Hanford Insider
Welcome the Hanford Insider, I’m your host Rob Bentley. I’m a lifelong resident of Hanford and I’m very involved in the local history scene and podcasting so I decided to start this show as a resource to Hanford area residents for covering issues, promoting events, sports, and reflecting on some local history.
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Hanford Insider
Hanford Insider: KCSO Explorer Program with Sgt. Andrew Mazza/High School Sports with Eric Bentley
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The extraordinary impact of youth service programs in our community takes center stage as Sergeant Andrew Mazza shares the remarkable success of the Kings County Sheriff's Explorer program. With 11 years of law enforcement experience and a personal journey that began as an Explorer himself, Mazza offers unique insights into how this program transforms young lives while simultaneously strengthening our community.
Currently at its highest enrollment ever with 27 participants aged 14-20, the Explorer program provides young people with comprehensive training in law enforcement procedures, from building searches to domestic violence response. However, as Mazza emphasizes, this isn't primarily about recruiting future deputies—it's about developing informed, engaged citizens. "We don't use our Explorer program to train future cops," he explains. "We use our Explorer program to give youth an inside look at law enforcement and see if that's something they would be interested in doing."
What truly distinguishes the Kings County program is its resilience and growth during the pandemic when similar programs nationwide were dissolving. Through adaptability and commitment, the Explorers not only survived but expanded their reach. Their community impact extends beyond training exercises to numerous service projects—assisting at school carnivals, museum events, and the Kings County Fair. These activities not only benefit local organizations but provide Explorers with valuable experience in community engagement and leadership.
The program's success story includes impressive achievements in regional competitions, where Kings County Explorers recently secured second place overall among 16 competing posts. For young people considering joining, requirements are accessible: ages 14-20, maintaining a 2.0 GPA, good school attendance, and passing a basic background check. As Sergeant Mazza notes, "We'll have as many explorers as would like to join us."
Ready to support these young leaders or help a teen find their path through the Explorer program? Contact the Kings County Sheriff's Office today and discover how this transformative program continues to build bridges between youth and law enforcement while strengthening our community bonds.
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On this episode of the Hanford Insider, sergeant Andrew Matza, with the Kings County Sheriff's Department, stops by to fill us in on the important role of the Explorer program. You'll get an update of Hanford news and the community calendar Then later I'll be back with your sports report. This is the Hanford Insider for Monday, march 24th.
Speaker 2:This is the Hanford Insider Podcast, where we dive into what makes our community tick, from local stories and hidden gems to conversations with people shaping our neighborhood. We're here to celebrate, explore and connect. I'm your host, rob Bentley. Whether you're new to Hanford or longtime local, this is your source for everything happening in our town, from events and news to unique conversations with people who make Hanford such a unique community. I hope you enjoy the format. Let's take a look at this week's community news. The City of Hanford announced this week that it was awarded the Stakeholder of the Year Award by the Valley Community Small Business Development Center last week in Clovis. This award recognizes the partnership with the City for free business workshops and for opening a satellite office for free business consultations inside the city-owned Amtrak station. Congratulations.
Speaker 2:The Hanford Civic Auditorium turns 100 this year and a special celebration will be held on June 7th. The committee planning the event is looking for talented singers to sing the national anthem at the ceremony that day. If you can sing the Star Spangled Banner or you know of someone who can contact me at hanfordinsider at gmailcom and I'll give you the tryout details. Auditions close. Next Monday, march 31st. Auditions for the Kings Players productions of Eat your Heart Out will be held March 31st and April 1st at the Temple Theater. Visit kingsplayersorg for details.
Speaker 2:The Hanford Oaks Lodge is accepting flags for proper disposal. Bring the flags to the lodge at 506 North Doughty Street. The Salvation Army is hosting Senior Bingo the first and second Fridays of each month from 9 30 am to 10 30 am. The Cinderella Project of Hanford is currently accepting donations of new and gently used prom dresses, shoes, purses or jewelry for the upcoming prom season. Donations may be dropped off at the High School District Office on Lacey Boulevard, across from Carl's Jr. Here are some things coming up on our community calendar. The history of Kings County agriculture display at the Carnegie Museum of Kings County is now open. The museum is located at 109 East 8th Street and is open Fridays, saturdays and Sundays from 1 to 5. Visit CarnegieMuseumofKingsCountyorg for more information.
Speaker 2:The Hanford Fraternal Hall Car show is Saturday, march 29th. The Hanford Sons and Daughters of Italy number 1543, are having their annual meatball sale on Sunday, march 30th at the Kings County Historical Society Hall on Hackett Street in Grangeville. Tickets are $15 and can be purchased from any member. The Children's Storybook Garden is holding a special needs Easter egg hunt on April 6th. Visit childrenstorybookgardenorg for more details. On April 8th and 9th, california Correctional Health Care Services is holding a job fair at the Hanford Civic Auditorium. For more information, visit cchcscagovcareers.
Speaker 2:The Leo Club is holding a Leo Fiesta celebrating their 10th anniversary on April 12th from 11 am to 2 pm. There will be awards, bingo and prizes, as well as a taco bar. All proceeds benefit the Salvation Army. Contact Lions Susan Boyd at 559-707-4583 to RSVP. The Hanford Fox Theater will be showing the movie Titanic on April 13th. For more movie and show information, visit foxhanfordcom. If you have an event coming up and you'd like some help getting the word out, let's work together. Send your information to hanfordinsider at gmailcom. Be sure to subscribe to my weekly newsletter to get a complete calendar of events. It's the most comprehensive community calendar available. Well, we're always happy to have our first responders here on the show and I am very excited to welcome to the show today Sergeant Andrew Motzev from the Kings County Sheriff's Department. How are you doing, andrew? Doing well. So, andrew, before we get started on the Explorers program, can you give us a little bit of background of your experience in law enforcement?
Speaker 3:Sure. So I've been here at the Kings County Sheriff's Office for about 11 years. Currently I oversee our school resource deputies who are assigned to different campuses throughout the county. I have nine total school resource deputies and then I also have our explorer post, of course, and I was an explorer at the Hanford Police Department through high school and growing up and definitely fell in love with that program Taught me a lot.
Speaker 3:It made the academy so much easier for me. I had a knowledge base when I started the academy, so it wasn't very foreign, which was awesome and very helpful. So I spent five years in the explorer program at Hanford PD and then I became a citizen on patrol is what they had at the time for adult volunteers and then after that a part-time dispatcher, reserve dispatcher for the police, and so during the citizen on patrol time and the part-time dispatcher time I was an advisor with Hanford police's Explorer program and then, coming over to the sheriff's office within a few, my first couple of years I started helping them with the post and then five or six years ago I actually took over.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's one of the neat experiences. I know that I've interviewed several members of the sheriff's department there and the variety of experiences that you bring to the table has always been really impressive. That you bring to the table has always been really impressive and I know you have an outstanding team there and you're always looking for more officers and such and dispatchers and all kinds of positions to fill there. But it's not the primary focus of the Explorer program. But I know that you look in ways to involve the community. But let's jump into the Explorer program now. Can you tell us a little bit about that? I know there's a lot to say about the Explorers program, but just go ahead and give the community a little input into what happens there.
Speaker 3:Sure, so our program is ran under the umbrella of Scouting of America, formerly Boy Scouts of America. So we are an umbrella under that program which carries our insurance and some liability type things to where a member of Scouting of America. And then here at the Sheriff's Office we have 27 Explorers currently, which is the largest I've heard program that we've had at one time and that's for ages 14 to 20 year olds, so once they turn 21, they are eligible to be peace officers, and so that's kind of where we cap out our involvement and then also that's a Scouting of America requirement, and so that's kind of where we cap out our involvement and then also that's a Scouting of America requirement. And so then I also have nine deputies that serve as advisors and they've all shown an interest in the program. They all want to be involved, and we have deputies from patrol, court services, the jail, and then of course I've recruited several of my school resource deputies to serve on that as well. Um, so we have a vast different knowledge base throughout the sheriff's office to share with the floors and, um, many of scores are current deputies with us. We're in the jail, we're on patrol.
Speaker 3:I have a recent explorer who aged out of the program. She's now a full-time dispatcher with us. And then I even have a former explorer who is cop out in Florida. He went to the Air Force and was out there and loved the state of Florida and became a deputy there. That's great. So we have explorers all throughout the Valley, different law enforcement agencies, and that's of course what we want to see. We want to see Explorers go on and become productive members of society, whether that's in law enforcement or not. We don't use our Explorer program to train future cops. We use our Explorer program to give youth an inside look at law enforcement and see if that's something they would be interested in doing. So I'd say we probably have maybe a 50-50 percentage of who goes into law enforcement and who doesn't. But our hope is that they become great members of the community and get involved in the community and serve the community, and that's a big focus in our program. So it's not all training in law enforcement, it's many service projects and assisting our community.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that was where I was headed next with the community or helping run events.
Speaker 3:We've done many carnival games like running carnivals at schools we've helped with. Like I said, parking on the king's fair is a big project for us but it's also a donation source for us. But we have many other hanford christian school spring carnival we've done carnegie museum's car shows, just helping with traffic flow, getting people checked in and registered, and just the explorers love to be out in the community serving the community and and giving back. And many of those programs provide donations to our explorer post, which is fully funded from donations and fundraising and that provides uniforms and equipment for the explorers as well as some travel expenses for different competitions or even fun trips that we might take to thank them for all their service in there. And the kids, just they love being out there and being involved and the amount of explorers that will sign up for an event is sometimes just amazing to see how many were there.
Speaker 2:It's amazing to see how many how many were so on these competitions? I know they receive a lot of training, just kind of, you know, explore, that's what it's exploring law enforcement. They receive a lot of training but they also use some of these skills in competitions, yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's correct.
Speaker 3:So we meet regularly by every other Wednesday.
Speaker 3:Every other Wednesday we meet in the evening from 530 to 8, and we provide training opportunities in different law enforcement type scenarios, whether it be building searches, searching like a response to a verbal alarm where someone may be inside the building, high-risk traffic stops so potential where there's a very dangerous subject that we're trying to pull out of a vehicle to arrest them.
Speaker 3:We train them in that type of scenario. And then things such as domestic violence investigations. We train them on how to respond to those and it includes a lot of the law behind all these different scenarios and give them just a knowledge base of what we do every day and then also encourage them to ride on patrol with our deputies and see that training put into place in the field where they see they are responding to those type of calls and seeing the deputies work them. So we provide that training and then that firsthand look through the ride alongs. And we attend the Central Coast Explorer competition every year which is held in different areas in the Central Coast. Last year was San Luis Obispo. We compete against 16 other explorer posts and our explorers came home with the second place overall award from that competition where they compete against the other explorers. In those scenarios, in those law enforcement type situations.
Speaker 2:That's great.
Speaker 3:Training and expertise to the test.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's great and they do a good job. I want to go back to the funding, because I know that you have several fundraisers. You mentioned the need to raise funds, but I'd like to give you an opportunity to kind of pitch some of these different activities that are sponsored that help fund all of these activities.
Speaker 3:Sure. So each April we do a drive-thru barbecue dinner and so we will advertise that on our Sheriff's Office, social media pages and different outlets sell tickets for that. One of our bailiffs provides the barbecue for that, cooks the food for us, and so the kids go out there and package those and we sell those tickets and serve those meals. Every October we host a cornhole tournament, which is also a great fundraising source for us. And then also last year we did our first ever gun raffle, that we raffled off a couple of guns. We had a gun donated by the King's Gun Center and then we purchased a second one and raffled off both of those.
Speaker 3:And then again I mentioned the Kings Fair. They do provide a very substantial donation to our Explorer Post for the many days and many hard high-heat days that they work out there to get everybody parked and get to enjoy the fair. So again, the community events. We will come out and assist any organization free of charge. But if anybody would like to help support the Explorers, to get to those competitions, to wear their uniforms or even pizza on a meeting night to help thank them for service those months.
Speaker 2:So what are the requirements to join the Explorers program and how would they apply if they were interested?
Speaker 3:Sure. So again, it's for anybody ages 14 to 20. You can apply anytime. I have not put a cap on the number of Explorers we'll have, because you can only do it four or five, six years. So I don't want to discourage anybody from getting involved if they want to.
Speaker 3:So at no time are we a full program. We'll have as many explorers as would like to join us. So all that they would need to do is reach out to either me or come by the sheriff's office and grab an application, fill it out. A advisor explorer advisor will do a background investigation and that's primarily talking to schools make sure that their discipline record is clean, have at least a 2.0 grade point average and are attending school regularly and not having excessive absences and tardies, and then, of course, talking to any relatives or friends that they list on the application. And then we do an interview with the explorer, and it's really not a pass-fail interview. It's again just a way to teach them, give them the tools, give them the experience of interviewing and applying for a job. And so we do an interview just to kind of get to know the applicant. Then we welcome them aboard.
Speaker 2:That's great. Well, Andrew, the Explorer program is such a valuable asset to the Kings County Sheriff's office and you guys do such a great job, and your sheriff and all of the commanders, sergeants everybody does such a great job for the Kings County Sheriff's Office and we really certainly appreciate everything that you guys do for the community.
Speaker 3:Yes, thank you. We are very fortunate to have such a large program currently and we couldn't have done it without the support of our administration, our sheriff. Interesting fact I'd like to point out where during the COVID times, a lot of Explorer posts actually dissolved and stopped meeting. We did our best to keep the Explorers engaged during that time and give them something to do and look forward to and be a part of, and so we actually grew during the COVID time. Of course, we allowed explorers to take the leave of absence if they felt safe to do so, wear a mask, anything that they wanted to do to make them feel comfortable.
Speaker 3:We tried to meet outside, but we were able to kind of tweak the program to allow it to continue and give the explorers something to do and be a part of, and we actually grew during the COVID time, which is amazing. Again, we're very fortunate to work in this area. To be in law enforcement in the Central Valley is a blessing as you watch the news and see different things. So we, both at the Sheriff's Office and the Explorer Post, are very fortunate to be where we are, to have this support.
Speaker 2:All right, well, thank you very much, andrew.
Speaker 1:And now it's time for Hanford Insider Sports with Eric Bentley. We'll start with softball, where Hanford West is off to a 7-1 start after going 2-1 in their three games last week. Things got started with a 5-2 win over Bullard, with junior Carmen Vasquez going 3-3 with 3 RBI in that game. Then a doubleheader Saturday saw the Huskies suffer their first loss of the season, 10-4 to Liberty, before bouncing back with an 11-3 route of frontier where Carmen Vasquez again made a big impact with the bat, hitting two home runs with five batted rim in the win. Sierra Pacific also went 2-1 last week, starting out with a loss in a high-scoring game to Tulare Union 15-9 on Wednesday. However, they got back on the winning track quickly with a loss in a high-scoring game to Tulare Union 15-9 on Wednesday. However, they got back on the winning track quickly with a pair of offensive outbursts, starting Thursday with an 11-8 victory over Mission Oak and capping off the week with a 12-2 victory over Fresno High on Friday. Anaya Zaragoza continues to lead the offensive charge, leading the Golden Bears in batting average and runs batted in, and Hanford High Softball had a rollercoaster of a week, going 1-2-1 in four games last week. It started on Wednesday where the Bullpups jumped out to a 4-0 lead over Golden West before eventually falling 5-4. 5-4. On Friday, the offense came to play in a 15-7 win over Independence, where Roxy Knight and Jasmine Rojas each picked up two hits and three runs batted in in the win and a doubleheader. Saturday saw the Bullpups play Clovis North to a 4-4 eight-inning tie before falling to Central 13-2. On to baseball now, where all three teams are still above 500 a few weeks into the season. We'll start with Sierra Pacific, where the Golden Bears went 2-0 last week. On Friday, it was the offense getting things going, as Isaac Ibarra had a three-hit game and Edgar Espinosa chipped in with two doubles and three runs batted in in the 10-7 victory over Garces Memorial. On Saturday, it was the pitching for the Golden Bears, as Caleb Kuhlwein threw six shutout innings, striking out 11, while Edgar Espinosa pitched a scoreless seventh. And the Golden Bears took down Mount Whitney 4-0 to improve to 6-2 overall on the year.
Speaker 1:Hanford West Baseball went 2-1 last week, taking down Bakersfield 4-3 on Tuesday thanks to a three-run fifth inning and a pair of RBIs from Sam Sandoval. After a 10-1 loss to Central Valley Christian on Thursday, the Huskies bounced back with a 5-1 victory over crosstown foe Hanford High in seven innings. Senior Alex Orozco went all seven on the mound for the Huskies, allowing only four hits and striking out six as Hanford West improves to 5-3 on the year. As for Hanford High, aside from the loss to the Huskies, the Bullpups got WYL League play started with a home-and-home against Inuba. Wednesday's game was on the road and it was the Bullpups coming away with a 3-2 win in eight innings was on the road and it was the Bullpups coming away with a 3-2 win in eight innings. Junior pitchers Cole Laskanik got the start, tossing five in the third innings, giving up two runs on only one hit while striking out seven, and senior Carlos Perez Jr went the rest of the way out of the pen with two and two-thirds of shutout ball to pick up the win. On Friday's home game, six different Bullpups picked up hits and the Dianuba defense committed five errors to tilt a lopsided com-test in Hanford High's favor 11-1, as the Bullpups improved to 5-4 overall and 2-0 in WIL play.
Speaker 1:And attention all swimmers. The Hanford Piranhas Swim Club is starting to get organized for the upcoming season. You can get all the information you need at hanfordpiranhascom. As always, we like to cover as many local sports as we can. So if you have a score, a story or a team update, please let us know. At hanfordinsider at gmailcom. I'm Eric Bentley and this has been your Hanford Insider Sports Report.
Speaker 2:I'm Eric Bentley and this has been your Hanford Insider email list. Stop by my website at hanfordinsidercom to sign up for updates. You'll also get an exclusive copy of my newsletter in your inbox each week. I also need your help getting the word out about the show by liking and sharing on social media or telling a friend For more information about the show. You can find this podcast on Facebook, instagram, threads X and YouTube at Hanford Insider. If you have a show idea, be sure to email me at hanfordinsider at gmailcom and I'll look into it. Thanks for listening. Have a great week.
