It was Rolf’s desire to be closer to Long Beach that led him to accept a lateral move to the Irvine Police Department. Rolf liked the ocean, the beach, and his childhood friends too much to move to the landlocked smog belt of Riverside County. Reserved by nature, Rolf kept a few close friends on the force but did not fraternize much after work because of the ninety-minute commute back to Long Beach. Andy Delgado considered Parkes one of the “Lions” on the force: a quiet, brave cop who would be there when you needed him. Parkes earned a four-year degree from Long Beach State, worked for a while as an EMT, and then decided to enter police work at the encouragement of some cop friends.Īt twenty-seven with under two years on the Riverside force, Parkes was highly regarded by his fellow officers. He wanted to be a professional pilot, but with all the veterans returning home from Vietnam in the mid-1970s, the labor market was glutted with experienced fliers. Rolf developed a passion for flight at an early age and was soloing a Cessna in the skies above Long Beach by age seventeen. It also explained his middle name: Napunako. But once teachers and friends learned he was Hawaiian by blood, it all made perfect sense: the Islander’s smile, the smoky complexion, his love of sun and water. He was a good-looking kid with black hair and dark eyes who, by virtue of local demographics, was assumed to be Hispanic. When his parents divorced, Rolf and his mother left the beaches of Waikiki for the beaches of Southern California where Rolf grew up the only child of a single mother just blocks off the water in the Belmont Shores area of Long Beach. With a name that belied his true heritage, Rolf Parkes was of mostly Hawaiian descent, born on the island of Oahu and adopted at birth by a Caucasian, non-native “haole” couple who lived there. The following is excerpted from Norco '80: The True Story of the Most Spectacular Bank Robbery in American History by Peter Houlahan, available on June 11, 2019. How the Norco bank robbery gave rise to patrol rifle programs
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