MATRON ANGIE KAUFFMAN

BADGE 200

SDPD 09/10/1936 - 06/11/1956

09/10/1898 - 02/22/1985

Evening Tribune (San Diego, CA) - February 22, 1985

Angie Kauffman, 86, who in her later years was known as "The Poppy Lady," was among three women to join the department in 1936.

Floss Montgomery, her niece and only close relative, said Kauffman had been under care for diabetes and heart disease by a registered nurse at her South Mission Hills home, where she died.

El Camino Mortuary will handle funeral arrangements, Montgomery said. Burial will be at Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery on Point Loma.

Kauffman moved to San Diego in 1908 with her parents from Puget Sound, Wash., and her first job as an adult was as a nurse at the old St. Joseph's Hospital. She later worked at Mercy Hospital. The first baby born at Mercy Hospital is seen in a photograph, in the hospital's yearbooks, with nurse Kauffman holding the child.

She was sworn in as a police matron in 1936 by former Chief George Sears and later that same year passed the entrance test for the reinstated of policewoman - something that had been abolished ten years earlier.

She and two other women became the forerunners for the regular hiring of policewomen. They spent three years in the vice squad, patrolling downtown bars and streets in unmarked cars from 7 p.m. to 3 a.m. Mrs. Kauffman retired from the department in 1956, saying at the time she was relieved to no longer be surrounded by "bad things."

"I don't think about depressing things," she said in a 1982 interview. "I try to think constructively."

She became active in the American Legion Auxiliary in 1946. After her retirement, she appeared each year at the Market Street police headquarters during May selling poppies to officers and members of the public.

She also was active in many charities, including the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, Easter Seals and the foster children adoption program. For 13 years, she delivered bread to a Tijuana orphanage once a week, until she suffered a heart attack in 1972

THE THIN BLUE LINE

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