Cathleen Allison/Nevada Appeal
Mike Brown is the tallest man in all the pictures in his photo album.
He grins next to old motorcycle friends, poses beside actors he met once and sticks his chest out in the back row of his police academy graduation picture.
Mike Brown, who works part-time security at a RV park in Mound House, has done almost everything he's wanted to do.
But if he could do anything, he'd be an officer again. His eyes are too bad, though, his body is too old and his convictions are too strong.
"I miss law enforcement," he said. "Big time miss it. I still see things that I wish I could be able to pull people over for or arrest them or give them a ticket for."
He said he helps and protects people whenever he can. He helps drivers who get in wrecks. He confronts loud drunks in the RV park. If people are honest with him, he said, he'll be honest with them.
The last time he was able to get close to what he loved most was when he worked in a police department in 1995. He was a dispatcher in Canby, Ore. He said budget cuts took his job.
The one time he worked as an officer was from 1972-82. He worked mostly traffic and DUI checkpoints at the police department in Portland, Ore. He said he loved his job.
Brown won't say how old he is. He'll only say he is a great-grandfather and born "when Harry S. (Truman) was just leaving office."
He said some people say they've done everything, but they probably haven't and he really has.
He said he's been everywhere. He was adopted and grew up on a California Air Force base. He lived all over the West and in Michigan, too. He's been a locksmith, disc jockey, maintenance man and all kinds of security guard.
He said he's guarded gold and jewels for Caesar's Place in the late 1980s. He has pictures to prove it.
Brown, who drives a blue golf cart around the RV park, has met a lot of people at his jobs, been engaged twice and married three times.
He spends most of his time alone now.
He likes to take care of his two cats and eat at a Chinese buffet in Carson City. Most people he used to go out with drink and smoke and he doesn't like that.
He's not ready for a girlfriend again either. He said he doesn't think he's ready to date again after what happened with his last two fiancees, the second who died in 2004.
"They have both taken their own lives," he said. "It makes it hard."
Sometimes he talks with one of his ex-wives, but he doesn't know where the other two are.
"They didn't like police," he said. "Didn't like law enforcement. They didn't like the hours. They thought their boyfriends were a lot more sufficient than me.
"That's all right, you know," he said. "Whatever floats their boat."
Some of the most important friendships he's had have only been for a few hours.
He said when he was working at a Reno casino in 1983, he got a hug from a woman whose husband he'd tried to save. The man was having a heart attack in a hotel room in middle of the night.
"She's in her nightie running up and down the hall screaming," he said. "These doors have metal frames. Well, I wear a size 16 boot and I don't have a pass key so I took the entire door and door frame right out of the wall with one kick and started doing CPR on the guy."
The man died after going to the hospital, he said, but the wife came back later to thank him for prolonging her husband's life.
Brown said he's ready to give that kind of help whenever anyone needs him. He said he thanks God every morning when he wakes up and looks at the ceiling and knows he's alive.
When he can't wake up and look at the ceiling, then that's that, he said.
"I've done everything that I've set out to do, except go to Australia," he said. "That's it. Everything else, well, I plug along and do what I can to help people the best way I can."
• Contact reporter Dave Frank at dfrank@nevadaappeal.com or 881-1212.