Rotary Names Officers of the Year

Since 1987, the Moorpark Noontime Rotary Club has selected law enforcement personnel to honor as Outstanding Law Enforcement Officers of the Year. This year, on Friday, the club honored Officer Dan Laubscher of the California Highway Patrol’s Moorpark office and Ventura County Sheriff’s Deputy Cyrus Zadeh.

The honorees, who were nominated by their peers, went above the call of duty while serving the community, according to their supervisors.

Laubscher, for example, put his own safety aside in July when he braved a burning car to help a driver out of the vehicle.

As Lt. April Baxter, commander of the Moorpark area CHP office, told it, the officer saw sparks and smoke coming from the car while it was on the freeway. Other motorists were trying to get the driver’s attention, but he continued driving, ignoring the CHP car’s attempts to get his attention and took an off ramp exit. At the bottom of the exit, Laubscher saw eight to ten-foot–high flames coming from the car and tried to get the driver to get out of the car. The driver was conscious but unresponsive and his door was locked so the officer couldn’t open it. Finally, he was able to get the door the driver’s attention and get him to lower the window slowly. The officer reached across the driver, unfastened his safety belt and, according to Baxter, with flames fully engulfing the car by that time, Laubscher finally was able to pull the man from the vehicle.

“It may come as a surprise to some that the driver was intoxicated,” Baxter told an amused audience.

“And Dan, without regard to his own safety, saved this man’s life most definitely,” she said.

Capt. Ron Nelson of the Moorpark Police Department told the audience of Deputy Zadeh’s ability to finally close down a Moorpark drug house that the department had known about but had been unable to get enough evidence on to make any arrests.

He also praised Zadeh’s communication skills and gave an example of how they help him perform his job by describing a recent call to which the deputy.

“Imagine this: you’re in a garage and you’re smoking marijuana from a bong. Here comes Deputy Zadeh, a uniformed deputy, and he comes up there, and not only is he so friendly and so communicative and he wants to be your friend so much that you invite him in your house and you show him all of your illegal marijuana and all of your illegal weapons that he has in there as well,” said Nelson.

“That’s not enough. You actually take him out to your backyard, where you show him where you’re growing all your marijuana … and then you get hauled away in hand cuffs. True story. And I think it demonstrates the great communication skills he has and the ability to foster cooperation, even from the bad guys.”

Officer Laubscher continues working for the Mookrpark CHP office. Zadeh, who worked for an electronics store prior to entering law enforcement, has recently transferred from the Moorpark Police Department to the Sheriff’s Department high technology task force.