LOS ANGELES -- By age 59, most people are looking forward to retirement, to a time when they can reap the benefits of their life's work and reflect on the strange twists and turns along the way.
But at 59, rookie police Officer Edward Olivares has caught a second wind and is looking forward to the strange twists and turns that lie ahead.
On Sunday, he took the first step of his second career as the Los Angeles Police Department's oldest rookie ever.
"I found out that LAPD was hiring and that my age was not a barrier, and I said to myself, 'This is something that I can be proud of for the rest of my life,' " Officer Olivares said Sunday as he lifted weights before his first patrol shift.
His graduation last week from the police academy was the culmination of two years of physical training to transform himself from a short, fat, laid-off defense worker to what he calls a "lean machine."
Since he left aerospace in December 1990, Officer Olivares has shed 65 pounds of fat, replacing at least part of it with 20 pounds of muscle. In between, the West Point graduate finished a cooking course at the famed Cordon Bleu cooking school in Paris, but found chef jobs even more scarce than positions in aerospace.
"I wanted to make it," he said. "There was never a time when I felt like quitting."
Officer Olivares' new career is possible because a 1992 decision by the city's police commission abolished the department's age limit of 34 for new recruits. The change was made to comply with federal anti-discrimination laws.
One of the biggest obstacles to becoming a police officer was his wife, Barbara. Not that she wanted to stand in the way of his dream, but she was concerned for his safety in the job -- particularly after the death of Christy Lynne Hamilton, the 45-year-old rookie who was shot and killed on duty in February.
Officer Olivares said his wife acquiesced when he explained that the statistical odds of dying in a freeway crash were higher than those of being killed as a police officer.