Fog City Stories - Brian Brady

I don’t know that my story is necessarily compelling, I think interesting is a better description. I’ve been lucky to have experienced, up to this point, an interesting existence. My immediate family is small, mom, dad, and one brother; however, the extended family is large. My dad was one of ten children growing up in Ireland. Since, back in the day, only the eldest son inherited the farm, all the siblings immigrated to the U.S. So, on my dad’s side I had eight aunts and uncles, with assorted cousins. My mom was born in San Francisco as was her brother, but both parents were Irish immigrants.

Based on that description you can safely assume I was brought up Catholic and attended Parochial Schools. I had the good fortune to attend Saint Ignatius High School, an all-boys (not anymore), Jesuit school. I say good fortune with a caveat, because my mother had died when I was thirteen and my brother eleven; my dad had to raise two boys by himself. He worked overtime to pay the tuition for my high school. From there to City College of San Francisco and then on to Golden Gate University. Finally, grad school at Sonoma State University.

I became a police officer with the Berkeley Police Department and stayed nine years, then moving on to the Baldwin Park Police Department in East Los Angeles for two years before moving again to Farmington, New Mexico for a four year stay before moving back to the Bay Area with the Novato Police Department where I worked the remainder of my 35 year career, retiring as the Police Chief. During my career I had the opportunity to work just about every assignment in the departments and progressed through every rank. It was a great career, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

After retiring, a friend told me that Universal Studios, later NBCUniversal, was going to be looking for a new head of security, so I applied. I had no idea what the head of corporate security did, but I had worked as a bodyguard for celebrities in the past, so I had some idea about the industry. Once I got the job, I quickly found out I knew nothing about the world of corporate security or even private industry for that matter. And to make things even more interesting the job included Universal Studios Hollywood, a world class theme park. It was a steep learning curve; however I was working for the best bosses I had ever encountered, and I learned. We survived a sale of the studio to General Electric, a merger with NBC, then owned by GE, and finally a purchase by Comcast. It was a wonderful ten years.

By this time, I was tired of L.A. and wanted to come home. There was an opening at the, under renovation, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art for a director of security and I applied and got the job. By this time, I knew a bit about the private sector, but I was about to get an education on the inner workings of non-profits, a whole new world. I stayed with the museum until it reopened and then decided to actually really retire. My wife and I bought a place under construction in Sonoma County and moved in. It was a one-half acre property. For two city kids growing up with postage stamp yards, we thought we had a farm.

Shortly after we were settled, or as settled as you could be on a farm, an old friend called and told me he had purchased a security and investigations company and asked if I would come aboard to help in getting this new enterprise off the ground. I did and I’m still part of the company, but my role is now consulting.

About the same time, I decided to dig out some old files I had collected over the years and began a journey creating crime/fiction novels. Because of my travels I had the good fortune to meet a significant number of interesting people, topflight investigators, talented police officers, great people in the private sector and everyone had a compelling story or anecdote. Fortunately, I had kept most of these in a file and now had a wealth of material for a story, or stories.

So began the stories that have now morphed into three books with more to follow.

Find out more at www.goldengatetales.com.

Article published in The Relatable Voice Magazine - August 2025.

Downolad the full magazine at:

https://www.relatable-media.com/the-relatable-voice-magazine