Former CHP Officer Remembers Risks Of Job

The California Highway Patrol has lost five officers in the last two months; four of them died on the road.

It’s a risk involved in the job that one former officer knows all too well.

February 28th, 1989: what started as a normal day ended up changing the lives of the Valdovinos family forever.

Zeff Valdovinos was a 36 year old California Highway Patrolman. He’d been with the department for 10 years, based in Ontario.

That day he made a routine traffic stop on the 210 in San Dimas. The 2 cars he pulled over stopped on a bridge. One of the drivers got out of his car to look for his drivers license.

“Unfortunately for him and I, another car traveling Eastbound on the 210 appeared right by me, maybe about three feet from me when i turned around and struck both of us,” Zeff recalls.

The driver had apparently fallen asleep before veering off the road, and hitting both Zeff and the driver he had initially pulled over.

Zeff was thrown about 30 feet off a bridge and landed on San Dimas Canyon Road. His injuries were extensive.

“The first officer on scene, told me years later, that when he got there both of his hands were up to his elbows because his arms had been crushed,” Zeff’s wife Patti Valdovinos said. “He must have lifted them up as the truck came and put his hands out.”

Zeff was eventually air lifted from the scene along with the other driver to the trauma center at Huntington Memorial Hospital in Pasadena.

“They took me, I believe immediately into surgery, and i don’t know how long i was out,” Zeff said. “But waking up was a surprise.”

“When I got there it was several hours later in the day when trauma surgeons came out and gave me a list of his injuries, which seemed endless,” Patti recalls.

Zeff had two young kids at the time, an 8-year-old son and a 9-year-old daughter.

“One day his son crawled up in my lap and said ‘If my dad dies I want to stay with you.’ I said ‘ Your dad is not going to die’ and I said ‘Please Lord, don’t make me a liar.'”

Zeff was in the hospital a little over four months. He spent the first three days on a respirator.

It was three weeks before doctors were even able to tell Patti that Zeff had a chance to live.

Zeff did live, but it’s been 21 years of recovery. He lost most of the use of his right hand. His right leg was totally shattered. He had to learn how to walk all over again. There was also severe intestinal damage.

And then there were the injuries that weren’t physical.

“For me it was a job I wanted to do, that I enjoyed doing, that I was good at,” Zeff said.”I knew my job and wanted to go back to it. The injuries prevented that. So what I have to deal with not being able to do what i know i can do. Seeing the officers out there, you look at it and you think about going back but you can’t.”

Seeing four other CHP officers die on California roads in the last month brings back a harsh reality.

“There is a possibility going out the door that saying good-bye to your wife and kids you might not come back,” Zeff said. “It angers me because people just aren’t paying attention. If they could do a day in our shoes, they’d have appreciation for what the officer really does and what the risk is, and what he is doing, what the exposure is.”

“I just wish John Q Citizen, that when your behind a car you have got to be careful,” Patti said. “There are no reset buttons. It’s not a game. There are lasting permanent effects. If you cant get that through your head don’t get behind the wheel.”

Zeff is still having surgeries related to what happened to him 21 years ago.

And in a twist of fate, his son, who was 8-years-old when Zeff had his accident, is now a CHP officer in East LA.