Former preacher turns to police work in Anchorage
Parker thought about being a chaplain but there were no openings
ANCHORAGE - He enjoys fine red wines, telling jokes and putting rapists in prison.
Anchorage police Lt. Dave Parker, the department spokesman, is the city's most visible cop these days. He's the force's public face, the one who appears in television and newspaper stories describing the city's crime and mayhem.
He wasn't always a cop.
About 14 years ago, Parker's life took a radical turn when he chose to leave a life of church work and immerse himself in the dark world of Anchorage's sex offenders, with its frightened, scarred children and cold, unrepentant offenders.
It wasn't a choice that came lightly to Parker. In fact, for him it was more like a calling.
He says it was the Lord's will.
"We believe that God puts us wherever we are," Parker said of his faith. "God is sovereign in all things. What happens to you and what happens to me, day-to-day, is all ordained by God, in that he uses it for His purposes."
Parker, 58, a self-proclaimed Calvinist, is at once an ordained preacher and a cop. He's a born-again, evangelical Christian who majored in biology during college and spent years traveling the globe as a missionary.
His faith seems unwavering, even in the face of prostate cancer. He learned that diagnosis Wednesday. He doesn't view it as a test of his faith so much as an opportunity to reflect, to depend more heavily on God, he said.
"God heals," Parker said. "Sometimes he does it through doctors, and sometimes he does it miraculously, and sometimes he does it by taking us home."
From his earliest days, Parker felt the touch of God. He grew up in Tuolumne County, Calif., the son of devoutly Christian parents, his father a dentist. He studied biology at a Christian college, Seattle Pacific University, where he met his wife, Marge.
He and his wife came to Anchorage in 1993 after a small, local church asked him to pastor. One day, he brought a member of his congregation to police headquarters to apply for a job, and thought about helping out as a chaplain.
It wasn't meant to be. A statewide chaplaincy program didn't have any spots. So Parker applied to be a cop instead, thinking it could open the door for him. He got the job, he says, because the Lord worked it out for him.
It was 1995 when Parker joined on, first working patrol and on a community policing detail. It didn't take long for him to gravitate toward detectives.
"I really enjoyed focusing on a particular genre of crime and the hunt. I know that there's a bad guy out there, I know he's hurting people," Parker said. "I love getting the bad guy. Isn't that an awful thing to say?"
For much of the 10 years he was a detective, he moved between rape cases and dealing with abused children, specializing in infanticide cases, and later winding up in charge of both units.
He says he was drawn to those crimes, some of the most taxing to work, because he wanted to help people who were taken advantage of, those who couldn't always defend themselves.
Still, those cases can take a toll. Police crime prevention specialist Anita Shell recalled once approaching Parker to get information for reporters on a particularly disturbing case back when he was heading up the crimes against children unit.
It wasn't the offender's first time. Nor the child's. Parker's reaction to the case as he listed the past offenses was, as she recalled, "explosive."
"You could see him spooling up as he was saying how innocent this child was and how much this child had been through," Shell said. "He was infuriated. He was just very, very angry at the system."
Last year, Heun named Parker as the spokesman for the department and pulled him out of the thick of it. Heun said he needed someone with discretion, who was outgoing but knew when to hold his tongue. Parker's energy and humor helped, he said.
For Parker, the transition was bittersweet.
"It was a good gig, but it was time for a change," he said. "Ten years of that has taken a toll. You still carry a lot of those cases, as I said, in your heart."
These days, Parker attends service and is an elder at the Anchorage Grace Church in South Anchorage. He doesn't advertise his beliefs or push them on others. But for those who want to hear, Parker is there to help them along.
"Someday I'll go back to preaching," Parker said. "But I don't know when. It's not in my hands. I'm sure it will be clear when it's time."
His latest tribulation, the cancer diagnosis, is also out of his hands, he said. A course of treatment was still being decided, but Parker said the cancer was still early on and small - when it can most effectively be fought.
Parker said his father survived prostate cancer, and he's confident he'll beat it too, with the help of his doctor, and of God.