"He used to be a bad cop, sitting on a motorcycle and giving people tickets. But after he started working as a community resource officer in Cupertino, he became a good cop, working with residents instead of giving them tickets," says Shervington's supervisor, Capt. John Hirokawa.

Harold Thomas Shervington, 42, better known as "Skip," has been such a good cop that Mayor Sandy James recently honored him as public safety officer of the year.

Born and raised in nearby Sunnyvale, Shervington knows Cupertino well. During the four years he has worked as Cupertino resource officer, he has expanded the city's various neighborhood programs. When he first took over the job, there were only 500 residences in Cupertino's neighborhood watch program; now there are 1,500 residences in the program.

Shervington relies on technology to inform residents. There are 1,850 subscribers to the city's email community alert program, called e-CAP. He sends out a report of residential crimes, suspect descriptions and crime-prevention tips to residents every week.

"The program helps Cupertino residents serve as their own beat officers, not only by catching criminals, but also by connecting people to one another and their neighborhoods," Shervington says. He recently launched a similar program for businesses.

In addition to these tasks, Shervington goes to block parties, neighborhood meetings and high schools to do presentations about identity theft, Megan's Law and burglary prevention.

"The biggest challenge of my job is to get Cupertino residents not to become complacent," Shervington says. "Cupertino doesn't have a lot of violent crimes, but that doesn't mean we don't have crime here. People tend to confuse low violent crime rate with low crime rate."

Shervington's outreach extends to people of different ethnicities and different age groups. To make himself more approachable to high school students, he shows them one of his high school pictures in which he had long wavy hair. He goes to English-as-a-second-language classes at local adult schools to teach people how to interact with police officers in the United States.

"In some countries, people think the police are the bad guys. But if you are brought up in the United States, the police are like firemen. They are there to help you," he says. "In some cultures, if a person is pulled over, the person has to immediately jump out of his or her car and walk to the police car. But here, we don't want you to leave your car."

Shervington's hard work has won the residents' trust and recognition.

Rodna Presley, block leader of the Three Oaks Park neighborhood, says Shervington is very thoughtful and efficient. Within 24 hours of a burglary that happened 10 blocks away from her neighborhood, Shervington sent an email to Presley and her neighbors to alert them of the crime. "He is always willing to help and has a big smile on his face," Presley says.

Judy Harrison, a neighborhood watch leader of Galway Drive and Barnhart Place, says Shervington has been generous with his time. "A lot of neighborhood meetings are in the evenings and on weekends. He always stays as long as necessary to answer all the questions," Harrison says.

Last year, Harrison found 14 people on nearby streets wanting to start a neighborhood watch group. Shervington helped each one of them schedule and conduct meetings, all within six months.

"Because of Skip's efforts, Cupertino is now a safer city to live in," Harrison says.

To find out about the city's neighborhood watch program or to subscribe to e-Cap, call 408.777.3177.