Jack Brush had a colorful career on the Los Angeles police force, which included the 1960s L.A. Riots and helping to arrest one of America’s most notorious cult leaders, Charles Manson.
Every summer, Brush would vacation in Yellowstone National Park to get away from the streets, which eventually led to a summer job he loved as a cop in the wilderness.
Beginning in the 1970s, Brush joined Yellowstone park law enforcement while his kids were on summer break. It was a completely different experience chasing lawbreakers through the wilderness rather than down dark alleys.
He traded his cruiser for a horse and spent weeks in the backcountry before it was time to reluctantly return to the big city.
The Lure Of Yellowstone
Brush started his career in a medical lab and spent time as an Army lab technician during the Cold War.
When Brush got out of the military, he married, moved from Pennsylvania to California, and joined the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD).
“I was about 5 years old when we started going to Yellowstone,” said his daughter, Terri Hobmeier. “Dad had a fishing buddy that he had met up there and we’d stay at Moose Lake Campground.”
The family would canoe, fish on the lake and enjoy their time away from the big city.
When Hobmeier started high school, Brush started working for the National Park Service law enforcement during the summers, and the family moved into government housing.
Brush would patrol the park on horse and the roads in a Park Service vehicle, a far cry from the LAPD back home.
It was a great time for the entire family, and they never wanted to go back to California when the season ended.
1960s LAPD
Brush lived with his family in downtown L.A., and when the L.A. riots broke out in 1964, his wife watched the town burn around their home while Brush patrolled the streets.
“The Black Panthers were harassing the cops, and it escalated,” Hobmeier said. “Tensions were high all the way around the country with civil rights, and it just exploded in L.A. when they started looting and setting everything on fire.”
Hobmeier said that L.A. was aflame, and the fire could be seen for miles. Her mom was alone with two little kids watching it all happen and wondering if her husband would come home to her.
“It was shortly after that my parents decided to get out of the downtown L.A. area,” Hobmeier said. “We moved outside of L.A. to a little town that’s no different than any little town in Wyoming with cows.”
As Brush moved his family to Santa Clarita, he continued to work for the LAPD. He had been assigned to the team investigating Charles Manson, who led the Manson Family, a cult based in California in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
“Dad was on the team when they found Manson’s commune,” Hobmeier said. “After they arrested Manson, a hit was put out on all the arresting officers.”
Hobmeier said that Manson’s threat of revenge extended to officers' families and so she and her brother were shipped out of the state to Pennsylvania to be with her grandma in another little town.
“That was one summer that we didn’t go to Yellowstone,” Hobmeier said. “Then we came back and went back to life. I didn’t really understand it until I was older.”
Brush observed the crimes on the street and when the LAPD started putting police officers in schools, he became an officer on the campus of Westchester High School.
It was there that he got to know Michael Jackson and his family before Jackson’s dad pulled him out of school over a bussing issue.
The Jacksons were going to be bussed to a different school so that the school would meet the race ratio, Hobmeier said.
"My dad always said Michael Jackson was just a really nice kid who didn’t really have a childhood,” Hobmeier said.
Brush would also bring home strangers for dinner on a frequent basis that included famous celebrities and others such as members of The Beatles.
Yellowstone Ranger
Despite rubbing elbows with celebrities in L.A., one of Brush’s favorite places was Yellowstone National Park.
When a friend suggested that he become a law enforcement ranger since he was up there all the time anyway, Brush thought it was a great idea.
Brush was stationed at the Old Faithful area and given a trailer to live in for his family. One of his duties was to go on backcountry pack trips looking for poachers and other lawbreakers in the national park.
“He also had to take the ranger vehicle and check to make sure no one’s speeding and that people aren’t jumping into hot pots or doing whatever,” Hobmeier said. “He would mainly take Ace, his horse, around on the boardwalk along Old Faithful to talk to visitors.”
Ace, according to Hobmeier, had a game he would play with the resident bison, Buff.
Buff was a favorite tourist magnet. A fellow employee wrote a song about the antics of Buff the Buffalo and kept score of how many tourists could get a picture of him until Buff would get annoyed and turn away from their cameras.
“Ace would take a step towards the buffalo and Buff would look at him,” Hobmeier said. “Ace would take another step towards him and Buff would take a step towards him.”
The game of chicken would continue until Ace would run off and then start all over again, taking one step toward the bison.
“It was a cute little game that the horse and the buffalo would play with each other,” Hobmeier said. “It was weird, but entertaining.”
Toddler Thief
Over the years, Brush witnessed many park shenanigans that people did, one of which was featured in the book by Lee Whittlesey, “Death in Yellowstone.”
It was July 1981 and a dog had jumped from the boardwalk into the sulfur water.
The owner, David Kirwan, dived in to save the animal and his friend, Ronald Ratliff, then jumped in to save Kirwan. Both men were extremely badly burned, and Kirwan had been blinded.
Near the spring, rangers found two large pieces of skin shaped like human hands. Kirwan died the following morning.
“Dad didn’t come home for dinner that night,” Hobmeier said. “He said that these guys should have known better because it is posted everywhere that no dogs are allowed on trails. They’re attracted to sulfur, you know.”
Another time, Brush was patrolling the roads when he pulled over a truck with a camper on the back. He started questioning the driver and got suspicious.
“He saw that there were a lot of kids in the camper and started asking the kids questions,” Hobmeier said. “He pieced their stories all together and discovered that they were the ones that were stealing from campers at the national parks.”
The family had been on a robbery spree across America and Brush broke the case.
They would put their 3-year-old through a small camper window and he would crawl into the camper to unlock the door.
“The family would then go in and take the goods,” Hobmeier said. “They were traveling all over the United States doing this, and then they would turn around and sell things and get money.”
The summer of 1982 was Brush’s last year at Yellowstone.
He had a massive heart attack and quietly resigned, not citing the true reason to the park. By then, he had moved out of California and was living with his wife in Arizona.
After he recovered, became a law enforcement ranger in Sequoia, Kings Canyon.
“Dad just loved it in Yellowstone and loved people,” Hobmeier said. “The kids would come up and pet his horse. It was just a fun time.”
Jackie Dorothy can be reached at jackie@cowboystatedaily.com.
