A High Calling : Pilot Volunteer Helps Officers Fight an Air War on Crime

FULLERTON â€”  Not one to volunteer the easy way, Dick Blosser, 69, donates his time from 1,300 feet above the ground--flying his 1943 airplane on so many missions for the Fullerton Police and Fire departments that City Hall calls the craft Fullerton One.

The retired Rockwell International manager lovingly restored the World War II-era, open-cockpit plane seven years ago, and ever since has taken it up regularly for the city at no charge, transporting police photographers shooting aerial photos of crime scenes for use in court, or firefighters looking for lost hikers in local parks.

When he’s not flying for his hometown, Blosser takes Orange County Sheriff’s Department investigators aloft to track drug traffickers, and uses his on-the-ground skills as an electrical engineer to help county explosives experts analyze the makeup of bombs.

He is one of hundreds of local senior citizen volunteers and thousands across the state who share their talents with strapped law enforcement agencies, boosting police effectiveness at no cost.

“I like to fly. I like the freedom, and I like to put something back in the pot,� Blosser said on a recent day before taking a spin above Disneyland in the graceful craft with a tendency to rock with the wind and an engine that roars the old-fashioned way.

“It’s something I can do that a lot of people can’t. What do we have at my age? We have time. We have time and talent to contribute. And that’s really something to offer.�

Blosser and others who fly their own planes for police and fire departments do get a bonus. They can write off their taxes the bulk of their flying expenses: fuel, maintenance and hangar rental costs.

In Blosser’s case, that saves him about $7,000 a year--not as much as it costs him to keep up the plane but, Blosser acknowledges, an incentive to keep Fullerton One flying.

In the air, Blosser pilots the tiny plane Red Baron-like, steering without the aid of computers at the modest speed of 140 mph on the average, a fraction of the rate at which modern aircraft of the same size whiz through the clouds.

But far from making the craft an anachronism, its unhurried pace is exactly what makes it so useful, police say. The plane, a Stinson L-5, was built for low-altitude military reconnaissance, and can slow to speeds of 40 mph, so slow it nearly hovers, helicopter-like, over an area, leaving a photographer plenty of time to shoot action or landscapes on the ground.

“We couldn’t do any of this without him. We couldn’t possibly afford to have an airplane on call for police work. This is not a big department or a big city,� said Fullerton Police Chief Patrick E. McKinley. “The plane is a real relic; it was at the El Toro Air Show and all. But Fullerton One’s our only plane.�

Fullerton’s is not the county’s only police agency to rely on a volunteer pilot for a bird’s-eye view of things. The Sheriff’s Department uses 40 volunteers--Blosser among them--flying 29 aircraft to transport prisoners and for long-term surveillance of suspected narcotics traffickers. But few police departments as small as Fullerton’s have access to their own pilot and plane.

Blosser’s contributions come in handy. On June 1, a Fullerton police officer wounded a suspect who McKinley said had threatened the officer with a gun. A few days later Blosser and a photographer were in the air producing photos of the scene that police investigators will use to check out the officer’s story.

On another day, Blosser was airborne for the Sheriff’s Department, looking for four teenagers lost overnight in Cleveland National Forest. With the department’s two helicopters both grounded for repairs that day, Blosser was called to duty. Circling low over Lake Elsinore, Blosser spotted the youths’ blue tent. He radioed sheriff’s deputies, who quickly brought the teens home.

Blosser’s original rescue operation was his plane itself--the same model craft that Henry Fonda flew in the 1965 film “Battle of the Bulge.�

When he bought the plane it couldn’t get off the ground safely and hadn’t been flown for 28 years. Blosser, who had been a licensed pilot since 1954 but who only learned to repair planes in 1987 after retiring from his job as manager of Rockwell’s flight simulation laboratory, went to work.

Within a year and a half he had outfitted the plane with a new engine and restored its manual throttle, foot pedals and instrument dials to working order.

Today, the Army green L-5 is one of about half a dozen such planes based in Southern California, Blosser said. He keeps it at tiny Fullerton Municipal Airport, where he and other older pilots are regulars at a cafe with a view of the runways.

Blosser has taken the mayor and most of the City Council up in the plane, along with the Fullerton police and fire chiefs. He and his wife regularly fly to air shows. After the 1994 Northridge earthquake, Blosser took firefighters up to survey damage.

On the ground, Blosser and 21 other senior citizens help out at the Police Department in more sedate ways--writing parking tickets, checking the homes of residents on vacation and taking garage sale ads off telephone poles.

When sheriff’s investigators need help analyzing a complex bomb circuit, they often call on Blosser, department spokesman Lt. Ron Wilkerson said.

But it is the calls on his phone or pager from police watch commanders asking him to fly that Blosser awaits most eagerly.

“It’s a freedom that you can get no place else,� Blosser said of the allure of flying. “When you’re on the street you can’t go so fast, and you’re pretty much told where to go. When we get in the air and you leave the control tower here, you can go anyplace in the country without having to ask anybody’s permission. There’s nothing like it.�