Former Danville Police Chief Ken Sandy, who served in the Contra Costa Sheriff’s Office for 27 years, died Christmas Eve from COVID-19 at the age of 83.
Sandy was an active member of the Rotary Club of Danville and taught Sunday school for the Alamo Ward, a Mormon church in Danville. After retirement, he served as director on the San Ramon Valley Fire Protection District Board.
In interviews, family members remembered a gentle, affable jokester who savored every salmon-fishing trip and never turned down the chance to catch a live sporting event. They recalled a principled policeman who never let his ego get in the way of his duties to the community.
“He always taught me to be non-judgmental through who he was at the police department,” said Sandy’s daughter, Reagan Hall. “He always talked about, ‘We all make mistakes, and the way we help people is to talk to them.’”
Born July 17, 1937, the lifetime Contra Costa County resident attended San Ramon High School, where he won accolades as a four-sport athlete, before enlisting in the U.S. Navy for several years.
During his 27 years with the sheriff’s office, Sandy invested in local policing and became Danville’s first police chief after the town incorporated in 1982. He served as chief for 10 years and then retired to assist the sheriff’s office’s in recruiting new officers.
“That was a real compliment when they hired him back to recruit people,” said friend and former Contra Costa County administrator Phil Batchelor. “You put on your recruiting team the person you’d like to hire. He did that for 10 more years.”
Loved ones remembered Sandy as having a keen sense of humor, keeping up long-running inside jokes and gags with his colleagues in law enforcement and later the Rotary Club.
But his years with the sheriff’s office also exposed him to multiple disturbing events that traumatized him, his family said.
When a school bus chartering choir students from Yuba City plunged off the Benicia-Martinez bridge in May 1976, killing 28 students and an adult adviser, Sandy was one of the first to respond to the accident.
Memories of the event — still the second-worst bus disaster in U.S. history — damaged Sandy emotionally for years, family said, but he was not afraid to discuss his feelings about it when asked.
“It had a tremendously detrimental impact on him psychologically,” Batchelor said. “He could have become angry and bitter and aggressive, but that was never Ken. No, Ken was always gentle and kind, and always in control of himself.”
Sandy kept his friends close, remaining pals with middle-school classmates throughout his life and attending their children’s baseball and football games.
He was an avid outdoorsman, making annual trips to Yosemite National Park. Sandy’s son-in-law, Keith Hall, remembered a particularly exciting family salmon-fishing trip to Alaska.
“Fishing was his passion,” Keith Hall said. “He loved to talk about it.”
“The past few years, he became more quiet and reserved — I think it had to do with his health,” Reagan Hall said. “But he was still able to talk to me about what was going on in his life. I cherished those moments.”
Despite his years, Sandy remained excited to talk about outings with his old buddies or to see his grandson’s baseball games.
“He would get so giddy talking about his big plans,” his daughter said.
Sandy is survived by his daughter and three stepchildren. His wife, Dorothy, is in a hospital intensive care unit with COVID-19, the family said Thursday.