OFFICER RODNEY A. DORNSIFE

BADGE 1050, ID 1261

SDPD 05/26/1972 - 12/31/1976

04/24/1951 - 12/20/2023

By Nicole Thornwolf Dornsife

On December 20th, my dad unexpectedly passed away. To say I'm devastated is an understatement, but after taking a couple of days to gather my thoughts, look bleary-eyed through photos and write something about my dad, I've put together some words to share with you all.

I firmly believe that no one is truly gone until people stop sharing their stories, so it's important to me that I share his story with you. Without further ado, here's my dad, Rod Dornsife.

On December 20th, my dad Rod Dornsife passed away suddenly. I’m profoundly devastated and will be mourning this loss for a long time to come, but I want to take this opportunity to brag on my dad and share with you all just some of the very many things that made him so special.

My dad was multi-talented and never content with doing just one thing. “Bored” was never in his vocab, he just got excited to get involved with anything that sparked his creativity, and I think he needed novelty and variety to stay energized in all his pursuits. I definitely get that from him. He was a photographer, a writer, an entrepreneur, a problem-solver, and an all-around intelligent man whose thirst for knowledge led to many doors opening for him. He always told me that one of the best ways to approach new challenges is to be okay with saying “I don’t know, but I’ll find out.” I live by this, and I have him to thank for it.

He was born in Oakland, CA and came from a Navy family, my grandfather being a Pearl Harbor survivor, and moved around a lot as a result. He grew up in California, Oregon, and Hawaii, where he enjoyed skateboarding and surfing. Unsurprisingly, two of his biggest injuries were related to these pursuits: A severely broken foot while skateboarding that took months of recovery (he named me Nicole after his colleague who helped him during this time), and knocked out his front tooth hitting a reef while surfing on Thanksgiving Day. The only time I’d ever seen him do either was when he bought me my own skateboard for Christmas and skated down the hill in front of my grandparents’ house. I was too terrified to hurt myself like he had, after all, this was the man who duct-taped towels and pillows around my body while teaching me how to ride a bike, so I never risked it.

He joined the San Diego Police Department as a traffic cop but also spent over 2 years as a traffic fatality investigator. Turns out, someone who’s seen the worst of the worst on the road is the best one to teach you how to drive. PS: Don’t ever put your feet on the dashboard. Just…don’t. He was also the founder of Police Product News Magazine, which he ran with my uncle and my grandpa, which is still operating today as an online news source. Here's an article sharing the founding of the magazine naming my dad and uncle specifically.  

As an aside, I have to share these calendars the magazine did, they’re a ridiculous and hilarious time capsule of “sex sells…even police products”. From the article: “The cheesecake photography worked and the promotional poster became one of the signatures of the magazine. Its ‘Do You Have Court Today?’ calendars are still remembered fondly by cops who read Police from 1976 to the early 1980s when the calendars were discontinued.”

His publication experience and career with the SDPD led him to writing The Ticket Book, in 1978, as an instructional manual for everyday folks to understand how cops find you, and how to potentially get out of it armed with inside knowledge of the system. It’s old tech now, but at the time, it was kind of the “A former cop revealed how to get out of traffic tickets with this one weird trick” of the day.

By the way, dad was always a supporter of the arts and hired Dave Deal, the artist who did the Armor All viking, to illustrate his book. Look at these illos! Folks who have been following my own work for a while might recognize the inspiration for my CHP GSD character Sarge.

Writing this book led to him being invited as a guest on Larry King and the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. He was actually on the Tonight Show multiple times as filler for when a celeb had to cancel, because as he said, “Everybody has a traffic ticket story, it’s a great conversation starter.” Here’s one of his clips you can watch. He’s on with Johnny Carson, David Letterman, Ellen Burstyn and James Garner. Unfortunately the clip cuts out somewhere at the 7-minute mark because of YouTube copyright rules, alas. 

His experience also led him to being invited to drive in the 1979 Cannonball Run, an unsanctioned cross-country race (not just a Dom DeLuise movie, though I often made joking comparisons lol)! As a serious car guy and a former cop, this is probably the most on-brand thing for him to have done. Car: Porsche 928. Time: 42:27:00, 28th place. His driving partner (and ‘72 Cannonball winner) Stephen “Yogi” Behr got arrested for speeding while it was dad’s sleep shift causing their delay. Oops.

Throughout the years, dad worked on and off again for holster and body armor manufacturer, Safariland (which is also where he helped me land my first “real” job) and eventually founded his own advertising agency, Dornsife & Associates, our family business. It was there that I got to be among industry professionals from an early age, which my dad more than encouraged, especially given my artistic and creative leanings.

But it was his combined experience with body armor manufacturing materials and his advertising and marketing prowess that led him to find another application for the spectra fiber found in bulletproof vests by turning it into fishing line, and hence, Spiderwire was born. Most of our life in the 90s was spent around Spiderwire, though my dad never really fished. He said he may not know how to fish, but he knew how to catch fishermen. Here's a Spiderwire commercial created by my dad’s friend Diego Angel of Angel Studios. Ever heard of them? You should. They’re now Rockstar (GTA/Red Dead Redemption).

Unfortunately, after dad sold Spiderwire, the advertising agency disbanded and we ended up losing nearly all of our money in the dot com crash. He never fully recovered I think, always trying to rekindle what we had. After my parents got divorced, he was couch surfing and living in an industrial park office building where I’d join him sometimes. We had to shower at the Carlsbad mall and hide from security as folks weren’t supposed to be living there. But we had each other, and he had drive. He invented, he was always on the grind, he was always, always at work.

A decade ago, a bad experience at a Starbucks bathroom led to the inspiration for his tech startup, Restroom Alert, a digital restroom management system to keep public restrooms clean, well-stocked, and fully functional. If you’re ever at the airport and see these signs on the mirrors to text a number to alert staff of a problem, that’s my dad’s company. Here’s the explainer video I did the artwork for. 

Given all of his accomplishments, I always felt like I would never live up to him, but he was always there to pull me up and support me in everything I did. I’d often tell him I felt like Julius Caesar living in the shadow of Alexander the Great. Not the best comparison, because that would make me Caesar (yikes), but I always felt like a little acorn next to a big oak tree, impossible to see my potential when he had done so much. But dad always believed in me, and he always encouraged me in everything I did, as long as I was happy. He made sure I had the best art supplies, he taught me how to seek knowledge (a real skill that I think goes overlooked), and he was always quick to tell me he was proud of me. Even if he didn’t always like or understand my art subject matter “How much do your ‘fur friends’ pay for these…name tags again?” he supported the hell out of my ability to do it.

When I suffered a devastating breakup right on the heels of having to drop out of college due to the 2008 recession and saw no way forward, he invited me out to Florida to stay with him. He told me that my writing talent could be honed for a different purpose, and he put me through a self-made “Marketing Bootcamp” to help me come out of my grief with a new skill and a new lease on life. He let me practice on his friends and clients (for pay) so that I could at least get the real-world experience I needed to pursue a marketing career when I couldn’t get the credentials from college. It’s because of him that I’m able to help others with their marketing goals and land good positions and gigs, as I am fully trained with a portfolio to back it (with the added bonus of having no student loans).

A few folks have asked about the panda thing. Before I was born, one of dad’s friends said he resembled a panda bear: white guy, dark circles around his eyes, dark coloration. It was a joke that built and built, and stuck for the rest of his life. When I was a baby, we had lots of panda things, but eventually we ended up reserving them for Christmas, a tradition I continue to this day. 

My stepmom would always send me a nice thoughtfully chosen panda ornament for our tree every year, all of which I still have and use. Here’s a pic of our tree when it was at its most panda-themed, before Jeff and I started collecting our own special ornaments to mix in.

​My dad and I were very close, and alike in many ways that I will always celebrate. I’ll never forget his sense of humor, his stories, and the idiosyncrasies that made him…him. And the catchphrases, my god, the catchphrases. I only just this year learned that his version of the Midwestern knee-slapping goodbye, “Alright, elephants up!” isn’t a thing. He always told me it’s about Hannibal crossing the Alps on elephants, that it’s time to go, but this whole time I thought it was a common phrase. He made it up. I always say “Elephants up?” when trying to make my exit (and you should too!).

When we lost my grandmother, his mother, last year, he told me that I was lucky to have gotten to know her as a whole person, not just as my grandmother. Too many children don’t get to learn about who their parents were before they came into the world, that they led whole lives (and in my dad’s case, many lives it seems) before they became parents. I’m fortunate in that I always had that. My dad was an avid storyteller, and I always have a dad story to relate to any situation (just ask, and I’ll tell you one any time!).

Though this is long, it still feels so insufficient to summarize such an amazing life with just what I’ve written here, but it would be absolutely impossible to cover everything. He did more with his time here on earth than most people could dream of ever achieving! The day after my dad died, I was busying myself with work to prevent myself from breaking down (as I’m sure dad would have done) while a good friend of mine talked to me over the phone. He said it better than I can, "Rod Dornsife lived a different life in every decade he was on this earth. He was never content to settle or sit, and that made him a new person with each endeavor. He's on to the final one now, and whatever that is, I know we all wish him well."

We called each other Augie Doggie Daddy and Augie Doggie Daughter, and signed our messages and cards with YADD (Your Augie Doggie Daddy/Daughter). This was my first Christmas without my dad, the first of many to come, and though my heart is irreparably broken, I’ll never forget everything he did for me as his daughter that has led to the person I am today. The best way I can honor him and his life is to never cease striving to be the person he always believed I could be.

I’ll love you forever and ever. Til we meet again.

THE THIN BLUE LINE

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