INEBRIATED END TO COP'S EXEMPLARY LIFE

ALTHOUGH I barely knew Jake Stasko, I assume no one could have been any
angrier or more ashamed than he himself would have been for dying as a
drunken driver.

I believe this because - long before the police captain's car slammed into
a tree on the way home to Petaluma - he was a near-legend in the San
Francisco Police Department. I never heard one negative thing about him.

Cops I do know always spoke of George "Jake" Stasko with a kind of
little-sibling reverence. He was one of the good ones, a smart, decent man
with a healthy ego, a good family life, a sense of community and a genuine
desire to serve and protect the citizens of San Francisco.

Even reporters, who are not quick to admire people they cover, granted
Stasko special status. He wasn't a hotdog or cowboy; he was an honorable,
stand-up guy whose word was solid; the department could have used 200 like
him.

But, in the early morning hours of Jan. 16, the 22-year SFPD veteran
forever colored his exemplary life with his death: He lost control of his
unmarked police car, veered off Highway 101 and crashed into a tree.
According to California Highway Patrol Officer Wayne Ziese, preliminary
toxicology reports show that Stasko had a blood-alcohol level of 0.26
percent, measured by a urine sample, and 0.36 percent, measured via blood.

Both are well above any state's legal limit and at least three times
California's limit of .08 percent. Even though the CHP officer who
investigated the accident scene said there were none of the usual signs or
smells of a drunk driver, the numbers say Stasko was
indisputably drunk.

When this news broke, many of the people I work with shuddered. Despite the
powerful consciousness-raising that has occurred in this country, thanks to
groups like Mothers Against Drunk Driving, many of us did not have to
stretch too far into our past (or, in some cases, the present) to identify
with the police captain.

Stasko's last day was a stress-packed 17-hour work shift that included his
tactical squad's role in a downtown bank robbery and fatal shoot-out. After
meetings, debriefings and paper work, the 47-year-old cop went to the
hospital to visit officers wounded in the gun fight.

At some point, he reportedly shared a bottle of wine with his twin brother,
an SFPD sergeant. Then he headed up 101 to his wife and three kids in Santa
Rosa.

Because our society finally has acknowledged that drunken driving takes an
ungodly toll on innocent people, it has metamorphosized from hangover joke
to serious crime. Everybody knows it is dangerous and wrong.

But a lot of people still drink and then drive. And in a state where two
glasses of wine can put you over the maximum blood alcohol limit, a lot of
people drive legally drunk. Every time we make it home without incident, it
reinforces the notion that we know our limit, know when our level of
functioning drops from adequate to impaired.

The perniciousness of alcohol - especially when aggravated by fatigue,
illness or medication - is that it scrambles your "knower." Impaired can
seem adequate. Dangerously impaired can seem, "Really, I'm OK."

On the highest moral plane, all the good that Jake Stasko did in his life
will not be wiped out by the circumstances of his death. Fresh air and fun
will not be rescinded for all those poor, inner city kids he hauled up to
Lake Tahoe for fishing and camping as part of his Operation Dream. The
legions of young cops he trained will not lose their street smarts. His
family and colleagues will continue to love and respect the whole person
they knew. But the rest of the Bay Area knows only what it reads and hears
in the news: The results of a toxicology report attached a tragic addendum
to the epitaph of a hero cop: drunken driver. From all evidence, Stasko
would have been the first person to see that as a terrible shame - and the
first to lay the blame where it belonged.