SAN GABRIEL VALLEY / COVER STORY : Senior Officers : Claremont police rely on retired residents to do such routine tasks as issuing parking citations, freeing sworn personnel for other duties.

Snazzy in their tan police uniforms, Lee Maudlin, 71, and Lafayette Vaughn, “about 60,” are hot on the trail of a suspected lawbreaker.

“We’ve got us a live one here,” Vaughn says to his partner as he moves closer to a car conspicuously parked in a handicapped spot. Maudlin readies his citation book, eager to write a ticket for $330.

But the car has a handicapped placard. “Dag gun it!” Maudlin exclaims to his partner as they get back into the patrol car.

As members of Claremont’s retired senior volunteer patrol program, Maudlin and Vaughn join six women and 12 other men in serving as extra eyes and ears for the Claremont Police Department.

In an effort to save money and get community members involved in Police Department operations, Claremont increasingly relies on the services of volunteers.

The volunteers are not armed but carry radios and flashlights and patrol the city in white cars complete with Police Department logos and flashing light bars. They are decked out in full police regalia--uniform and seven-point-star badges.

In the past, paid police officers would perform such routine services as fingerprinting, looking for parking violators and checking the homes of vacationing residents, said Claremont Police Capt. Russ Brown, who began the senior volunteer program in 1984.

Now volunteers have taken over those tasks, freeing up sworn officers for the streets.

The volunteers donate 5,000 to 6,000 hours a year to the Police Department, Brown said.

This year’s budget for the senior volunteer program is a mere $2,600--enough to dress volunteers in their uniforms (tan, unlike the blue uniforms that the sworn officers wear) and buy them food when they have to spend the night protecting a corpse at a crime scene, which they have done several times.

“We rely pretty heavily on our senior volunteer program,” Police Chief Bob Moody said. “They’re worth their weight in gold.”

A former furniture and floor covering manager for Sears Roebuck, Maudlin has a son who is a police captain in Colorado and who urged him to get involved in the community.

For Vaughn, who worked for four years as a traffic officer for the LAPD, it was a natural thing to do. “Regular police would have to do what we do if we didn’t do it,” Vaughn said. “It seems like we’re doing some good for the community.”