Purloined handcuffs, and 60 years later, apologies

VISTA, Calif. — The handcuffs came skidding across a Van Nuys restaurant floor, lost by a police officer struggling with a suspect. A teenage bystander scooped them up and kept them.

But guilt tugged at him. Sixty years later, those handcuffs turned into a life lesson for a Vista man and his two young grandsons.

The San Diego County man, 74, wants to remain anonymous. He’ll let his letter to the Los Angeles Police Department, which arrived last month at the West Valley station, tell his story. With the letter came the handcuffs and a $100 donation to the department foundation. Copies of the letter also went to the little boys, ages 6 and 9.

Circa 1960, the man was 14 and in a Bob’s Big Boy restaurant when he witnessed a scuffle between an officer and a “young ruffian,” the letter reads. When the cuffs went flying, the teen picked them up and took them home. Admittedly, he wrote, he “felt a little guilty” when he looked at them over the next six decades.

When his grandsons were visiting and playing with plastic handcuffs, he figured he’d impress them with the real thing. They did think the cuffs were cool — until he told how he acquired them. “They were aghast and asked me why I stole the handcuffs from a policeman,” the letter reads. “I, of course, had no good explanation.”

The boys later brought it up to their parents. A long talk followed. The grandfather apologized and was forgiven. “But I can’t stop thinking I did wrong on so many levels, so I am returning the handcuffs with this confession and a note of apology,” the letter reads.

The atonement resonated. “At the end of the day, the message was it’s never too late to do the right thing,” said Officer Mike Lopez, an LAPD spokesman. “He instilled those values into his grandchildren.”