For Capitola’s first female police chief, childhood lessons shape a vision for progressive policing culture

Sarah Ryan’s path to becoming Capitola’s first female police chief started in an unlikely place: a home water birth to two mothers. Now, nearly five decades later, she leads a law enforcement agency serving 10,000 residents.

Ryan, 49, who took office in December, is only the second female police chief in Santa Cruz County’s history, following Jan Tepper, who led UC Santa Cruz’s force from 1991 to 2003. Ryan succeeded Andy Dally, who retired as Capitola police chief in November.

Growing up in the San Lorenzo Valley, and later Live Oak, with two mothers taught Ryan to navigate the complexities of what was considered an unconventional family life in the 1990s. 

She remembers asking her parents, Ana Maldonado and Jess Wachtel, why people reacted negatively whenever they held hands or were affectionate toward each other. The AIDS crisis and accompanying wave of homophobia shaped her worldview, though Ryan has nothing but positive things to say about her childhood and thanks her parents for instilling a strong sense of self within her. “It was very much a factor growing up, and it transformed my approach and who I was as a person developing in this world,” she said. 

A star volleyball player and member of the homecoming court at San Lorenzo Valley High School, Ryan didn’t immediately see a future career in law enforcement. After graduating high school in 1994, she enrolled in general education classes at Cabrillo College to explore her career options while coaching and playing volleyball as a left-handed setter. 

“My mom’s main thing was education, and she would continue to help support me as long as I was going to school and taking steps, even little ones, towards self-sustainability,” she said. 

At Cabrillo, she developed a close relationship with her coach, Jan Furman. A well-known volleyball coach, Furman still teaches kinesiology at the college and was instrumental in pushing Ryan to try harder, helping to kick-start her drive toward leadership.

Initially, Ryan set her sights on becoming a first responder because it appealed to her athletic and action-oriented nature, but she decided to first pursue social work after taking advice from someone established in law enforcement. “They told me not to become the person who only does criminal justice, so I took that advice and ran with it,” she said. 

Ryan transferred from Cabrillo to San Jose State University in 1997, graduating two years later with a bachelor’s degree in social work. She landed a job as an office supervisor at the Santa Cruz Women’s Health Center, where she oversaw the clinic’s operations, including hiring staff and planning physicians’ schedules. 

The job also meant she frequently interacted with police officers who came into the clinic to help unhoused people with mental health or drug addiction issues. Several told her that a career in law enforcement was fun and interactive and also got them out into the community. “A lot of them were local who had grown up here, so that made me identify with them a little more because they were part of a similar mindset that I was starting to embrace,” Ryan said. 

Among those she interacted with was Capitola Police Sgt. Cliff Sloma, whom she met at a social gathering. He became her mentor, a relationship that has persisted even after Sloma retired from the department in the summer of 2022.

Eventually, the idea of becoming a police officer clicked in Ryan’s mind. At the time, law enforcement agencies were trying to diversify their ranks by hiring more women and college graduates. Ryan felt she checked many boxes, so in 2000 she began to apply to police departments, focusing on Santa Clara County, whose police departments paid higher salaries than in Santa Cruz County.  

Her attempt at a career in law enforcement came to a screeching halt in July 2001, however, when she found out she was pregnant with her son, Kyle. Ryan took two years off work to raise him. When she returned to the job hunt, her priorities had shifted: She could either work at a law enforcement agency farther away for more money, or stay closer to home to spend more time with her toddler and serve her community. “I realized that I wanted to give back to my community and become entrenched in it differently,” she said. 

She applied to the Capitola Police Department in 2004, and after two days of panel interviews with police chiefs, community members, department heads and a sheriff, she was hired as a community service officer. Ryan enrolled in a police academy at Gavilan College in Gilroy, where she learned how to drive police cars and handle firearms before graduating in May 2005 and taking to the streets of Capitola as a patrol officer. She volunteered to work the graveyard shift as a way to help establish some seniority so that she could eventually move into positions that could both accommodate her family life and allow her to rise through the professional ranks.

The work exposed her to both the lighter and darker sides of policing. Ryan and another police officer once responded to an alarm call at the Capitola Theater, which used to be next to the Britannia Arms in Capitola Village. They canvassed the building and, after determining it was secure, opted to have some fun. “I decided to put on a wig and costume over my uniform and came out on stage acting very playful,” Ryan explained with a giggle. 

A much tougher moment came when a Watsonville man shot and killed his 7-year-old daughter, Yaxtel G. Tapia, and then himself in the parking lot of the Capitola Mall in March 2017.

Eventually, Ryan applied to be a field training officer, which involves both patrolling and training new officers on how to collect evidence or write a police report. “You really get to know your job differently and better when you have to teach it to somebody else,” she said. 

Three years later, Ryan was promoted to detective. The role was a dynamic Monday-through-Friday job that had her working on major cases like the 2013 murder of Capitola property manager Jonathan Gordon Smith by mother and son Diana Lynne Cohen and Daniel Xane Cohen after they were evicted from their Live Oak apartment. Some investigations had her working with other detectives from around the county, as well as police departments in nearby cities like San Jose and San Francisco. It also gave her direct exposure to the duties of the department’s senior leadership. 

“At least at our agency, you get to work next door to the chief,” Ryan said. “So, because you’re in that position, you get toppled into doing other administrative duties that need to be done.” 

That paved the way for Ryan to move into a position as operations captain in 2020, an important step toward her goal of eventually becoming police chief. 

Operations captains are responsible for overseeing patrol sergeants and acting as a second-in-command in times of emergency. Traditionally, police departments have two captains, one operations and one administrative. However, Capitola could afford to have only one captain, and Ryan said it became her mission to convince the city to add another. 

“I saw it as a better way to build talent and to bring more people through the agency,” she said. When the city finally approved the second position, Ryan was the one to step into the job, promoted to administrative captain, responsible for managing the record department’s contracts and finances, along with meeting with the Department of Justice and other government agencies. 

The job also allowed Ryan to return to university, this time with a focus on law enforcement leadership. She attended a two-year master’s degree program at the University of San Diego, where she explored the intellectual side of law enforcement and how police fit into larger society. “What’s shifted in law enforcement to make it easier for someone like me is the increasing value of emotional intelligence, and that’s something I’ve always appreciated,” Ryan said. 

When Andy Dally announced his retirement in late 2024, Ryan was the obvious choice to succeed him. She had long been vocal about her intention to become chief and believed she had the proper education and leadership experience under her belt to accomplish it. “There was a ton of internal support for me to get that spot,” she said. 

Yet despite the strong support for her candidacy within the Capitola Police Department, Ryan still needed to go through an intensive application process, including interviews with county and city leaders and community members, who grilled her on a wide range of questions about her vision for the department, how she planned to manage the budget, and how she would handle disasters like floods or fires. 

She was sworn into the position last Dec. 4 and was so excited that she hugged Santa Cruz County District Attorney Jeff Rosell, who performed the ceremony. “It was really special standing up there, and I was so touched by how many people showed up,” she said, explaining that she is big on hugs. 

One of the people at the ceremony was her son, Kyle Jack, who says he’s proud to call his mom one of the good cops in America because of her love for the city she serves. 

“She genuinely cares about the community that she’s serving, and this isn’t just a job for her. It’s a sense of purpose, and it really matters to her,” Jack said. 

Capitola Police Operations Capt. Leo Moreno said the department is ecstatic to be helmed by the city’s first female police chief.

Moreno has worked as a police officer in Capitola for 22 years, 19 of which have been spent working with Ryan in various positions, from in the squad car to as a detective on a crime scene. 

Ryan, he said, is not only his boss but also his friend, describing her as an inclusive and approachable person to work with. “She leads with fairness and integrity, and she actively aims to make a difference within our agency, community, and county,” he said. 

Ryan says she wanted to become police chief to make a positive change in her community, while closing out her career in that position. 

She points back to the lessons of understanding and patience she had to learn growing up with two mothers as helping shape her perspective toward leading a police department.

While she no longer responds directly to calls like she used to, Ryan works to instill in her officers the same emotional intelligence that her upbringing helped give her when trying to understand those who don’t necessarily conform to the norms of society. She says she is trying to be “super intentional with who I bring in, who I promote,” to be able to continue creating a progressive culture within the department.

“It’s important as a police officer to be able to read a room and to look at cultural differences, look at family dynamics, and really take them into consideration when approaching a situation to find the best solution,” Ryan said. 

In reality, she said, that’s all about trying to get people to coexist with one another peacefully and to try to disengage conflict through conversation rather than violence. 

“When the general public sees my officers in their uniform and badge, I want them to know that it represents me and the vision and mission of the Capitola Police Department.”

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