Willow Glen Resident
Community
San Jose police captain says farewell to working 24-7
By Lisa Sibley
Working midnight shifts for the San Jose Police Department, Capt. Richard Fairhurst and Lt. Rich Calderon became good friends in their younger years. Fairhurst still describes Calderon as his right-hand man--literally.
One particular incident on the midnight shift occurred at the Oasis, a problematic bar in downtown San Jose, which has since been shut down. The establishment had been the site of two homicides, Fairhurst recalls, as well as a slew of stabbings, fights, beatings and sexual assault incidents.
"It was a nightmare," he says.
A lieutenant at the time, Fairhurst was trying to clear the parking lot of some of those thugs, when he found himself surrounded by them. This was before the era when the police force had entertainment zone and cruise-management teams to handle late-night crowds that frequented the downtown nightclub district.
"These guys were going to pull my head off. So I'm wondering basically, which one of them to go after first. I'm going to hit as many of them as quickly as I can before they get to me," Fairhurst says. "I'm figuring this is going to be a heck of a fight, and then all of a sudden they just stop and back up and they've got this look on their faces. I don't know what's going on, and I look around and there's Rich."
They wanted nothing to do Fairhurst because the "Incredible Hulk" had come to his rescue. Calderon, a beefed-up wrestler, boxer and martial arts expert, was much heavier then than he is today.
"So, I say, 'You guys want some of this? Who's first? Come on,'" Fairhurst remembers, laughing with Calderon. "It was pretty funny. They took off; it was like we were radioactive."
Fairhurst, 55, retired from a more than 30-year career with the SJPD, so it was fitting that Calderon, 53, has been tapped to be his backup once again, except that this time Calderon replaces Fairhurst. Calderon, a 28-year SJPD veteran, was selected for the post Jan. 19 and took over Feb. 11, after a Feb. 9 promotions ceremony.
The seasoned captain is more than ready to trade in his constantly ringing cell phone to spend time with his family, sleep in, make use of his new fly fishing equipment, work on projects around his Santa Cruz County home and do some traveling.
"I am excited to have my husband home more now, but I know how much he will miss all the guys," Betty Fairhurst says. "Our entire family will always love and admire all the fine men who work at the police department."
Calderon, already a familiar face in the Willow Glen area, will command the police department's western division, as Fairhurst has done for the past two years. Running the division is practically a 24-7 job, overseeing six lieutenants, 24 sergeants and 24 teams of officers. Fairhurst turns his cell phone off one day a week.
Prior to overseeing the division, Fairhurst has served in various units--some more than once--as he moved up through the ranks. His experience ranges from working in the patrol, SWAT team and homicide crime scene units to the sexual assault investigations unit, the field training officer program, internal affairs, narcotics and traffic.
"I never considered promotion and advancement through the ranks as the goal. I just always had fun," Fairhurst says, adding, "People become police officers for all kinds of different reasons, but I think if you look at the vein through everybody, it centers around the job of providing opportunity for so much meaning and purpose."
Fairhurst says one challenge Calderon will face is that at the current attrition rate, the SJPD can't hire and train officers quickly enough. The department has the same number of cops it did in 1998, despite the city's increasing population. Calderon says he's aware of the staffing issues and need for allocation of more resources in the western division.
Sgt. Bruce M. Wiley has worked under, next to or for Fairhurst for most of his 26-year career. Wiley recalls another midnight warrior occurrence when Fairhurst was a lieutenant and got bored just driving around, so he started bringing suspects into custody and wound up getting in trouble for it.
"When you're the boss, you're not supposed to be tying yourself up [making arrests]," Wiley says.
Wiley describes how Fairhurst has brought the level of accountability and expectations up for young officers by taking an interest in the quality of work they produce, without allowing rank to affect him.
Sgt. Johnson Fong says this "man of few words" let's his actions do the talking.
"We'll miss him," Fong says. "Dick has a sense of integrity and compassion that command respect."
Del Mar High School Principal Jim Russell got to know Fairhurst when the school was trying to deal with gang-related activity in and around the school. Fairhurst helped pull together an initial meeting with school officials and community resource representatives for a frank discussion about the problem.
What grew out of his initiative are monthly climate meetings with representation from the Campbell Union High School District schools, its feeder schools, the SJPD, the district attorney's office, Catholic Charities of Santa Clara County and the Safe Schools Initiative, to name a few. The problems that once existed have become almost nil, Russell says, because of the increased communication. It's a model that officials from other cities now want to learn from and implement in their own communities.
Joe Mosley, community service supervisor with the city's Parks, Recreation and Neighborhood Services Department, works on the mayor's gang task force with Fairhurst, convening technical team meetings to identify issues taking place in the western division and trying to facilitate resources to address some of the violence.
"He's very approachable. He doesn't mind rolling up his sleeves and getting out there with his staff," Mosley says. "He's very modest. He doesn't like all the limelight, but he gets things done."
Purely by chance, Fairhurst was working the night of the kidnapping of 9-year-old Jeanette Tamayo, and was assigned to run the investigation, in cooperation with FBI and other agencies.
An intruder abducted the 9-year-old from her family's San Jose home in June 2003. The girl's mother and teenage brother came home in the middle of it and were beaten before the predator fled in his car, taking Jeanette captive.
The man threatened to kill her multiple times over several days, Fairhurst says, and the case drew national attention. The traumatized and courageous 9-year-old was finally released alive.
However, Fairhurst doesn't brag about his tireless commitment and stellar performance in cases like these. This cop in the blue uniform is dedicated to his work, his faith and his family.
"It's a been a good gig," says the 1974 San José State alum.
Fairhurst and his wife, who met at age 17 and have been married 30 years, have two daughters, Alison, 24, and Rebecca, 20. They have also gone through the tragedy of losing their daughter, Leigh-anne, who would be 25 today. The experience has only made Fairhurst better able to relate to the balance needed between work and home life as well as family tragedies that have affected his fellow officers.
"There will somebody to take his position, but there won't be anyone to replace him," Wiley says.
