After 32 Years on Force, Sierra Madre’s Acting Chief Seeks a Normal Life

Michael Sizer remembers Chris Christensen’s first words when the two met in the ‘60s: “You’re under arrest.� Christensen, a Sierra Madre police officer, was busting him at home for marijuana possession.

Sizer pleaded guilty and served three years. Seventeen years after his release, he received a pardon from the state--and found out that Christensen had submitted the paperwork.

“Chris was the first to bend over backwards and give me the benefit of the doubt,� said Sizer, now a 59-year-old electrician who was named Sierra Madre’s citizen of the year in 1993. “He’s always trying to make everybody happy, and yet he’s also always the law.�

Christensen’s reputation in this city of 11,000 runs as deep as the roots of the town’s legendary 102-year-old wisteria vine. In his 32 years as a policeman, he has rescued children from physically abusive families, cradled dying accident victims in his arms and saved pets from the mouths of hungry coyotes that wander down the canyon.

Now, at 59, he is about to turn in badge No. 8 and retire from the first and only beat he has walked since 1965. His retirement, to take effect at year’s end, has surprised many. He announced it in September when the City Council asked him to become chief; he agreed to serve as acting chief for three months.

“He deserves retirement, but we don’t deserve to lose him,� said Ann Twedell, a resident of Sierra Madre since 1943. “He’s really a cornerstone of the community. Most of the people here grew up with him.�

“Three generations of kids who grew up here know of Christensen,� said Twedell’s friend Nan Carlton. “I don’t know anybody who doesn’t like him.�

In a city with a 20-officer police force and no traffic lights or big chain supermarkets, an officer like Christensen matters more.

Jason Brown, the 21-year-old night manager of Bean Town coffeehouse on Baldwin Avenue, said he has noticed how Christensen speaks with ease to young people who gather at night on the sidewalk.

“He’s willing to deal with people one on one,� Brown said. “He’s the only one who will go up to a skateboarder and talk to them.�

But you can’t be a policeman and live a normal life, and that’s what Christensen says he’s looking for--for his wife, Mary, if nothing else.

“My wife and I grew up together in the same neighborhood since 1947,� said Christensen, who married Mary just six months before he became a Sierra Madre officer at 27.

“I’ve been married to two different people,� he said. “My wife and my job. I’ve devoted too much time to my job, and not enough to my family.�

Born and raised in Pasadena, Christensen attended Pasadena City College, intent on earning a degree in architecture. He joined the Air Force in 1959 and spent part of four years on a tour of duty handling radar and communications in Japan and Vietnam. When he returned to the United States, he worked for the Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Forest Service as a surveyor. He saw a newspaper ad for the Sierra Madre police job and noticed it paid about $100 a week more than he was making.

His days on the force have ranged from what he calls the “peace and pot� movement in the ‘60s through the increase of white-collar crime in the late ‘80s. He worked his way up to sergeant, but always stayed on the street.

“You always want to be that white knight and make arrests and correct everything,� Christensen said. His office is sparsely decorated, almost as if he’s ready to leave the next day. A photograph on the wall shows the interim chief kneeling near a squad car, with four children around him, their signatures around the border. The picture is a present from their father, a Sierra Madre resident who was formerly a juvenile delinquent. Christensen now calls him one of his “success stories.�

And then there are the suicide calls.

“I’ve had children die in my arms, children that were beaten to death,� he said, casting his eyes down. “I really think that the [policeman’s] fear of not being there before something happens is the worst.�

The fear motivated him to organize formal skateboard demonstrations and bicycle safety programs for Sierra Madre’s children--time that might have otherwise been spent with his own four children, who now range in age from 20 to 30.

“It’s time for him to move on,� said Mary Christensen. “I appreciate the fact that he’s told people that he’s taken care of the people of Sierra Madre and now its time to take care of his wife. . . . The highlights for him have been the people in town and his friends; that will be the hardest for him to leave.�