Widow reflects on private life of popular Deputy Wallace, slain on duty

A peace officer’s home is his sanctuary, a refuge from the daily danger of dealing with bad guys. It’s understandable that many cops don’t really want people to know where they live.

The home of Deputy Dennis Wallace, on the other hand, was never off limits to a kid in trouble, a teacher needing advice, or students craving mac and cheese and a safe place to do homework.

“Kids would flock to him,” said Angie Ramos, a niece. “Anybody would.”

The woman who shared that home finds herself lost without the husband who was taken from her violently and unexpectedly last month.

“For 30 years, every day, it was the two of us,” Mercedes Wallace said in her first interview since her husband’s death. “Everything we did, we did together. It’s just the thought of, now we’re not a couple. It’s just me.”

The Wallace home of 25 years – one of Hughson’s worst-kept secrets – has been decorated with blue ribbons, blue wreaths and blue flags, inside and out, since Nov. 13. All are gifts from countless people honoring the man felled that day in what Stanislaus County Sheriff Adam Christianson described as an execution, four months before the 53-year-old deputy had hoped to retire.

Dennis Wallace’s Modesto funeral nine days later drew hordes of officers from all over the country, thousands of well-wishers and Gov. Jerry Brown. On Saturday, all of Hughson paid tribute to Wallace’s widow, chosen as grand marshal of the annual Christmas parade.

The Indianapolis Colts’ Matt Overton defied NFL rules prohibiting personal messages by wearing special blue cleats inscribed with a tribute to Wallace in a Thanksgiving loss to Pittsburgh, and said on social media that he’s sending them to Mercedes Wallace. It’s thought that Dennis Wallace, who also found time to run a youth soccer league and referee football games, officiated for some of Overton’s games when he starred years ago at Tracy High School.

A gift for gab

Thousands of students in Salida schools, and others in Hughson, Denair, Waterford and Riverbank, knew Wallace as their anti-substance-abuse DARE officer. He could talk to anybody and everybody, whether on a sports field, in a classroom or a jail cell.

But he excelled with youths, even though he and his wife could have no children of their own. Their 10 siblings gave Dennis and Mercedes 34 nieces and nephews, and they became godparents to 11 more, so it was never very quiet around their place.

“It’s amazing how many people he touched,” said Mercedes. “I knew I was sharing him, because he was into everything. I didn’t realize how much I shared him.”

Why did people gravitate to Dennis Wallace?

“That giving heart of his,” Mercedes said, softly. “He was always positive, always friendly. That big old smile and his dimples.”

“He never saw the ugly in anybody,” she continued. “He would say, ‘People make wrong choices, but it doesn’t mean they’re not people.’ ”

“Off-duty” became a myth at the Wallace home. A neighborhood kid once knocked on the door to ask if Deputy Wallace might recover a stolen skateboard, a seemingly impossible task. He kept a lookout as he drove around Hughson, chatted up youths with skateboards and eventually found the right one. Case solved.

“The (Sheriff’s) Department would get upset because people wouldn’t call 911 or the department; they’d call Dennis,” brother-in-law Neil Raya said.

The price of popularity

A quiet restaurant dinner was improbable, family members said, because people always approached to greet Deputy Wallace. Trips to the store were constantly interrupted. “Come on, rock star,” Mercedes would say, tugging him away in due time. At home games of his beloved San Francisco 49ers, he shunned beer for fear of running into someone he’d lectured about substance abuse – which happened every time, she said.

They met three decades ago when both were employed by E.&J. Gallo Winery, the world’s largest wine producer, headquartered in Modesto. He did security and she worked at the glass plant when they fell in love and got married.

A few years later, he followed his brother, Dave Wallace, now a Modesto police detective, into law enforcement. No local agency would sponsor Dennis Wallace in the academy, so he paid out of his own pocket and landed a spot with the Hughson police.

“He was excited because he was in uniform,” Mercedes said. “I’m sure a lot of deputies have a passion for the job. Dennis wanted to make a difference.”

Hughson later contracted with the county Sheriff’s Department for police services and its officers were absorbed into the larger agency, where he thrived except for various injuries. He was bitterly disappointed, Mercedes said, when idled for two years without pay because county managers said he was too injured despite his pleas to return.

He sued and was reinstated, but the lawsuit continued over lost wages and benefits and has yet to be resolved.

Mercedes doesn’t like talking about the case, or about Christianson’s role as a lead player in her husband’s funeral, except to agree that he handled it with dignity.

Could Deputy Wallace’s open nature, his preference for diplomacy rather than violence, have contributed to his death?

The department hasn’t shared details of its investigation, the family said. They know what everyone else does – that Wallace had come upon a van at Fox Grove fishing access near Hughson, learned from a dispatcher that it was stolen, asked for backup and was slain moments later by bullets fired at close range.

David Machado, 38, was arrested four hours later, after going on a crime spree that included a carjacking in nearby Keyes and an attempted one in Tulare County, according to authorities. He pleaded not guilty and awaits trial, behind bars.

‘Please be careful’

“My last words to (Dennis), every morning when he walked out, were ‘Please be careful,’ ” Mercedes said. She had used those words less than two hours before he was gunned down. The memory of the sheriff and a sergeant approaching her home to break the unthinkable news on that otherwise peaceful Sunday morning, she said, is a painful blur punctuated by screams and sobs.

Similar grief had stung the Wallaces 38 years before. Dennis’ father, a California Highway Patrol officer, was killed in a car crash after pulling a double shift.

For 20 years, Mercedes managed the uncertainty but was never completely at ease when sending her husband off to work. He once talked her into doing a ride-along with him, thinking maybe she would relax upon seeing him at his best. It lasted 30 minutes; she asked to be taken home after watching him chat up a shifty-looking parolee along a roadside, a routine activity for him.

“I said, ‘I know what you do; I don’t want to see what you do,’ ” Mercedes recalled. “He was so good at talking to people, and he never saw the evil in anybody.”

Dennis and his brother retired from refereeing high school football a few months ago, having achieved the goal of officiating a playoff game and exceeding it with an all-star game. Next on Deputy Wallace’s list was retiring from the force; he was aiming for March to coincide with their 30th wedding anniversary, and hoped to travel to Italy to make up for skipping their 25th for lack of money, during the time he was laid off, Mercedes said.

Among those helping to share Mercedes’ burden with personal visits to the Wallace home were Stephen Blaire, bishop of the Diocese of Stockton, and Sharon Rocha, the mother of Modesto’s most famous murder victim, Laci Peterson, who was eight months pregnant upon disappearing just before Christmas 2002. Her husband, Scott Peterson, was convicted of killing her and their unborn son and awaits appeals on death row. Machado also could face the death penalty, authorities have said.

Link to Laci Peterson

Mercedes Wallace and Sharon Rocha have worked many years together at Ambeck Mortgage Associates. Because Rocha has borne similar grief – with the eyes of thousands upon her – “she knows how heartbroken I felt,” Mercedes said. “She sat with me and cried with me.”

Raya said Dennis was “the rock of the family, the glue that kept us all together.” He also liked to say that “time heals everything,” Raya said.

Mercedes isn’t sure how she will go forward, but she is surrounded by a loving support network of numerous family members and friends. Many wander to the home that has no Christmas lights yet, but plenty of blue decorations, with more rolling in each day.

“If I had to do individual thank-yous, I would never finish,” Mercedes said. “The love we’ve received is amazing. I just want to thank everyone.”

This story was originally published December 3, 2016 at 5:47 PM with the headline "Widow reflects on private life of popular Deputy Wallace, slain on duty."