Minutes before the daily briefing was set to begin for a recent pre-dawn shift at the California Highway Patrol’s Westminster office, Officer Tony Nguyen paused to look at a display showing photos and badge numbers of the station’s cops.
Organized by rank and seniority, his photo is in the top row of active officers, while his son Stephen’s is close to the bottom.
More than 8,000 officers joined the department between father, who is 50, and son, who is 26 and two years out of the academy. But this morning, the Nguyens are side by side.
They wanted to work together, in the same station house, during the same shifts, for the remaining time before the father ends his CHP career.
After 28 years in the California Highway Patrol – 18 riding a motorcycle – the elder Nguyen is nearing the end of his career. Retirement day is marked in days, not months or years. This day, it’s 56 days, a number he shares with other officers as he walks to his bike.
Growing up in Pomona after fleeing Vietnam with his family in 1975, Tony Nguyen ended up in law enforcement at the suggestion of a close friend, who, like him, was looking for a permanent career. They both went to the CHP’s academy.
“I applied because my friend did, to be honest with you, and I needed a better paying job,” said Tony Nguyen, then about to graduate from Cal Poly Pomona. “I really had no knowledge of what law enforcement was at the time. Now, I’m glad I chose the Highway Patrol.”
Like many young CHP officers, Tony Nguyen was first assigned to one of Southern California’s busiest traffic corridors, the Los Angeles metro area. A decade into his career, and already a motorcycle rider, Tony Nguyen jumped at the opportunity to transition out of a black-and-white for a bike.
He liked that riding the freeways on a motorcycle matched his vision of the CHP.
“You know the show ‘CHiPs,’ right?,” Tony Nugyen said with a laugh. “It was made with two guys on motorcycles, not two guys in a car, right?”
Several years later, tiring of the long commute to the Inland Empire where he was raising his family, Tony Nguyen transferred to the CHP’s Rancho Cucamonga office, where he would spend the bulk of his career.
A young Stephen Nguyen was watching.
“Growing up, that was all I saw my dad do, coming home on the bike and being around it,” Stephen Nguyen said. “It’s something I always looked up to. I always respected the department as a whole. … It seemed like a big group of people you could rely on and trust. …
“It feels good to put on the uniform, having grown up seeing him put on the uniform,” he said.
The younger Nguyen thought about a career in law enforcement while in high school, but it wasn’t until his college years were over that he decided to attend the academy.
“I never really pushed him to apply for the Highway Patrol,” the dad said of the eldest of his three children. “After he finished college, he wanted to pursue his own career in graphic design. I just let him know in the back of his head, the CHP is always going to be there for you.”
Stephen Nguyen was first assigned to a CHP office in San Francisco. He wanted to return to Southern California. Tony Nguyen told him when he did, they could work together on the same shift – maybe.
“I told my son, ‘I’ll work in the same office with you, but not on graveyard,’ ” Tony Nguyen said and laughed. “I can’t stay awake for those hours anymore. We will work in the same office, have coffee together, that is good enough for me.”
Several months ago, the son got a transfer to Westminster, so the dad put in for one there too, and got it.
Higher-ups at the CHP backed the father and son working together.
“The California Highway Patrol has a rich history of public service, and I can’t think of a better way to share that value of service than by doing this job while working alongside your family member, in this case a father and son,” said Captain Brian Lee, who commands the department’s Westminster division.
“Like any partnership, they motivate each other and back each other up on their beats, but it’s also a rare chance … to have the opportunity to work with a family member,” the captain said.
As dawn breaks – and minutes after the younger Nguyen pulled over a car that blew by him going more than 80 miles per hour on the 22 Freeway – father and son sat with another officer for a break outside a Starbucks in Buena Park.
The Nguyens often meet up when they aren’t patrolling their respective assigned stretches of freeways.
“He is wearing the same uniform as I am, he knows pretty much everything I know as far as policy and what to do,” Tony Nguyen said. “He is just lacking the 20-plus years of experience, which he will gain.
“But at the back of my mind I still want to critique him and tell him something, thinking he doesn’t know. But he knows. It’s hard, because a parent, and a father, is always going to think that way.”
Said his son: “He is going to give me critiques here or there, but I don’t take it as my dad trying to babysit me. He wants me to succeed in this job, and I see it as a lot of experience.”
Both acknowledged the potential danger of working as a CHP officer, and the possibility, however remote, that one would have to assist with an incident in which the other was injured, or the possibility that both could be injured or worse.
A month earlier, a CHP officer in Sacramento was struck and killed by a truck during a traffic stop in Solano County. And on this day all of the officers in the Westminster officer were wearing black mourning ribbons on their badges to recognize the death of a Sacramento deputy who had been killed in a shooting.
“I just knew and let him know he was getting into a dangerous profession,” Tony Nguyen said. “But now, as a father working this job, I see him, I’m proud of him, I want him to do whatever he wants to make him happy on this job, but I know the dangers are out there, and I think about it all the time.”
That goes two ways.
“I think about him all the time,” Stephen Nguyen acknowledged. “On the bike, anything could happen. But you have to separate the professional and family dynamic. Because if something happens out there, and we let our emotions take over, it could affect the whole situation.”
The son patrols in a black-and-white. But he has dreams – he intends to go through the proper training and intensive testing to try and get assigned to the motorcycle detail.
Stephen Nguyen has riden bikes since he was 18. In fact, that weekend he was going out to buy a larger one, one that matches the hefty motorcycles used by the CHP.
