gates said he needed 10 officers to launch D.A.R.E., on paper Brandes was a ridiculous longshot. Such an assignment was seen as plum and for veteran officers only.
But by 1983, Brandes had finished her master’s degree at Chapman.
Gates selected her.
In addition to helping to launch D.A.R.E., Brandes’ face — replete with glorious Sheena Easton hair — was plastered on 600 billboards throughout the state, along with a female flight attendant, to hawk California’s mandatory car seatbelt law when it went into effect Jan. 1, 1986.
Photo by Steven Georges/Behind the Badge OC
Asked why she left her full-time position as an LAPD officer in 1986, Brandes didn’t flinch.
“It wasn’t my end game,” she said. “I knew back then I wasn’t going to be the first female police chief, so I decided to concentrate on something else. I do things 100 percent or not at all.”
Did we mention Brandes is a go-getter?
So the former Officer Doyle decided to open a PR agency, having got a taste for public relations while an officer during the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.
Her Newport Beach-based shop, The Professional Image, was one of the first PR firms to specialize in cosmetic and plastic surgery. She soon married a plastic surgeon and became Adrienne Doyle-Brennan.
After she had a son, Patrick, Doyle-Brennan decided to be stay-at-home mom and go back to work in six months.
But she eventually opted to sell her PR shop to employees and then launch a cosmetics company, only to sell it a few years later.
In 1997, she divorced.
She then thought:
How can I make money without having to hire a lot of people?
The bells went off.
She decided to take a cue from her mother, Pauline, and become a real estate agent – something she swore, when younger, she would never do, because of the insane hours.
In 1999, she cut her teeth at the boutique agency Strada (which eventually was swallowed up by Coldwell Banker), she made some money, she invested in residential real estate, she made a lot more money, and in 2008 she joined Surterre Properties.
Five years ago, she married O.C. business mogul Richard John “RJ” Brandes.
Brandes, among his many accomplishments, developed one of the country’s premier equestrian facility in San Juan Capistrano. Recently, in Norco, he opened SilverLakes, one of the largest soccer facility in the country.
At Surterre, Brandes now has seven active listings with a combined total value of $38 million. She also is a real estate agent in Aspen, where she owns a condominium.
“This business isn’t about selling homes,” Brandes said, “but about counseling people and solving their problems. The key is tenacity and understanding people. I’m honest and people trust me, and they should, because I’m really good at what I do.”
Brandes fondly recalls her days at the LAPD. Her office includes framed photos of her as an officer and a framed copy of the funeral program for her former boss and friend Chief Gates, who died of cancer on April 16, 2010.
To him, she always was “the cop with the red lipstick.”
Now, Brandes is the real estate agent with the red lipstick.
Her cell phone goes off.
She blots on more lipstick and politely excuses herself, back on the home-selling beat.
