Police Relinquish Custody of Valued Employee

It would still be dark when Rita Resendez left her small home in Highland Park at 4:30 a.m. Two buses and about 2 1/2 hours later, she would arrive at work at police headquarters in Van Nuys.

Resendez would spend the next eight hours scrubbing, straightening and sweeping the police building. Then she would start her 2 1/2-hour ride home.

Officers at the police station say the tiny, popular 64-year-old smilingly did the work of three people. So, when she came in several months ago crying and saying she was being criticized by her superiors because her bus riding was making her late to work, the station house came to her rescue.

As a result, Resendez has a job starting Monday as custodian at the Los Angeles Police Department’s Northeast Division station, near her home. The pay will be the same, $323 a week; but, instead of spending five hours getting to and from work, she will travel little more than half an hour, she said.

“We’re sorry to see you go,” said Deputy Police Chief Dan Sullivan, commander of Valley police operations. He gave her a hug on Friday, her last day at the station.

‘Like Family Here’

“I feel the same. You are like family here,” Resendez said.

Sullivan’s secretary, Ruth Snowden, arranged Resendez’s transfer.

“She was kind of crying one day, and I found out they were kind of after her because she was late to work,” Snowden said. “We didn’t care if she was late because she works harder than anybody else here.”

Officials in the city’s General Services Administration declined to comment.

“She’s everyone’s grandmother,” said Sgt. John Rygh.

“I never saw her without a smile,” said Sgt. John Jergensen. “You know, sometimes I’d be here by myself, and everything would be caving in, and I’d be upset, and then I’d see that smile. I’d think, ‘What have I got to be sad about? I don’t have to take three buses a day. If she can be happy, so can I.’ I hate to see her go.”

Just ‘Do My Responsibility’

Resendez put her hands to her face and shook her head with embarrassment.

“I just try to do my responsibility,” she said. “The reason why I work hard now is because I want my daughter to have a good education.” Resendez is separated from her husband and is raising an adopted 16-year-old daughter.

Resendez was assigned to Van Nuys two years ago. She fears freeways and got lost on surface streets. That’s when she started taking the buses.

For going-away presents she received two cakes, a wallet with a few dollars in it and a Timex watch.

“Her eyes welled up,” Jergensen said. “She said, ‘I never could afford a watch.’ You’d think we had given her a Rolex.”