MAMMOTH LAKES, Calif. _ Steve Searles is not really a cop, not really a civilian; he lives in limbo between those two worlds.
And, man, does he live. Think of him as the Serpico of the Sierra, a little snarly and gruff and frayed around the edges _ a ponytailed ex-surfer turned mountain man. A bit of a hillbilly intellectual without much formal schooling, a void in his resume that both flusters and propels him.
"It's haunted me my whole life," he confesses.
There are lots of contradictions to this 60-year-old wildlife officer, lots of ironies and surprising qualities that make him more than another town character, and worthy of a memoir.
Searles has carved out a niche and a career as Mammoth Lakes' "bear whisperer," a protector of the wild things that roam the night: the ubiquitous bears, deer, coyotes and all manner of high-country cat. He protects the residents and the 2.5 million annual visitors too, though they have the numerical advantage. They also have guns and cars ... warm beds and cozy, muffin-scented kitchens.
The wildlife sense this. They want decent food and cozy cabins too. Sometimes, they help themselves.
Back in the 1990s, when he was first hired as go-to guy for Mammoth's critter overpopulation, it was the intrusive coyotes and raccoons that Searles handled. Mammoth Lakes had thousands of the trespassers under houses and cabins _ mean and clever rascals that he trapped and removed before turning his efforts in 1996 to another nuisance, the black bears.
The bears were sweeter souls but even bigger presences, some topping 600 pounds. After a break-in, there'd be scat everywhere.
The police chief hired him _ as a temp _ to rid the ski village of half the big vagrants, who'd made a habit of plowing through restaurant Dumpsters and frightening the city folks from L.A. and San Francisco who came here to wallpaper the place with $100 bills. The fed-up police chief told Searles, who had a reputation as one of the region's top hunters and trappers, to kill 16 bears.
"Right, chief," Searles said. "On it."
But along the way, he learned something about the bears, and in turn he learned even more about himself.
"Dead bears learn nothing," he said. "If you kill one, another will come in from the mountains to replace it."
An outside-the-box approach, based largely on stern voice commands, would lead to global recognition, an Animal Planet show, scores of fans and, he says, even a few stalkers.
His obsession and his long hours might also have cost him friendships and a long marriage to his wife, Debra, who recently packed up and left.
Yet, Searles is still here, still patrolling the shorelines where the bears tend to congregate, chasing them off the roads where they are in mortal danger, scolding them back into the woods and away from traffic with his trademark "Bad bear! Bad bear!" commands _ along with a few other tools in his kit, such as air horns, fireworks and the occasional pepper ball.
"I'm not really the bear whisperer," he says. "I'm more the bear yeller."
But he's more than that. He's a party on wheels, glib and loaded with rough-edged charisma, mocking his buddies, making fun of himself more than anybody else.
"I'm lazy like Tom Sawyer," he says of getting residents to adopt his methods. "I got everybody to do my work for me."
Admittedly, he's sometimes better with the bears than he is with people.
"Training the bears was easy," Searles says. "Training the people was hard."
