COMMANDER STRONG-ARMS DRUG DEALERS

It used to be that only defenses on college football teams had cause to
fear Hal Chealander.

Now it's drug dealers.

Chealander, 50, is the commander of the narcotics and vice division of the
Kern County Sheriff's Department.

Two weeks ago, in cooperation with 18 agencies, he cracked down on 23
members of a Central Valley methamphetamine organization.

Agency leaders like Allan Rogers, who recently retired as chief agent for
the FBI in Bakersfield, credit Chealander as a driving force in
coordinating multiagency busts of regional drug lords.

Acting as a linchpin comes naturally to Chealander.

Thirty-two years ago, he was a quarterback for the powerful Taft College
football team, where he was named second team All-American in the National
Junior College Athletic Association.

He led the Cougars to 8-1 and 7-2 seasons in 1968 and 1969 and still holds
10 school records in the program that ended in 1994. The records include
most career touchdown passes (21), most career yards gained (1,617) and
highest percentage passes completed in a game (72.2 percent).

Chealander went on to be a starting quarterback at Mississippi State
University, where he graduated in 1973 with an education degree.

He then had a brief stint in the National Football League, playing four
preseason games in 1974 as backup to Minnesota Vikings quarterbacks Fran
Tarkenton and Bob Berry before the New York Jets picked him up in 1975.

But just before the Jets training camp opened, he dislocated a knuckle on
his right index finger playing volleyball, and it didn't heal properly.

Legendary Jets quarterback Joe Namath had another backup that year.
Meanwhile Chealander, after some heavy soul-searching, returned to Kern
County to pursue another dream: being a cop.

He became a sheriff's deputy on July 18, 1975. A few months later, he
turned down a Jets offer to return. It was an offer that included a
tempting tag line: "There is a place for you in the NFL."

He asked himself, "Am I doing the right thing?" Now, 25 years later, he
replies, "As it turned out, I did."

Since that day in July a quarter-century ago, Chealander became a cop in
every sense. He manned an outpost in Ridgecrest. He nearly lost his hand
during a drug bust. He shot a man during a SWAT operation.

He learned many lessons. Two have remained constant — cops and the
community make a great team, and multiagency collaboration is better than
working alone in terms of getting a job done.

"He wants to make a good thing better," the FBI's Rogers said. "That's
Hal's forte."

About 10 years ago, long before community policing became a buzzword in law
enforcement, Chealander initiated the first community coalition in
Bakersfield, Assistant Sheriff Paul Montgomery said.

Montgomery, who is one of Chealander's closest friends, said Chealander
coordinated the East Bakersfield Community Coalition to control crime
around Kern Medical Center and East High School.

That led to the opening of the East Bakersfield substation and community
center, Montgomery said.

Chealander's philosophy is, "We're here for the public. If we don't
recognize that, then we have problems."

He cites community reaction to a special operation that netted more than
100 arrests in the Cottonwood Road area three years ago.

"The real story," Chealander said, "was the phone calls we got from
citizens after that saying, 'Thank you' and 'I can come out of my house at
night now without being afraid of bullets whizzing past.'"

Chealander is also a proponent of what he calls "a resource multiplier" —
getting the cooperation of many agencies to tackle problems beyond the
reach of any one agency.

"Hal is responsible more than anyone else in this organization," Montgomery
said, "for our cooperative task forces we have with other agencies."

He listed a series of such groups that culminated last year when Chealander
spearheaded an effort that produced the federal designation of High
Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (HIDTA) for nine counties in the Central
Valley.

That came with $800,000 in federal money to fight drug organizations,
particularly methamphetamine distribution networks.

Under that program, officers arrested 23 people May 31and seized more than
170 pounds of methamphetamine and chemicals used to produce the drug.

Chealander's first foray into drug enforcement came in 1978 and 1979 when
he became an undercover narcotics investigator.

"I had a beard and long hair and wore Levis and a T-shirt," said
Chealander, whose usual image is golf casual and well-groomed.

In narcotics, he said, investigations "work from the ground up."

"You build a case off a bit of information."

Undercover work had its own difficulties. But police work in general is
fraught with risks, he said.

"Every time you go out, especially with a search warrant, there is a fear
factor that you have to deal with," he said. "Today they are all armed."

He related his worst experience — one in which he almost lost his right
hand in 1979.

He and fellow officer Lupe Martinez went to a home while undercover to
serve a search and arrest warrant for a cocaine and marijuana dealer.
Chealander tried to make a buy at the door, but the man refused. Chealander
produced his badge and the warrant.

"He slammed the front door, which had decorative panes of glass. I grabbed
the door frame ... My hand slipped off the door frame and went through one
of those panes of glass.

"It cut me to the bone. It took out all my tendons. It was just a spaghetti
wrist. Two arteries were severed and blood was just pumping and gushing.
Fear kind of hit me then."

Chealander grabbed his wrist through the pane while the man was still
pushing on the door.

"I just said to Lupe, 'Shoot him. Shoot him.' The man saw the gun and
surrendered. It was effective negotiations."

Chealander spent three hours in surgery having his tendons reattached by
Dr. Schaul Sarmicanic at Mercy Hospital.

When Chealander first became a deputy in 1975, he experienced a different
kind of challenge working the night shift in Ridgecrest.

He remembered Jim Sylvester, the department shooting range master, telling
him, "When the sun goes down in Ridgecrest, you are the law west of the Pecos."

The nearest backup officer was a California Highway Patrol officer, if one
was on duty, and the Ridgecrest Police Department.

"But they might be 30 or 40 minutes away," he said.

"It really taught me a lot about myself because you only have yourself to
depend on," Chealander said. "You learn how to talk to people. You use your
mouth and brains, as opposed to your nightstick and gun. If you don't
resolve the problem yourself, you can get awfully hurt or dead."

In his career, he has pulled assignments in Lamont, in metropolitan
Bakersfield, the communications center, as the sergeant of the Mojave
substation ("where basically you are the police chief") and in the
Medium-Maximum Security Jail when it became a federal detention center. He
was also an observer in the sheriff's helicopter program.

Chealander was promoted to lieutenant in 1987 and the position was
subsequently reclassified to commander.

In the mid-to late 1980s, he was a member of SWAT — the special weapons and
tactics team. Virtually all operations end with no one getting hurt.

But on April 7, 1988, Chealander was one of five officers who fired 46
rounds at accused rapist Jose "Joe" Soto Reyes, 42. Twenty years earlier,
Reyes shot and killed the Tehachapi police chief, William Mantoth, who
tried to arrest him under similar circumstances.

SWAT members shot Reyes after a four-hour standoff. He came out of his home
with a knife sheath that he had taped to look like a gun. He pointed it at
SWAT officers, prompting a hail of gunfire.

John Smith, the sheriff at the time, called it a "textbook suicide."

Chealander still vividly recalls the incident.

"When you get to a point where you have to pull the trigger, you go through
an emotional roller coaster."

Chealander said one of the ways he keeps perspective about his work is to
indulge in a whole other life away from it.

Chealander's free time is filled with outdoor activity — golf (he's a 5
handicapper), basketball, softball, hunting, fishing and cattle round-ups.
"I'm not wanting for things to do," he said.

He never married, so his free time is his own.

Every year since 1976, Chealander, Montgomery and a collection of relatives
go on deer or elk hunting trips to Colorado where Chealander endears
himself as the breakfast cook.

The same group fishes at Lake Isabella, Lake Nacimiento and San Antonio
Lake, or out in the ocean from Morro Bay.

Older brother Steve Chealander said that as much as Hal likes work, "he
would rather live up in the mountains in a tent with him and his dog than
anywhere else."

Steve Chealander, an American Airlines pilot, said Hal can be
introspective, gentle and helpful.

He recalled how Hal and the Montgomery brothers helped Steve's family move
into a new house without having been asked. "Hal has a huge heart," his
brother said.

The Chealander brothers and their sister, Jan C. Reinka of Virginia, are
the children of the late Allan Chealander and his wife, Geneva Chealander.
Their father was a colonel in the Air Force.

Hal was born in Weisbaden, Germany, near Frankfurt while his father and
mother were there as part of the Berlin Airlift — an operation to bring
supplies to the American allies in west Berlin.

The family lived in many places around Mississippi, Ohio, Washington and
finally California where Chealander was recruited by Taft College.

It was there that Chealander rode around with sheriff's deputy Bob Tays
"and gained a little insight into what being a cop is all about," he said.
"It piqued my interest."