Sheriff Brown’s Rock n’ Roll Partners

Since his election in 2007, Sheriff Bill Brown has been the chief law enforcement officer for Santa Barbara County. While “Santa Barbara County” may suggest to some the varied and gorgeous environs associated with the “Santa Barbara” brand – sandy beaches, the rolling hills of wine country, wildflowers, a puzzling Danish village with windmills – to law enforcement, “Santa Barbara County” has other connotations. Sheriff Bill Brown oversees jurisdiction of more than 2,700 square miles and a teeming population of about 443,000 people. No pressure. 

“In September I’ll have been in law enforcement for 48 years,” Sheriff Brown says. “I’ve enjoyed every day. I still look forward to coming to work, and it’s something that I believe is a noble profession – protecting and serving people.”

Apart from inserting themselves between criminal jackasses and the commonweal, the sheriff’s office is also known as a linchpin of disaster response – a menu of unpleasantries that includes shootings, floods, wildfires, and an ever-changing panoply of other public threats. Fire is, of course, the default California emergency. As the Golden State gets drier and hotter, the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Office has gained – through long experience – a definable expertise on that front, anymore coordinating seamlessly with other agencies when the area bursts into flame, as happens with increasing regularity. 

“It flows quite naturally now in terms of setting up a joint command post with the fire department, figuring out what they want in terms of an attack, what they see in terms of evacuation needs. While they’re busy fighting the fire, we’re busy sorting out the evacuation.” 

Kicking Ash

In December 2017, “off-season” California firestorms forced over 230,000 people to evacuate, destroyed more than 1,300 structures, and took 47 lives. 

In the course of that explosive December, the once-forested mountains above Montecito were kiln-blasted and defoliated by the pitiless Thomas Fire, the baked and unanchored hills only awaiting a triggering event. When in the wee hours of January 9, a torrential post-fire rain came ashore, the soaked slopes separated from the Santa Ynez range and roared down through Montecito in a 15’ high, boulder-strewn cascade. Over 400 homes were damaged or destroyed and 23 lives were swept away in the horrific avalanche. In a strange instance of muted disasterspeak, the explosive catastrophe came to be called the “Debris Flow.” The grotesque violence and scale of the tragedy truly tested the tensile strength of the emergency response, and of the individual emergency responders. 

In the wake of the Thomas Fire/Debris Flow double tragedy, the healing potential inherent in Montecito’s unique demographic came to the fore.

“One805 came out of an idea to put on this Kick Ash Bash after the Thomas Fire and Debris Flow,” Sheriff Brown says. “These twin disasters were back-to-back. Our people were thrashed by the fire, and then all of a sudden boom, we were thrust right into it again. We were drained. It was extremely touching that members of the community thought, ‘Hey, let’s throw a gigantic party for the first responders and their families – give them a little respite from all of this…’”

Andy Hardy’s Marshall Plan

Folks of a certain age may remember Mickey Rooney in the Andy Hardy movies, clapping his hands in revelation – “That’s it! We’ll put on a show!” – in order to raise funds for this or that downtrodden community cause. He would then corral his pals into helping him mount the tumbledown, heartfelt revue in the family barn. 

Here comes a stretch. Imagine Andy Hardy’s neighbors are Katy Perry, Kenny Loggins, Alan Parsons, Steve Vai, Richard Marx, Wilson Phillips, David Crosby, Glenn Phillips, and Dishwalla. The show is emceed by the ermine-caped King Midas of Snark, Dennis Miller. Walk-ons include Ellen DeGeneres, tennis icon Jimmy Connors, and the truly impeccable Jane Seymour. The barn, of course, is Bella Vista Ranch and Polo Club in Summerland. [whew!] Well, it happened one night.

“They went out and did this incredible job of organizing this unbelievable lineup of talent to come and sing and perform, and in such a wonderful venue. It was a tremendous day. I’ll never forget that.” Sheriff Brown is still clearly struck by how the fairly spontaneous operation rose to the occasion, even beyond what they had planned. “I think the idea originally was just to raise money to pay for the event, this outpouring of thanks. But they raised so much money that they had a significant amount left over. They ended up saying, ‘We’re going to give this to you, and we want you to buy equipment and the operational things you need that will help you in these scenarios.’” 

The One805 Kick Ash Bash netted some $1.7 million, which paid for two new mobile command centers, an “At-Ease” program offering counseling to over-stressed first responders, and other needs for the ravaged community. Today, Sheriff Brown is – in cahoots with Co-founders COO Richard Weston-Smith, CEO Kirsten Cavendish Weston-Smith, and CFO John J. Thyne III – all over that mission, and explains where the rechristened fundraising steamroller has filled specific critical gaps.

“Some of these emergencies are long-term duration events that have had a tough impact on some of our first responders. It’s really great that they have this service that’s provided confidentially, the financial component taken care of.” Apart from these humane and psyche-salving mental health services, the Kick Ash Bash also began curating the desperately needed hardware these disaster responses oblige, an effort that is ongoing through the Bash’s rocking successor. 

“One805 has donated equipment that has really helped us in what I would call major incident or critical incident response,” Sheriff Brown says. “For example, our dive team is called out typically for search and recovery operations. If we have to get people into the water to find either victim remains or some evidence that relates to a crime or an event, One805 has provided us with some real state-of-the-art dive helmets that allow our people to communicate with each other underwater. They’ve provided our crisis response teams wireless communications equipment, where heretofore our communications setup had lengthy cables, and was otherwise very archaic in terms of today.” 

It can be easy to forget that all this first-responder largesse is made possible by a model cobbled together once upon a time by the Cavendish Weston-Smiths and Mr. Thyne – a stage crammed with volunteer rock stars wielding not the axes used to hack through doors in a four alarm fire, but the fretted, six-stringed variety whose melodious sonic output manages to [yeah] blow the audience’s doors off in performance. How often does a county sheriff wax rhapsodic about the Marshall amp contingent? 

“The One805 live events have been enormously helpful fundraisers for the last several years, but they’ve also been great entertainment venues for first responders themselves. Many of them with their families have been able to attend. We’re blessed with a lot of great talent that lives here, and that they are so very generous with their time and their talent.” Never mind the first responders themselves. “It’s also, of course, about the team that I’m lucky enough to lead, but also the other teams that we interface with. When necessary, we create this team of teams and come together to deal with the major incident. I’m incredibly proud of them all.”