The badge says ‘police’; couple see a protector

Santa Ana Police Officer Rufus Tanksley had seen plenty -- dead bodies, beaten wives with black eyes and scores of tattooed gangbangers -- by the time he met the homeless couple.

As he patrolled the city, he often spotted homeless people sleeping in doorways or pushing shopping carts filled with their belongings. One couple stood out, though.

They weren’t drug addicts or alcoholics. They weren’t mentally ill. The man had once owned a business and his wife held a steady job. Now they had little but were eager to get their lives together, he thought.

The hulking cop with the shaved head, a onetime stand-up comic and high school teacher, began giving money, gifts and advice to the couple, who still speak with New York accents 30 years after leaving Brooklyn.

“They were different than the homeless people I had met,” said Tanksley, an 18-year police veteran. “I knew they were good people who had bad luck. And I know about bad luck. I’ve had my share.”

Marlena Gammelgard, 52, a laid-off Superior Court cashier, had a college degree and a charming personality. She was willing to do chores in Tanksley’s house. John F. Martin, 54, former owner of an electronics repair shop, “can fix just about anything,” said the 48-year-old Tanksley.

In 2003, the police officer sold them a 1990 Chevrolet Geo but never asked for the $500. When he spots them sleeping in it, he occasionally tucks a $20 bill in an envelope on the windshield. He takes them to the movies, and at Christmas he prepared them a breakfast of biscuits, sausage, eggs, potatoes, coffee and orange juice at his home. He lets them invoke his name to avoid jail when they get picked up by police. He got them a discounted rate at a Santa Ana hotel.

“If you don’t think of cops acting this way, you haven’t met Tanksley,” Gammelgard said. “He breaks the stereotypes.”

The officer is coming to realize that his commitment to the couple serves as a self-styled religion that he prefers over regular church attendance and tithing. It is a way to repent for what he’s done wrong.

“When I’m at home, I think about what I haven’t done right,” said the 48-year-old Tanksley, who is twice divorced.

“Then I think about what I have done with them. It’s easy to say ‘to protect and to serve.’ It’s hard to help provide.”

Although Tanksley has lifted himself from poverty, he knows he has made mistakes and wants to make things right.

He chose to work overtime instead of spending time with his three sons. He spent his money instead of saving and investing. He didn’t apply for higher positions in the Police Department. But at least, he thinks, he’s kept Gammelgard and Martin in a warm motel when it was too cold to sleep in the car.

The effort fills a void in his life. Two of his sons are grown. One is in the Army, and the other plays pro football in Canada. His 14-year-old son lives with Tanksley’s former wife.

He still spends money freely, regularly flying to Canada to watch his son play. He frequents Maggiano’s and Morton’s in Santa Ana with his dates. He’s got an ample wardrobe with 35 pairs of shoes to match.

But at times, he feels empty. He wonders how happy material things make him. He thinks about the couple standing on corners begging for money, and of Gammelgard picking up bits of trash and pasting them on cards in the shapes of flowers, an artistic effort to pass the time.

To Martin and Gammelgard, Tanksley says, “everything is a treasure. I’m drawn to their appreciation with whatever they get.”

He is not the only Santa Ana cop who knows homeless people.

Although Tanksley says the department doesn’t know the extent of their relationship, Santa Ana Police Cmdr. Alan Caddell is proud of Tanksley’s relationship with the couple. “Officer Tanksley and other officers are proving that individual actions do make a difference in people’s lives, which is why most officers chose this profession,” Caddell said.

Tanksley wants to help the couple, but on condition that they work toward bettering themselves.

“I know they can do it on their own, so I’m not going to do it for them,” Tanksley said. “These are people who actually had enough intelligence to own a business but enough bad luck that they were living in my car.”

Getting out of poverty is something Tanksley has done himself. Raised a Baptist outside Austin, Texas -- without running water until he was 8 -- Tanksley says his family was so “po’ ... we couldn’t afford the other two letters.”

Jokes always came cheap, and Tanksley used them to soothe life’s pains, among them the death of his father and brother in a car accident in 1977. A year or so later, the grandmother who raised him died.

Nonetheless, the jokes flowed. He won a national talent contest, made TV commercials, did club acts and warmed up for touring bands. But seeking permanent work, he answered a television advertisement run by the Santa Ana Police Department in 1988.

While on his beat, Tanksley met Martin and Gammelgard in 2002 at their electronics shop on 17th Street.

The shop closed when the property was sold. The couple had lived in the shop, and the loss of the business meant they were left homeless. At the same time, Gammelgard was laid off from her court job.

Trying to help, Tanksley employed the couple to watch his home when he traveled, to clean his house and repair his computer.

“Tanksley was the only one who stood behind us. Even our families gave up on us and said we were losers,” Gammelgard said. “He could see who we really are.”

Four months ago, the twosome finally got minimum-wage jobs at a Santa Ana factory.

Tanksley and the couple talk about the day they will rent their own place.

“When they are in their own place ... I’m going to revel in that and hope they will do what I did for someone else.”

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