Public safety officers promoted

The Laguna Beach fire and police departments recently promoted two long-time guardians of public safety to the rank of captain.

Michael Hall began his career with the Police Department in 1979 when he joined the Explorer Post. He was a junior at Laguna Beach High School at the time.

“I loved it,” Hall said. “I lived down here [at the department].”

He graduated from the Reserve Academy even before he graduated from high school and was hired as a dispatcher and reserve officer in 1980. He completed the Golden West Police Academy in 1981 and was hired by then-Chief John Sparks. Hall turned 21 a month after he was hired and has never worked for any other department.

He was promoted to sergeant in 1989, lieutenant in 2001 and captain in October. Hall is now serving as commander of the support services division, which he supervised in his last two years as lieutenant and for two of his 12 years as sergeant.

Support services includes dispatch, records, police vehicle fleet, jail management, statistics, parking collection and information technology.

“I am pretty good with technology, but I couldn’t do it without Officer Tony White,” Hall said.

Hall said he has enjoyed every assignment he ever had, even traffic control and ticket appeals -- now the province of Sgt. Jason Kravetz. He did admit to a special fondness for patrol.

“Sometimes when I drive into work, I see the patrol cars and I want to go back out there,” Hall said. “When I was an Explorer, I couldn’t get enough ride-alongs. It is the passionate part of the job.”

Fellow officers and City Hall employees witnessed the ceremony marking Hall’s promotion, held in the City Council chambers.

Capt. Paul Workman and Sgt. Darin Lenyi each pinned one of the captain’s bars on Hall’s uniform. Leah Nealon, who works in the city’s Water Quality Department, pinned on the captain’s badge. Then-Chief James Spreine swore in Hall.

Pat Brennan was sworn in as the Fire Department’s newest captain by City Clerk Martha Anderson. Brennan’s brother, Kevin, pinned him. His wife, Lynae, daughters Summer, 23, and Tiffany, 24, and what Brennan calls his extended City Hall family attended.

“I was humbled by the number of people there,” Brennan said.

Brennan’s variety of experience at other departments and on special assignments, as well as special training, allowed him to leapfrog from firefighter to captain.

“I was a captain at San Onofre from 1983 to 1987,” Brennan said. “That’s where I got my hazardous materials and computer training.”

Brennan was hired full-time in Laguna Beach in 1987 and put his past training to good use.

“I built a program using real-time data from flood control agencies’ 73 sites to track storms and compile information to make a prognosis,” Brennan said. “It is not forecasting.”

The program was twice used to evacuate children from Annaliese’s School in Laguna Canyon and to feed information to the now-defunct Swift Water Team.

“I could allocate resources as needed,” Brennan said.

He also was detailed to special assignments, such as the American Trader oil spill in 1990 off Huntington Beach.

Brennan has been a firefighter for 32 of his 50 years. He graduated in 1974 from the first state-certified fire academy at Santa Ana College.

He chose to join the Laguna Beach department because it offered diverse opportunities that drew on all his past experiences in firefighting -- wildfires, commercial fires and even his earlier work as a lifeguard.

“The department kind of needed a guy like me,” Brennan said. “I am a state-certified fire officer, a state-certified fire prevention officer -- the only one in the department [and] a state-certified hazmat [hazardous materials] technician.” He is also state-certified for technical rescues, such as in earthquakes.

Although he didn’t mention it until asked, Brennan is also one of the department’s premiere chefs. Firefighters are on round-the-clock duty when they are in the station house. That means someone cooks or the crew starves. Brennan’s Irish stew has been featured in two cookbooks.

Brennan is proud of the department.

“We do more with less all the time,” Brennan said. “We have to be anywhere in the city in four minutes.”

Brennan wants to use his experience to train a new generation of firefighters.

He advises aspiring firefighters to get as much information and training as possible.

It’s not easy to become a firefighter.

They face five tests: written, physical agility, oral, fire chief’s interview, a physician’s exam and a background check.

“You really have to score in the top 5 or 10 percent just to get to the chief’s interview,” Brennan said.

Despite the difficulty in getting a job and the inherent danger, 400 to 500 applicants show up for every opening.

Why?

“Every day that we go to work is a challenge,” Brennan said. “That is what draws me and others in the fire service. We make a difference.”

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