Countywide : ’85 Reserve Officer of the Year Is Named

Orange County’s Reserve Officer of the Year for 1985 is Capt. Robert Stark, an engineer for the telephone company who volunteered more than 1,000 hours to the Sheriff’s Department last year.

Stark, 42, of Orange received the award in Santa Ana Saturday night at the 3rd Annual Reserve Awards Banquet of the Orange County Police Reserve Coordinators Assn.

A reserve officer for the Sheriff’s Department since 1980, Stark helped organize a reserve officers program that reduced the number of burglaries along the coast during the summer last year, said Garden Grove Police Sgt. Ken Whitman, a member of the awards committee.

Orange County has more than 1,000 reserve law-enforcement officers, most of whom receive little compensation and even less recognition, Whitman said. “Most of them have other careers, but a lot of kids now see (being a reserve officer) as a training ground for becoming a regular police officer,” he said.

Officer Robert Dorton, a reservist with the Garden Grove Police Department, earned the association’s Lifesaving Award for administering cardiopulmonary resuscitation to a 63-year-old woman who had suffered a heart attack when she witnessed a robbery at a pizza parlor.

Nine officers were honored for distinguished service: Officers Scott Cullings and Charles Thompson of the Santa Ana Police Department; Sgt. John Leahy, Capt. Dean Hesketh, Capt. Thomas Milne, Lt. Gerald Hopkins and Lt. Brad Warner of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department, and Officers Lonnie Nelson and Richard Symons of the Irvine Police Department.