She was steely when she needed to be but her style was more honey than vinegar. She invited strangers to call her “Sandy.”
But she left no doubt — to the board that appointed her, to the deputies she led and to the public she served — she was the sheriff.
Former Orange County Sheriff Sandra Hutchens, one of the most notable women in law enforcement across the nation, died Monday after a lengthy battle with breast cancer. She was 66.
Hutchens is survived by her husband, Larry.
The first female sheriff in Orange County, Hutchens rebuilt a department severely damaged by her prison-bound predecessor, earning a national reputation once described by President Donald Trump as “legendary.”
“She restored our pride, gave us back our dignity and rebuilt trust with the people we serve,” Sheriff Don Barnes said in a prepared statement. “She kept her oath, kept her promises, and ended her time in office leaving this agency better than when she started.”
Fred Smoller, a political science professor from Chapman University, said he was saddened by the news.
“Sandy? … She was a pathmaker in what could be seen as an old boy’s club,” Smoller said.
Hutchens’ 10-year tenure in Orange County was not without its challenges, however. Prosecutors and deputies on her watch improperly used jail informants to gather evidence on criminal defendants, misdeeds that led to Orange County’s worst mass killer, Scott Dekraai, avoiding death row. She feuded publicly with a Superior Court judge who believed she was withholding documents. And there was an embarrassing jail escape by three inmates, including one labeled as Orange County’s “Hannibal Lecter,” who took advantage of jail deputies and their supervisors who had grown lax.
But, perhaps, her biggest nemesis was the cancer that she spoke publicly about to encourage and inspire others fighting their own battles with the disease. Barnes said her fight was successful for eight years. But the cancer came back. This time it was too much, even for a fighter like Hutchens, who was constantly evolving.
‘Always reinventing ourselves’
“We have never arrived,” Hutchens once said. “We are always reinventing ourselves.”
That’s how she went from a high school graduate in Long Beach to a pharmacy technician to an ice cream scooper while taking community college classes in her early adult years.
Hutchens then landed as a secretary in the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, a typist who wanted more than to copy arrest reports. She applied for the academy and earned a job as a deputy in 1978. She rose through the ranks and, by 2003, was named division chief of homeland security for the department.
There were bumps along the way.
In 1980, on New Year’s Eve, Hutchens fatally shot a man who was holding a gun in a Willowbrook garage. The gun turned out to be unloaded, but an investigation by prosecutors cleared Hutchens and her partner of any criminal liability. The family of the dead man, however, was awarded $1.3 million by a civil jury.
After 32 years with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, she retired to her home in Orange County. But it wasn’t long before her husband, Larry, brought to her attention the disaster that had become the Orange County Sheriff’s Department.
Former Sheriff Michael Carona had resigned and was indicted on charges of political corruption. He later was convicted in federal court on one charge of witness tampering. Meanwhile, the department had pretty much been running itself.
A new sheriff in town
In 2008, the Orange County Board of Supervisors was looking for someone to fill the two years remaining on Carona’s term. More than a dozen applied.
Hutchens won the job, hand-picked by a county board that had grown tired of locking horns with Carona. But they soon found Hutchens to be herself a heel-digger, often siding with her interpretation of the law, whether or not it was politically expedient.
Former state Sen. John Moorlach was among the members of the Board of Supervisors that voted for her.
“Michael Carona was doing strange stuff that impacted the whole department and sometimes you need a calming voice. She brought it,” Moorlach said.
State Sen. Pat Bates, R-Laguna Niguel, also was on the board that appointed Hutchens.
“It was also joyful to be in her presence,” Bates recalled. “She was so respectful, but unwavering. She was body and spirit involved in what she did.”
Undoing Carona actions
Hutchens began collecting the replica badges and concealed weapons permits that Carona had doled out to contributors. And she began — against her wishes — to release some jail inmates according to her interpretation of a new state law.
That was Sandra Hutchens; she saw her job as enforcing the law regardless of how she felt about the law. In the informant scandal, she attributed the problem to deputies who had not received enough training, and she blamed herself for that. She was fierce in her defense of her troops.
Hutchens was elected to full four-year terms as sheriff in 2010 and 2014 and, by 2017, she was meeting with Trump as president of the Major County Sheriffs’ Association, along with Thomas Manger, a chief of police in Maryland. Trump was exuberant in his praise of the two. “You have had great service,” the president said.
Retired in 2018
That same year, with the department under federal investigation and the ACLU calling for her resignation, Hutchens announced she would retire at the end of her term.
But she went out on her own terms, recommending her protege, then Undersheriff Barnes, for the job. He won election in 2018.
“For me personally, she was a mentor and a friend,” Barnes said. “I will continue to be inspired by her commitment to always do the right thing, regardless of the consequences, and serve with the department and community’s interests first without need for self-recognition. I am tremendously grateful for the opportunities she presented me, and the many lessons I learned from her over the years.”
In keeping with Hutchens’ wishes, Barnes said, there will not be a memorial service. Her family has asked that donations be made in her name to Drug Use is Life Abuse (www.duila.org) or the Susan G. Komen Foundation (www.komen.org), two charities she actively supported while in office.
