CA: Danger was his business - Sgt. Conrad Grayson retires after 29 years on sheriff's bomb squad

He's been the tough-looking guy in camouflage on your local TV news, explaining with rapid-fire delivery how the pipe bomb his team just disarmed could have torn off someone's arm. Sgt. Conrad Grayson, with 29 years on the San Diego County Sheriff's Department arson-explosives unit, is the most senior nonmilitary bomb technician in the country. And by most accounts, one of the most well-respected.

Grayson, 66, closed out his 39-year law enforcement career Friday, saying it's time to let younger men take over.

“I don't want to get to the point where the guys say, 'Work around the old sarge,' ” Grayson said. “I'm kind of a freak case. Very few people go that long.”

The FBI's most senior bomb technician, Special Agent Kevin Miles of the Los Angeles office, said Grayson's retirement “will leave a big hole in the experience level in San Diego County and Southern California.”

At a standing-room-only retirement party Wednesday night, Sheriff Bill Kolender called Grayson “an icon in law enforcement” and presented him the department's Distinguished Service Medal.

Grayson taught bomb recognition and use of explosives to thousands of law officers, firefighters and military personnel. He gave safety talks at school assemblies, banks, hospitals and businesses.

He worked the horrific scenes of the PSA jetliner crash in North Park, the Oklahoma City federal building bombing and San Diego County's Cedar and Paradise wildfires.

Senior Special Agent Rick Verducci said that when he joined the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives 18 years ago, “Coni was the guy to go to. He's a legend.”

Before clearing out his cramped sheriff's Emergency Services Division office at Gillespie Field in El Cajon, Grayson sat for an interview amid memorabilia, family photos and a prominent sign that read, “No Sniveling.”

He said he ends his career on a high, with last month's dedication of a $1.5 million renovation at the sheriff's 5-acre bomb disposal and training range in Rancho San Diego. Offices, classrooms, restrooms, lighting and a perimeter fence were installed, along with a museum to display thousands of grenades, shells, detonators and other devices Grayson collected.

The new bomb squad leader, Sgt. Everard Dayrit, said his 13 years as a SWAT supervisor should prepare him for his new assignment.

“It's an honor to replace him,” Dayrit said of Grayson. “His knowledge and expertise is something I'll strive for.”

Grayson, the youngest of three brothers, recalls a tough East Los Angeles childhood when “if anyone called me 'Coni,' I'd pound their face.” (Now he views the widely used nickname as an endearment.)

Grayson's oldest brother, Abe, made a career in supermarket management. Brother Gilbert, 68, spent 20 years in the Navy, then in 1980 followed Conrad into the Sheriff's Department. He plans to retire in September.

Peers call Conrad Grayson dedicated, generous, and always willing to help and to share his vast knowledge of explosive devices, terrorism and law. He taught the subjects to nearly every police officer and firefighter in the county. They knew they could call him at 2 a.m. with questions. Reporters knew he was always good for a quote.

“I go into total teaching mode,” Grayson said. “The public doesn't know what a dry-ice bomb is? Let's use it to tell them what to look out for. If you don't, another person picks up something and now another person is hurt.

What his colleagues might not know is that he actually wanted to work homicide, not bomb-arson. And that he tried for 13 years for a promotion to lieutenant. And that he co-founded the American Association of Zoo Keepers.

The ex-Marine signed on at the San Diego Zoo in 1967. He and six co-workers, wanting training in handling animals, brought in lecturers such as gorilla expert Jane Goodall and formed the now-international association.

Grayson switched careers in 1968, graduating from the San Diego Police Department academy and working for the University of California Police and San Diego police until joining the Sheriff's Department in 1972.

When Sgt. John Reeve asked him to apply for the bomb squad, Grayson told him he'd rather work homicide.

“He said, 'Do it for a couple of years, and transfer,' ” said Grayson, who joined the three-deputy unit in 1977. “I got so doggone busy, I forgot all about homicide.”

There was virtually no safety equipment for bomb technicians in the early days. Grayson routinely carried dynamite and fireworks in the trunk of his county-issued car to the bomb disposal range.

“He fought for years to better the unit and the equipment,” recalled Bill Kilpatrick, who worked on Grayson's bomb squad for eight years before retiring in 2005.

“We're his boys,” said Detective John Williamson, a three-year bomb squad member. “He would do anything for us.”

With donations, grants and budget requests, Grayson acquired a bomb disposal carrier, bomb safety suits and remote-controlled robots that can disarm an explosive with a blast of water. He expanded the squad to six detectives who serve the entire unincorporated county area and 17 cities, apart from San Diego, which has its own bomb-arson team.

Detective Bill Jache, a bomb squad member for nearly 11 years, praised Grayson's low-key leadership style and his willingness to handle small chores that free his investigators to work on cases.

Grayson has handled the big ones, too. He was overwhelmed by the carnage when 144 people died when a jetliner and a small plane collided over North Park in September 1978. “I couldn't sleep at night – every time I closed my eyes, I saw dead bodies.”

Equally searing was the wreckage at Oklahoma City's Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in April 1995. When the FBI asked him to help at the scene of America's biggest bombing, Grayson caught a plane the next day. After eight days of pulling out bodies, the image that hit him hardest was the little, bloody handprints on the crumbled wall of a day care center, where children had groped their way to safety.

And again in 2003, Grayson and his team recovered bodies, 17 in all including Novato firefighter Steve Rucker, from the Cedar and Paradise fires that devastated the county.

But the blast heard 'round the world for Grayson's team was the day it blasted four kittens.

“That really kicked our butts,” Grayson said, recalling the hate mail and worldwide ridicule.

In 1986, a sealed box was left outside a Ramona bank. The bomb team got a blurry X-ray image of a live creature inside. The team had recently destroyed a similar box containing a rattlesnake, so it blasted this box with a water cannon. Three kittens were killed. The survivor, which Grayson dubbed Lucky, was adopted by a detective.

Grayson's retirement doesn't mean he plans to relax. He has applied for a Transportation Security Administration job at Lindbergh Field, and if that falls through, he's thinking of joining the sheriff's volunteer search-and-rescue team.

Grayson's wife, Teresa Gersch, retired as a sergeant in 2003 after 22 years as a county deputy marshal and three years with the Sheriff's Department.

“I knew going into this marriage that this department was No. 1,” Gersch said. “I'm looking forward to moving up in position.”

She said she bought a motor home in February, and Grayson hasn't yet ridden in it. He also refused to use the fire-engine-red pickup she bought him in June until he had to turn in his county car.

“I think I've been real patient,” Gersch said. “He truly belonged to the people of San Diego.”

PROFILE: SGT. CONRAD GRAYSON

1958-64: Marine Corps and Marine Reserve, serving in Vietnam and the Far East

1967-68: San Diego Zoo; co-founds American Association of Zoo Keepers

1968-69: San Diego police academy, reserve officer

1969-72: University of California Police Department

May-August 1972: San Diego Police Department

1972-2007: San Diego County Sheriff’s Department

Online: For a multimedia look at Grayson’s storied career, go to
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/metro/multimedia/grayson/index.html

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