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Show Park Record Thursday, November 16, 1989 Page A7 Secret Service man joins politics in Park City kiiTrntnDD i -m i . i I In the '60s, Steve Zimney was a college student at the University of California at Berkeley when Governor Gover-nor Ronald Reagan flew over the campus and tear-gassed the protesting pro-testing students from a helicopter. A dozen-plus years later, Zimney was assigned by the Secret Service to help protect President Reagan's children. Today, Zimney has traded in the shift work of presidential detail and the glamour of traveling on Air Force One and seeing the world, for the quiet pleasures of managing the Utah office of the Secret Service. Ser-vice. "Just say I'm out of investigations investiga-tions and I drive a desk these days..." And for a man who has spent the past 20 years traveling, Zimney is surprised that both he and his wife Diane have put down more roots here than at any other assignment he has had. "We've turned down some transfers. We don't want to give up Park City." That's a pretty grand recommendation recommen-dation from someone who has seen most of the world ("except Australia and Finland..."). Steve and Diane live in Park Meadows with their two children, Allen 15, and Jana 12. And even though the children have spent more holidays without their father than with him, and he and Diane spent a five-year period communicating com-municating mostly through a tape recorder installed in the door of their refrigerator, it is still a far more stable family life than the one Steve had as a child. "Mom died when I was four. My dad was a civilian auditor for the U.S. Army Ordinance Depot and we traveled a lot. He remarried when I was about six she was a hairdresser. hair-dresser. . .but she didn't last very long. After he divorced her he sent us to live with his sister in Washington state... it was about 50 miles northwest from Spokane. "I remember that time as the best part of my childhood. We were on a ranch and we rode horses and fished a lot. After that we stayed with a series of people Dad paid to take care of us. When I was in the third grade we finally stayed with a Baptist family in Concord, California Califor-nia I was there until college." Steve and his younger sister (who 'now lives in Boise, Idaho) "spent a lot of time going to church. I quit l'"'Tfi-If-Or-u- Yitmtttrr NEW HOME ON GOLF COURSE. 3 bdrm, 3 bath up, main floor features den and guest bath, spacious living and dining areas, roomy family room and nook adjacent to kitchen. Kathy Mears 649-7129, Max Greenhalgh 649-4166, 649-9200 SILVER SPRINGS $199,000. 4 bdrm, 2.5 baths, vaulted ceilings, large master suite, 2 fireplaces, fenced yard. Lucy Murphy 649-6973, 649-9200 WON'T LAST! 1508 Fawngrove in Deer Valley. 2 bdrm, 2 bath corner unit, private patio on secluded pond, fully furnished. $142,000. Steve Ryan 649-2970, 649-9200 F ' I 1 W 1 PARK WEST CONDO. I bdrm, I bath. Fully upgraded with new carpet, wall coverings, efficient gas fireplace, stream and trees out back door. Amenities Include tennis and pool. $45,000. Chris Gatchell 649-3273 I : I i. i I , i Zimney accompanied President and Mrs. Bush on their trip to China in 1980; pictured pic-tured here with President and Mrs. Bush after a run in downtown Peking. (Zimney is third from the left.) going as soon as I left home." And the pair grew independent in their trials. "We grew into ourselves instead in-stead of clinging to each other," he says simply. In high school, Steve was a student stu-dent leader and a tennis and basketball player. In his senior year a California Highway Patrolman spoke to a group of students about defensive driving and Steve talked to him after his presentation about law enforcement. enforce-ment. "I think that day was the first time I ever heard the word criminology." It just so happened one of the better bet-ter criminology schools in the nation na-tion was in Steve's backyard and after high school he enrolled at UC Berkeley. It was there, a year later, he met Diane also a criminology student. "In my senior year I took every test in sight and I scored well on the Training Enforcement Agent Examination. The Secret Service mm inni wit f ijg Mi """""if' $ 24' ff c'j rvuwwvn ! wT , , . 1 u happened to be hiring at the time. That was 1970 and the presidential election of 1968 was the first time the Secret Service had responsibility responsibili-ty for candidates and more positions posi-tions opened up. In fact, a lot of us that are approaching the 20-year mark this year were hired because of that greater opening. "In college I had thought I would be a forensics criminologist matching mat-ching up evidence and solving crimes in the lab. But when I barely bare-ly passed organic chemistry and calculus, my interest changed to investigations." in-vestigations." Steve's first assignment was in San Francisco and Diane was working as a probation officer for adult males in Oakland. "One day myself and another agent were going into a neighborhood in Oakland when I spotted my own personal car, a Corvette, there at the house we were headed to. It turned out Diane was already in the house on a home visit with the guy we wanted to ar- ' DEER VALLEY LIVING AT ITS FINEST! 1 533 Lakeside Condo. $295,000. Custom furniture pkg., 3 bdrm, 3 bath, loft area for 4th bdrm or office, pool, jacuzzi, sauna plus many other amenities. Nani Hogle 649-6467, 649-9200 SHADOWRIDGE CONDO $159,900. 2 bedrooms, fully furnished, pool, hot tub, next to resort. Jeanne Croy 649-4114,649-9200 TT mm COUNTRY CHARM 3 bedroom home in Heber. $95,000. Fashion Chavez 654-3772, 649-9200 .l5"XRi; 64 THAYNES CANYON DRIVE. Great family , home on golf course. 5 bdrms, 4.5 baths, 5147 sq.ft. $419,000. Kathy Penrose 649-3766, 649-9200 -I . . V rest... "I was booking them up and she was writing pre-sentence reports," he said with a laugh. And for those who think Secret Service only means presidential protection work, Steve explained the Agency was first formed in 1865 to stem the tide of counterfeit currency cur-rency circulating. Today they handle han-dle not only the White House detail, widows and minor children of the former presidents, they also investigate in-vestigate credit and computer fraud as well as their old mainstay counterfeiting. There are less than 2,000 agents total today. to-day. After four years in the San Francisco Fran-cisco detail, Steve was assigned to Washington D.C. and the White House. It was the last eight months of Nixon's presidency. "The walls of Watergate were falling down then. He was hiding out a lot and he was behaving in a bizarre manner. I went on a couple of fishing trips with him, and to EARLY Due to Thanksgiving, our deadlines will be as follows: Display ads-Friday Nov. 17 at 5 p.m. Classified-Friday Nov. 17 at 5 p.m. The paper will he published Wed. Nov. 22. 'Just say I'm out of investigations and I drive a desk these days.. Steve Zimney Key Biscayne and Camp David and San Clemente. "The most intense emotional scene I ever witnessed was in the East Room when Nixon resigned. It wasn't an adreneline feeling like at a shooting or a scene of an accidentthere acci-dentthere was just such sorrow and regret. And then suddenly he was on a helicopter and gone. Half the detail went with him to San Clemente and the other half of us stayed to cover President Ford." Steve found Ford eager to engage the agents in conversation and place sports bets with them and he enjoyed the detail. He spent two years then covering Jimmy Carter who he felt was somewhat "out of his league." But he says of all the politicians he has ever covered, he found the most down-to-earth to be President George Bush. "I accompanied he and Barbara on the 1980 trip to China. They are genuinely warm people." After the White House, Steve went to Grand Rapids for two years, then the greater Los Angeles area for a couple more years (that's when he had the protective detail of three of the Reagan's children) and in 1984 he bid on the Salt Lake City office and got the assignment. "We had 10 days to find a house and get settled. We looked in Salt Lake City and felt it was too crowded crowd-ed but we couldn't find anyplace we felt really good about. On the sixth day we drove to Park City to have lunch and think about our choices. We feel in love with the area. "Shortly thereafter Mondale came and stayed at the Yarrow and I remember meeting Police Chief Frank Bell in the parking lot and introducing myself. I told him we had just to moved to town. He told me dryly 'there are worse places to live than Park City.' He was right." DEADLINES ! Listening to Steve talk about the day he was in Sacramento with Gerald Ford when Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme tried to assassinate the president and listening to Steve recount smuggling smuggl-ing scotch at Christmastime into a Moslem country which forbids alcohol and listening to Steve talk about watching who came into and out of the back door of the White House, you realize this man has been a part of a great deal of history. It is something he is proud of, but he downplays it. "I feel good that I gave eight hours work for eight hours pay you know... I guess I learned that people are people the world over, but most especially cops are cops. They take care of one another. I have been fortunate to make friends in so many different countries and cultures." In 1987 Steve was part of the largest domestic seizure of counterfeit $100 bills. In total, it was a $20 million operation out of... Salmon, Idaho. "Over eight years and a lot of time and patience the guy really had the plates down near perfect. If he hadn't gotten greedy I think he could still be passing those bills around." Steve has stories of Russians and Egyptians and Germans and tense moments and jogging in downtown Peking. He says for himself the most political thing he has ever done was march in the Park City 4th of July parade this year with an "I'm for Bob" (Richer) t-shirt on. And what if, as the rumor goes, Vice President Dan Qualye wants to come to the Senator's Ski Cup here this January? It will be up to Steve Zimney to see he is protected here in Utah. But if you have protected pro-tected presidents in palaces the world over, having the vice president presi-dent in some Park City condo shouldn't prove too great a challenge... |