CAREER CHANGERS

When he was 55 William Bottger '63 left the top-100 law firm in Los Angeles where he had been a corporate lawyer for 25 years to join the police academy. Bottger, now a patrol officer in Glendale, California, decided to make the switch because his law career wasn't as satisfying as it once was. "I realized ifI was going to spend the remaining five or ten years doing something stimulating or exciting, I was going to have to do something else," he said.

Dean Esserman '79 also left behind a law career to walk a beat. He had worked as an assistant district attorney in New York and general counsel for the New York City transit police before the city of New Haven asked him to be its assistant police chief. Dartmouth had given Esserman an early exposure to police work when he got a summer internship with the New York City transit police. "I think police work is being engaged in life, being completely engaged in the community," he said. "I think police work can be a force for social justice."

Esserman